Can Mormons Believe in Evolution? (Click here for the answer

[_Sethbag]

LDS doctrine and science do conflict. Your own personal, speculative version of LDS doctrine and science don't conflict in your own mind.

You say "The Lord's Prophets Seers and Revelators have no doctrine that I am in conflict with. " That's patently untrue. A simple example is that you accept that things lived and died on Earth before Adam's Fall. This conflicts with the doctrine that there was no death in the world before Adam's Fall. You can play all the word games you want, and try to weasle out of it, but this conflict is absolutely there.

But the key here is not whether the Lord's Prophets, Seers, and Revelators have doctrine that you are in conflict with. The key is whether the Lord's Prophets, Seers, and Revelators actually believe what it is you put forth as the key to getting the LDS church out of the problem with evolution. They don't. And you don't see the problem in that? That you, specifically, "get it" and Thomas S. Monson, whose mantle is supposed to be far, far greater than your intellect, doesn't? The problem is that you've defined your very own, personal version of Mormonism which you think gets Mormonism out of a bind, and nobody else in the Mormon Church believes it. What are the odds here, BCSpace? How can you reconcile this?

[_bcspace]

LDS doctrine and science do conflict.

Your inability to provide a single example, by your own logic (caused by symptoms of Fortigurn's Lazy Research), shows that this is not the case.

You say "The Lord's Prophets Seers and Revelators have no doctrine that I am in conflict with. " That's patently untrue. A simple example is that you accept that things lived and died on Earth before Adam's Fall. This conflicts with the doctrine that there was no death in the world before Adam's Fall.

Since the context is the created world, how am I in conflict?

The key is whether the Lord's Prophets, Seers, and Revelators actually believe what it is you put forth as the key to getting the LDS church out of the problem with evolution.

Who says they think the Church has a problem with evolution?

[_Sethbag]

You say "The Lord's Prophets Seers and Revelators have no doctrine that I am in conflict with. " That's patently untrue. A simple example is that you accept that things lived and died on Earth before Adam's Fall. This conflicts with the doctrine that there was no death in the world before Adam's Fall.

Since the context is the created world, how am I in conflict?

Not so fast. On what basis do you limit this teaching to the context of the "created world"? You're playing word games here. Please justify your interpretation of these teachings as applicable only to what you would call a "post creation" context.

LDS prophets have always taught that death entered the world with the Fall of Adam. You, arbitrarily, wish to confine this teaching to the point in time which you argue constitutes the post-creation existence, and thereby exclude from consideration what was happening on Earth for billions of years prior to this post-creation period. This is absurd on its face. You cannot find any authority within the last 170 years of church teaching to support this arbitrary division. 2Nephi 22 does not offer up a blank check to limit the "no death" teaching to the time after Creation was finished.

The Earth has existed for over 4.5 billion years. During that time, it has undergone great changes. There is no evidence that the Earth itself changed in any particular way such as would justify the teaching that its "creation" had ceased 6000ish years ago and we were now entering the distinct "post creation" phase of its existence. The Earth has always undergone gradual change, and it is still is. Mountains are being created today just as they were millions of years ago, land is being subducted under other plates and "destroyed" in the Earth's mantle today, as ever before. New seafloor is being created by the movement away from each other of continental plates. Species are undergoing mutation and competition for survival just as they ever were since life existed at all. Some species are going extinct, as ever, while new species are undoubtedly in the very slow process of being differentiated from amongst closely related animals and plants. Things were living and dying every single day from hundreds of millions of years ago until the present.

Please explain, and justify with evidence, what condition it was in the Earth that differentiated it, say, 10,000 or 15,000 years ago from, say 6,000 years ago in some substantive way that could related rationally to conditions as "pre- or mid-Creation" and "post-Creation". You can't. It's all word games. Adam and Eve came about "post-Creation" only because you define it to be so, without reference to any circumstances in reality.

Also, you cannot show any evidence that things ever stopped living and dying, as would required by LDS doctrine even if you were to justify excluding the hundreds of millions of years of previous living and dying as "pre- or mid-Creation". Human beings had already existed and lived and died for multiple hundred thousands of years, created the first proto-civilizations before the timeline of Adam, had already domesticated animals and developed organized agriculture, developed the first proto-writing systems, and so forth, before the timeline of Adam. Please demonstrate how any of this human activity changed in fundamental character at any time corresponding to a change from "pre- or mid-Creation" to "post-Creation but pre-Fall". Death would have had to have been a part of these proto-societies and the tribes and people who formed them going back hundreds of thousands of years, but then somehow all death in the entire World must have stopped, corresponding to some period arbitrarily designated "post-Creation", only to resume again because Adam and Eve ate a particular fruit off a particular tree.

Your word games re: "post-Creation" cannot get the LDS teachings of the Fall out of the quandary posed by Earth's history. The LDS prophets were simply wrong. They had no idea what they were talking about, and made it up as they went along, either out of whole cloth, or as "rational" developments of inherited, previous mythology.

[_Tarski]

My mother thinks there were no rainbows in the world before the flood. Maybe if shown the impossibility of this, she could come back with

"Oh, there were no rainbows before the flood during the no-rainbow-period in the no-rainbow-area."

Presumably this no-rainbow-period lasted for a few days while there was no rain in the no-raindow-area.

Funny what "no rainbows in the world before the flood" could be taken to mean by a religiously determined mind.

[_bcspace]

Since the context is the created world, how am I in conflict?

Not so fast. On what basis do you limit this teaching to the context of the "created world"? You're playing word games here. Please justify your interpretation of these teachings as applicable only to what you would call a "post creation" context.

I've already shown you exactly how in 2 Nephi on this board and on the MADB. You've yet to explain how I might be wrong instead preferring to cry foul.

[_bcspace]

My mother thinks there were no rainbows in the world before the flood. Maybe if shown the impossibility of this, she could come back with

"Oh, there were no rainbows before the flood during the no-rainbow-period in the no-rainbow-area."

Presumably this no-rainbow-period lasted for a few days while there was no rain in the no-raindow-area.

Funny what "no rainbows in the world before the flood" could be taken to mean by a religiously determined mind.

The analogy doesn't work because there is no verse showing such as division as there is for the creative states.

[_Tarski]

My mother thinks there were no rainbows in the world before the flood. Maybe if shown the impossibility of this, she could come back with

"Oh, there were no rainbows before the flood during the no-rainbow-period in the no-rainbow-area."

Presumably this no-rainbow-period lasted for a few days while there was no rain in the no-raindow-area.

Funny what "no rainbows in the world before the flood" could be taken to mean by a religiously determined mind.

The analogy doesn't work because there is no verse showing such as division as there is for the creative states.

Explain how merely the existence of labeled periods or states fixes things. If someone says that there was no rainbow before the flood, it doesn't help to find verses that divide time into periods or states. "Before" is a word that has a funny way of meaning what it means. Before should refer to all periods or states before the stated time. For example, if Adam was in the garden starting in 10,000 BC then before Adam would mean anytime prior to 10,000 BC would it not? It would include 11,000 BC as well as 1000,000 BC. Dividing that prior time up into epochs during which the earth was in various states does nothing to fix this. In fact, scientists already make such divisions (pleistocene epoch etc.).

Here is another issue. Is god trying to trick us with words or is he saying things in a way that inevitably creates the wrong impression even to most of his greatest servants like McConkie?
Every single person I know of that ever read the "no death before Adam" verses interpreted it as meaning what me and Sethbag are saying it means. Any exceptions are motiviated by the imported and post hoc desire to reconcile with evolution. Is god succeeding in the communication department? Does he need a better dictionary? Such interpetations as yours just do violence to common sense and overturn the ordinary meanings of words. "No death before Adam" now means its opposite: There was death before Adam.

[_bcspace]

The analogy doesn't work because there is no verse showing such as division as there is for the creative states.

Explain how merely the existence of labeled periods or states fixes things.

Because if there is a statement "no death in the world before Adam", we have to ask "Which world?". It could refer to one of them, it could refer to both, but if not specified as is the case, evolution can fit just fine.

Here is another issue. Is god trying to trick us with words or is he saying things in a way that inevitably creates the wrong impression even to most of his greatest servants like McConkie?
Every single person I know of that ever read the "no death before Adam" verses interpreted it as meaning what me and Sethbag are saying it means. Any exceptions are motiviated by the imported and post hoc desire to reconcile with evolution. Is god succeeding in the communication department? Does he need a better dictionary? Such interpetations as yours just do violence to common sense and overturn the ordinary meanings of words. "No death before Adam" now means its opposite: There was death before Adam.

No, I don't think God is trying to trick anyone, but I do believe that individuals try to fill in the gaps to the best of their earthly knowledge. As great as they may be spiritually, I often find those most stridently opposed to evolution incapable of correctly describing it and/or unwilling to consider it.

If that causes you problems, then you simply do not understand that LDS do not believe it's leaders mouths are being forcibly guided by God 100% of the time (or even 1% of the time). Which brings us back to the D&C 107 principle in which all 15 are needed to agree first. Until you understand that, you will always have problems trying to convince us of anything at all. And such misunderstanding is probably one of the root causes for why some of you have left the Church (which gives me a brilliant idea!......).

[_Tal Bachman]

If you think it to be an eternal truth in order to argue against it, then fine. Otherwise I will regard any religious pronouncements against evolution to be speculative. As President McKay said, the Church has no official position. He knew that science marches on and that the Church should not try to chain it in place.

---Nice try, Moksha. Unfortunately, as everyone who can read will know, it wasn't me who claimed that that First Presidency statement presented "eternal truth", but the First Presidency members themselves in their official First Presidency statement. Those were THEIR words. So, if you're claiming that the First Presidency, speaking as the FP in an official FP statement to the church, was WRONG when they claimed they were presenting "eternal truth"...well then all you've done is admit that the Lord WILL permit the prophet to lead the church astray. There's really no other option for you.

Anyway...thanks for making my original point for me: it simply doesn't matter what their words are. It doesn't matter what "eternal truth" or "official LDS doctrine" is, to you or anyone else, when the bottom line is that you are no longer cognitively capable of believing it. Hence, you can believe in evolution just like other Mormons can believe it's okay to drink beer once in a while, vote for gay marriage, and whatever else they feel like.

[_Tal Bachman]

BCSpace

I just read all your comments...and I must say they're exactly what I predicted in my first post on this thread: the mindgames, the ad hoc explanations and word redefinitions...you've done the whole bit.

How can that be, BC? Am I magic? How could I have known that you would say just what you've been saying?