Mormonism and Human History

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

About an hour ago I clicked on this Reddit post about the unbroken seal on King Tutankhamun’s tomb:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comme ... tomb_1922/

which led to me reading this post (c&p’d the salient takeaways below):

https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comme ... tomb_1922/

One of the oldest human settlements, Göbekli Tepe, in Turkey dates to around 9000 B.C. The people living in 4500 B.C. would've been thinking of the people who lived in Göbekli Tepe as the ancients in the same way we think of the Egyptians, assuming they even knew about them or had legends or stories passed down through the millenia.

Göbekli Tepe is nothing though in human history (yes im aware history usually refers to when writing was invented and anything before it is pre-history but im using it just to mean all of the past). One of the oldest sculptures ever discovered, the Lion Man, dates back to around 40,000 - 35,000 B.C.

Here’s the wiki on Lion Man:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-man

Determined by carbon dating of the layer in which it was found to be between 35,000 and 41,000 years old, it is one of the oldest-known examples of an artistic representation and the oldest confirmed statue ever discovered.

The way we think of ancient Egypt now is how people in Göbekli Tepe would've been thinking about people 3200 years before them. Think about that, now go 3200 years farther back and picture the timescale. Now do that 8 more times. That's how far back this Lion Man sculpture dates to. Like the solar system, our puny brains have a hard time truly comprehending the scale. The more you think about it the more you feel it sinking in. But, however long this timescale feels to you, you are still underestimating it.

We like to think of people that far back in time as the stereotypical cavemen. But, I'm a big believer that just because relatively advanced technology had not been invented yet, that people were not dumb as the stereotype portrays. They were intelligent and probably had complex cultures and languages. And these people were incomprehensibely ancient, even incomprehensibely ancient to people who would've been living in Göbekli Tepe, had they had any idea of the true age of humans and the world. They weren't dumb like we think of cavemen, it was just impossible to even start agriculture on a large scale which is what ultimately allowed more advanced civilization. Agriculture developed over thousands of years mainly due to how long it takes to genetically select for crops that are better suited for human needs.

Then, we realize that 40,000 B.C. is nothing. If that's not incomprehensible enough, then we estimate that homo sapiens has been around since at least around 200,000 years ago. In that time, who knows how many cultures, religions, languages existed that have now vanished. Hell, even Neanderthals, a whole different species existed and there is evidence that they were just as intelligent as homo sapiens having their own cultures and languages as well.

When I was a Mormon and would come across information like the above, I’d experience the cognitive dissonance so many people talk about when reality and Mormonism didn’t align. My reaction would be any number of things, but mostly just thinking of some rationalization that’d make Mormonism make sense in context to real history. I’m curious what board members would tell themselves when something like the above-posted information was presented to them. How did you hand wave away 200,000+ years of human cultures, religions, and identities in order to squeeze Mormonism into the equation?

For me, the notion that a desert tribe’s god dated to ~1600 BCE was monitoring the Aurignacian peoples in the upper Paleolithic era is absurd, and it really lessens the notion of Jehovah (Elohim if you’re a Mormon) having any sort of meaningful long view impact on humanity. Every culture, every dynasty, every hegemonic power had their gods, and now they’re gone. Hundreds of thousands of years of god-worship, and we’re to be open to the possibility that there’s an anthropomorphic polygamous deity that chose a scryer to dictate a book through a rock? I wonder what the sculptor of Lion Man would make of Mormonism …

- Doc

[Physics Guy]

On the one hand ancient history goes really far back, and people were still about as smart as we are back then. On the other hand the global population was a lot lower for most of that time, those fewer people were also less connected with each other, and technology changed much more slowly. The gap in years between 6000 years ago and 3000 years ago is the same as the gap between 3000 years ago and now, but I'm really not sure that years are the right metric here. How much change really happened in a century, or even in a millennium, all those centuries ago?

Stories and songs no doubt changed, perhaps not even much more slowly than hits fade from Spotify now. Rulers and religions changed, also not much more slowly than they do today. Dialects drifted, but probably quite a bit more slowly when there was less contact between different languages. Technology changed, too—but very much more slowly than it has in the most recent centuries. Human life probably changed more from 1800 to 2000 than it had changed in the previous fifty thousand years.

So I'm not sure how much we really should be boggled by the length of ancient history. There are a lot of past centuries back there, and it would be cool to learn what they were like, but if we're expecting fifty centuries like the 20th century CE, we're going to be disappointed. I'm pretty sure it mostly wasn't like that.

[Shulem]

How did you hand wave away 200,000+ years of human cultures, religions, and identities in order to squeeze Mormonism into the equation?

That's just it, all they can do is hand wave it away. There is no scientific reasoning to support biblical chronology which *is* fully endorsed in Mormon scripture -- 6,000 years. Science and Mormonism are like oil and water and don't mix. The Book of Abraham makes it quite clear that the kingdom of Egypt was first founded in about 2300 BC by children of Ham. I have a thread up in the Celestial Forum devoted to that very poor assumption Smith made which was a common belief during his day. But we know that Egypt is much older than the false story given in chapter one of the Book of Abraham. We know that the great pyramids were built before biblical Noah is dated to have boarded his craft laden with a pair of every animal in existence. The story of Noah, the ark, and the Book of Abraham chapter one is childlike fiction and bears no scientific value whatsoever.

[dastardly stem]

Doc:

’m curious what board members would tell themselves when something like the above-posted information was presented to them. How did you hand wave away 200,000+ years of human cultures, religions, and identities in order to squeeze Mormonism into the equation?

I think as a believer in Christian teachings I'd assume God kinda sorta tricks us all. He set it up so it appears our disciplines in uncovering history would be helpful and good, but instead we would never really be able to uncover the true history of all that went down. We need to be tricked, I figured, so we'd be find challenge in believing in God..or some such thing. I do believe that was my go to approach.

When I was a boy and had just gotten some lessons on evolution, the age of the earth and all of that. I sat in a sacrament meeting wherein the speaker, who I maintain was some sort of stake leader, got very confusedly condemning of science in general, mocking evolution and the supposed age of the earth. After the meeting my dad had a nice chat with me about my confusion. He basically painted a picture that would have required God to have intentionally trick us. I suppose that laid the groundwork for how I had to reconcile it over and over afterward.

[Dr Exiled]

My response was to not think about it too much using the tried and true "we will know some day the answers to these questions." It still works for my believing brother.

[Moksha]

Sister Bigley from the SLC 4th Ward was the inspiration for the Venus of Willendorf figurine, so that would make her one of the first Mormons of the art world.

[Manetho]

One of the oldest human settlements, Göbekli Tepe, in Turkey dates to around 9000 B.C. The people living in 4500 B.C. would've been thinking of the people who lived in Göbekli Tepe as the ancients in the same way we think of the Egyptians, assuming they even knew about them or had legends or stories passed down through the millennia.

Fun fact: Cleopatra lived closer in time to the era of COVID-19 and Zoom meetings than she did to the building of the Great Pyramid (2050 years before the former, ~2500 years after the latter).

For me, the notion that a desert tribe’s god dated to ~1600 BCE was monitoring the Aurignacian peoples in the upper Paleolithic era is absurd, and it really lessens the notion of Jehovah (Elohim if you’re a Mormon) having any sort of meaningful long view impact on humanity. Every culture, every dynasty, every hegemonic power had their gods, and now they’re gone. Hundreds of thousands of years of god-worship, and we’re to be open to the possibility that there’s an anthropomorphic polygamous deity that chose a scryer to dictate a book through a rock? I wonder what the sculptor of Lion Man would make of Mormonism …

This is one of my problems with Abrahamic religions, and especially with Christianity and Islam, which, unlike Judaism, claim to be for everybody.

The mandate that all Muslims who have the financial means should go on a pilgrimage to the Kaaba made a lot more sense in seventh-century Arabia than it does in a world where there are two billion Muslims, millions go on the hajj each year, and every few years there's a major trampling incident no matter how much Saudi oil money gets poured into construction projects to relieve the pressure. The mandate makes a lot more sense as the creation of a seventh-century man who never left the Arabian Peninsula rather than that of a universal deity.

Christianity's insistence that faith in Jesus is the key to everything may not be as physically impractical, but it feels just as incongruous. The idea that any one person can be the key to all divinity is deeply counterintuitive to me, and the teachings attributed to Jesus are far too much of a mixed bag (insightful stuff, products of first-century Jewish internal disputes that don't feel all that relevant to modern life, and arrant nonsense) to overcome that intuitive reaction. It gets worse when you realize that the earliest Christians, and probably Jesus himself, expected the world to end within their lifetimes.

These religions just feel too small for their pretensions.

[Abaddon]

In my former Mormon worldview, the dating was simply wrong. Scientists only believed they were dating these objects and ancient civilizations correctly.

In other words, willful ignorance.

[Kishkumen]

When I was a Mormon and would come across information like the above, I’d experience the cognitive dissonance so many people talk about when reality and Mormonism didn’t align. My reaction would be any number of things, but mostly just thinking of some rationalization that’d make Mormonism make sense in context to real history. I’m curious what board members would tell themselves when something like the above-posted information was presented to them. How did you hand wave away 200,000+ years of human cultures, religions, and identities in order to squeeze Mormonism into the equation?

For me, the notion that a desert tribe’s god dated to ~1600 BCE was monitoring the Aurignacian peoples in the upper Paleolithic era is absurd, and it really lessens the notion of Jehovah (Elohim if you’re a Mormon) having any sort of meaningful long view impact on humanity. Every culture, every dynasty, every hegemonic power had their gods, and now they’re gone. Hundreds of thousands of years of god-worship, and we’re to be open to the possibility that there’s an anthropomorphic polygamous deity that chose a scryer to dictate a book through a rock? I wonder what the sculptor of Lion Man would make of Mormonism …

- Doc

Fantastic post, Doc. The maker of Lion Man would have no frame of reference for Mormonism. A thousand years from now, if humanity is still around, there will probably be no frame of reference for Mormonism once again. Perhaps AI religions will take over within the next century or so. What I enjoy reflecting on is the fact that people have been doing this religion thing for tens of thousands of years. They probably will continue to so something like it thousands of years from now. Even if you don't believe in a religion, it is wild to think of how these practices and ideas connect us to the larger historical framework.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

There was a great documentary by Werner Herzog in 2010 called "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" that caused me to have a little cognitive dissonance.

It's about a newly discovered cave in France that has the most beautiful and awe inspiring paintings I've seen. And, they are 40,000 years old. Some of the paintings are on the same scale as the Sistine Chapel and cover the entire cave ceiling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfJfRx2IAYo