Whence cometh Eve?

[Tsjoeva]

Adam would've been born first and/or the first placed into the garden and/or the first homo sapiens born whoose spirit is a spirit child of God. etc. No conflict. Also in the OT, the notion of the fabrication of man is evident. Why couldn't evolution qualify as fabrication?

Evolution, isn't a creation...

Well, there is a pr

[Tsjoeva]

Adam would've been born first and/or the first placed into the garden and/or the first homo sapiens born whoose spirit is a spirit child of God. etc. No conflict. Also in the OT, the notion of the fabrication of man is evident. Why couldn't evolution qualify as fabrication?

Evolution, isn't a creation...

Well, there is a pr

[Tsjoeva]

No prob. The LDS position is no doctrine on evolution or creationism. Therefore, you will find LDS on both sides arguing the merits of their position, whether or not it (especially evolution) conflicts with existing doctrine.

Thanks, for the explanation.

[thesometimesaint]

Nofear:

I can accept human life on other planets. Though at present we have no empirical evidence for such.

As we know of no other planet that has any recognizable form of life. It is impossible to say either way. But I subscribe to the philosophy the basic laws of the universe don't change with location. That God took a rational method to produce a rational result. So in that sense it is not reinventing the wheel, but knowing what a wheel is, and taking the necessary steps to make one.

Efficiency is hardly a matter in nature. This world in inhabited by millions of different types of living organisms all more or less inefficient in the way man looks at it. But it works well enough for them, and it works well enough for us. Personally I have no desire to meet a living "T" Rex any time soon. But without the "T" Rex we wouldn't have birds. So in the long run it worked pretty well, as I like fried chicken.

Depends on your goal. The killing of virtually ALL life on earth, as in the Scriptural Flood, and starting over seems rather inefficient to me.

[BCSpace]

Evolution, isn't a creation...

Well, there is a pr

[Nofear]

And then, of course, you had a fully designed "final" wheel sitting in your work-area all along. Sure, you could have just copied the final wheel that was sitting next to you, but the other way is more mysterious.

Hmmm... I've never found "'cuz it's more mysterious" a very persuasive theological argument.

But you are right, we also have the spiritual creation to accommodate in our thinking. And we still have to answer why build hominids at all? Well, no, no we don't have to. At least not any more than we have to explain the dinosaurs and the multiple mass extinction events. I'm personally content to let them be "mysterious" (for the time being).

Anyway, I personally find radical panspermia the most parsimonious and logical of all our wild speculations about the origin of Eve.

[Sevenbak]

The fall brought physical death, in addition to spiritual death, so if evolution produced Adam, how does that work?

[Nofear]

I can accept human life on other planets. Though at present we have no empirical evidence for such.

As we know of no other planet that has any recognizable form of life. It is impossible to say either way.

No empirical secular evidence, but the scriptures are as plain as day in this. So, to a Mormon audience at least, I can not only possibly say but can say with a great deal of certainty -- there are other worlds and they are inhabited and they appear human.

[Gillebre]

The fall brought physical death, in addition to spiritual death, so if evolution produced Adam, how does that work?

Evolution didn't produce Adam. That's just it. But that's also just my opinion.

I know that the Earth was prepared for us, but I do not believe it involved creatures evolving from one kind to another (and as scripture/quote/whatever it is because my mind's blank atm goes, all things produce after their own kind).

The movie 'Knowing' with Nick Cage became all the more interesting (although it did have some seriously flawed points) when I came to the understanding and belief that all life on this planet is of an extra-terrestrial origin.

Or, should I say extra-celestial. lol

[Sevenbak]

Evolution didn't produce Adam. That's just it.

I couldn't agree more.

[BCSpace]

The fall brought physical death, in addition to spiritual death, so if evolution produced Adam, how does that work?

By agreeing with no death before the fall and since there is no description of the creative state before Adam was placed in the garden, making the assumption that death occured before the garden. Consider:

And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.

2 Nephi 2:22

The state of no death comes after the creation. So while the creation was taking place, death could have occured. Of course as the Church admits, there are no details of the physical creation. It also says that it is wrong to ascribe to the Church a doctrine fixing the age of the earth. So a 4.5 billion year old earth with evolution as the creative process for living things fits well within LDS doctrine.

[thesometimesaint]

Nofear:

By definition Empirical is Secular.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical

The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation, experience, or experiment.[1] A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses. It is usually differentiated from the philosophic usage of empiricism by the use of the adjective "empirical" or the adverb "empirically." "Empirical" refers to the use of working hypotheses that are testable using observation or experiment. In this sense of the word, scientific statements are subject to and derived from our experiences or observations.

[BCSpace]

Evolution didn't produce Adam. That's just it.

I couldn't agree more.

I think it was BY who pooh poohed the idea that God literally scooped up some mud/clay and fashioned the physical form of a man. Of course that is the question, how did the physical body come about?, for which there are no details given in LDS doctrine and scripture. Incidently, BY believed that God the Father came down to earth with Heavenly Mother and by partaking of the physical fruits, were able to procreate the physical bodies of Adam and Eve (Adam-God never having been taught by BY). Of course that, like evolution and creationism, is not accepted by the Church as doctrine either.

[Nofear]

By definition Empirical is Secular.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical

The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation, experience, or experiment.[1] A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses. It is usually differentiated from the philosophic usage of empiricism by the use of the adjective "empirical" or the adverb "empirically." "Empirical" refers to the use of working hypotheses that are testable using observation or experiment. In this sense of the word, scientific statements are subject to and derived from our experiences or observations.

I'm not going to get into an epistemological debate with you, but when we are discussing the scriptures I count as "observation" then scriptural text itself -- it becomes an acceptable input of authoritative data (albeit it must still be interpreted). So, when I clarified your statement as "secular empirical" data I emphasized your inane and utterly irrelevant (to this discussion) claim that we haven't seen any life on other planets yet with our mortal, secular observations. Context -- pay attention and try to add something useful next time.

[Mudcat]

I suppose some find the notion of God making Eve from Adam's rib a bit to far fetched to be believable.

I don't see any problem with God creating Eve's body from Adams' preexisting genetic material. I don't have a formal position on the matter, Genesis is open to numerous interpretations. But I certainly don't see any reason why an omni-max deity couldn't have created Eve in exactly such a manner.

I wonder why this is such a difficult pill for some to swallow. I mean it seems that most of the reports of miraculous events during Christs day are somehow more acceptable. But when it comes down to it.. raising a dead man, feeding multitudes with a handful of fish, the transmutation of water into wine and so forth are equally difficult to accept.

[Nofear]

I don't see any problem with God creating Eve's body from Adams' preexisting genetic material. I don't have a formal position on the matter, Genesis is open to numerous interpretations. But I certainly don't see any reason why an omni-max deity couldn't have created Eve in exactly such a manner.

The Church doesn't have an official position either on how Adam and Eve started either. We only got our theories.

I wonder why this is such a difficult pill for some to swallow. I mean it seems that most of the reports of miraculous events during Christs day are somehow more acceptable. But when it comes down to it.. raising a dead man, feeding multitudes with a handful of fish, the transmutation of water into wine and so forth are equally difficult to accept.

I suspect that the idea of God creating this earth's Adam and Eve in any other way than evolution is a hard pill to swallow for some because we have a great a deal of observation that nominally seems consistent with evolution. And some find it difficult to set aside an observation as irrelevant to their theory -- the opposite of the "God of the gaps" mentality. Both of which are fallacious approaches.

[BCSpace]

But I certainly don't see any reason why an omni-max deity couldn't have created Eve in exactly such a manner.

No problem. But an "omni-max" deity can also have used evolution or some other method just as easily.

[Mudcat]

I suspect that the idea of God creating this earth's Adam and Eve in any other way than evolution is a hard pill to swallow for some because we have a great a deal of observation that nominally seems consistent with evolution. And some find it difficult to set aside an observation as irrelevant to their theory -- the opposite of the "God of the gaps" mentality. Both of which are fallacious approaches.

Sure. I suppose I am fairly agnostic on evolution in the sense of macro evolution. Maybe it occurred but IMO the lack of transitional species in the fossil record, that you would expect to find had it occurred, seems to be a strike against it.

I think micro evolution has a wealth of evidence to support... like all dogs coming from some sort of singular canine ancestor. IOW, my thoughts on the matter stop at homo erectus until better evidence presents itself.

Regardless, sometimes I think it is better for people to simply admit that they don't know for certain. Squeezing what we believe about God, into "what we know right now" might be comforting in some respect but it could be just as wrong as it is comforting.

But assuming the God used evolution as the process by which he created man, then Eve being made from Adam's rib would seem a little outlandish, but certainly not impossible.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Regards,

Mudcat

[Nofear]

Regardless, sometimes I think it is better for people to simply admit that they don't know for certain. Squeezing what we believe about God, into "what we know right now" might be comforting in some respect but it could be just as wrong as it is comforting.

Quite agreed! Though I'm rather confident that even our Adam-from-evolution advocates (among whom I am not -- I'm a radical panspermist) are not dogmatic about it and will readily confess that they "don't know for certain" about Adam's origin.

They'll just be dogmatic that evolution happened for everything else.

[BCSpace]

But assuming the God used evolution as the process by which he created man, then Eve being made from Adam's rib would seem a little outlandish, but certainly not impossible.

I see it as possibly indicating that she came from the same genetic stock. Or it could be something relatively esoteric like Isaiah 11:1.

[e=mc2]

So Ron......... shall I stir the pot and ask you what your thoughts are even though I already know? I can kinda understand why you are keeping it to yourself......GRIN!

[bluebell]

I don't really understand the idea that the Garden story is allegorical. Wouldn't that mean that the Fall never actually happened but is just an allegory? Could those of you who hold that position clarify?

[katherine the great]

I don't really understand the idea that the Garden story is allegorical. Wouldn't that mean that the Fall never actually happened but is just an allegory? Could those of you who hold that position clarify?

With what I consider absolutely indisputable evidence of evolution--human as well as everything else--I've had to rethink my personal understanding of the beginning of Genesis. It is impossible to believe that our species has been on the earth (THIS earth) for over 150,000 years and still interpret the first few chapters of Genesis literally. A literal reading requires us to believe that there were no humans on the earth before 4--4.5 thousand b.c. There are tens of thousands of pieces of evidence that say that humans (in our current form) have been on the earth for at least 145,000 years longer than that. I can understand why, before there was a veritable mountain of evidence in support of an old earth and evolution, church leaders held fast to a literal interpretation because it still made a lot of sense. Now it makes no sense to me. That is the main reason I believe the story to be allegorical. I also don't believe for a second that Eve was literally taken from Adam's rib or that the entire world, including the sun and stars were created in seven days. Lucifer literally being a talking serpent who is turned into a snake is a stretch for me too. If only those parts of the story are allegorical, what is to prevent the rest of it from being an allegory? From my (admittedly unorthodox) perspective, it makes perfect sense that the "fall" of Adam happened when he (or they) left our Heavenly home and the presence of our Heavenly Father and came to earth, thus resulting in spiritual death--our separation from God. I understand that it isn't a perfect theory, but it is more perfect to me than completely rejecting everything that God has revealed to us through the physical sciences in order to hold to a literal interpretation. Those are my thoughts anyway.

[BCSpace]

I don't really understand the idea that the Garden story is allegorical. Wouldn't that mean that the Fall never actually happened but is just an allegory? Could those of you who hold that position clarify?

The actual details might not be precisely known but the Fall must have happened and is real according to LDS doctrine. Without the Fall, the gospel doesn't exist. That the Church has no doctrine for or against evolution makes it a possibility (though not necessarily true) so one might contemplate how evolution can fit in with the Fall. I believe I have come up with a way it can fit and I'm sure others have some good ideas as well.

[Ron Beron]

Wow! Thanks for all the responses. I am being a bit dishonest in my OP in opining that Eve was created from Adam's rib when there is no such occurance. Some notes....

1. The actual term is that Eve was created from Adam's tsela or side. The actual passage is, "And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs (or side), and closed up the flesh in its place." If one looks at tsela one will find it has many meanings. In each case it means an item that extends out. And before everyone gets excited I am NOT heading in that direction.

Zeony Zevit, an teacher at the American Jewish University of Los Angeles has suggested in a paper published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics in 2001 entitled "Congenital Human Baculum Deficiency" by Scott F. Gilbert and Ziony Zevit that the tsela in question was actually the baculum or literally a bone present in all but male humans and spider monkeys in aiding intercourse. The absence of this bone would certain give rise by obvious observation to the exclusion of this part of the anatomy and the speculation among early peoples in the speculation of how Eve came about, i.e., tsela equates to the baculum. In addition, the passage in Genesis continues with another etiological detail... Zevit writes,

Genesis 2:21 contains another etiological detail: "The Lord God closed up the flesh." This detail would explain the peculiar visible sign on the penis and scrotum of human males