More bad news for our scripture believing friends

[_Jason Bourne]

Which is also non doctrinal.

But used to be doctrinal. :)

Doesn't appear to have been.

Yes it certainly appears to have been.

[_Jason Bourne]

No:

1) Adam-God wasn't what BY taught.
2) It doesn't meet the D&C 107 criteria.

1: Yes it was
2: Nor was the priesthood ban, the KFD and related teachings, and so on...

[Guest]

I'm wondering why all of you are tossing around 6,000 years as if that's the lone theory out there. I had always understood it to be 11,000-15,000 years. No, I don't have a reference, that's just been my understanding.

Could be. But does it make a difference? Could 7 Billion persons spring from one couple 15,000 years ago? Can we tie back to one couple genetically? I think not. Then if you believe in the flood well what are we at then? All of us tied to 8 persons 4500 years ago?

I agree. 10,000 to 15,000 years ago as a time period for the 'beginning" of humankind is so far from what the evidence says that it is really not significantly different from 4,500 years or 6,000 years or 7,000 years ago.

By these dates in history, there were thriving populations of modern humans on every continent except Antarctica. Adam ondi Ahman, the place in Daviess County Missouri that Mormons claim was near the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve lived before the fall, was, in fact probably being treaded frequently 6,000 years ago by people whose ancestors had migrated from Asia by land.

http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/human_pop/worldpop.jpg

Our earliest common ancestor with modern chimpanzees lived something like 4.5 million years ago.

For the appearance of anatomically modern Homo sapiens, the best number we have is something on the order of 200,000 to 250,000 years ago. Some estimates even extend this time frame.

Our closest (now extinct) hominid relatives (the Neanderthals) may have lived up until as late as 30,000 years ago or so. Turns out that Homo sapiens have some Neanderthal DNA, so it is pretty clear that the two co-existed for some time (probably in southwestern Europe.) Another isolated hominid branch (Homo floresiensis) may have even been living as late as 17,000 years ago.

Anyone who honestly believes that humankind was first found upon this Earth 6,000 or even 15,000 years ago has chosen to remain willfully ignorant, and has worked very hard to do so.

[_Jason Bourne]

No, you're just stuck because you haven't been paying attention when I mention D&C 107 and Adam Sr Adam Jr is a perfectly cromulent explaination that matches the facts far more than Adam God.

Oh hear we go. Elden Watson's crappy Adam Jr. and Adam Sr. theory.

Well if that is what BY thought why the hell didn't he say so.

Answer is: He did not think it. He thought what he clearly said.

Even John Tvedtness knew the Jr/SR idea was bunk.

A worse piece of apologetic I have not seen. The fact that you keep referring to it shows how desperate you are to try to get our of Adam God.

[_Jason Bourne]

Which Adam?

The only Adam our earth has ever had. The one BY said was out God. The Dude in the Nude in the Garden, the lovely Garden.

[_Jason Bourne]

Our closest (now extinct) hominids relatives (the Neanderthals) may have lived up until as late as 30,000 years ago or so. Turns out that Homo sapiens have some Neanderthal DNA, so it is pretty clear that the two co-existed for some time (probably in southwestern Europe.) Another isolated hominid branch (Homo floresiensis) may have even been living as late as 17,000 years ago.

Ha! So when I run into some dolt and I say they act like a Neanderthal I may they actually may have some in them! Wow. Who knows, maybe I do as well. My gene pool however hail from England and Denmark at least as far back as I can go and that is only about 500 years. So who knows.

Anyone who honestly believes that humankind was first found upon this Earth 6,000 or even 15,000 years ago has chosen to remain willfully ignorant, and has worked very hard to do so.

Alas, I tried to for a long time. I did mental wrangling like BC does. It just does not work for me anymore.

[_Chap]

AGAIN

BUMP FOR BCSPACE (I see we are at the stage where he ceases to respond to a thread where he can't think of a let-out, in the hope that he can have a fresh run at the problem in a few months' time ...)

And in any case ... what am I doing trying to argue with bcspace that it is LDS doctrine that we are all descended from Adam and Eve when in this thread he said:

I believe that we all who are alive today are descendants of Adam and Eve is almost (perhaps absolutely) mandated by doctrine. Perhaps you might have some intermarriage in there (a nod to some strange ideas about Genesis 6). But I prefer a cleaner explaination than that in the absence of details.

What has changed since then? Has he moved just that little bit further towards apostasy?

ALSO BUMP THE PREVIOUS POST:

Are we descended from our Heavenly Father,

Yes.

How so?

How can you be sure that he is any more the Father of us all in a literal sense than Adam and Eve are literally the Father and Mother of us all, which you have denied?

Interestingly, Gospel Fundamentals (doctrinal, no?) seems to take a different view:

The lives of Adam and Eve changed after they ate the fruit our Father in Heaven had told them not to eat. Our Father in Heaven sent them out of the Garden of Eden. They could not walk and talk with Him anymore. From then on mankind was separated from the presence of our Father in Heaven. Not being able to be with our Father in Heaven is called spiritual death.* Adam and Eve had to live in the world outside the beautiful garden. They had to work to obtain the things they needed.

Their bodies changed. Now they could have children. They could become sick and feel pain and sorrow, and someday they would die. The changes that came upon Adam and Eve are called the Fall of Adam.

These changes affect all of the descendants of Adam and Eve. Like them, we too have the power to have children; and sickness, pain, sorrow, and death also come to us.

It is clear from the final sentence that 'we ... have children; and sickness, pain, sorrow, and death also come to us' because that is what happens to 'all of the descendants of Adam and Eve'.

Can you wriggle out of that too?

Go on, have a go!

Hey, there's this too:

"Lesson 3: The Fall of Adam and Eve," Preparing for Exaltation: Teacher’s Manual, (1998)

What would have happened to us if Adam and Eve had not eaten the fruit? (Because they would not have had children, we would not have had the opportunity to be born on this earth.)

Yup. No kids from Adam and Eve, then no us. We are descended from them all right! Doctrine.

[_Chap]

Hi bcspace, I suppose you'll be posting on Liz's board from now on?

[_Chap]

Ho well, bcspace has apparently gone the way of DCP.

I suppose he is disgusted by my rabid snarling, and the spittle and all.

(Translation: my pointing out that

(a) It appears to be LDS doctrine that we are all descended from Adam

(b) he has said as much himself on another occasion.

(c) but he now tries to deny that this is the case.)

Back to the dog pound, then ...

[_Darth J]

For bcspace and our other friends who insist that evolution is compatible with LDS doctrine, let us take yet another look at OFFICIAL LDS DOCTRINE:

“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.)

Old Testament Student Manual, Genesis--2 Samuel, "Genesis 1-2---The Creation" (the above quote is under Points to Ponder (2-18))

The ACTUAL OFFICIAL MANUAL to which I have linked concludes with young earth creationist pseudoscience talking points asserting that evolution is false, beginning with (under Points to Ponder (2-19)):

But what of the scientific evidence that supposedly contradicts these statements? Isn’t the evidence that all life evolved from a common source overwhelming? Harold G. Coffin, Professor of Paleontology and Research at the Geoscience Research Institute, Andrews University in Michigan, presented one scientist’s view of how life began. The following excerpts are from a pamphlet on the Creation written by Dr. Coffin.

“The time has come for a fresh look at the evidence Charles Darwin used to support his evolutionary theory, along with the great mass of new scientific information. Those who have the courage to penetrate through the haze of assumptions which surrounds the question of the origin of life will discover that science presents substantial evidence that creation best explains the origin of life. Four considerations lead to this conclusion.

“1. Life is unique.

“2. Complex animals appeared suddenly.

“3. Change in the past has been limited.

“4. Change in the present is limited.

“Anyone interested in truth must seriously consider these points. The challenge they present to the theory of evolution has led many intelligent and honest men of science now living to reevaluate their beliefs about the origin of life.” (Coffin, Creation: The Evidence from Science

P.S. Under section 2-17 of this manual, there is a special treat for our "local flood" heretics:

"The Flood and subsequent cataclysms drastically changed the topography and geography of the earth. The descendants of Noah evidently named some rivers, and perhaps other landmarks, after places they had known before the Flood. This theory would explain why rivers in Mesopotamia now bear the names of rivers originally on the American continent. It is also possible that some present river systems are remnants of the antediluvian river systems on the one great continent that existed then."