The Ej Meh Conundrum Attn: bcspace!

[_Spurven Ten Sing]

As many of you are well aware, I am close friends with an individual who presents a serious problem for Mopologetics. Ej Meh was born sometime in the last interglacial period, to best estimates based on carbon dating of a little bit of his "lucky spear" shaft, about 29,500 YBP plus or minus 1,500 years. He is a normal looking person, has a firm grasp of such complexities as art, religion, music, and a sort of paleolithic philosophy. He is warm, funny, insightful, and sometimes quite naïve and suspicious of the modern world.

He also predates the Adam and Eve myth by about 23,000 years or so and presents a serious problem for the Myth. Allow me to break it down to a few points, as I like to do to sound better organized than my desk in my office suggests.

1. If A/E myth is literal, there can be no such thing as Ej Meh. They should be the first humans.

2. If A/E myth is partially literal, and A/E are just the first humans, evolved through natural selection, then there can be no such thing as Ej Meh. They should still be the first humans.

3. If A/E myth is partially literal wherein A/E are the first Hominids to receive souls and/or are the first spirit children as Mopologists sometimes suggest, then there a worse problem:
A. Ej Meh,s people did not go extinct but continued to reproduce.
B. At some point, the Mormon god selected two of these descendents and filled them with soul/spirit.
C. The non-souled humans continued to live.
D. The souled people began to reproduce.
Okay so far? Let's continue.
E. At some point, the souled and the unsouled meet, marry, and intermix.
F. The unsouled outnumber the souled by a great deal (5 million unsouled to 2 (Adam and Eve) souled in 5000 BC.)
G. Soon, the souled are a tiny representation, genetically, in a smaller portion of the world.

Conclusion?

At best, the souled are a tiny mixed minority with the souled, and unless there is a large extinction event (like a worldwide flood), we simply cannot expect many humans alive today to have souls, be spirit children of God, nor can we be said to descend from them in any great degree. Ej Meh enjoys reminding me that his people still have command of the Earth, at the expense of those with souls.

[_Drifting]

The dilemma you speak of was resolved in 2,300 bc when God drowned everyone apart from 8 people directly descended from Adam and Eve, and we all stem from them.

[_Nightlion]

As many of you are well aware, I am close friends with an individual who presents a serious problem for Mopologetics. Ej Meh was born sometime in the last interglacial period, to best estimates based on carbon dating of a little bit of his "lucky spear" shaft, about 29,500 YBP plus or minus 1,500 years. He is a normal looking person, has a firm grasp of such complexities as art, religion, music, and a sort of paleolithic philosophy. He is warm, funny, insightful, and sometimes quite naïve and suspicious of the modern world.

So, have you asked Ej Meh if he believes in God?

I believe that the earth existed as the fossil record shows for as long as Adam and Eve took to finish all the hosts of spirit children that they were commanded to multiply and replenish in heaven. That could well have taken billions of what we count for years. The fossil fuels mostly needed for this day and age were prepared by sudden deep burials from time to time of great upheavals ended with and utter extinction before our world was seeded with its intended flora an fauna. It does not matter that the new life was similar to the old life. So what?

As to humanoids that THE ACADEMY OF THE ANTI-CHRIST insist existed from 29,000 years ago I demand that there be better proof than one jaw bone here and another fragment there. No species capable of reproduction for 29,000 years would leave such a meager amount of evidence. Look at all the evidence of us people here for only six thousand years. Multiply that by five times and let's have a look at the reality of pre-adamites.

What dinosaur bones failed to make it into the mix of fossil fuels are strewn about. If thousand of years of near-humanoids existed they should have huddled together a time or two in rather safe regions when the earth was flipping over on itself to deep bury the coal deposits and oil and gas reserves. So? Whatcha got? Just a fabrication of peer review crap?
Eeewww the consensus of The Academy Of The Anti-Christ that now reigns over all nations and peoples of the whole earth. I spit at thee.

[Guest]

As a humorous aside, when I Googled "Ej Meh", I came up with a lot of entries on Elitist Jerks, Death Knights, and Hunters.

Conclusion?

I think you're probably taking too many liberties with this assumption...

has a firm grasp of such complexities as art, religion, music, and a sort of paleolithic philosophy. He is warm, funny, insightful, and sometimes quite naïve and suspicious of the modern world.

...especially when it comes to "complexities". You really don't have much in the way of civilization and domestication until the Neolithic period If I recall correctly (dang wikipedia protest).

by the way, my own hypothesis does not have any "unsouled". It assumes, as per LDS doctrine, that every living thing has a spirit. In my hypothesis (read: not doctrine), preAdamite homo sapiens have spirits, but they are not the literal spirit children of God, but lesser spirits not capable of taking advantage of the available brain power; perhaps a plausible explanation for a quarter of a million years of homo sapiens without civilization.

To a lesser degree, instead of lesser spirits, I could go with an "uplift" via some revelatory or visitory process from advanced beings such as the Gods. More problematic as what happens to them who died before the Fall, but there is precedence in the arguments of Talmadge and BH Roberts regarding the 1909 statement till the 1931 statement.

And then there is the question of a global or local garden state which I don't think LDS doctrine is clear on, with doctrinal evidence for either being extant.

[_Fence Sitter]

BC,

Would you explain more what you mean by "global garden state" and where you find that in LDS doctrine? I am not challenging you on this I just have not heard it before.

[_bcspace]

Would you explain more what you mean by "global garden state" and where you find that in LDS doctrine? I am not challenging you on this I just have not heard it before.

By global garden state I mean the state of no death that Adam and Eve experienced was extant in all the world. There is express doctrine that the whole earth was in this state of paradise and that the garden was a "center place". That could imply both a local or a global state of no death or some type of combination. However, if Adam and Eve were cast out, into what were they cast out and why use the term cast out if the rest of the world was a paradise like the garden?

The implications for what happened to the rest of the pre Adamites is governed in part by this question. Did they all go extinct? Could they not compete with the "new" homo sapiens? Did they breed themselves out with the new homo sapiens? etc.

My opinion is that it is unlikely they went extinct because modern homo sapiens do not appear to be descended from a single set of parents. So in order for us to be considered the descendents of Adam and Eve in some sense, they have to be the first spirit children of God to inhabit a homo sapiens body and/or the first to be uplifted.

[_Fence Sitter]

By global garden state I mean the state of no death that Adam and Eve experienced was extant in all the world. There is express doctrine that the whole earth was in this state of paradise and that the garden was a "center place". That could imply both a local or a global state of no death or some type of combination. However, if Adam and Eve were cast out, into what were they cast out and why use the term cast out if the rest of the world was a paradise like the garden?

The implications for what happened to the rest of the pre Adamites is governed in part by this question. Did they all go extinct? Could they not compete with the "new" homo sapiens? Did they breed themselves out with the new homo sapiens? etc.

My opinion is that it is unlikely they went extinct because modern homo sapiens do not appear to be descended from a single set of parents. So in order for us to be considered the descendents of Adam and Eve in some sense, they have to be the first spirit children of God to inhabit a homo sapiens body and/or the first to be uplifted.

Thanks BC. Do you have more on the bolded part?

[_bcspace]

Sure. Bottom question:

http://LDS.org/ensign/1994/01/i-have-a-question/i-have-a-question?lang=eng&query=garden+eden

[_Chap]

My opinion is that it is unlikely [pre-Adamites] went extinct because modern homo sapiens do not appear to be descended from a single set of parents. So in order for us to be considered the descendents of Adam and Eve in some sense, they have to be the first spirit children of God to inhabit a homo sapiens body and/or the first to be uplifted.

Ah. The sense in which we are the descendants of Adam and Eve is ... that we are not in fact their descendants. Got it.

If bcspace wants to say that Adam and Eve were the first to undergo some process that was later undergone by others, there are some quite good words that convey that - like 'pioneers' for instance. No need to bend poor old 'descendants' out of shape just because people who actually did (unlike bcspace) believe that Adam and Eve were the sole original biological great^n-parents of all living humans used it in its normal sense.

[_Darth J]

Sure. Bottom question:

http://LDS.org/ensign/1994/01/i-have-a-question/i-have-a-question?lang=eng&query=garden+eden

Questions of general interest answered for guidance, not as official statements of Church policy.

You are equivocating between a physical location and a state of mortality. The unofficial answer about where the Garden of Eden was does not address whether there was any death anywhere on this planet for any organism at any time prior to Adam and Eve partaking of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Go find the official doctrine that says any living thing on Earth died at any time prior to the Fall.