Cylon wrote:Bcspace, you believe in human evolution? Wow. Didn't see that one coming.
No, he doesn't. He believes that his misunderstanding of evolution is compatible with his ignoring the plain meaning of what the LDS Church teaches: that there was no death for any form of life on this planet before the Fall of Adam and Eve circa 4,000 B.C.E. viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15412&start=84
Bcspace ludicrously tries to rely on the Church not having an official position as to the exact mechanism by which human beings were created as allowing for evolution to be compatible with LDS doctrine. But the two are not even remotely compatible, because the Church makes assertions of fact that preclude the possibility of evolution: no organism reproduced or died before Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden; Adam and Eve left the Garden 6,000 years ago; the entire planet was covered with water at the time of Noah (which bcspace arbitrarily rejects), etc. In its official curricula, the Church explicitly recognizes that evolution is incompatible with the Church's teachings.
Old Testament Student Manual, Genesis--2 Samuel, "Genesis 1-2---The Creation" Points to Ponder (2-18)
“Of course, I think those people who hold to the view that man has come up through all these ages from the scum of the sea through billions of years do not believe in Adam. Honestly I do not know how they can, and I am going to show you that they do not. There are some who attempt to do it but they are inconsistent—absolutely inconsistent, because that doctrine is so incompatible, so utterly out of harmony, with the revelations of the Lord that a man just cannot believe in both.
“. . . I say most emphatically, you cannot believe in this theory of the origin of man, and at the same time accept the plan of salvation as set forth by the Lord our God. You must choose the one and reject the other, for they are in direct conflict and there is a gulf separating them which is so great that it cannot be bridged, no matter how much one may try to do so. . . .
“. . . Then Adam, and by that I mean the first man, was not capable of sin. He could not transgress, and by doing so bring death into the world; for, according to this theory, death had always been in the world. If, therefore, there was no fall, there was no need of an atonement, hence the coming into the world of the Son of God as the Savior of the world is a contradiction, a thing impossible. Are you prepared to believe such a thing as that?” (Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 1:141–42.)
If you search bcspace's posts about evolution, you will find his "theory" about how LDS doctrine can be reconciled with evolution. I totally swear I am not making up that this is bcspace's idea:
1. Directly contradicting the plain meaning of what the Church repeatedly and unequivocally says, bcspace posits that there was massive death all over the world to get the Earth up to the state where it was ready for human beings. Then the Garden of Eden became this island of immortality, while death and reproduction of animals (bcspace never seems to mention plants as being subject to evolution) was happening everywhere else.
2. God used evolution to get to the point where human bodies had developed. These human bodies had non-human spirits in them, however.
3. God inspired these non-human spirits in human bodies to mate in the Garden of Eden. When they did, God sent the human spirits of Adam and Eve into the human bodies that were the result of this mating. Thus, Adam and Eve were the first "human beings" because they had both human spirits and human bodies, even though through evolution there already were homo sapiens with non-human spirits living on the Earth before them.
Anyone with a passing familiarity LDS doctrine or biology (or who is not on medication that has substantial side effects) can readily see that there is no factual, theological, logical, or scientific reason to believe any of this. It is entirely ad hoc.
So Cylon, that's what bcspace means when he says he believes in evolution.