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First Humans Adam And Eve?


Anijen

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As I study sometimes my mind gets hijacked buy questions. Can atheist and members come together in some sort of harmony with scientific evidence and faith? I started reading and studying the Old testament again and was pondering Adam and Eve. There is science that suggest that there are older humans or hominids that predate before Adam and Eve. I once heard in college that the Aborigines can date back before the time of Adam. So the question begs how can I be so believing and face scientific evidence? I thought about Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden. Could they have been transplanted from another sphere to this one where a past life now dead but once lived IE fossils, dinosaurs and even cavemen? I am curious and would welcome any thoughts on the subject. I believe in all the Church's doctrine of they being our first parents. I don't believe in polygenisis and I believe that all things created have a spirit form or soul. Would enjoy reading your comments on this.

Edited to add that I just saw Uncle Dales Neanderthals in the celestial kingdom but this could be a part two to that.

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As I study sometimes my mind gets hijacked buy questions. Can atheist and members come together in some sort of harmony with scientific evidence and faith? I started reading and studying the Old testament again and was pondering Adam and Eve. There is science that suggest that there are older humans or hominids that predate before Adam and Eve. I once heard in college that the Aborigines can date back before the time of Adam. So the question begs how can I be so believing and face scientific evidence? I thought about Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden. Could they have been transplanted from another sphere to this one where a past life now dead but once lived IE fossils, dinosaurs and even cavemen? I am curious and would welcome any thoughts on the subject. I believe in all the Church's doctrine of they being our first parents. I don't believe in polygenisis and I believe that all things created have a spirit form or soul. Would enjoy reading your comments on this.

I suggest that you take a couple of college level geology courses in your spare time, and get back to

us on this one.

UD

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As I study sometimes my mind gets hijacked buy questions. Can atheist and members come together in some sort of harmony with scientific evidence and faith? I started reading and studying the Old testament again and was pondering Adam and Eve. There is science that suggest that there are older humans or hominids that predate before Adam and Eve. I once heard in college that the Aborigines can date back before the time of Adam. So the question begs how can I be so believing and face scientific evidence? I thought about Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden. Could they have been transplanted from another sphere to this one where a past life now dead but once lived IE fossils, dinosaurs and even cavemen? I am curious and would welcome any thoughts on the subject. I believe in all the Church's doctrine of they being our first parents. I don't believe in polygenisis and I believe that all things created have a spirit form or soul. Would enjoy reading your comments on this.

Edited to add that I just saw Uncle Dales Neanderthals in the celestial kingdom but this could be a part two to that.

As my wife and I both graduated with degrees in Biology (her's is a bachelors, mine is a minor), I think I can speak to this (to some degree) in layman's terms - as best I understand this.

In quite a few discussions about evolution (if you haven't read Darwin on this subject, I suggest you do), in light of the restored gospel, this is what my wife and I have come up with:

Anthropological science shows that prior to 4000 BC (approx. time of Adams introduction into the world according to the OT), homosapiens used tools, had social structures (groups, villages, civilizations, etc), and lived lives that would appropriately be described as 'these guys are people, just like you and me' - Evolution shows that the human skull, the brain cavity, the shoulder and hip girdles all point out that the human condition, biologically, was set LONG before Adam entered the stage.

So, how does that jive with the Gospel of Christ?

1. If I remember correctly, Oliver Cowdry (I'll find my reference for this) taught that Adam and Eve were brought here from a more heavenly sphere (he hypothesized from the sun) and that due to the lack of faith of men, the whole story of Adam being created from the dust, and Eve from a rib, was created, because the children of men "couldn't handle the truth" (so to speak).

2. How much do we really know about the process Jehovah used to form the earth and the creatures found on it - there is nothing in the Gospel of Christ that contradicts the idea that there was some form of evolution used to develop the human body - as a matter of fact, science has overwhelming evidence that this is the case - and as evolutionary science is truly just the discovery of what nature has to say (as well as we can understand it right now) what we are really doing is just discovering how God formed animals, plants, and man.

3. Hugh Nibley stated that regardless of what may have come before, our concerns of 'history' really start when Adam and Eve enter the stage - because with Adam comes the first covenant that we are concerned with - regardless of what might have been, this is where things get interesting.

...some sort of harmony with scientific evidence and faith

Not all things have been revealed to us by God - for His own loving purposes. It is in those areas that atheistic scientists will tell you "look the Bible can't be right because of bla, bla, bla" - but keep in mind, science told us that there were only 4 elements - earth, fire, water, and air. Science told us that the earth was flat, science told us that the 'stars' ran in an orbit around the earth, etc., etc., etc.

Science is the art of attempting to explain our complex world in a way that makes sense to our human brains - it is trial with almost an infinite number of errors. It is never 100% - that is why evolution is referred to as the theory of evolution, etc.

In the end, there is nothing in the Gospel of Christ that contradicts science, it is science that, at times, is in contradiction to the Gospel of Christ.

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Could they have been transplanted from another sphere to this one where a past life now dead but once lived IE fossils, dinosaurs and even cavemen? I am curious and would welcome any thoughts on the subject. I believe in all the Church's doctrine of they being our first parents. I don't believe in polygenisis and I believe that all things created have a spirit form or soul. Would enjoy reading your comments on this.

Honestly, you can make up just about anything you like about Adam and Eve and as long as it doesn't obviously contradict a direct reading of the scriptures, you can find a bunch of people in the Church who will believe you.

You can believe that all evidence of pre-Adamites was put there by God to test us. Or the evidence is from the other planet pieces used to organize Earth. Or so called "scientific" methods of fossil dating are unreliable if they aren't faith-promoting. Or Adam's generation had bodies made up of "celestial" material that, upon death, decayed at a much faster rate to make it appear as being much older. Or the fossils actually belong to prototype apes and have been misrepresented by unbelieving scientists. Or the air was so much purer back then (without all this pollution) that it changed how fossils decay. Or, there the Bible is in error when it dates the Earth, and Adam lived much longer ago. Or Adam was born on another world and brought here to live in a Garden while the rest of the Earth carried on in mortal life and death.

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1. If I remember correctly, Oliver Cowdry (I'll find my reference for this) taught that Adam and Eve were brought here from a more heavenly sphere (he hypothesized from the sun) and that due to the lack of faith of men, the whole story of Adam being created from the dust, and Eve from a rib, was created, because the children of men "couldn't handle the truth" (so to speak).

Well this doesn't make sense to me. Why would human life evolve on earth while Adam and Eve were being created on another planet? I don't have a problem accepting human evolution. I think evidence is overwhelmingly in support of it. I do have a problem understanding how the entire human race sprang from one couple who lived 6000 years ago. So, the only scenario I find believable is that (assuming Adam was a real person and not a symbol of all men) Adam was the first person that God made His covenant with, but not the first or only human that existed on the earth.

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Well this doesn't make sense to me. Why would human life evolve on earth while Adam and Eve were being created on another planet? I don't have a problem accepting human evolution. I think evidence is overwhelmingly in support of it. I do have a problem understanding how the entire human race sprang from one couple who lived 6000 years ago. So, the only scenario I find believable is that (assuming Adam was a real person and not a symbol of all men) Adam was the first person that God made His covenant with, but not the first or only human that existed on the earth.

sorry if I didn't make myself clear on this - I was simply showing that there are differing thoughts on the arrival of Adam, not that I was presenting the definitive list of "ok, this is what happened, and it happened in this order" - if there was confusion from what I was saying, I apologize - Oliver (here, again, I will find my reference - verify that it was in fact Oliver Cowdry) was stating, in my oh so humble opinion - what he believed to be the case, or perhaps he had had something revealed to him on this topic, but wasn't able to fully and clearly state what he was saying (and again, no real knowledge of evolution was, as far as I can tell, known/taught/understood by the early Church leaders. This reference of mine also says that Adam came here with 'one of his wives' - so how's that for another point of discussion?).

Personally, I have no problem if 'evolution' as we understand it was used on this earth AND that Adam came from another sphere to this earth - we are all the children of our Heavenly father, and I truly do not believe that those children of God on other worlds look any different than we do - maybe less fat than I am, but still, they look like the Father.

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Before Adam, by Hugh Nibley

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display.ph...ripts&id=73

Nibley addresses what you are asking.

Not really. I've actually read this several times and quite enjoyed it, but...Here's the snag:

"Do not begrudge existence to creatures that looked like men long, long ago, nor deny them a place in God's affection or even a right to exaltationâ??for our scriptures allow them such. Nor am I overly concerned as to just when they might have lived, for their world is not our world. They have all gone away long before our people ever appeared."

The problem I see with this scenario is that there have been fully modern humans on this planet for over 100 thousand years. Yes, all other hominids, and all Neanderthal people had definitely died out long before Adam would have appeared, but if Adam lived less than 10,000 years ago--he would have lived alongside many other people--and there would have been people living on all the continents (well, except one...) I don't see anything in Brother Nibley's remarks that can explain people alive today who couldn't possibly have descended from the Biblical Adam.

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I believe that every good biblical scholar at some point in his or her ponderings has to ask the genuine who-done-it on this topic. I too have long wondered abot the seeming contradictions of science and the bible. I studied and prayed on the subject for years hoping for an answer. What I kept getting was a dream where the scriptures opened up and math equations were in it instead of the typical passages. What I got from those dreams was that the truth (math is the only truth we know) lay in the scriptures on the topic of creation, age of the earth, and the global flood.

It did not dawn on me until quite recently that the earth really could be just thousands of years old and that there were no pre-human species on the earth before Adam. All of my ponderings led me to many books, travels to geologic sites and fierce dialogue with some very notable scientists. What I have since gathered is that the overwhelming evidence science proposes is really nothing more than a pile of famous bits and pieces that can fit in the back of a pickup truck. I once went to a traveling National Geographic display on ancient fossils and they had on display the famous feathered dinosaur fossil. They had all kinds of supporting evidence, displays, videos, numerous famous scientist quotes and the like for this display. It turned out that just a few months after that the fossil was a very good hoax from China. So it really make one wonder. Almost all of the famous pre-human hominid fossils have also turned out to be either hoaxes or just ordinary monkey or homo-sapien bones. The question I ask is this-

If there are literally millions of fossilized human bones, why are there not strikingly billions of the pre-homo sapien bones and fossils that should be in the geologic column?

The geologic column (the rocky sediments under our feet) is another strange feature that supposedly built itself upwards for miles over the coarse of millions and millions of years in rather perfect parallel strata. It is quite funny that when little kids reproduce the strata effect they take a glass jar and put in different clays and chalk dust and sand and then inundate the whole thing in water and violently shake it up and then drain the water off and end up with very nice parallel strata layers. If kids can duplicate it with using the flood method is it not also possible that the global flood really did occur as Christ even taught and that the current layers of strata and uplifted strata (mountain chains) were created as a result of the flood?

And if that be the case, the whole science of evolution falls completely on its face as there would be no supporting evidence because the geologic column formed very rapidly rather than over millions of years?

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I do have one other question that is topic related-

If science has never aknowledged resurrection, why do we hold to it as a real truth? Is it because we die and it would be nice to have the perfect sunset ending of eternal life? Ponder that and then ask yourself this-

Why do we have obvious presuppositions on certain topics like resurrection and eternal life but have very different views on the creation and age of the earth? Is it because we filter things according to our wants and desires? Suppose science came out with the overwhelming evidence that resurrection is impossible and that there has never been a documented case supporting the theory. Would the whole Christian community burn their bibles? I hardle think so. The same can be said for evolution. Countless polls have been taken regarding God, creation and evolution. The majority have always chosen God, special creation, and no evolution. This tells me that even though science might specifically say this or that concerning origins, the bulk of schooled Americans can't be dooped and still hold to the logic that if God exists, then the bible is true and is the basis for all truth!

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I don't see anything in Brother Nibley's remarks that can explain people alive today who couldn't possibly have descended from the Biblical Adam.

That's because Nibley neglected to mention the universal solution: the theory of adoption.

By the theory of adoption, your patriarchal blessing can name you to a tribe that is not shared by your parents.

By the theory of adoption, native americans with no geneological relationship to Lehi can be called "lamanites". Even polynesians.

By the theory of adoption, all those humans living alongside Adam can be called his descendants, even though they weren't even related to him.

Try applying the theory of adoption to your geneology work, and see if it isn't a huge time saver.

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'Rob Osborn' writes,

If there are literally millions of fossilized human bones, why are there not strikingly billions of the pre-homo sapien bones and fossils that should be in the geologic column?

You are working on a premise that there were millions/billions of pre-homo sapiens. This simply is not the case. Bipedal hominids never did reach more than a few hundred thousand at best. In fact, we almost died out several times over the course of the millennium's. What we find are the bits and pieces of fossilized hominids who did live. As to a concept of "geologic columns" it simply ignores the fact of vast geological tectonics and upheavals of the Earth's surface. It is not static.

It is quite funny that when little kids reproduce the strata effect they take a glass jar and put in different clays and chalk dust and sand and then inundate the whole thing in water and violently shake it up and then drain the water off and end up with very nice parallel strata layers.

You used a key word here:drain. If the Earth was inundated with water so that it reached the level of Everest then you would have to increase the water content of the Earth five times. Not only isn't there enough water on the Earth for this purpose, but where would such a vast amount drain off to. If it went into the atmosphere the resultant humidity and density of the water would have strangled anyone who have remained alive. You also make the comment that ,"Christ even taught and that the current layers of strata and uplifted strata (mountain chains) were created as a result of the flood". Where is this taught? When Jesus did reference the flood story it was either a figuration or a later scribal embellishment.

And if that be the case, the whole science of evolution falls completely on its face as there would be no supporting evidence because the geologic column formed very rapidly rather than over millions of years?

Again....no evidence for Velichovsky style disasters.

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I strongly recomend you read this book:

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/billbr...n=9780767908184

It's a pop approach to science. I don't know why people feel they have to take the story of Adam and Eve as a historical account, or that they had to have lived within the past 50,000 years. In fact, it has been very clearly established that you don't have to go back more than 6,000 years to find a single common ancestor. It should also be considered that, of all the people on the earth producing offspring today, only a small fraction of them will have survivors 5,000 years from now. In fact, it could be as few as 1%.

Evolution has not been proven true or false, it is a position, like creation, that cannot be debated due to lack of evidence. So lets sit back and enjoy the ride and non of this bickering over who produced who.

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Wrong.

Yes -- "wrong;" -- which is also to say that you are essentially "right."

But, then again, not everybody is well educated in such things.

I have no idea whatsoever, how to make a skateboard fly along on a handrail, with a 150 lb rider on it.

So far as I can tell, it is impossible, and a trick of some kind, that we human beings should avoid. Why

would I say such a thing? Because I am profoundly ignorant of skateboarding, for one reason....

....just as many other people are profoundly ignorant of geology, paleontology, radioactive decay dating,

sea-floor spreading, rate of change over time in DNA sequences, etc,

The mythological explanation of things is always so much easier to "think" and "say."

I can go into junior Sunday school and explain that the earth is very young and that we human beings

are devolved from a higher state of perfection, etc. etc. The students will easily understand.

But if I go into that same class with a long chart of a core-drilling, trying to show them how tens of

thousands of years of annual mud deposits are all recorded on that long, narrow graph, the students

will become restless, disinterested and confused.

Reality 101 is a hard course, and not everybody is going to get an A grade.

Too bad about that.

Uncle Dale

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I can go into junior Sunday school and explain that the earth is very young and that we human beings

are devolved from a higher state of perfection, etc. etc. The students will easily understand.

But if I go into that same class with a long chart of a core-drilling, trying to show them how tens of

thousands of years of annual mud deposits are all recorded on that long, narrow graph, the students

will become restless, disinterested and confused.

Reality 101 is a hard course, and not everybody is going to get an A grade.

Too bad about that.

You could always just tell them that Mitochondrial Eve is 140,000 years old and let them start trying to debate DNA science.

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I once heard in college that the Aborigines can date back before the time of Adam. So the question begs how can I be so believing and face scientific evidence?

Mormonism is not compatible with modern scientific knowledge. A perfect example are the Aborigines you mentioned. Australian Aboriginals have been genetically isolated from the rest of humanity for the past 30,000 years. If Adam lived 6,000 years ago (as D&C 77 plainly states), Australian Aboriginals cannot be among his descendants.

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