Are Mormonism and Human Evolution Compatible?

[_The Dude]

I dunno about Adam and Eve, but I think the trickiest questions in Mormonism have to do with our physical bodies and weird parts such as an appendix, male nipples, wisdom teeth, and females leg hair.

Basically the problem is that our rather-odd physical bodies are seen as necessary and even good in the eternities. I dunno know about everyone else, but much as I like my body, I don't think the human form is the best form to take for an eternity. Too much of it seems kinda ad-hoc if ya know what I mean.

Of course I know what you mean.

But this assumes cause and effect is not reversed in the eternal perspective. Maybe we have appendix to get us ready for the eternities. We might need male nipples for some reason in the future. Maybe wisdom teeth and of course female leg hair are pre-adaptations for eternal bliss. Let your imagination run wild, Asbestosman!

Actually, somehting that recently struck me was why our bodies have to be such that alcohol intoxicates us and other drugs mess with our minds. Sugar doesn't intoxicate us, so why does alcohol need to? As to other drugs, couldn't our brains use other neurotransmitters? Basically it's a sort of question of evil. Why did God give us bodies that allow us to cause so much harm to others through drunk driving? Why not have alcohol give us a pleasant effect without endangering others? I don't put many people at risk if I woof down another donut, so why if I drink another bottle of whiskey (not that I drink)?

It's possible that further evolution will select for different interactions with alcohol and sugar -- people who don't like sugar so much might survive the diabetes epidemic. :)

If time is precious, then create bodies that need sleep?

Why put a premium on time? Why not give an open ended test with no time liimit? Or why not make it open book?

[_asbestosman]

Maybe wisdom teeth and of course female leg hair are pre-adaptations for eternal bliss. Let your imagination run wild, Asbestosman!

Maybe female leg hair could be groomed in a way to look like some really sexy stockings. Maybe they could use it to shave cool messages on their legs written in Adamic, or the Deseret Alphabet. Maybe they could let it grow really long and then I could climb out a tower like with that story of Rapunzel.

Why put a premium on time? Why not give an open ended test with no time liimit? Or why not make it open book?

Open book tests are always the hardest. Still, it's hard for me to imagine a test harder than this one, especially when many of the answers seem to defy empirical evidence. If God were my professor, I'd warn everyone about how He likes tricky questions. It seems 1/3 of His own children were too scared to enroll. Sometimes I don't blame them.

[_The Nehor]

[
This is one of the stupidest things I've ever read. It's just barely not quite as stupid as saying "the Bible is true because the Bible says so".

You know what? I'm the first man of all the race of Sethbag. I'm also the smartest of all the race of Sethbag, and the most handsome, and the best sexually endowed, and so forth and so on.

So, Adam wasn't really the first homo sapiens, eh? But he was the first man "of the race of Adam", whatever that means? And of course you can feel free to define "race of Adam" as whatever it needs to mean to help your belief system remain somewhat intact.

I've read much stupider actually. What I said is not a proof nor did I claim it was so comparing it to your statement regarding the Bible is probably pretty stupid too.

I'm just saying that the story of humanity that I am a part of began with Adam. Whether he was the first 'homo sapien' means nothing to me whether he was or not. I don't know where Adam came from.

I'm not even going to attack the 'You learn everything by your feelings' charge. No matter how often I explain it it comes back. Bored of it. I guess I'm going to hell for my heresy because heaven knows Bruce R. Mckonkie was right about everything he ever wrote or said. I'm not jettisoning beliefs. I'm just telling you what I know for sure. I want to know more.

Please don't mock my faith. Please don't mock my dating life. If I'm torturing myself why am I so happy? Why are my prayers bliss? Why was taking the sacrament today such a wonderful experience?

My views are not as 'out there' as you seem to think. Many of the members I talk to think the same way. I'm sorry you want so badly for me to say I'm wrong....but I'm not.

[_karl61]

(it's early morning and WAY TOO HOT and I can't sleep)

I think Rays earlier links gave some great information on how the church has addressed evolution: they didn't accept it.

http://www.signaturebookslibrary.org/ha ... r3.htm#BYU

http://www.signaturebookslibrary.org/ha ... tm#roberts

[_Sethbag]

Yes, you are. And someday you may figure this out. It'll help if you stop making excuses for the LDS church and finding your own, "personal" ways to continue believing in it.

And your dating life is your business, obviously, but let's look at this realistically for a moment. Do you honestly think LDS women dig a guy who tells them he's seen God, angels, and the Devil? Who feels bliss every time he takes the sacrament? Who believes the church is true, but doesn't believe what the church teaches about so many things?

And seriously, the history that you're a part of doesn't begin until Adam? Just what in the hell does that even mean? You're a white boy, who speaks English, so you're part of the story of the development of the Indo-European language family, thought to have moved into Europe something like 9000 years ago (3000 or so years before the Biblical Adam timeframe). You're a descendant of ancient Europeans, who go back tens of thousands of years. You know that dude they found frozen in Austria in the ice a few years ago? He was part of the ancient history of the people you descend from.

Not your history? You're cutting off your nose to spite your face, or, less clichely, you're willing to cut yourself off from the history of humanity to which you belong, all before 6000 years or so ago, and divorce yourself from your roots, in order that your stone-age, goatherder mythologies can remain somewhat plausible to you?

Or else just what do you mean by this? How is this ancient world not your world? How is its history not your history? How do your statements about this make any sense whatsoever, apart from the value they have to you in helping you maintain some semblance of plausibility in your belief system?

It is literally true that your belief system is bronze-age mythology, personally reinterpreted as necessary to get around certain contradicting facts now recognized through modern research. How does that satisfy you? Oh, I think I know the answer to this. It's the religious euphoria into which you have trained yourself to fall through your meditation practices.

But dude, seriously, chicks don't dig guys who claim to see God, Angels, and the Devil. That's just too far out for even most Molly Mormons to stomach, much less your garden variety, less Molly Mormon girl.

[_Ray A]

But dude, seriously, chicks don't dig guys who claim to see God, Angels, and the Devil. That's just too far out for even most Molly Mormons to stomach, much less your garden variety, less Molly Mormon girl.

Is that all you care about? "Chicks who don't dig guys who claim...."?

Take all the bimbos you want. What really motivates you?

[_barrelomonkeys]

I dunno about Adam and Eve, but I think the trickiest questions in Mormonism have to do with our physical bodies and weird parts such as an appendix, male nipples, wisdom teeth, and females leg hair.

I absolutely agree about the female leg hair!

Cute asbestosman. ;)

[_Nephi]

I dunno about Adam and Eve, but I think the trickiest questions in Mormonism have to do with our physical bodies and weird parts such as an appendix, male nipples, wisdom teeth, and females leg hair.

I absolutely agree about the female leg hair!

Cute asbestosman. ;)

Actually, now, the best theory I have seen as to why humans have so little hair (male or female) compared to the rest of the great apes has to deal also w/the fact that all our fat is on the outside parts of our bodies. All other terrestrial mammals have their fat interwoven into their muscles throughout their bodies (look at a steak next time you eat one), but humans, all the fat is on the outside of their bodies.

There are other mammals out there that have hardly any hair and their fat on the outside of their bodies, though: aquatic mammals. ALL of them are designed this way. A great theory I have seen states that before the last ice age, the oceans were very high (higher than they are now), and that this caused a portion of the ape kingdom to become isolated in Africa (an island was made of sorts). They were forced to hunt for food in the water, and spent most of their time there. This isolation on top of survival of the best caused those who evolved less hair and fat on the outsides of their bodies to survive. Hence why we look the way we do.

This fits quite nicely into the whole scheme of things IMHO.

[_Jason Bourne]

I've been learning more about evolution lately. As a History major in college, I took only the science courses needed to complete my General Ed requirements and so I've been in need of a refresher course on evolution. Waiting on a few books recently ordered from Amazon has me feeling impatient, though with my husbands religious views on the creation of the earth, I may have to read them on the sly!

As a Mormon, I never considered evolution compatible with church teachings on the creation of the earth. I took literally the accounts of creation in the Bible, the Book of Moses and the temple. I had no problem understanding creation may have taken more than six days, but I did accept as truth that God created Adam and Eve as the fully developed first humans. I didn't believe that humans evolved, only adapted, and likewise, I believed that God was once a man who was created as a human being long ago on another planet. I didn't believe he was the product of evolution, either.

Yet, I see that some Mormons claim to believe in evolution. How is it possible to square evolution with Mormon doctrine? Doesn't the fact that evolution is in reality the way humans came to be spell trouble for a religion which teaches God has a body and also claims that God Himself gave Joseph Smith the eternal truths which were to be taught in the temple? Perhaps some Mormons believe the Bible to be errant in many ways, but do they believe what is taught in the temple to be errant, also? Not literal, perhaps? For those Mormons who believe in evolution, do you think God gave Joseph Smith incorrect information about how the earth and all it's inhabitants were formed?

Admittedly, I do not know a tremendous amount about evolution, but I do know enough about Mormon doctrine on the creation of the earth to believe it's incongruent with human evolution.

KA

I think it can be compatible with Mormonism and the creation of all things accept for man. It seems to me that if there was no Adam and Eve type then the fall and the need for an atonement become void. Course this is an issue for Christianity as well. Of course Adam and Eve could have been the first intelligent civilized humans, or maybe the first ones to start the "chosen" line or something like that.

But JFS and BRM both found evolution for how man came to be nullifying the need for Christ.

[_Jason Bourne]

Evolution is absolutely incompatible with traditional Mormon beliefs and teachings, and the words of pretty much every LDS Prophet from Joseph Smith right on down to the present day. And don't let any LDS member tell you otherwise. The only way around this is either to deny that evolution actually happened, which is what the fundie Christian, fundie Jewish, and fundie Muslims do (and probably fundie other religions too), or else to deny that LDS actually believe what LDS have believed since Joseph Smith, and what LDS Prophets have taught down to this very day.

You have to actually deny that Adam and Eve having been the first human beings on Earth is really LDS doctrine.

You have to deny that LDS believe and teach that literally nothing on Earth died before Adam and Eve fell.

You have to do things like rendering Adam and Eve possibly mythological but their "important lessons" yet true.

Basically, the only way to reconcile traditional (as opposed to diehard mopologetic) Mormon teachings with evolution and other science, is to either wipe out one, or the other.

Literally every single LDS believer today who tells you that evolution is compatible with LDS teachings either has no clue what these things actually mean, or else is undercutting the words of past LDS prophets, current LDS teaching materials, and LDS study aids and whatnot in the scriptures. They aren't compatible at all, without eviscerating them.

I think you overstate this but I agree as far as evolution to create men and women.