Complex?

[MG 2.0]

This is not a trick question. I am genuinely interested. When you have "suspended your preconceptions' and "held to truth"...what is that truth?

Flesh it out in a way that the average guy might say, "My gosh, that's the truth! Why did I not recognize it before!"

Who knows, you might have a potential convert here. I'm open.

Regards,
MG

Who is converting who? From the nature of your posts it sounds like you are a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as am I. I don’t appreciate the dogmatism of the correlation committee and other leaders but I don’t think that constitutes a conversion except maybe away from strict orthodoxy.

It sounds like you’ve gained a reputation for not responding to some questions or challenges. I’d be happy to give you a chance and share some points where I suspended my assumptions in the face of compelling evidence under one condition; if I am going to spend the time digging up the research to make into a coherent response I ask that you do not use A.I. in researching your response as you did when responding to Everybody Wang Chung in “The Most Ridiculous Things in Mormonism”. I would not like to read the apologetic hallucinations of an A.I..

Is that fair?

Fair enough.

Regards,
MG

[Ego]

Fair enough.

Regards,
MG

I was raised with the stories of the creation of the world and while my family was generous about interpreting the ‘days’ to be symbolic, thus allowing for the earth to be very old, I was still taught that everything from Genesis 2:4 onwards was literal. I was taught that Adam was formed from the dust (clay depending on translation) of the ground by some supernatural ability that God had. I attended public school faithfully and took my tests on evolution but all the while I was very convinced that it was all wrong.
My assumptions were first challenged when I went to a museum where they have a wall displaying the skulls of many pre-human hominids along with a diagram of the evolutionary tree that they were a part of. I had dismissed the claims about evolution, this was ponderous though. It didn’t constitute proof to me that humans evolved from ancient animals but it did constitute proof that these ancient near-humans did in fact exist. I then became a progressive creationist; I believed that God created animals closer and closer to being in his image as the earth became more and more mature and ‘ready to host human life,’ I felt like this was an appropriate view according to Genesis if interpreted as being a simplification of the progressive creation process (i.e. plants before animals, animals before humans). Again, I did not believe in evolution, I was compelled by one piece of evidence at a time, but it was compelling indeed and I couldn’t deny it, so I changed my assumptions bit by bit.
There is even a wall of skulls at BYU’s Bean Life Science Museum, little did I know they had this display identical to the kind I saw years before elsewhere; they even label it “Hominid Evolution”. You’ll have to find an image of it online by searching ‘BYU Museum of Life Science skulls’ since I couldn’t get the image to embed right.

Now my assumptions about the Garden of Eden were actually reaffirmed for a time. There was a nature documentary I was watching about Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. There are groves of ohia lehua trees which grow in the middle of lava fields of all places, these are called kipuka forests. They are on higher ground so when the volcanoes ooze out their lava it flows like rivers around these forests, very effectively isolating them from the rest of the wildlife on Hawai’i. Because of their isolation, kīpuka forests are safe havens for the formation of new and distinct species such as a unique species of the Hawai’ian happy face spider.
At this point I felt that at the very least we see evidence of new creatures in isolated environments (such as in Charles Darwin’s study of the island finches) where they will not be disturbed by other creatures in their respective ‘spheres of creation’. My assumption was just that this was the modus operandi of God when creating new creatures for just as some isolated environments can be paradisiacal like the kipuka forests of Hawai’i, I thought that the Garden of Eden may have been such an oasis and been a place where God could create humans without us being disturbed by our predators like the sabertooths until Adam and Eve were expelled from it.

“Here let me state to all philosophers of every class upon the earth, When you tell me that father Adam was made as we make adobies from the earth, you tell me what I deem an idle tale. When you tell me that the beasts of the field were produced in that manner, you are speaking idle words devoid of meaning. There is no such thing in all the eternities where the Gods dwell. Mankind are here because they are the offspring of parents who were first brought here from another planet, and power was given them to propagate their species, and they were commanded to multiply and replenish the earth.” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 7: 285-286.)
“Adam, our earthly parent, was also born of woman into this world, the same as Jesus and you and I.” (Joseph F. Smith, Deseret Evening News, December 27, 1913, Sec. III, p. 7.)
Here is a link that contains many more quotes along these lines:
https://josephsmithfoundation.org/faqs/ ... ca2a58a450

This challenged my assumptions once again because here were Church leaders themselves contradicting the story in Genesis that Adam was formed from clay. I was pretty happy to accept this though, because even though it wasn't what I was brought up with, it seemed to open doors for more of the ‘data’ to fit the creationist model. For example these prophets had affirmed was that humans and creatures are born, not formed from clay, and while Brigham Young for example affirmed that in the case of humans this was from other humans from another world, he said nothing about the creatures of this earth, so I felt like it was ok to accept evidence for evolution among the non human life on earth. Such as in Darwin’s finches or in the E. Coli Long Term Evolution Experiment which has been running since 1988 without break and which has observed many mutations in their E. Coli after tens of thousands of generations (it's much easier to test on bacteria which have way shorter lifespans than animals), some of which have been beneficial and led to greater survival just as the theory of evolution suggests.

Why did I stop believing that Adam was born from Homo sapiens from a different world? I was already on the verge of not believing it anymore, since I had accepted a naturalistic explanation for so much, it seemed strange and improbable to hold to this last point just because of my anthropocentric assumptions of my youth that humans were somehow superior to all the animals by virtue of being specially created by God as such. The last straw for this goes back to my view of progressive creationism. I believed that part of the world being more fit for humans included causing our competition to go extinct, so for example I saw the Late Pleistocene extinctions as being part of God’s effort to ‘clear the land’ to make way for humans. This of course included the extinction of most megafauna like woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, ground sloths, giant beavers, and most importantly Neanderthals. I believed it would be quite contrary to God's plans to have such a near human coexisting with humans. Unfortunately this assumption was radically shattered when I discovered that humans and Neanderthals coexisted for many years before the extinction and even intermingled. It is estimated that Europeans and Asians have between 1-2% of Neanderthal DNA and that Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders have 4-5% Denosovan DNA.
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/unders ... erthaldna/

Well at this point I had one final straw to hold onto in my creationist assumptions, the Garden of Eden, I could still believe that the first humans evolved there because it is common for speciation (I called it what it was now) to occur in isolated biomes. Unfortunately those hopes were also crushed when I learned that there was no such oasis that we have evidence for. Rather we have evidence that Homo Sapiens emerged through the interbreeding of South and East African hominid populations.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6736881/

This has made me very deistic in my views. At most the laws of physics and biology by which evolution occurs is contingent upon God which might be generously construed to be teleologically calculated to produce humans, but there seems to be no evidence for special intervention on God’s part to create humans as I was raised believing.

[sock puppet]

Fair enough.

Regards,
MG

I was raised with the stories of the creation of the world and while my family was generous about interpreting the ‘days’ to be symbolic, thus allowing for the earth to be very old, I was still taught that everything from Genesis 2:4 onwards was literal. I was taught that Adam was formed from the dust (clay depending on translation) of the ground by some supernatural ability that God had. I attended public school faithfully and took my tests on evolution but all the while I was very convinced that it was all wrong.
My assumptions were first challenged when I went to a museum where they have a wall displaying the skulls of many pre-human hominids along with a diagram of the evolutionary tree that they were a part of. I had dismissed the claims about evolution, this was ponderous though. It didn’t constitute proof to me that humans evolved from ancient animals but it did constitute proof that these ancient near-humans did in fact exist. I then became a progressive creationist; I believed that God created animals closer and closer to being in his image as the earth became more and more mature and ‘ready to host human life,’ I felt like this was an appropriate view according to Genesis if interpreted as being a simplification of the progressive creation process (i.e. plants before animals, animals before humans). Again, I did not believe in evolution, I was compelled by one piece of evidence at a time, but it was compelling indeed and I couldn’t deny it, so I changed my assumptions bit by bit.
There is even a wall of skulls at BYU’s Bean Life Science Museum, little did I know they had this display identical to the kind I saw years before elsewhere; they even label it “Hominid Evolution”. You’ll have to find an image of it online by searching ‘BYU Museum of Life Science skulls’ since I couldn’t get the image to embed right.

Now my assumptions about the Garden of Eden were actually reaffirmed for a time. There was a nature documentary I was watching about Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. There are groves of ohia lehua trees which grow in the middle of lava fields of all places, these are called kipuka forests. They are on higher ground so when the volcanoes ooze out their lava it flows like rivers around these forests, very effectively isolating them from the rest of the wildlife on Hawai’i. Because of their isolation, kīpuka forests are safe havens for the formation of new and distinct species such as a unique species of the Hawai’ian happy face spider.
At this point I felt that at the very least we see evidence of new creatures in isolated environments (such as in Charles Darwin’s study of the island finches) where they will not be disturbed by other creatures in their respective ‘spheres of creation’. My assumption was just that this was the modus operandi of God when creating new creatures for just as some isolated environments can be paradisiacal like the kipuka forests of Hawai’i, I thought that the Garden of Eden may have been such an oasis and been a place where God could create humans without us being disturbed by our predators like the sabertooths until Adam and Eve were expelled from it.

“Here let me state to all philosophers of every class upon the earth, When you tell me that father Adam was made as we make adobies from the earth, you tell me what I deem an idle tale. When you tell me that the beasts of the field were produced in that manner, you are speaking idle words devoid of meaning. There is no such thing in all the eternities where the Gods dwell. Mankind are here because they are the offspring of parents who were first brought here from another planet, and power was given them to propagate their species, and they were commanded to multiply and replenish the earth.” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 7: 285-286.)
“Adam, our earthly parent, was also born of woman into this world, the same as Jesus and you and I.” (Joseph F. Smith, Deseret Evening News, December 27, 1913, Sec. III, p. 7.)
Here is a link that contains many more quotes along these lines:
https://josephsmithfoundation.org/faqs/ ... ca2a58a450

This challenged my assumptions once again because here were Church leaders themselves contradicting the story in Genesis that Adam was formed from clay. I was pretty happy to accept this though, because even though it wasn't what I was brought up with, it seemed to open doors for more of the ‘data’ to fit the creationist model. For example these prophets had affirmed was that humans and creatures are born, not formed from clay, and while Brigham Young for example affirmed that in the case of humans this was from other humans from another world, he said nothing about the creatures of this earth, so I felt like it was ok to accept evidence for evolution among the non human life on earth. Such as in Darwin’s finches or in the E. Coli Long Term Evolution Experiment which has been running since 1988 without break and which has observed many mutations in their E. Coli after tens of thousands of generations (it's much easier to test on bacteria which have way shorter lifespans than animals), some of which have been beneficial and led to greater survival just as the theory of evolution suggests.

Why did I stop believing that Adam was born from Homo sapiens from a different world? I was already on the verge of not believing it anymore, since I had accepted a naturalistic explanation for so much, it seemed strange and improbable to hold to this last point just because of my anthropocentric assumptions of my youth that humans were somehow superior to all the animals by virtue of being specially created by God as such. The last straw for this goes back to my view of progressive creationism. I believed that part of the world being more fit for humans included causing our competition to go extinct, so for example I saw the Late Pleistocene extinctions as being part of God’s effort to ‘clear the land’ to make way for humans. This of course included the extinction of most megafauna like woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, ground sloths, giant beavers, and most importantly Neanderthals. I believed it would be quite contrary to God's plans to have such a near human coexisting with humans. Unfortunately this assumption was radically shattered when I discovered that humans and Neanderthals coexisted for many years before the extinction and even intermingled. It is estimated that Europeans and Asians have between 1-2% of Neanderthal DNA and that Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders have 4-5% Denosovan DNA. In the greatest irony for eugenics ever, people from Africa which the Europeans regrettably enslaved for being ‘lesser’ have no DNA from these near humans unlike them.
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/unders ... erthaldna/

Well at this point I had one final straw to hold onto in my creationist assumptions, the Garden of Eden, I could still believe that the first humans evolved there because it is common for speciation (I called it what it was now) to occur in isolated biomes. Unfortunately those hopes were also crushed when I learned that there was no such oasis that we have evidence for. Rather we have evidence that Homo Sapiens emerged through the interbreeding of South and East African hominid populations.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6736881/

This has made me very deistic in my views. At most the laws of physics and biology by which evolution occurs is contingent upon God which might be generously construed to be teleologically calculated to produce humans, but there seems to be no evidence for special intervention on God’s part to create humans as I was raised believing.

Ego, as a diest, why then a god at all?

[MG 2.0]

Fair enough.

Regards,
MG

I was raised with the stories of the creation of the world and while my family was generous about interpreting the ‘days’ to be symbolic, thus allowing for the earth to be very old, I was still taught that everything from Genesis 2:4 onwards was literal. I was taught that Adam was formed from the dust (clay depending on translation) of the ground by some supernatural ability that God had. I attended public school faithfully and took my tests on evolution but all the while I was very convinced that it was all wrong.
My assumptions were first challenged when I went to a museum where they have a wall displaying the skulls of many pre-human hominids along with a diagram of the evolutionary tree that they were a part of. I had dismissed the claims about evolution, this was ponderous though. It didn’t constitute proof to me that humans evolved from ancient animals but it did constitute proof that these ancient near-humans did in fact exist. I then became a progressive creationist; I believed that God created animals closer and closer to being in his image as the earth became more and more mature and ‘ready to host human life,’ I felt like this was an appropriate view according to Genesis if interpreted as being a simplification of the progressive creation process (i.e. plants before animals, animals before humans). Again, I did not believe in evolution, I was compelled by one piece of evidence at a time, but it was compelling indeed and I couldn’t deny it, so I changed my assumptions bit by bit.
There is even a wall of skulls at BYU’s Bean Life Science Museum, little did I know they had this display identical to the kind I saw years before elsewhere; they even label it “Hominid Evolution”. You’ll have to find an image of it online by searching ‘BYU Museum of Life Science skulls’ since I couldn’t get the image to embed right.

Now my assumptions about the Garden of Eden were actually reaffirmed for a time. There was a nature documentary I was watching about Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. There are groves of ohia lehua trees which grow in the middle of lava fields of all places, these are called kipuka forests. They are on higher ground so when the volcanoes ooze out their lava it flows like rivers around these forests, very effectively isolating them from the rest of the wildlife on Hawai’i. Because of their isolation, kīpuka forests are safe havens for the formation of new and distinct species such as a unique species of the Hawai’ian happy face spider.
At this point I felt that at the very least we see evidence of new creatures in isolated environments (such as in Charles Darwin’s study of the island finches) where they will not be disturbed by other creatures in their respective ‘spheres of creation’. My assumption was just that this was the modus operandi of God when creating new creatures for just as some isolated environments can be paradisiacal like the kipuka forests of Hawai’i, I thought that the Garden of Eden may have been such an oasis and been a place where God could create humans without us being disturbed by our predators like the sabertooths until Adam and Eve were expelled from it.

“Here let me state to all philosophers of every class upon the earth, When you tell me that father Adam was made as we make adobies from the earth, you tell me what I deem an idle tale. When you tell me that the beasts of the field were produced in that manner, you are speaking idle words devoid of meaning. There is no such thing in all the eternities where the Gods dwell. Mankind are here because they are the offspring of parents who were first brought here from another planet, and power was given them to propagate their species, and they were commanded to multiply and replenish the earth.” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 7: 285-286.)
“Adam, our earthly parent, was also born of woman into this world, the same as Jesus and you and I.” (Joseph F. Smith, Deseret Evening News, December 27, 1913, Sec. III, p. 7.)
Here is a link that contains many more quotes along these lines:
https://josephsmithfoundation.org/faqs/ ... ca2a58a450

This challenged my assumptions once again because here were Church leaders themselves contradicting the story in Genesis that Adam was formed from clay. I was pretty happy to accept this though, because even though it wasn't what I was brought up with, it seemed to open doors for more of the ‘data’ to fit the creationist model. For example these prophets had affirmed was that humans and creatures are born, not formed from clay, and while Brigham Young for example affirmed that in the case of humans this was from other humans from another world, he said nothing about the creatures of this earth, so I felt like it was ok to accept evidence for evolution among the non human life on earth. Such as in Darwin’s finches or in the E. Coli Long Term Evolution Experiment which has been running since 1988 without break and which has observed many mutations in their E. Coli after tens of thousands of generations (it's much easier to test on bacteria which have way shorter lifespans than animals), some of which have been beneficial and led to greater survival just as the theory of evolution suggests.

Why did I stop believing that Adam was born from Homo sapiens from a different world? I was already on the verge of not believing it anymore, since I had accepted a naturalistic explanation for so much, it seemed strange and improbable to hold to this last point just because of my anthropocentric assumptions of my youth that humans were somehow superior to all the animals by virtue of being specially created by God as such. The last straw for this goes back to my view of progressive creationism. I believed that part of the world being more fit for humans included causing our competition to go extinct, so for example I saw the Late Pleistocene extinctions as being part of God’s effort to ‘clear the land’ to make way for humans. This of course included the extinction of most megafauna like woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, ground sloths, giant beavers, and most importantly Neanderthals. I believed it would be quite contrary to God's plans to have such a near human coexisting with humans. Unfortunately this assumption was radically shattered when I discovered that humans and Neanderthals coexisted for many years before the extinction and even intermingled. It is estimated that Europeans and Asians have between 1-2% of Neanderthal DNA and that Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders have 4-5% Denosovan DNA. In the greatest irony for eugenics ever, people from Africa which the Europeans regrettably enslaved for being ‘lesser’ have no DNA from these near humans unlike them.
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/unders ... erthaldna/

Well at this point I had one final straw to hold onto in my creationist assumptions, the Garden of Eden, I could still believe that the first humans evolved there because it is common for speciation (I called it what it was now) to occur in isolated biomes. Unfortunately those hopes were also crushed when I learned that there was no such oasis that we have evidence for. Rather we have evidence that Homo Sapiens emerged through the interbreeding of South and East African hominid populations.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6736881/

This has made me very deistic in my views. At most the laws of physics and biology by which evolution occurs is contingent upon God which might be generously construed to be teleologically calculated to produce humans, but there seems to be no evidence for special intervention on God’s part to create humans as I was raised believing.

Ah...evolution. Yep, that's a quandary. One source that I might suggest if you haven't already read his stuff is David H. Bailey a retired mathematician and computer scientist (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory). He discusses evolution and other scientific/religion topics on his website. To find that website you can use the search words: Who is David Bailey LDS scientist?

Here is a quote from that site I find meaningful because it demonstrates that an academic who is also a believer can dovetail his scientific explorations along with his religious impulses for belief in a supreme being:

[A]t the personal level of the individual, I can believe that I am God’s creature without denying that I developed from a single cell in my mother’s womb by natural processes. In theological parlance, God may act through secondary causes. For the believer the providence of God impacts personal life and world events through natural causes.
Franciscan Priest Francisco Ayala
source of quote: https://www.sciencemeetsreligion.org/20 ... an-theism/

Over the years David H. Bailey has written a lot about science and religion. I've found him to be a good resource as I've attempted to bring together a co-existing belief in God and evolutionary theory.

How Adam and Eve fit into the whole thing is, as you have mentioned, a bit beyond our paygrade. I haven't stumbled upon any evidence that they existed as two individual human beings within the evolutionary line that extends back tens of thousands of years if not farther. I take it on faith that they did exist as the progenitors of the race of humans that modern humans are the result of.

Putting aside some of the other things you talked about in your post...whereas evolutionary theory, Adam and Eve, and associated conundrums can get us in a twist...I have another question. (by the way, thank you so much for your post, very interesting and informative as to your personal history).

What do you see as the outgrowth and meaning of "purpose" when it comes to mankind? If you are more or less a deist does that or does that not lead you to believe that mankind has purpose that has any kind of ultimate meaning not only here on planet earth, but in some form/kind of hereafter?

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

Ego, as a diest, why then a god at all?

I'll let Ego answer this question along with mine in regards to "purpose", and I won't speak for him/her, but I can think of some reasons.

And I've posted them many times over the years. Some of the same reasons some pretty bright people believe in God. And Jesus.

But yeah, Ego is an interesting person. I've enjoyed what he/she had to say in a recent post. Very thoughtful.

Now he/she has a few questions to follow up on if he/she feels that it is worthwhile/appropriate to do so in this venue.

Regards,
MG

[Gadianton]

A person can believe anything they wish to. There is nothing in science or any other discipline that outright rules out Mormonism as there is nothing that outright rules out Jehovah's Witnesses or Scientology.

Ego's saga is an interesting one, and I hope MG really did read what he wrote. Something tells me MG read far enough to see the word "evolution" and then just responded, without considering the specifics of what Ego said.

A Mormon might be able to maintain belief despite science, but Mormonism as a broad story about everything must be thrown out. The words of the prophets must be disposed of, and considered overreach. There are a great many Mormons out there who see the problem ahead and try to stop people like Ego from going there. I've mentioned before that my Bishop who interviewed me for mission very politely tried to tell me to stay away from Hugh Nibley. He was right. I'd heard him say things at other times over the years like, he'll look into this other doctrine or idea once he's got faith and repentance down. The way to stay in the boat, the most sure way, is reject the investigation of anything in Mormonism outside of the very basics. And there is plenty of reason to do so. Thinking deeply about doctrine is not going to make you a more moral person nor will it feed the poor.

The problem with finding meaning in Mormonism given the specifics of Ego's saga, is that the way the world is understood will change substantially as Ego absorbs the concepts behind the creation of the world as it actually is. It's possible that God lit the fuse beginning at say, the Paleozoic, and for 359 million years, this strange and horrifying epic unfolded that resulted in man, who subjects everything including themselves for 200+ years until the second coming, and there's a point to this? I could drive to 7-11 and get a drink by venturing through the entire US Interstate system first. People might hold up the factual correctness that I did such a thing. But it's kind of hard to see the enjoyment of the drink reflected in the journey to obtain it.

[MG 2.0]

I hope MG really did read what he wrote. Something tells me MG read far enough to see the word "evolution" and then just responded, without considering the specifics of what Ego said.

Years ago I almost packed it all in because of evolutionary theory vs. religion/God/church. Gadianton, it gets a bit tiresome to continually watch you place judgement/condemnation on me and my past. You really don't know much about me at all except for where I'm at now. You have no idea what kind of winding road I've had to follow to end up in the place where I'm at.

That seems to bother you to no end.

As I mentioned to Ego. Evolutionary theory is something that can get a person knotted up in twists. I've been there with many similar/congruent types of conundrums and concerns similar to what Ego shared.

You seem to ride your high horse roughshod without regard for what kind of falsehoods and innuendo you might leave in your wake.

It would be nice if you would stop doing so.

I'm looking forward to hearing more from Ego in regards to the question(s) I've asked. In some ways, thusfar, I see a kindred spirit. I have an interest in hearing how other people navigate one of the most thorny issues one can come up with in Mormonism/Christianity...evolutionary theory vs. the fall of man and the conflicting ideas/doctrines that have been proposed in the LDS church since its inception/beginnings.

Regards,
MG

[Gadianton]

As I mentioned to Ego. Evolutionary theory is something that can get a person knotted up in twists. I've been there with many similar/congruent types of conundrums and concerns similar to what Ego shared.

My hope was that you read Ego's entire post. Did you? If you did, then I can understand if you were frustrated with my response, but if you didn't, the fact that you struggled with evolution at an earlier time in your life does not absolve the oversight of failing to read Ego's post.

Did you read Ego's entire post?

I've been there with many similar/congruent types of conundrums and concerns similar to what Ego shared.

1) name a single concern that Ego shared.

2) name a single concern that you ever had.

[MG 2.0]

As I mentioned to Ego. Evolutionary theory is something that can get a person knotted up in twists. I've been there with many similar/congruent types of conundrums and concerns similar to what Ego shared.

My hope was that you read Ego's entire post. Did you? If you did, then I can understand if you were frustrated with my response, but if you didn't, the fact that you struggled with evolution at an earlier time in your life does not absolve the oversight of failing to read Ego's post.

Did you read Ego's entire post?

I've been there with many similar/congruent types of conundrums and concerns similar to what Ego shared.

1) name a single concern that Ego shared.

2) name a single concern that you ever had.

Now I've read it through three times. I had read it twice before. Yes, I'm frustrated but not surprised at your response.

When I said I traveled a similar path...I meant similar, but not exactly. I can't remember (unless it was when I was a kid) ever thinking that it made sense for a 6000-7000 year old earth. I was exposed to evolution in one form or another way back when. I can't even remember now when it was. I've always had an interest in science and read a lot of science stuff as a kid.

Kind of a nut when it came to reading

Way back when I came across the 'Brigham Young theory' that Ego mentions and kind of went what??

I always had questions about one thing or another within the theory and how it fit with the Fall story. Ego felt that he hadn't been told the whole story...I thought it rather obvious that this was the case. I did find it interesting that BYU many years ago had a hand out on evolution developed by a professor who's name I can't remember right now.

That was cool.

I had many concerns. One of them being 'the first man' belief/teaching. It didn't fit with evolutionary theory for what I could see.

One summer my wife and I took the kids back east for a couple of weeks. We went to Adam-ondi-Ahman and saw Adam's altar. Yeah, right!

Anyway, I could go on...maybe another time.

I did mention David H. Bailey. Ever read his stuff? I did, years ago. It was cool to see that an active Latter-Day Saint person with a scientifically trained mind had been able to dovetail Mormonism with science and evolution in particular. I've read other stuff over the years and came to the tentative conclusion that 'God did it'. Put the whole thing in motion millions of years ago...and here we are.

We're here with a purpose beyond what we make whole cloth.

I'm not in any way dismissing the fact you've taken a different road and ended up in a different place. My journey is different than yours. For you to decide/determine that one path ends up with 'the only logical conclusion' is a bit of hubris, in my opinion. But you're where you are and that's fine.

But get off any highorse your riding and accept the fact there are a lot of people out there that see things differently than you.

It's not like it's your way or the highway.

It's OK! Lighten up!

One thing I've noticed over the years is that some folks here are so damn serious. I hope that isn't perceived as a criticism that puts me in the doghouse.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing more from Ego. I hope he returns and spends some time with the questions a couple of us have asked.

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

Oh Duane Jeffries. That was the BYU professor's name...