bcspace wrote:Yes, it is a loophole.
No stretch at all as 2 Nephi 2:22 simply speaks of the state into which man was created. It says nothing that puts up any time limits. Again you are grasping because your favorite argument is destroyed.
Yes it is a stretch. A colossal, massive, humongous stretch. Your loophole would allow the earth to exist in a radically different form during its creation, ie: pretty much like it is now, with things living and dying, evolving over millions of years, etc., and with homo sapiens existing as a distinct species for at least well over 100,000 years, and then somehow convert from that state into a state that conforms with LDS doctrine on the subject. The idea that there is no blood in living things prior to Adam's fall, and that nothing could die, is not compatible with our evolutionary history as we now understand it to have been. You saying that that was merely the state during the creation, but upon the creation's completion, everything changed, really doesn't make much sense. It's really no better than arguments in support of Special Creation. If God just snaps his fingers and everything changes, how is that any better than the arguments in favor of a 6000 year old earth? That's why I made the examples that I did.
Seriously, let's discuss your theory some more and see where it leads.
Given evolution, living, dying, and animals with blood in their bodies, including probably millions of homo sapiens, what do you think happened to them at the time the Earth magically changed from a mortal world to an immortal one? What happened to the blood? What happened to the millions of homo sapiens? So you're suggesting that God used abiogenesis and then organic evolution to design and create bodies for animals and eventually (a couple billion years later) people, and then simply shut down all the mechanisms of normal biology and transformed the world into something very, very different? And maintained it in this way until Adam ate a particular piece of fruit?
Somehow a man Adam, who was himself the son of two of the existing homo sapiens, was just different enough that his bo[quotedy could house a human spirit, and he and his wife Eve, who miraculously also happened to have a body, unlike her own homo sapiens parents,
LOL! Only a scientific illiterate would be opposed to evolution.
Indeed. When faced with the overwhelming evidence for evolution, you're forced to accept it. But then, in scientifically illiterate manner, you try to shoehorn some kind of immortal, bloodless, deathless, reproductionless Garden of Eden fairy tale into our actual biological and natural history. I stand in awe at your ability to convince yourself that this isn't completely, utterly, and even insanely retarded.
which was configured right for the housing of a human spirit, found themselves alone and completely innocent in this paridisical Garden of Eden.
There has to be some point when a body is ready to house a spirit.
Only if there's really such a thing as a spirit. And the question inevitably comes up, what was controlling the actions, words, emotions, choices, thoughts, etc. of the millions of homo sapiens bodies iving at the time of Adam, including his own parents, possibly brothers and sisters, cousins, uncles and aunts, etc., since obviously they didn't have "human" spirits controlling them. Do you suppose they had no spirit? Or did they have spirits that were 99.9999% identical to real human spirits, but were just not quite human? Like, perhaps, the factory seconds from the spirit production line?
Keep in mind that we have evidence of proto-civilizations, the earliest forms of writing, and the expected human trappings of our earliest civilizations, from before the time of Adam. You're suggesting that it's perfectly OK for there to have been genetically-compatible, intelligent, sentient homo sapiens on this planet speaking and writing in language, making music, trading goods with each other, tilling and cultivating fields, smelting copper and whatnot, but they didn't have "human spirits" in them, until Adam came along, and he got the first "real" human Spirit. Do you not recognize how contrived that is? Do you not recognize how hard, and to what lengths, you're being forced to go to shoehorn in some modicum of LDS creation mythology into our actual natural history?
A demon-god named Satan tempted Adam and Eve to eat a certain piece of fruit, and suddenly Adam knew right from wrong.
I don't think there was anything magical here. When consequences are applied, one begins to know the difference between good and evil.
Of course, after the invention of agriculture, written language, early civilization, etc. there was no "sin", because none of the millions of homo sapiens already spread out across most of the globe had no concept of right and wrong? It took Adam and Eve eating a certain piece of fruit to bring this concept to humankind? That's quite a stretch.
Adam and Eve realized that they were naked, that they had genitals that liked to be touched and rubbed, and figured out how to have sex, and started giving birth to more homo sapiens whose bodies were configured to house human spirits.
Who said anything about not having sex?
Let's see. LDS believe that Adam and Eve were innocent, didn't realize they were naked, etc. I think they come about as close to saying "they weren't having sex" as they can while still making one read between the lines. So, are you suggesting that Adam and Eve were having sex, but they still couldn't have any children because they hadn't fallen yet? Why couldn't they? Was Adam shooting blanks? Was he putting it into the wrong orifice in his inept and innocent naïvété?
Meanwhile, outside the Garden of Eden, all of the non-human homo sapiens had been stuck in some kind of stasis where all the activities, even the beating of their own hearts pumping real blood through their veins, had come to a screeching halt waiting for Adam to eat that fruit.
Says who?
Ok, so if it wasn't some kind of stasis, what do you propose all of the millions of existing homo sapiens, including Adam and Eve's parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, fellow tribemembers, clanmembers, etc. were up to the whole time Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden before they fell?
If Adam was born of homo sapiens parents who had evolved from earlier forms of life, they clearly had blood in their veins when Adam was born. What happened to it? How do you reconcile existing, blood-filled, living, dying, homo sapiens with LDS teachings about no blood in bodies until after the fall? About no death until after the fall? About no reproduction until after the fall? How do you account for the fact that these very conditions were decidedly
not compatible with the state of the homo sapiens on Earth right up into the moment you hypothesize as the time when Earth when from the creation period to the period "after they were created", or the state they were created into, as you like to say it. Somehow you have to account for how these conditions might have changed, and then changed back, and for their to be no evidence that things went any differently for human beings on earth in the time before the time of Adam than they had for tens of thousands of years previously.
Let's hear it, BCSpace. Who are the homo sapiens on earth today who aren't really human, because although they're genetically compatible with the rest of us people, their bodies, not having descended from Adam and Eve, but rather from the pre-Adamites, are not configured to house human spirits?
Who said I believe any of the words you are putting in my mouth?
These are the natural consequences of what your proposing. There were probably millions of homo sapiens on Earth at the time of Adam. There is ample evidence that they continued living on from before this time, to this time, and after this time, without interuption. So you have to account for them in your theory. And you claim Adam is truly the father of our race because he was the first whose body was capable of housing a human spirit, and that we all, who have human spirits, are Adam's descendants. Well, if there were millions of homo sapiens whose bodies could not house human spirits, and they continued, and there are people today whose ancestry goes back to these people, and does not contain any ancestry of people who arguably might have descended from Adam, then there's no way these people could house human spirits, is there? The Australian aborigines got to Oz around 40,000+ years ago, and were isolated there until fairly recently. Since it would be hard to argue that they were descendants of Adam, were the Aborigines simply human-like creatures without human spirits at the time they were "discovered" by the Europeans a few hundred years ago? And are the aborigines today, if they can trace their ancestry back to pre-Discovery times with no intermixing of European genes, still incapable of housing a human spirit?
How do you account for the claim that Adam is the ultimate ancestor of us all, and yet at the time of Adam there were literally millions of other homo sapiens reproducing? At what time, in the subsequent few thousands of years, were the pockets of these homo sapiens who descended from the pre-Adamites finally able to house human spirits, notwithstanding never having mixed with anyone arguably of the "seed of Adam"? Is Adam the ultimate ancestor of us all only through adoption?
Do you realize just how stupid this all is? ... Trying to keep human history the way we now know it looks like, and evolution, and all the rest, and yet maintain a literal Garden of Eden story with Adam, the father of all of us "real" humans, is just stupid.
Since it fills in details that are not revealed by God, it's not stupid at all.
You haven't filled in any details at all. You're not claiming anything. Let's see if you can be pinned down on
anything at all in this conversation. I'm going to bet not. You're really not saying anything with any explanatory power here. You're simply hand-waving and claiming the blessing of science on a decidedly anti-scientific shoe-horning of mythology into natural and biological history. It's absurd.
Why does your belief system have to maintain a modicum of viability? Why can't you just be wrong about your religious beliefs?
Whenever you show any dregree of wrongness, I will agree. But you have yet to do so.
I've already demonstrated many deficits of your proposal, but obviously you're unwilling to see or acknowledge that.
It's not like you'd be the first one. In fact, according to the beliefs of your church, almost everyone on earth who exists today, or who ever has existed, has been wrong in their religious beliefs. Why is it that you can't allow yourself to follow the exceedingly common human trait of having been convinced, and yet been wrong, about your religious beliefs?
I have followed said human trait. I am convinced that I am right.
The hilarious thing is that this is your own specific pet theory. Nobody else believes it quite the same way. It is truly the Gospel of BCSpace. Joseph Smith didn't believe this. Brigham Young didn't believe it. None of the prophets believed it down to the present day. Gordon B. Hinckley has never given us any reason to suspect that he believes this. This is all you. Now really. Not even considering the likelihood that you'd actually be right when almost everyone in the world who is convinced of his or her religious beliefs is actually wrong, what do you suppose is the likelihood that you've stumbled onto the "real" truth that the Lord's annointed, his Prophets, Seers, and Revelators have not known? How is it that rest of the church is wrong, but you, BCSpace, have figured it all out?
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen