My First Encounters with Institutional Mormonism

[_why me]

On what do you base your belief that Adam and Eve were actual people?

You exist. Therefore you are. Unless you came from a monkey.

[_Tarski]

On what do you base your belief that Adam and Eve were actual people?

Therefore you are. .

Lets see

You exist.

OK

Therefore you are.

whoa, quite a deduction

Unless you came from a monkey.

and in that case what? I don't exist?

Or I still exist, having come from a monkey.

Of course none of this bears on the question of whether the Adam and Eve fairytale has any truth to it.

[_Simon Southerton]

I think that people experience what they experience. But I don't think that they experience what the LDS experience.

Again, what evidence or experience do you have to back up this claim? Have you grown up in an evangelical or a Baptist home? Or how about living in a Jewish community? Would you deny that these people feel strong emotional experiences in their churches or synagogues? What's the Holy Ghost telling these people?

[_Drifting]

On what do you base your belief that Adam and Eve were actual people?

You exist. Therefore you are. Unless you came from a monkey.

why me, how was Eve created?

[_DrW]

Haplogroup X is the only one of the five haplogroups found within the indigenous Peoples of the Americas that is not strongly associated with Eastern Asian. Haplogroups A, B, C, and D are all strongly associated with Eastern Asia.

As a point of clarification, all of these haplogroups (A, B, C, D and X), were represented in the pre-Columbian Amerindian founding lineages prior to their Siberia to North America migration via Beringia.

Due to the period of reproductive isolation from the sister clades of this group, (an isolation of at least 10,000 years), by the time the New World Amerindians finally arrived in North America and started expanding south and east, they were genetically distinct from their old world ancestors, regardless of haplogroup.

This reproductive isolation from the Old World continued up until the arrival of the Europeans in the 15th century, Jeff Lindsey notwithstanding.

Jeff Lindsey's apologetic style reminds me of Hugh Nibley. When they cannot make assertions based on evidence they resort to stating possibilities, often in the form of questions, in an attempt to obfuscate, misdirect, misinterpret, of otherwise raise doubts about the conclusions of mainstream science related to the Mormon narrative.

In the interest of "truth in labeling", consumers of Mormon apologetics should at least demand that some kind of fact-based probability estimates be provided with the various apologetic possibilities based on nuanced readings.

[_harmony]

On what do you base your belief that Adam and Eve were actual people?

You exist. Therefore you are. Unless you came from a monkey.

I exist, therefore Adam and Eve existed? I don't follow you, why me.

[_harmony]

On what do you base your belief that Adam and Eve were actual people?

Besides LDS doctrine? The notion that the rest of the doctrine, even if figurative, doesn't seem to work without Adam and Eve being actual people.

So you have nothing independent of scripture on which you base your belief?

[_brade]

On what do you base your belief that Adam and Eve were actual people?

You exist. Therefore you are. Unless you came from a monkey.

I don't even...

[_Brackite]

He forgot? It wasn't important? He was writing on gold plates and did not feel like it? The book is an abridgement and perhaps it was on the unabridged version?

Oh…I see that he forgot. It is a good thing that Nephi at least didn’t forget to write that he found horses upon the Promised Land. Now we know that there were horses upon the American Continent before Christopher Columbus arrived.

[_Buffalo]

He forgot? It wasn't important? He was writing on gold plates and did not feel like it? The book is an abridgement and perhaps it was on the unabridged version?

Oh…I see that he forgot. It is a good thing that Nephi at least didn’t forget to write that he found horses upon the Promised Land. Now we know that there were horses upon the American Continent before Christopher Columbus arrived.

Too bad Nephi didn't see fit to prophesy of anything concrete that was to occur after 1830 AD.