Do pre-adamites help?

[_Black Moclips]

Though the blasphemy stings the little portion of mo-ism left in me, Seth, that dialogue was pretty funny.

[_Thama]

Evolution is contradicted by the LDS doctrine that there was no death, nor procreation on Earth until after the Fall of Adam. This is iron-clad LDS doctrine that is impossible to weasle out of, though who knows, make a doctrine weasle-proof and, as BCSpace proves, they'll just invent a better weasle. BCSpace tries to get out of this problem by pointing to wording in 2Nephi2:22, a scripture which serves as one of the basis for the LDS doctrine that there would be no procreation nor death until after the Fall.

And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.

Note that the state in which things must have remained is the state in which they were "after they were created". BCSpace's claimed loophole is this word "after". He claims that there was a creative period which was in effect before things "were created", and that this creative period was no over until God said so, and only when God said so had things "been created". So, as long as God had not said that the creation was over, all the millions and millions of years of things dying had all occurred before anything "had been created", and so it doesn't count.

But, magically, once God said the creation was over, everything still in existence at that moment "had been created", and so all of that stuff must have remained forever, had Adam not sinned. Of course, he just hand-waves off all of the problems presented by the existence of millions of f*cking and dying pre-Adamite homo sapiens all around the world. At the instant the "creative period" had ended and things then "had been created", none of them, according to LDS doctrine, could have died or procreated, from that point on until the Fall. This creates some obvious problems. But hey, all that goes away with enough hand-waving and smoke and mirrors.

When I was a believing Mormon, I reconciled this matter without many problems. While there are many GA quotes indicating that there was no death before the Fall, there is a real dearth of scripture to nail this point down. 2 Ne. 2:22 only has to indicate that death would never have come upon the world if there was no death during creation. However, if you accept that creation occurred via an evolutionary process with death at its center, then the scripture can mean that the evolutionary system which was set up would have continued indefinitely without change to the system.

[_Sethbag]

That's pretty creative, Thama, but it neglects the wording in 2 Nephi to an extent I don't believe you can excuse. "all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end." It says "all things", not just "the system", or "the process of evolution". It's saying that everything that has ever been created must have remained in the same state it was in when it was created.

Clearly all things that had ever been created had not remained in the same state in which they were after their creation, at the time of any conceivable Adam and Eve timeline. And clearly 99.999% of all things that ever were created (speaking of living things) have seen an end, as they died and reverted back to the elements and were recycled by other living things.

When you were a believing Mormon what you engaged in required you to insert meanings and qualifiers and whatnot into the text, that were simply not there. I was never comfortable with this approach, and so all I could fall back on was "it's not necessary to my salvation" and so I simply downplayed the importance of the Prophets, Seers, and Revelators, and the authors of the Book of Mormon, and whoever else, getting it completely and totally wrong. Obviously I don't downplay that anymore. ;-)

[_Chap]

I notice we are back on evolution, and that the pre-Adamites have been dropped from the discussion.

Presumably bcspace couldn't find a way to reconcile these two things:

(a) The earth had homo sapiens spread all over it tens of thousands of years before any date bcspace was willing to accept for Adam and Eve.

(b)bcspace wanted all human beings today to be descended either entirely from Adam & Eve (no pre-Adamite genes in us at all) or at least to have Adam and Eve in our ancestry somewhere (so we all have some of their genes). Both of these are demographic impossibilities, the first since it required mass human extinctions all over the earth, and the second because Adam and Eve's descendants would have had to fly around the world, crossing oceans and landing at thousands of sites to screw careful selected women who they knew (how?) would cover all subsequent bloodlines.

But has he given up? I bet he hasn't. It's just that he can't bend the words far enough yet without them snapping in half so they become completely useless. But keep trying bcspace, keep trying. Maybe it will work in Hebrew?

[_John Larsen]

Here is a good exercise:
1. Get a group of friends together.
2. Have a couple of rounds of drinks.
3. Pick any two random contradictory ideas (they don't have to be good ideas).
4. Have a couple more drinks.
5. You and all of your friends now try to find any way possible to reconcile the two ideas. Anything goes, you can redefine words, give people superpowers, time travel, etc.
6. Write down you new piece of apologetics.

When you wake up the next morning and read said apologia, I guarantee it will make more sense the reconciliation between human evolution and the fall.

[_Thama]

That's pretty creative, Thama, but it neglects the wording in 2 Nephi to an extent I don't believe you can excuse. "all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end." It says "all things", not just "the system", or "the process of evolution". It's saying that everything that has ever been created must have remained in the same state it was in when it was created.

Clearly all things that had ever been created had not remained in the same state in which they were after their creation, at the time of any conceivable Adam and Eve timeline. And clearly 99.999% of all things that ever were created (speaking of living things) have seen an end, as they died and reverted back to the elements and were recycled by other living things.

When you were a believing Mormon what you engaged in required you to insert meanings and qualifiers and whatnot into the text, that were simply not there. I was never comfortable with this approach, and so all I could fall back on was "it's not necessary to my salvation" and so I simply downplayed the importance of the Prophets, Seers, and Revelators, and the authors of the Book of Mormon, and whoever else, getting it completely and totally wrong. Obviously I don't downplay that anymore. ;-)

I was never much on the whole semantic analysis of scriptures to get their "real" meaning... I'm familiar enough with the difficulty in even a good translation to think this was ever a good idea. "All things" seems general enough to be read and intended both ways, and when you consider that it is really the only scripture in Mormon canon that even appears to demand no death before the fall, it becomes much easier to reconcile evolution with Mormon doctrine.

No death before the fall isn't even internally consistent with the scriptures... what would have happened to the cells of the fruits that Adam was commanded to eat in the Garden? Was he pooping immortal masses of cells? When faced with the option of extreme literalism which would make the scriptures into complete absurdity or a somewhat more generalistic understanding that seemed to preserve their integrity, I went with the latter every time. I still think that Mormonism, among all the Christian branches, is the best equipped to deal with the reality of evolution. The synthesis isn't perfect by any means, but there's a lot of flexibility there not provided by Genesis alone... and the more educated members will keep bending as far as plausibility will let them.

[_cinepro]

Here is a good exercise:
1. Get a group of friends together.
2. Have a couple of rounds of drinks.
3. Pick any two random contradictory ideas (they don't have to be good ideas).
4. Have a couple more drinks.
5. You and all of your friends now try to find any way possible to reconcile the two ideas. Anything goes, you can redefine words, give people superpowers, time travel, etc.
6. Write down you new piece of apologetics.

When you wake up the next morning and read said apologia, I guarantee it will make more sense the reconciliation between human evolution and the fall.

Yeah, but what's even more impressive is the LDS apologists did it without the drinks.

[_cinepro]

No death before the fall isn't even internally consistent with the scriptures... what would have happened to the cells of the fruits that Adam was commanded to eat in the Garden? Was he pooping immortal masses of cells? When faced with the option of extreme literalism which would make the scriptures into complete absurdity or a somewhat more generalistic understanding that seemed to preserve their integrity, I went with the latter every time. I still think that Mormonism, among all the Christian branches, is the best equipped to deal with the reality of evolution. The synthesis isn't perfect by any means, but there's a lot of flexibility there not provided by Genesis alone... and the more educated members will keep bending as far as plausibility will let them.

Plants and fruits get a special consideration. Certainly, no one thinks Adam ever killed another animal, but people are OK with picking fruit; after all, it doesn't really cause the tree to die, and the scriptures are silent as to whether or not apples and other fruit have little fruit spirits.

But I guess it's quite possible that they weren't eating anything while immortal, and another reason eating the fruit made them mortal was because they had introduced death into the world by killing it and eating it.

[_Tarski]

Here is a good exercise:
1. Get a group of friends together.
2. Have a couple of rounds of drinks.
3. Pick any two random contradictory ideas (they don't have to be good ideas).
4. Have a couple more drinks.
5. You and all of your friends now try to find any way possible to reconcile the two ideas. Anything goes, you can redefine words, give people superpowers, time travel, etc.
6. Write down you new piece of apologetics.

When you wake up the next morning and read said apologia, I guarantee it will make more sense the reconciliation between human evolution and the fall.

Yeah, but what's even more impressive is the LDS apologists did it without the drinks.

But they are drunken with the Spirit. (Apparently similar to being stoned)

[_The Dude]

I still think that Mormonism, among all the Christian branches, is the best equipped to deal with the reality of evolution.

I have the opposite opinion.

We've had this discussion on MADB, back when you were still Mormon.

Evolution gives an explanation for why we are formed the way we are. Why do we sweat? Why do males pee and ejaculate out of the same passage? Why do we have bilateral symmetry? Why do we have bones on the inside instead of an exoskeleton? Because of our evolutionary history: our relationships to other living things and the constraints of our environment on this planet. Any Christian branch that accepts some part of the Bible as allegory could also accept Genesis as allegory, with no further reprecussions. All they need is the will and intellectual flexibility. Mormons can also do this much with ease, owing to their greater intellectual flexibility towards the Bible, but Mormons still have to figure out why their god has the same shape (and DNA) as us when he does not share our evolutionary environment (this planet, his creation) or our relationships with other living things (once again, his creations!) The plausible apologetic or doctrinal answer for this conundrum has yet to be devised, and so Mormonism is uniquely troubled. Either their basic concept of deity is just wrong, or they are forced to accept the mechanism of evolution without the most basic insight it has to offer: the meaning of biological form.

Do you still think Mormons are the best equipped to deal with all of the reality of evolution? I think they are best equipped to deal with a hollowed-out cartoon version of evolution. It's okay as long as they don't think it through.