Evolution And Mormonism

[Alvino]

Simple poll.

I also would like to see what people here think better describes the events of the Adam and Even story to have been: a symbolic narrative with people who did not exist in real life, or a narrative about concrete people who actually lived.

--------------------

Not looking for much debate here. I just want to know what y'all think.

[thesometimesaint]

Alvino:

Question #1....

Did humans evolve through natural selection and random mutation from other primates and those primates from other non-primate species?

Answer... Yes.

Question#2. ... .

Were Adam and Even two human beings (Homo sapiens sapiens) created without being part of a species that evolved from lower species?

Answer ... No

Question #3

What describes better what the Garden of Eden mentioned in Genesis is/was?

Answer ...

An actual place that existed or exists on Earth.

[USU78]

Where's the "Don't much care" choice?

[Buzzard]

If Adam is not a real person, there will be a lot of disappointed folks in Missouri one of these years.

[altersteve]

If Adam is not a real person, there will be a lot of disappointed folks in Missouri one of these years.

Just because Adam had ancestors does not mean he was not a real person.

[ERayR]

Just because Adam had ancestors does not mean he was not a real person.

True. The only problem is deciding who is right about who those ancestors are.

[happy]

A lot of people have speculated that Adam and Eve form the final stage of human evolution and that speculation comes from the rewording of "created" to "organized" in Genesis.

[CV75]

While I lean one way, it wouldn’t bother me in the least if the truth is something else; I still have and keep my covenants.

Q1. “No” – To the extent the scriptural account is not figurative, I limit the application of Darwinian Evolution in practice, time and place: that while all species undergo some natural selection, it only applies after the Fall. Not all beings die or resurrect at once, so not all life left the Garden of Eden at once. If Adam and Eve (as stewards over the Earth, and just as Noah was the last to enter the ark, and as was the last to enter the Garden) were the last to enter the fallen world, and their offspring would be the least affected by natural selection. The “hominids” were either already in their nascent form in the Garden, departing between long intervals (accounting for the time it took to lay down the fossil record in today’s observed sequence), or left early enough to evolve through natural selection and thereby account for the time it took to establish the fossil record. Unique biotic environments resulting from natural selection in isolation still allow for Homo sapiens’s (Adam and Eve’s) appearance into or exclusion from any of those environments at any stage, and did not have to evolve from lower life forms within them. The easily-observed population genetic changes over many generations that come and go (such as surviving immune bacteria giving rise to the next drug-resistant form after a massive antibiotic-induced die-off) still allow for Homo sapiens to appear in relatively recent history and therefore display natural selection only to the point of diversifying into the various so-called “races”.

Q2. “Yes” (see above).

Q3. “Yes” but I also believe that it could have and/or currently exist somewhere else and double as a symbol.

[CV75]

Where's the "Don't much care" choice?

Still in the Garden of Eden!

[ERayR]

While I lean one way, it wouldn’t bother me in the least if the truth is something else; I still have and keep my covenants.

Q1. “No” – To the extent the scriptural account is not figurative, I limit the application of Darwinian Evolution in practice, time and place: that while all species undergo some natural selection, it only applies after the Fall. Not all beings die or resurrect at once, so not all life left the Garden of Eden at once. If Adam and Eve (as stewards over the Earth, and just as Noah was the last to enter the ark, and as was the last to enter the Garden) were the last to enter the fallen world, and their offspring would be the least affected by natural selection. The “hominids” were either already in their nascent form in the Garden, departing between long intervals (accounting for the time it took to lay down the fossil record in today’s observed sequence), or left early enough to evolve through natural selection and thereby account for the time it took to establish the fossil record. Unique biotic environments resulting from natural selection in isolation still allow for Homo sapiens’s (Adam and Eve’s) appearance into or exclusion from any of those environments at any stage, and did not have to evolve from lower life forms within them. The easily-observed population genetic changes over many generations that come and go (such as surviving immune bacteria giving rise to the next drug-resistant form after a massive antibiotic-induced die-off) still allow for Homo sapiens to appear in relatively recent history and therefore display natural selection only to the point of diversifying into the various so-called “races”.

Q2. “Yes” (see above).

Q3. “Yes” but I also believe that it could have and/or currently exist somewhere else and double as a symbol.

A very reasonable position. My own is quite similar although not identical.

[CV75]

A very reasonable position. My own is quite similar although not identical.

I'd be intersted in reading your position on #1.

[Hamilton Porter]

Fall story symbolizes:

1. Man's rebellion and estrangement from God.

2. Israel's expulsion from the Promised Land and into Assyrian captivity.

3. Mormons' expulsion from paradisaical Jackson County, MO.

Edited August 23, 2012 by Hamilton Porter

[BCSpace]

I subscribe to the LDS doctrine friendly model of human bodies evolving via natural selection and the human spirit, already evolved/created before this earth's creation, placed into Adam and Eve at conception/birth when all was ready (creation finished). Thus one can accept all science and all LDS doctrine on the matter, including that homo sapiens have been around, breeding and dying, long before the Fall and the fact that there was no death before the Fall; the "garden state" having existed AFTER the creation was finished (2 Nephi 2:22, 1931 Heber J Grant First Presidency statement, doctrine from the institute manual on D&C 77:6-7, etc.).

So for poll purposes, I think it would be good to separate the human and Adam and Eve questions each into two; one about the physical body and one about the spirit body.

While we know from doctrine that the rib story is figurative, there has to be at least some literal truth to the story. That Adam and Ever are real people and the garden is a real place or state. The question remains in my mind as to whether or not the garden state was world-wide or local. There seems to be doctrine or evidence supporting both. For example, the earth's paradisaical state vs. what were Adam and Eve cast out into?

Edited August 23, 2012 by BCSpace

[ERayR]

I subscribe to the LDS doctrine friendly model of human bodies evolving via natural selection and the human spirit, already evolved/created before this earth's creation, placed into Adam and Eve at conception/birth when all was ready (creation finished). Thus one can accept all science and all LDS doctrine on the matter, including that homo sapiens have been around, breeding and dying, long before the Fall and the fact that there was no death before the Fall; the "garden state" having existed AFTER the creation was finished (2 Nephi 2:22, 1931 Heber J Grant First Presidency statement, doctrine from the institute manual on D&C 77:6-7, etc.).

So for poll purposes, I think it would be good to separate the human and Adam and Eve questions each into two; one about the physical body and one about the spirit body.

While we know from doctrine that the rib story is figurative, there has to be at least some literal truth to the story. That Adam and Ever are real people and the garden is a real place or state. The question remains in my mind as to whether or not the garden state was world-wide or local. There seems to be doctrine or evidence supporting both. For example, the earth's paradisaical state vs. what were Adam and Eve cast out into?

To each his own. I just find that this view, for me, is irreconcilable to a fall.

Edited August 23, 2012 by ERayR

[cinepro]

Simple poll.

I also would like to see what people here think better describes the events of the Adam and Even story to have been: a symbolic narrative with people who did not exist in real life, or a narrative about concrete people who actually lived.

--------------------

Not looking for much debate here. I just want to know what y'all think.

While Adam may have been formed from the dust of the earth, I do not believe he was made of concrete.

[SeekerB]

I voted No, No, and Yes.

1. I don't believe evolution and random mutation alone produced the human species. There was involvement from someone else in the process.

2. The species we know as Homo Sapiens already existed. Adam and Eve were not newly created as the first members of that group. "As man is God once was...".

3. The Garden of Eden was a real place but was removed from the earth sometime after the fall. Angels with flaming swords guarded it after the fall.

[Freedom]

Until I meet the guy and have a chat about his childhood, I would say it is impossible to say.

[Closet Doubter]

This poll is not so simple. I believe in evolution but I don't believe it was random. As David McKay said in a letter to a BYU science professor "Evolution is a beautiful concept if you recognize the hand of God in it" (might not be exactly correct but close).

Who really knows who Adam and Eve were or anything about the Garden of Eden. The bible reads so close to ancient fables in this regard that it is easier to believe they are fables. Like it states in certain ordinances, it is figurative where Adam and Eve are concerned.

I was taught in Institute that the earth was created near Kolob and when the fall occurred, the earth fell from its orbit near Kolob to its current orbit around the sun and that prior to this fall, the entire earth was the Garden of Eden. When my wife got extremely offended by the South Park episode explaining Mormon beliefs when it showed the earth careening through space from Kolob to its current location, I had to explain to her that I had also been taught that this was our doctrine so don't get offended by the creators of South Park because they were taught the same thing.

[changed]

1. I think there are elements of evolution involved, but I don't think evolution happens through "random chance".

2. I think the fall from perfection was real, so I tend to think Adam and Eve were real, that they were sent to a world that had become void.

3. I think Eden might be from another sphere - something akin to Carl Sagan's flatland, where the 3D apple is Eden, and the 2D world is Earth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odT4u0fyRmo

or perhaps I would go with the limited geography theory, of a patch of perfection in the midst of another dying world....

Moses 1:35... there are many worlds that have passed away.... I think we are built on the ruins of other worlds that have passed away.

With all of it, I agree with CV "While I lean one way, it wouldn’t bother me in the least if the truth is something else;"

[ANACO]

Alvino, on 23 August 2012 - 12:49 AM, said:

Simple poll.

I also would like to see what people here think better describes the events of the Adam and Even story to have been: a symbolic narrative with people who did not exist in real life, or a narrative about concrete people who actually lived.

--------------------

Not looking for much debate here. I just want to know what y'all think.

While Adam may have been formed from the dust of the earth, I do not believe he was made of concrete.

Lol!

[supersnail]

This poll is not so simple. I believe in evolution but I don't believe it was random. As David McKay said in a letter to a BYU science professor "Evolution is a beautiful concept if you recognize the hand of God in it" (might not be exactly correct but close).

I get what you are saying, but I got to clear this up. Evolution consists of deterministic and stochastic parts. In imprecise language, we can say non-random and random parts. Mutation is random. Random or non-random, no aspect of evolution precludes external purpose, cause, agency, or whatever, because by definition those things are external to the mechanism under consideration. Is any serious biologist really in denial about this? No. Do all anti-religion activists care to point this out? No.

In a sense, an asteroid colliding with the earth becomes internal to evolution. That doesn't mean that evolutionary theory must specify every such event or they contradict evolution. We aren't sure what caused the Permian-Triassic extinction. Some of the causes may themselves have a cause that only appears accidental. Was the hand of God in any of that? We will never be able to rule it out. Evolution as scientific theory never said that God's hand could not be in evolution.

[Lightbearer]

My answers were: NO, YES, and Eden was a real place however it was a Terrestrial condition (not a Telestial or mortal one) I believe that this generation has accepted as fact a great error and as evidence of my reasons for believing as I do I quote the following:

"It is held by some that Adam was not the first man upon this earth and that the original human being was a development from lower orders of the animal creation. These, however, are the theories of men. The word of the Lord declared that Adam was “the first man of all men” (Moses 1:34), and we are therefore in duty bound to regard him as the primal parent of our race. It was shown to the brother of Jared that all men were created in the beginning after the image of God; whether we take this to mean the spirit or the body, or both, it commits us to the same conclusion: Man began life as a human being, in the likeness of our Heavenly Father.

True it is that the body of man enters upon its career as a tiny germ embryo, which becomes an infant, quickened at a certain stage by the spirit whose tabernacle it is, and the child, after being born, develops into a man. There is nothing in this, however, to indicate that the original man, the first of our race, began life as anything less than a man, or less than the human germ or embryo that becomes a man.

Man, by searching, cannot find out God. Never, unaided, will he discover the truth about the beginning of human life. The Lord must reveal Himself or remain unrevealed; and the same is true of the facts relating to the origin of Adam’s race—God alone can reveal them. Some of these facts, however, are already known, and what has been made known it is our duty to receive and retain.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, basing its belief on divine revelation, ancient and modern, proclaims man to be the direct and lineal offspring of Deity. God Himself is an exalted man, perfected, enthroned, and supreme. By His almighty power He organized the earth and all that it contains, from spirit and element, which exist coeternally with Himself. He formed every plant that grows and every animal that breathes, each after its own kind, spiritually and temporally—“that which is spiritual being in the likeness of that which is temporal, and that which is temporal in the likeness of that which is spiritual.” He made the tadpole and the ape, the lion and the elephant, but He did not make them in His own image, nor endow them with godlike reason and intelligence. Nevertheless, the whole animal creation will be perfected and perpetuated in the Hereafter, each class in its “distinct order or sphere,” and will enjoy “eternal felicity.” That fact has been made plain in this dispensation (see D&C 77:3).

Man is the child of God, formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes, and even as the infant son of an earthly father and mother is capable in due time of becoming a man, so the undeveloped offspring of celestial parentage is capable, by experience through ages and aeons, of evolving into a God.

Joseph F. Smith

John R. Winder

Anthon H. Lund

First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

November 1909

This is a statement from the First Presidency not an isolated opinion of a General Authority. So to me it stands as doctrinal truth. The full statement can be found here: http://www.lds.org/ensign/2002/02/the-origin-of-man?lang=eng

To me it is rather plain although I have been vilified and scorned by some members of this board. But all are free to believe what they will. If the theories of science is more important than the revelations of God then judge ye.

[thesometimesaint]

What was man before he was a man? Is an oxymoronic question.

[supersnail]

What was man before he was a man? Is an oxymoronic question.

My thought exactly. If we read the statement closely, it does not contradict evolution.

[ERayR]

My thought exactly. If we read the statement closely, it does not contradict evolution.

I have posted it before but here it is again. To me the gospel of evolution of man contradicts the concept of the fall and thus negates the atonement. I know there are some who have rationalized that the fall was not a physical fall and if you want to believe that then fine go for it but as for me fall still means fall not a gradual rise from the primordial ooze.