scholasticspastic
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Posts posted by scholasticspastic
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"All living things—mankind, animals, and plants—were spirits before any form of life existed upon the earth (Gen. 2:4–5; Moses 3:4–7)."The relevant portion:
(I don't know how to do nested quotes on here.)
I'm unable to find an official estimate of how many bacteria are alive on Earth. This source estimates it to be 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bacteria alive on Earth right now. That's just right this minute.
ET 9/98: First-ever estimate of total bacteria on earth
How many Earths of bacteria have there been, assuming the minimum allowed time for the Earth to have existed (I'll let you use the Young-Earth Creationist figure of 6000 years for this one). How many Earths of grass have existed in that time? How many Earths of trees have been germinated in that time? How many Earths of jellyfish have been spawned in that time? How many Earths of mice have been born in that time?
There has been less than one Earth of humans born in the entire history of the Earth so far. So making that claim is possible for human spirits without running into all sorts of logistical problems. But for most unicellular and plant species and for many of the shorter-lived animal species we run into silliness when we try to force that to be literally true.
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I have no idea how much biology is left to learn. Therefor I cannot rule out that I know practically nothing compared to biologists 3000 years from now. I do know that I only understand a tiny slice of the biology which is currently understood and that no living person can endeavor to know more than a tiny slice of any current scientific discipline.Knowledge is a continuum. You think you are a biologist and you believe you have a profound understanding of biological principles, because you compare yourself to men living three thousand years ago. But if you compare yourself with biologists three thousand years in the future, or even three hundred years, you are likely to look quite ignorant indeed. So then, is it justifiable to say that you don't really know any biology, you have no real concept of what you're talking about, and it's prideful for you to pretend to know anything about biology when in reality you are woefully ignorant?
Actually, maybe it's perfectly appropriate to say that; just make sure you apply the same yardstick to yourself that you wish to apply to Moses. And realize that, by so saying, you essentially deny anyone the ability to say anything about anything, because hey, maybe their knowledge is really wrong.
The same can all be said for a hypothetical comparison between myself and a biologist 300 years in the future.
Yes.
But knowledge is cumulative. We have accumulated a lot more knowledge than was understood back in Moses's time. We aren't any smarter, but we know more stuff. We can describe the way living things work, the way astrophysics works, the way the Earth is shaped and its composition, the movements of the planets, magnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, chemistry and medicine much better than Moses could have. Moses couldn't have described most of those things at all. He didn't have access to the wealth of observations we have access to now. That isn't pride speaking. That's just the way it is.
Given that the LDS church is a proselytizing church, it's probably a good idea to avoid unnecessary jargon. Death is something other than "separation of the spirit from the body" because we can observe a lot of things dying which would be silly to attribute spirits to. Is there an afterlife for all the billions of trillions of bacteria which have died this year? If things without spirits can die physically, then your definition of physical death is insufficient to be useful. Physical death means you stop being physically alive. Spiritual death means you still exist as a spirit. There is no cessation of being a spirit, thus it isn't terribly useful to call it a death.In LDS scripture and usage, "death" refers to spiritual separation. Separation of the spirit from the body is called "physical death", while separation of the spirit from God is called "spiritual death". As we are all destined to be resurrected and live forever as physical beings, physical death becomes (in that sense) a temporary thing of little overall consequence. Spiritual death, also called "the second death", is the only real death, and the only one we need concern ourselves over in an eternal sense.
Unless being cast into the outer darkness means ceasing to exist spiritually. Then we should probably call it ceasing to exist spiritually instead of calling it the outer darkness. And I would agree that it's a spiritual death.
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That's how I misunderstood the statement. Which is clearly not true. Unless bacteria and dandelions and redwoods and mushrooms and trout and mice and kittens all have spirits.From what seminarysnoozer was describing, I believe she was talking about the physical death- and she meant that our definition of physical death (separation of body and spirit) cannot happen if something does not have a spirit.
I'm already aware of the multiple possible meanings of "Hell." What I am confused about, also as an aside, is why some people are offended when I use the word "hell." It's on my list of cuss-words which don't make any sense.In our theology, a spiritual death is a permanent separation from the presence of God. The only ones who experience a spiritual death will be those who are cast into "outer darkness" (what your typical Christian would term hell, but here we get into a whole other confusion of terminology because this can mean more than one thing too) come judgement day. We believe that very few people will experience a spiritual death, but that everyone experiences physical death.
I do know a little about spiritual death. What mostly confuses me is why it's called death at all. Unless spirits which die spiritually cease to exist as spirits, it's not any sort of death. Just as I would become confused if you tried to tell me I could die physically without ceasing to exist as a living thing.
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It is essentially a euphemism for separation from God: Death, Spiritual
"Separation from God" doesn't take much longer to say and is much less confusing than "spiritual death."
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As far as your last paragraph goes, I agree there is a lot of pride attached to that statement. But more importantly what is carried with it is purpose. I would rather have the prideful belief that there is purpose to my life that goes beyond this life more than believe this life serves no purpose greater than momentary self gratification that will be all forgotten upon death.
You misunderstood me. Which I guess is fair as I'd just done it to you.
I'm saying that it is prideful to claim to know things which we cannot possibly know given the vagaries of scriptures due to the times they were recorded as far as truth-claims about how the world works. Because even if God had been telling them exactly how the world works, they wouldn't have had the necessary understanding to convey those truths. Thus Moses can be forgiven for not understanding how biology works. Not only that, but it would have been pointless for Moses to learn how biology works at that time. Nobody would have believed him.
This is a separate concern from understanding WHY the world works, which is something which could have been conveyed without any scientific understanding. But the HOW of the world and the WHY of the world are very different things. It is unnecessarily prideful to assume you know the HOW of the world just because you have access to a source which tells you about the WHY of the world.
People back then didn't know how most things worked. We know a lot more about how things work now. We still do not know how everything works. Whenever we confuse speculation with knowledge, whether we're doing religion or science, we're making fools of ourselves.
Concerning the LDS understanding that there are two kinds of death: Then don't be lazy and leave the word "spiritual" off when you're talking about spiritual death versus physical death. It's a barrier to communication. There was no way to tell from context which type of death you were talking about. Not only that, but I'm confused by what is meant by the term "spiritual death."
Care to explain how that's supposed to work? Is it something we ought to call death at all? Because death refers to a cessation. If I die physically, then I cease to be alive. If I die spiritually, do I cease to have a spirit? If not, I have reservations about calling it a sort of death.
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You might want to rephrase this. Not because I'm saying it's wrong, but because it's very probably sloppy.... and there is no death, of course, without a spirit to be separated from its body.
The first thing that popped into my head is: Then bacteria must have spirits. Because they die all the time. And it's a good thing they do.
An interesting question is: Given an evolutionary spectrum of organisms rather than the sharp division between humans and other animals, shouldn't we expect there to be or have been organisms which also had the capacity to support spirits? If we were to encounter sentient organisms from another world which were clearly not human organisms and yet which had civilization, would it be safe to assume that they also had spirits? Is there room in the LDS faith for aliens with spirits?
None of this is of doctrinal concern to me. I don't expect that we'll encounter any extraterrestrials in my lifetime whether or not they're there. It's just stuff which popped up in my head when you seemed to imply that it was necessary that there be a spirit for something to be alive. Because there's a lot of stuff which we can kill and most of it probably isn't stuff we would be terribly eager to claim had any sort of spirit. Like bacteria. Or dandelions.
Speculation is fine. Asserting that IT IS SO seems to be something a lot of people get tangled up with. This isn't a sign of faith- it is a sign of excessive pride. That Man was made in God's image is written by the same people who clearly had no inkling of the information we would eventually have access to via science. God could have said or meant practically anything and that would have been the extent of the detail in which it could have been recorded by His prophets at the time. So it's probably quite risky to attach too much meaning to that stuff when it comes to truth-claims about the world.The process of God forming the body of Adam is unknown, even though a lot of people on this forum like to speculate that it is similar to mortal birthing. We don't know, though, if the process requires similar mechanisms observed in evolution, or evolution itself. It may be natural evolution plus at some point some genetic engineering, as an example.
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Come on. Now you are suggesting that criminals are dishonest. Sheeze.
Some of the most ethical people I've known were criminals.... Their ethics just didn't match up with ours.
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I guess... but I think statistics also show that atheists are incarcerated with less frequency than believers.
It's also worth pointing out- and this is a problem, not a funny- that a prisoner is more likely to be released on parole if they convert to a religion or become more vocally faithful to a religion. That just tends to be how parole boards work. So one has to wonder how many religious people in prison are atheists who figured it'd be easier to get out on parole if they were "born again."
I have several problems with a religious test coming from parole boards. Not just the fact that making people more likely to lie about religious faith is a crummy deal.
Statistics about religion and criminality (or personal happiness) bothered me when I was a happy atheist. They still bother me as I work to stop being an atheist. There are just too many confounds for us to get anything out of them.
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Does this come from the Bible rendition? I know nothing about the Bible story, or any other rendition of Adam and Eve, that says they "didn't have blood".
I'm going to have to admit to having been wrong here. :) The bit about not having blood is not contained anywhere in the Bible or the Book of Mormon or any other scriptural reference to the Garden of Eden. I presumed it to have scriptural roots somewhere because it was included on lds.org, but apparently they're comfortable including a lot of things which have no scriptural roots. Having gone back and searched every reference I can find to Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden, I can honestly say that nothing in the story of the Garden need necessarily conflict with biology.
Now if I were to treat all the world as if it were, for a time, the Garden of Eden, then we'd run into trouble. But there is nothing in scriptural references to the Garden which disallows life going on as usual outside the Garden. So it's even possible that there needn't have been any death within the Garden while outside it things could have been living and dying as one would expect on a world with evolution. There needn't be any resultant evidential record remaining for such a relatively small place.
Similarly, I can't see any reason to object on biological grounds to the literal existence of Adam and Eve. I still object to their literal creation, however. There is far too much fossil, genetic, and physiological evidence for human evolution for me to feel comfortable ignoring it based on a few lines in any book written back when nobody had sufficient access to the tools which would have been required to understand evolution. It's reasonable to expect that an entity trying to talk to people in such a time would have run into difficulties if they tried to express anything in terms of evolution.
I do reject a literal understanding of death, diseases and infirmities resulting from the Fall. Again, there is too much support from fossil, genetic and physiological evidence to discount the idea that many diseases and infirmities are the result of evolutionary processes and predate any modern organisms, especially human kind. There would be no pre-human fossil record at all if death didn't predate humans and proto-humans on Earth. We can say that Adam and Eve were exposed to disease because they were forced to leave the disease-free oasis that was the Garden of Eden and I won't object to it. However, blaming disease and death throughout the whole of the Earth on the Fall stretches credulity to its breaking point.
Again, I have no idea whether scriptures actually blame disease and infirmities on the Fall. I know that's a claim made in the same resource which says Adam and Eve didn't have blood. The idea that disease and infirmities are the result of the Fall might have been transmitted to me by people who had read that book.
I freely admit that I haven't read most of the scriptures yet. I will readily admit when I am wrong about them. This is one of those times.
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I think I could adopt the interpretation forwarded in which he was the first man to believe in God. But evolution really doesn't allow for the sort of sharp demarcations between forms you seem to be implying. Adam's children should have looked no more or less human compared to Adam than any offspring you have would look compared to you. Similarly, if we allow for evolution working for all life on Earth, Adam would have looked no more or less human compared to his biological parents than your children look compared to you.As an engineer and scientist I have yet to find a problem with LDS doctrine. I do believe problems can and do arise with how many interpret doctrine. For example. Adam was the first man - but was he the first humanoid?
Bacteria become a problem here. I would be fearful of the idea of an Earth after one hour sans bacterial death. The idea of an Earth after a full day without bacterial death is fantastically bizarre. Those buggers can have doubling times measured in less than an hour. Most bacteria are not disease organisms, but rather constitute essential components of the ecosystem. Without bacteria there would be no plants, no animals, no humans.There was a time when death was not part of the ecosystem on earth. That time period may have only lasted a few days or possibly years. If it was a rather short time - the effects would very easily have been lost in time as foot prints in a beach by the ocean.
So, no, the idea of any time in the history of life on Earth when nothing died makes no sense to me because bacteria.
Genetic engineering does nothing to evolution. Evolution is a process, not a pathway. So I'm probably missing your point here.Genetic engineering can seriously alter evolution. Manipulating DNA could seriously alter "natural" or perceived courses or evolution that could effect the overall genetic make up of humans. It should not be anymore difficult to believe that a G-d could be manipulating human development and evolution as any more far fetched than the seeds of human evolution having possible extra terrestrial origins.
The Traveler
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Heh, you would have enjoyed this side discussion: http://www.lds.net/forums/introduce-yourself/43961-lds-muslim-perspective.html#post640478
Are you sure we use the same definition of "enjoyed?" I guess sometimes I enjoy wincing....
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I'm struggling with a few concerns here:I only just decided to review this thread from the start. Can you tell me what it is about the mere existence of a literal garden of Eden or a literal Adam and Eve that offends your biologist's sensibilities? I am not understanding how either of those is a biology issue.
1st: I'm lazy and there are a lot of ways a literal interpretation of scripture regarding Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden fails to jive with biology. Just for example: Am I to understand that Adam and Eve didn't have blood? How is that supposed to even work? Show me an organism the size of a human with complex organs that lacks a circulatory system! I'll be happy to go through the reasons we need a circulatory system so we don't die. I'll give you a hint: Some of this is physics. It wouldn't matter whether we had superhuman cells. Adam and Eve literally ate at least once. So they would have needed to breath. So, that one issue aside, I'm reticent to begin listing things because it's actually a very large time commitment.
2nd: Spinning off a long laundry list of personal issues concerning something that many people do believe to be literally true will undoubtedly result in someone feeling personally attacked, though that is not my intention.
3rd: This is a many-layered answer, depending upon starting conditions. There are already many ways people have parsed those scriptures into literal vs. metaphorical passages. Any answer would doubtless result in an endless series of what-ifs concerning how things might work out if I were to go with a different distribution of literal vs. metaphorical passages.
4th: Quite a few of my objections concern the entailments of what sort of a God would warp everything the way it is, such that, for instance, there are more parasitic species of life than there are non-parasitic species of life (a situation which is almost as yucky as it is cruel)? If we allow for evolution then parasites and diseases can be things which were allowed by God rather than intentionally created by God. He becomes a much nicer person. We don't have to deal with self-righteous prigs assuming someone's been a sinner every time they get sick. This is listed as a set of issues here because there was no disease in the literal Garden of Eden and disease is often attributed to the Fall. It doesn't matter whether Adam and Eve brought it on themselves, the consequences in the literal situation were designed in by God.
So these are my categorical objections to a literal Adam and Eve and Garden of Eden. These categories are not exhaustive and each category can be expanded to many potential pages of examples.
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Actually, in context, I said:As one in your shoes let me ask a few questions.
I've toyed over the last few years between being LDS, agnostic, or atheist. I had fallen away from the church for a while and couldn't decide which of the three I was. The one thing I did learn was one cannot be LDS and agnostic or LDS and atheist at the same time. You need to pick one and do it right.
Having lived with an agnostic husband for about 15 years (now an atheist for about 5 years), I have to ask, You said, "I cannot ever be more than agnostic about God in this life."
By the standards of evidence I employ as a scientist, I can never know that scripture is true, or that there is a God. Because the sort of experience which is taken as evidence in religious circles isn't admissible as any sort of evidence in scientific thinking. Feelings are far too subjective and difficult to communicate or calibrate for them to be used in science. So from that perspective, if I wish to be consistent in how I apply standards for evidence, I cannot ever be more than agnostic about God in this life.
I can never be more than scientifically agnostic about God in this life. I allow for the possibility that positive, empirical evidence for the existence of God would be available in the next life, which would allow me to be more than scientifically agnostic about God.
Evidence which is sufficient for me will not always be evidence which is sufficient for others. I am convinced that I am in love with my girlfriend. There is no evidence I could present to you that would convince you that I am in love with my girlfriend. I am not personally agnostic about the love I feel, but I'm willing to be scientifically agnostic about it. It's simply a matter of disparate standards of evidence. I know the love exists but cannot demonstrate it exists.
My girlfriend knows that I'm an atheist. She knows that I've struggled with matters of doctrine and that I'm trying to find a way to read scripture which works for me. She loves me. When I asked her if she'd consider, at this time in her life, marrying someone she couldn't be sealed to in the temple, she said yes.And yet you're considering marrying this girl in the temple. So my questions:
Does your girlfriend love you just the way you are, right now? Is she okay with your being an atheist? Would she marry you even if you didn't convert to being LDS?
My girlfriend has spent all her life expecting to be sealed in the temple and raise LDS children. Regardless of whether I can truly convert to the LDS church, we've agreed that were we to get married any kids who came along would be raised LDS. We also agree that if I cannot truly come to faith it would be wrong to get baptized or participate in any of the covenants of the LDS faith. She knows that I will not lie. She understands that trying to come to faith is not a promise that I'll come to faith- though she remains understandably hopeful that things will turn out that way.You said you love her enough you don't want her to give up anything "especially something as doctrinally important as being sealed in the temple- to be with me." What is her take on this? Does she want you to do something you don't believe in? Will she feel guilt about this in the future?
The fact that she loves me enough to give up being sealed in the temple is a huge factor in my wanting to do my best so she doesn't have to. I understand how big that is.
If I'm married in the temple I will not be agnostic or atheist.The reason people want to be married in the temple is that they're sealed for time and all eternity. The problem is, if one is either agnostic or atheist then they're not going to be going to the highest level of the celestial kingdom, which is where you're girlfriend wants to be with you.
This may or may not be the case (the temple bit). I look forward to seeing this clarified. But if I come to faith sufficiently to be baptized and married in the temple, I'll have come to faith sufficiently to hold the priesthood. So this is another non-issue.Others can correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it required to enter the temple for men to be holders of the Melchizedek Priesthood? Your wife would probably expect you to bless your children when they're infants, and give blessings when they're ill.
If I'm baptized, I understand that's part of the commitment. I understand that the effect of working to be baptized without actually believing in the LDS faith would pervert the act from one of love to a farce. It would be an act of disrespect to the church and to the woman I love. It isn't something I would consider.What if you're given a calling? Will you serve?
If I am baptized, it will mean everything it's supposed to mean. Which includes a personal testimony and a commitment on my part to maintain that testimony for the rest of my existence. I am not so puerile as to think lying to someone I love is in any way okay.As I said, I'm LDS and my husband is atheist. When we were married my testimony was less, and he was agnostic. Now I'm stronger in the church than I've ever been and he's gone the extreme too, he's now atheist. We loved each other for who we were before we got married. We didn't expect either one to change for the other. If it happened great, if not well... that was fine too, and here we are still married after all these years.
The point is, there's a lot more serious stuff that you need to think about than just how science fits into the LDS church. What's gonna happen when years down the road the "logical fallacies" just become too much and the "honey do" era is over? Are you going to remain strong in the church? If not, how's that going to effect your wife and now children?
I agree that these are important questions. Couple that with my aversion to dishonesty and you can see why I'm not running around claiming to have converted right now. I will have faith if I can. I hope to retain her love if I can't.I don't mean to sound like I'm rude, but you're in a "honey do" phase right now where she can do no wrong, and all you wanna do is "do" things for her. I respect that, but these are questions you're gonna have to consider before making the jump.
Ah, but it does. You'll be giving up your freedom to just be you. If you're anything less than a believer you're living a lie, and there goes your freedom. Most atheists don't really like religious people to pray for them, but I have a feeling that you want us to, so I will.
I hope something out of all this helps, but I'd just be careful that you understand what it is that she wants. Converting for someone else seldom lasts, so to thine own self be true!
Because I have been in love before, but never like this. It's.... Well, you know I can't say what it is. Because it's love. And coming up with words which are sufficient for that doesn't seem to be something anyone's managed so far.
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I particularly enjoyed this part:
(underscore mine)We came to few firm conclusions. But by the end everyone that I was aware off, came to see that evolution was no threat to our faith. We also came to the conclusion that we understand very little about things like the Creation and the Fall and that new interpretations must be entertained some that fundamentalisms and literalisms that became popular in the 50s disavow. We also realized that Mormonism and evolution are compatible in surprising ways—perhaps more so than any other religion. That we do not believe in an ex nihilo creation, that we believe that this earth and its inhabitants will be saved and indeed this is our place of final destiny, all speak to a hope that the two are complementary. There are sticking points of course. There are problems that will have to be sorted out by further revelation, closer and more open readings of scripture, and a humility that any interpretation of our scriptures is tentative and subject to further revelation from prophets or the book of nature.
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Attack Clinton all you like. I make it a point to attack all elected officials regardless of the cartoon animal they're represented by.Whatever your political leanings, surely you remember the justifications associated with President Clinton's extramarital escapades fifteen years ago: "He's the alpha male! Of course he's going to 'spread the love' around! That's what he's supposed to do! Any other man in that situation would do the same thing!"
The point is not to attack Clinton, but to point out that many of his defenders based their defense on the animalistic origins of the human body -- arguing in effect that people are just another kind of animal, and therefore you should not fault someone for acting like what he is.
The "alpha male" nonsense is a fantastic example of ignorance of actual biology or animal behavior. There are many ways animal societies can be structured. "Alphas" were observed under terribly artificial circumstances: apes in zoos. Basing our understanding of animal behavior on how they behave in zoos makes about as much sense as deciding what normal human behavior looks like by observing prison inmates.
On top of that, there's no reason to assume that any species of ape will share a social structure with another species of ape. We can find loads of evidence that ape species each have their own social structures. So even allowing for descent from an ape species, there still isn't any basis for assuming that human behavior should resemble that of a particular ape species.
I'm going to continue to leave this alone. The reasoning you're pointing out is faulty. I also disagree with your conclusion.Again, the point is not to condemn homosexuals, but to point out that many people defend homosexuality based on the idea that, hey, we're all just animals anyway, and homosexual behavior is normative among many animals, so therefore there cannot be anything wrong with it.
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This is bizarre. In what way would being an evolved organism justify anti-social behavior in a social organism? Anyone trying to make this sort of claim is 1) an idiot. 2) ignorant of biology. and 3) some other insult I'm too lazy to come up with. Because that sort of person earns at least three insults.The bishop is called to lead his congregation in the truths of the gospel. He does so, to the best of his ability. Maybe he sees evolution as a stand-in for all the ungodly influences of the world; even those who accept evolution must admit that it has often been invoked in unclean, even criminal, activity, and not just to explain but to exculpate. "That's just how my body is evolved!" is not a sufficient explanation to dismiss homosexual behavior, beating up your neighbor because he made you mad, committing adultery with an intern, ravaging yourself with drugs, or many of the other things people seek to excuse themselves over by pinning it all on their animalistic origins. Maybe this is what your bishop is responding to, and why he tries to caution his ward members not to fall into such faulty patterns of thinking.
I'm going to leave the homosexuality stuff alone. I'm not gay, so it doesn't apply to me. That's as close as I can get to agreeing with you there.
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I tend to agree with you Scholastic, though this is what Elder Packer had to say about evolution, "Surely no one with reverence for God could believe that His children evolved from slime or from reptiles."
-RM
Surely no one without reverence for slime could have studied microbiology.
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And of course those evidences WOULD be found in the human body, if we mated with "evolved man" and mixed our genetic characteristics. Of course I'm coming up with an explanation that makes sense to me and that others may not agree with, but I don't see how this makes it "special pleading". I am not exempting myself from any standard that I hold others to...
Man cannot mate with any other species of animal. If we're using "Man" to mean "human" as in the human species, then you've got me very confused, indeed. I don't see this as helping to clarify.... well, anything, really.
You seem to be saying that there were evolved humans. Then Adam was literally created. Then Adam's descendents mated with the evolved humans.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to simply say there were humans before Adam and Adam was the first of them to have some sort of interaction with God? Why is it acceptable that the other animals are evolved, yet we have to get all complicated when it comes to ourselves?
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Sounds like your family likes debate and that's great when it comes to scientific matters but it's not what's going to help you find the truth when it comes to religion. In the end you will have to seek the answers from the creator himself.
There are a lot of people who would say that's what we're doing when we utilize the scientific method.
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As I said before, if you do not honestly believe the teachings of the Church, you should not pretend you do just to join. But by the same token, you should not let pretended and non-existent doctrinal difficulties (such as the Church's non-existent stance against evolution) prevent you from progressing.
The difficulty hasn't been pretended.
My sources for understanding the LDS church are as follows:
Church, including the publication Gospel Principles (which I've been reading). My current Ward bishop makes a point of making anti-evolution comments. Gospel Principles shouldn't be expected to clarify the issue for me and it doesn't.
My literal creationist LDS family members who seem intent upon slapping me in the face with whatever they can find which they feel backs them up when they try to tell me I must believe in a literal creation to be Mormon.
So between getting slapped in the face with literal creationism at church and getting it from my family members, and compounding the problem by admitting a very poor personal understanding of doctrine, it's easy to see where I'd get confused.
I am not here as a "concern troll." I am exactly what I say I am. There seem to be as many ways to be Mormon as there are Mormons and I'm trying to learn how to navigate this new landscape. I'm doing my best to learn the doctrine of the church because I don't want to lie, by intent, by ignorance, or by omission, should I be baptized.
I'm happy to accept that the theory of evolution is a non-issue in terms of LDS doctrine. That is enough for me. But you can see why I might have gotten the impression that this isn't the case.
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I'm not so loyal to the theory of evolution that I'm unwilling to give it up. But there's a tonne of evidence for it. Almost all of the modern synthesis in Biology has evolution twined through it. So I'm extremely resistant to letting go of it without some very compelling evidence. And logical fallacies as are necessary to literally interpret scripture about the origins of man really rub me the wrong way. God made reality. Reality should be consistent with what God says. When it isn't, as scripture is always transcribed by man, it seems more reasonable to assume a faulty transcription rather than a faulty God.
I'm willing to admit that I will never have a faith so strong that I'm able to deny the reality of what I see when I find a scripture that says it's false. Nor do I think such a faith would be a good thing.
If this makes me a bad Mormon, should I manage to get to a place where I can be Mormon at all, then I will be a bad Mormon.
Thanks for that recent link, Forget-Me-Not!!! It's exactly what I was looking for.
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However, I also believe that Adam and Eve were created separately- a final creation that God placed in the Garden of Eden upon completing all other creations. Nowhere in the scriptures is there a reference to how long they were in the Garden, and it is quite possible that life continued on for thousands of years growing and changing and evolving while Adam and Eve remained in "stasis" in the Garden. I think it is even possible that the "fiery archangel" sent to block the way back to the garden once they were cast out may have been the meteor that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
I can't do this. Because the very same evidence which is so compelling in other animals can also be found in the human body. You're talking about committing the fallacy called special pleading.
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On the contrary, what it says is that all men descend from Adam, the first man.
Yes, it does say that. But it says it in such a way, together with mentioning, "It is held by some that Adam was not the first man upon this earth, and that the original human being was a development from lower orders of the animal creation. These, however, are the theories of men." that I can't help worrying that denial of the possibility of the evolution of Man was their intent.
The context in which they made this proclamation means it's official church doctrine. The subject of the proclamation is very relevant to my line of work. So getting a straight answer about what the church's position on evolution is prior to making any commitments to that church becomes an important issue to me.
So far everything I've been able to find at lds.org implies that evolution is contrary to LDS doctrine without actually saying outright that evolution is contrary to LDS doctrine. In many ways this is far more maddening.
I am a Biologist. I've spent most of my life- not just my time in academia- researching biology. The evidence for evolution is more compelling than the evidence that I am my Father's son. In fact, any evidence that I'm my Father's son, as used in a court of law, is only possible via the theory of evolution.
So this is a big issue for me.
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This isn't as helpful as you may have intended. I am comfortable positing the existence of God without evidence. I do, however, become extremely uncomfortable when scripture about things on Earth is expected to trump evidence on Earth about things on Earth.Then there are the Pharisees of science. They try to limit God to what they perceive as logic, based on man's puny understanding of things. For example, they say there can be no God because nothing can move faster than the speed of light. Meanwhile, we have recently seen experiments from CERN that produced particles that move faster than light, which would redefine the very fundamentals of our understanding of physics. We are reluctant to admit that we had it wrong for a long time. God's existence only gets contradicted by incomplete science.
Unfortunately, I may not be able to be honest, a Biologist, and a Mormon all at once. I just found this:
Given the procedure described I must assume that what they decided is doctrine.Perhaps the most heated and prolonged discussions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries centered on the creation of the earth and the theories of organic evolution. In the midst of these controversies the First Presidency asked Elder Orson F. Whitney of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to draft a statement that would convey the Church’s official position on the origin of man. Elder Whitney’s statement was subsequently approved and signed by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and published in 1909 as an official declaration of the Church. This statement affirmed that:
“It is held by some that Adam was not the first man upon this earth, and that the original human being was a development from lower orders of the animal creation. These, however, are the theories of men. The word of the Lord declares that Adam was ‘the first man of all men’ (Moses 1:34), and we are therefore in duty bound to regard him as the primal parent of our race. … Man began life as a human being, in the likeness of our heavenly Father.” 14
This seems a very clear indictment of the descent of Man via the mechanism of evolution as false. Based entirely on scripture.
My response must be this:
If I must regard this as doctrine, then my time as a hopeful Mormon is done. Because no Christian should forget that they have two sources for the word of their God:
The one most commonly known is their scripture. But within that scripture it is also claimed that the whole of the Universe is the word of God. Further, while the Bible and other records may be the word of God, they are written by men, through the lens of their understanding at the time they were written. Whereas the Universe, if it is created, cannot be anything other than the naked word of God. It seems prideful and myopic to give precedence to scripture and refuse to accept the Universe itself as a source of information. Because while the understandings of men change over time, reality has a stubborn tendency to remain immutable and immune to fashion.
The theory of evolution was proposed over a century and a half ago. Since that time, it has been tested hundreds or even thousands of times every year. Rather than having been shown false by these experiments, it has become the bedrock upon which the rest of our understanding of Biology rests.
I would challenge anyone to tell me who's being prideful. Is it the person who ignores reality as created by God in favor of their understanding of scripture? Or is it the person who is willing to alter their understanding scripture as they gain more information about reality as created by God?
Because it appears, in this case, that one of them is wrong.
Doctrine confusion
in LDS Gospel Discussion
Posted
If the scriptures are about God's plan for Man, then we cannot understand God's plan for bacteria, plants and animals. Is there a passage in there telling us about their spiritual fate? Will they all be resurrected alongside us? If so, where will we put them all? There's room for us, but not for them. Not on this world.
If God has plans beyond being food for us for all the bacteria, plants and animals on Earth, can we count on those plans being important to our salvation? If not, why bother trying to force what the Bible and Book of Mormon say about the other organisms to be literally true? Are the scriptures intended as text books or as guides to our salvation? I hope it's only the latter, because they're not very good at the former. For one thing, there's not enough of them. I've got more pages of text book just for my undergraduate studies- and even if we only count the classes which were required for my major. And it's safe to assume I know quite a bit less than God having read those books. It's safe to assume that I came away from reading those books knowing less than most modern Biologists.