My favorite cogdis of the Mormons.

[_Jason Bourne]

Holy crap Sethbag. What it biting your rear end?

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.

Uh no. I did not just make this up ad hoc recently it is something I have speculated about for quite some time while realizing as I did so that there are major flaws with it.

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.

Sethbag, I usually like you . But you are being a jerk on this one. You don't know what is in my mind about this. I was just tossing out some thing. Actually it seems highly unlikely to me that Adam and Eve were anything like the literal view that I was taught. And then I have to follow up what that means for a number of other things. This is why I ask other Christians how they work through this one. I was talking to a conservative Christian about this yesterday. He started telling me something about a Gap Theory-not sure what that is-and then a young earth theory. I did not have time to follow up with him on this.

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.

Mind Virus of religion? Hmmm You tell your kids this stuff?

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

Gee thanks for your permission. I feel so liberated now.

[_Gadianton Plumber]

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.

Here are some thoughts: (I love lists)

1. Eden as island. OK, the rest of the world is functioning like a normal planet with death, evolution, and intelligent human shaped animals. Eden is set apart, maybe with a hedge from the them until the fall when A/E and their similarly graced pets join them. What's the point of the story? There is no death in the world (except outside the backyard), no man (except all those human ones), and there is no need to toil (except everybody else). So is there no sin either (except in el al Vegas)?

2. Do you think the rest of the world made fun of A/E because God was a little too overenthusiastic about home schooling?

You are my favorite, JB. So far you are the only member brave enough to take a stab at this. You are better than even DCP!

[_Jason Bourne]

Well thanks. I am really not doing all that well and I think it is clear this is an area of concern for me. BC Space would do much better.

But today I read the discussion of the Fall of Adam in the Bible Dictionary. What rank does this have for LDS doctrine? It is published with LDS Scripture:

Bible DICTIONARY
Fall of Adam
The process by which mankind became mortal on this earth. The event is recorded in Gen. 2, 3, 4; and Moses 3, 4. The fall of Adam is one of the most important occurrences in the history of man. Before the fall, Adam and Eve had physical bodies but no blood. There was no sin, no death, and no children among any of the earthly creations. With the eating of the “forbidden fruit,” Adam and Eve became mortal, sin entered, blood formed in their bodies, and death became a part of life. Adam became the “first flesh” upon the earth (Moses 3: 7), meaning that he and Eve were the first to become mortal. After Adam fell, the whole creation fell and became mortal. Adam’s fall brought both physical and spiritual death into the world upon all mankind (Hel. 14: 16-17).
The fall was no surprise to the Lord. It was a necessary step in the progress of man, and provisions for a Savior had been made even before the fall had occurred. Jesus Christ came to atone for the fall of Adam and also for man’s individual sins.
Latter-day revelation supports the biblical account of the fall, showing that it was a historical event that literally occurred in the history of man. Many points in latter-day revelation are also clarified that are not discernible from the Bible. Among other things it makes clear that the fall is a blessing, and that Adam and Eve should be honored in their station as the first parents of the earth. Significant references are 2 Ne. 2: 15-16; 2 Ne. 9: 6-21; Mosiah 3: 11-16; Alma 22: 12-14; Alma 42: 2-15; D&C 29: 34-44; Moses 5: 9-13

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I think this leaves hardly any wiggle room for the speculative things I have posted as well as some I have heard from others. I would like BC Space to jump in here. Where is he?

[_Sethbag]

If you check, your Bible Dictionary's introduction contains this following disclaimer:

It is not intended as an official or revealed endorsement by the Church of the doctrinal, historical, cultural, and other matters set forth.

Woohoo, not official! Speculation's back on, boys!

Jason, I'm sorry that my earlier post comes off as insulting or attacking to you. I don't intend any sort of personal attack on you at all. It's the mindset of knowing there are fatal flaws in one's religious beliefs, so rather than discard them, one sets one's mind to work crafting excuses, or ways in which one might stretch definitions and whatnot so that the flaws appear to one to be circumvented. This is not about truth - it's about protecting one's cherished beliefs, or one's loyalty to the tribe.

And yes, I agree with Dawkins that religious beliefs tend to act like viruses, only viruses of the mind. First they infect a person, then they get that person to infect other people with them, and they circumvent one's normal rational faculties in order to shortcircuit the process by which the mind would ordinarily reject bad ideas.

Mind Virus of religion? Hmmm You tell your kids this stuff?

Yes, right after they get out of Sunday School each week, where we've just finished telling them about Noah's Ark, Adam and Eve being immortal (and alone) in the Garden of Eden, Nephi cutting off Laban's head so he could take Laban's property, Abraham attempting to sacrifice Isaac to fulfill the God's command, and Saul being punished by the Lord for stopping short of the utter annihilation of some poor nation, by killing all of the men, women, and children, but saving a few of the cattle. The Lord loves obedience more than sacrifice, after all.

Yes. Yes I do tell my daughter this stuff. What do you tell your kids?*

* Speaking of which, did you teach your kids that the Lord trained up a guy to be his latter-day deputy on Earth by having him hunt buried treasure by staring at a magic rock in a hat? Or that the Lord had this same guy stare at the magic rock in the hat to translate the words ostensibly written by a prophet there's no evidence ever existed, about a people nobody's been able to show ever existed, about a bunch of events nobody has ever shown any evidence ever happened, all written in a set of gibberish characters supposed to have been descended from Egyptian, but actually written using these gibberish characters in the Hebrew language? Can you really watch an interview or a lecture from Richard Dawkins, and yet prefer the above sort of Bushmanesque Mormon hand-waving exercises?

ps: I apologize in advance for being so hard-nosed about this. Sometimes I feel like someone's gotta just say it like it is, and I think this is one of those times.

[_Paracelsus]

If you check, your Bible Dictionary's introduction contains this following disclaimer:

It is not intended as an official or revealed endorsement by the Church of the doctrinal, historical, cultural, and other matters set forth.

Woohoo, not official! Speculation's back on, boys!

Not official, private opinion, and all the other dodging ...
Is there something OFFICIAL?
What part of the LDS.org is official? 5% ? 10% ?

0 % ?

by the way the "Guide to the Scriptures " has no such disclaimer and there are copies/echoes of the same definitions from BD.
Are that mirrored definitions of BD official?

[_William Schryver]

JSM:

Why should there be one test? There'd be many different ones. Following The Dude's and my examples, you could test eyesight and ejaculate volume in highly visual species that reproduce internally.

Until one of you can demonstrate that an individual developed a trait that was conducive to reproductive success, and that said individual was successful in passing that trait to its offspring, and that those offspring then likewise successfully passed that same trait to their offspring—and in the process made the trait predominant in the species from that point forward (until, of course, modified or replaced by subsequent adaptation) then you are left with the hard, cold reality that “fitness” means nothing if it cannot reproduce itself. And therefore “fitness” must necessarily equate to nothing more than reproductive success: the traits of those who reproduce best become predominant in the species; the species does not come to reflect the traits of those who are naturally the “fittest.”
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beastlie:

Is it really possible that someone with at least average intelligence really doesn't get the point that has been so laboriously explained?

We’re clearly living in the days of full liberation for women: even beastlie feels entirely comfortable taking a position in the circle. I fully expect dissonance and marginal to join the revels before long.

But while you’re here, beastlie, why don’t you show us your supreme grasp of “the point” and demonstrate, using examples, the logic of Delusion's axiom of Darwinist ideology:

The fittest aren't those that survive, but rather those that have traits that are more functionally efficient at reproductive success compared against others in a population.

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The Little Dude:

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

Of course! I’ve never really read anything on the issue except a couple paragraphs in an article in Christianity Today while I waited for my oil to get changed one day. Having a copy of Origin of the Species on my bookshelf would be tantamount to inviting Satan himself into my house. It's all of the devil!

And, as everyone knows, anyone who has seriously examined the tenets of Darwinist theory comes away entirely convinced that it constitutes the only logical answer to the origins of life on this planet.

Right?

Only stupid people or uninformed people or religious people who intentionally blind themselves to the facts are capable of claiming they perceive evidentiary holes and logical flaws in evolutionary theory as it is currently promulgated in the world.

Only those liberated from the notion that there is unmistakable intelligence manifest in the design of the systems of this planet—biological and otherwise—are capable of seeing these things clearly.

And anyone who disagrees shall be silenced.

That’s the world in which we live.
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[_truth dancer]

Hey Sethbag,

Yep, sometimes someone needs to just say it like it is... you are always good for that!

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.

This rings so true to me. I kept "expanding the paradigm" to the point that I was making up all sorts of *&%$ in order to make the "story" fit into some sense of reality. What was weird is that I knew I was doing it but kept on coming up with all sorts of ideas and theories so I could keep believing in what was clearly not true. Crazy making for sure!

Once I just let it go, there was and still is an overwhelming sense of peace; it was like an enormous dark cloud dissipated and my life took on a whole new light. All of a sudden the confusion, the struggle, the craziness just disappeared. Gone forever.

Without the weirdness our human (and universe) story unfolds smoothly and harmoniously, (not that it is all that great), with it I felt like I was living in some sort of alternative universe where anyone can make up anything and find a way to pretend it is real; where the strangest things are held as ultimate truth.

Adopting the make believe stories of a few powerful men from an ancient nomadic tribe, and trying to fit them into the modern, civilized world just takes some outlandish paradigm shifting!

Jason, BC's nonsense is not going to be helpful. While he believes that he makes sense and has a theory that can blend scripture with reality, he is only kidding himself. It is craziness and really just demonstrates how far the human mind can go to try to make sense of the nonsensical.

~td~

[_The Dude]

And, as everyone knows, anyone who has seriously examined the tenets of Darwinist theory comes away entirely convinced that it constitutes the only logical answer to the origins of life on this planet.

Right?

Evolution isn't about the origin of life.

Only stupid people or uninformed people or religious people who intentionally blind themselves to the facts are capable of claiming they perceive evidentiary holes and logical flaws in evolutionary theory as it is currently promulgated in the world.

Actually, there is a lot of truth to these reasons why people don't accept evolution (we may not agree on the definition of "evolutionary theory as it is currently promulgated in the world". Ignorance and religious dogma are always driving forces in the opposition, and you are a classic example.

[_William Schryver]

The Little Dude:

Evolution isn't about the origin of life.

Cute.

It may not attempt to answer questions about the primordial origins of life, but it most certainly seeks to provide the explanation for the current status of life on this planet, and that has of course been the context of our discussion.

You're just using these semantic games as a tool of evasion anyway--which I entirely expected from you. You flatter yourself that you are superbly capable of discussing the gritty details of these questions, but you have always been at a pronounced disadvantage when it comes to considering the "big picture" logical and philosophical issues of whatever discussion you involve yourself in. Yours is a micro mind that just can't seem to wrap its arms around the less-empirical aspects of the macro questions of life.

... you are a classic example.

I've always maintained that I was a classic example of the kind of man Mormonism produces. I continue to stand by that assessment.

As for "classic examples" in general, this particular message board is rife with them, you hardly being an exception.

[_The Dude]

It may not attempt to answer questions about the primordial origins of life, but it most certainly seeks to provide the explanation for the current status of life on this planet, and that has of course been the context of our discussion.

You're just using these semantic games as a tool of evasion anyway--which I entirely expected from you.

No, I'm just noting another instance of your ignorance, or at least carelessness (saying origin of life = Darwinism). The matter of the discussion is evolution as a tautology, most certainly a semantic game (of yours).

Yours is a micro mind that just can't seem to wrap its arms around the less-empirical aspects of the macro questions of life.

Uh huh. Coming from you.

I've always maintained that I was a classic example of the kind of man Mormonism produces. I continue to stand by that assessment.

Some would say opposition to evolution is a classic Mormon trait, but I disagree because I have known many Mormons (including some of my finest professors at BYU) who would side with me for 100% of this discussion regarding evolution being tautological. You are a classic example of ignorance and dogmatism, that's all I meant.

As for "classic examples" in general, this particular message board is rife with them, you hardly being an exception.

Interestingly, Kevin Graham shares your dogmatic and ignorant opposition to evolution. I'm not sure if he would fall for the tautology argument, but I wouldn't put it past him.