My favorite cogdis of the Mormons.

[_Some Schmo]

In other words, you'll trust them where it's convenient to trust them but not where it conflicts with your cherished beliefs?

Yes, that's right. I'm not giving up my precious religious beliefs just because there is a collection of scientific data that says this and that.

Well, I have to give you credit for admitting it. Good on ya.

I'd rather believe in storks, damnit. I'm keeping my fricking religious beliefs. That's not to say I don't respect your beliefs, because I think everyone has the right to decide things for themselves. We can still be friends and disagree strongly about key things.

That's true. I recently had a conversation with my ex-mormon yet still god-fearing brother, and I made an offhand comment involving natural selection. He jumped on it asking me some creationist slanted question thinking he would trip me up, and it suddenly occurred to me that after all these years, he still thinks evolution is a hoax. I was amazed. The conversation got mildly heated before we decided it would be best to just not talk about it, and move on to other things.

Toward the end of the phone call, he told me he was sorry for jumping on me over evolution, and I told him it didn't matter; he's still my brother and I still love him no matter what.

As I've said many times before, it's easy for me to criticize the belief and still respect the person. Beliefs don't make a person; they only describe something about their perspective.

[_Paul Osborne]

Some Schmo,

Keep your friendship with your brother at all cost if you can. Love is all that matters. Whatever truth is or isn't, will work itself out as it has since all eternity past. We are to learn.

The truth is no more important than our ability to love each other. Without love in the world truth doesn't matter much.



Paul O

[_Paul Osborne]

Curious a bit here. Have you ever condemned a Mormon for refusing to see the foolishness that is their religion?

I try not to condemn anyone except for insane Muslim terrorists. We should be very reserved in judging people. It always comes back to haunt us.

Paul O

[_JohnStuartMill]

I think the concept that is tripping Will up is the ex post nature of most of our explanations for survival. If we're trying to explain how birds evolved, then we point to actual outcomes: although dinosaurs that had bony armor might have had a higher probability of survival from a Cretaceous standpoint, dinosaurs that had feathers actually survived to propagate their genes, so we know that feathers ended up conferring "fitness". Because a lot of the evidence for evolution is in the fossil record, a lot of the support for evolution consists of pointing to these actual events, and ignoring the ex ante survival probabilities that didn't pan out because of bottlenecking or abrupt environmental changes or whatever**. Will's problem is that he isn't separating the two.

Interesting analysis, but I don't think that's what is going on. Will just heard somewhere that "survival of the fittest" is a tautology and therefore Darwinian evolution is fatally flawed. We can backtrack and parse and explain until we reach page 29, but every time he will go back to arguing from his unexamined operational definitions that force a tautology, and insist that nobody has addressed it.

Oh, I'm also sure that Will didn't pioneer this criticism of evolution all by himself. I'm just offering an explanation for why he finds it so convincing. Maybe my explanation will be useful in accounting for the wide popularity of the criticism, too.

[_Jason Bourne]

Gadianton Plumber

Another speculative idea I have toyed with is that Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden and somehow it was protected and shut off from the rest of the world. The other humans at that time were not intelligent, may not have had spirits that were the children of God placed in them and the world may have gone on for a long time before Adam and Eve fell and were put out into the world. So they were the were the first flesh in the garden that was protected and then when they left they or their children may have mingled and married to the other humans and thus the off spring from such mixtures would have spirits from God in them.


There are problems with this one as well. If Adam and Even left that garden it would have been about 6000 years ago if the Bible is accurate and 6000 years ago there were other intelligent human civlizations on earth.

But I thought you might find this idea interesting.

[_AlmaBound]

The other humans at that time...they were the were the first flesh in the garden that was protected...mingled and married to the other humans...

There are problems with this one as well.

Not to be too much of a stick in the mud, but another problem, if taken literally, is this verse:

Gen 2:20 And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

If she was the mother of all living, then all of the "other" humans would have come from her as well, wouldn't they?

[_gramps]

The Dude wrote:

Will just heard somewhere that "survival of the fittest" is a tautology and therefore Darwinian evolution is fatally flawed.

It sounds like something a priesthood holder would throw out in a Priesthood quorum meeting, so everyone can chuckle together over those stupid scientists and atheists...

And then they can all get back to discussing Joseph running through the forest packing his 60 pound plates under one arm and punching out the bum thiefs in waiting.

No chuckles there, at all.

[_Sethbag]

Gadianton Plumber

Another speculative idea I have toyed with is that Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden and somehow it was protected and shut off from the rest of the world. The other humans at that time were not intelligent, may not have had spirits that were the children of God placed in them and the world may have gone on for a long time before Adam and Eve fell and were put out into the world. So they were the were the first flesh in the garden that was protected and then when they left they or their children may have mingled and married to the other humans and thus the off spring from such mixtures would have spirits from God in them.


There are problems with this one as well.

High among them is the fact that you just made this ad hoc band-aid explanation up off the top of your head, in order to salvage some way the writings professed to be the Word of God can still be correct. The corollary to this is that your beliefs are so important to you that, when they turn out to be contradicted by abundant evidence, you are more willing to scramble around to find some way of salvaging them, than you are interested in actually finding truth.

If Adam and Even left that garden it would have been about 6000 years ago if the Bible is accurate and 6000 years ago there were other intelligent human civlizations on earth.

But I thought you might find this idea interesting.

The idea itself isn't very interesting. In fact, as an intellectual feat, it's pretty juvenile. I'm not saying this to judge you yourself, only to remark on the depths you are conditioned to sink to intellectually by the mind virus of religion, and religious loyalty. What is more interesting than your idea, is the fact that a grown, mature, intelligent man will come up with this idea, know he's doing it, and still do it anyway, as if there were no choice in the matter. This is what religion does to people.

And there is a choice in the matter. When something is untrue, and undeserving of belief, just stop believing in it. There is no need to make excuses for things which it turns out are not really true. You are "allowed" as a grown, intelligent, mature human being to choose to stop believing things that are not true.

[_Sethbag]

Not to be too much of a stick in the mud, but another problem, if taken literally, is this verse:

Gen 2:20 And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

If she was the mother of all living, then all of the "other" humans would have come from her as well, wouldn't they?

I guess that depends on the definition of "living". It could be that "living", in this verse, really means "those living with spirits of Elohim inside of them". Then the verse is a bulls-eye. How could the author of Genesis known?!?

[_harmony]

I was taught as a small child that the story of Adam and Eve was a myth. When I joined the LDS church and found out the doctrine was that it was literal, I had to laugh. How could it be literal? It's like the legend of Coyote, or any of the other Native American creation myths. It's a way for ancient people who had no scientific knowledge to explain the unexplainable. Surely now we know better!

The dogged adherence to an ancient myth in the temple is on the many things that irritate me about going. Once was more than enough.