How literally do you take the creation story?

[CA Steve]

In fact, as LDS doctrine clearly indicates, each of us, similar to what is said of Adam and Eve in LDS scripture and doctrine, once lived in the presence of God, but were unable to become like Him. We were there immortal but unable to feel pleasure and pain, or good and evil, or to have children.

.

Don

Are you saying we were not capable of good and evil in the pre existence? If so how is it that one third of the spirits followed Satan? What am I missing?

[semlogo]

Yea! I

[changed]

Are you saying we were not capable of good and evil in the pre existence? If so how is it that one third of the spirits followed Satan? What am I missing?

I think it's a different kind of good/evil. Without bodies, spirits cannot touch things, cannot physically hit someone, cannot experience hunger pains, or any kind of pain - for spirits, it's all just a thought experiment, just ideas, if that makes sense?

I think that perfect beings (like Adam/Eve, or like our Heavenly Parents - they only had "one" begotten son - only one - and had to use a handmaid - so that means they do not beget children in their perfect form either, why polygamy is needed?) anyways, I think perfect beings cannot have children because in order to bring a spirit into the world, you go against their agency (imperfect to go against agency) - you are getting them into something they have never experienced before, and can therefore not make an informed decision on... we do the thought experiment, and made a choice in the premortal world, but it was an un-informed choice, a choice made without experience.... Children cannot sin, because they have no experience... perhaps spirits cannot sin either, as they have no real physical experience? just speculations...

[changed]

Of course He isn't.

Alma 42:14

Now the work of justice could not be destroyed; if so, God would cease to be God.

so when it states God has all power, that means He has all the priesthood power?

If it is not logically impossible (like microwave a burrito sooooo hot that He can't eat it), and if it is not evil, God can do it imo.

awwww, it's not that crazy, just thinking outside 3D is all...

if you really want to go crazy, watch this:

http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_reg_E.htm

If you want to see in 4D

[semlogo]

so when it states God has all power, that means He has all the priesthood power?

If it is not logically impossible (like microwave a burrito sooooo hot that He can't eat it), and if it is not evil, God can do it imo.

awwww, it's not that crazy, just thinking outside 3D is all...

if you really want to go crazy, watch this:

http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_reg_E.htm

If you want to see in 4D

[Ceeboo]

there are things God could do that would result in him not being God anymore.

Really?

Can you give me a few examples of these things?

And, what would God become if God wasn't God anymore?

Peace,

Ceeboo

[semlogo]

Really?

Can you give me a few examples of these things?

And, what would God become if God wasn't God anymore?

Peace,

Ceeboo

According to the Alma scripture I referenced - God would cease to be God if he didn't uphold the plan of justice. What would he become, having ceased to be God? I don't know. It would never happen, though.

[changed]

Omnipotence means unlimited power. That doesn't describe God. Not only are there things God can't logically do, there are things God could do that would result in him not being God anymore. Ergo, not omnipotent.

God "could do it", He would just face consequences for doing it... but He "could" still do it

I admit I didn't carefully read the rest of your thesis on 4-D tesseract onion worlds or whatever it was. To be honest it smacks of chem-trails/faked moon landing level cuckooery. No offense! I'm not interested in learning more about the hollow earth theory either.

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

M-Theory is perhaps the most elegant model that fits observations that we have... it implies 11 dimensional space.

Perhaps trying to describe life on another dim did end up sounding like a hollow earth at one point ... as we go on, we are better at understanding what the higher dims are though.

[semlogo]

God "could do it", He would just face consequences for doing it... but He "could" still do it

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

M-Theory is perhaps the most elegant model that fits observations that we have... it implies 11 dimensional space.

Perhaps trying to describe life on another dim did end up sounding like a hollow earth at one point ... as we go on, we are better at understanding what the higher dims are though.

After he did it though, he wouldn't be God. Presumably he would no longer have any power.

[mfbukowski]

I have not been able to read through the entire thread and I know that some of this has already been suggested (perhaps all of it), but here is how I understand the Fall story.

In the story of the Fall, Adam (meaning "man" and "many") and Eve (meaning "life"), who represent each of us, begin in a pre-mortal life. (They have not yet become mortal.) In this paradise "Adam and Eve" live in the presence of God, are immortal, do not experience pleasure or pain, good or bad, or the vicissitudes of mortal life, and are unable to have children or to become like God.

They then "partake of the fruit" of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a symbolic action, not literally eating fruit, as even the great LDS literalist Bruce R. McConkie argued in the Ensign. The partaking of the fruit is, as Elder McConkie indicated, figurative of the action or choice by which Adam and Eve moved from immortality to mortality. (Note that I'm not suggesting Elder McConkie would agree with my overall interpretation, but rather that even one of Mormonism's most literalistic readers of scripture could recognize the fruit as figurative rather than literal.)

In fact, as LDS doctrine clearly indicates, each of us, similar to what is said of Adam and Eve in LDS scripture and doctrine, once lived in the presence of God, but were unable to become like Him. We were there immortal but unable to feel pleasure and pain, or good and evil, or to have children.

But we each made a choice, which could readily be symbolized by the partaking of the fruit in the Eden story, to leave His presence and take on ourselves mortality.

This is what we know as the Fall.

Don

I completely agree with you.

I think we need to be aware of the tendency to think that one interpretation is correct while others are not- and assuming false incompatibilities where they don't exist.

Since "what actually happened" is in principle unknowable, in a scientific or epistemological sense, and since we are to "liken" ourselves to Adam and Eve, your interpretation is as totally a valid as many others. What you are saying does not rule out the possibility, for example, that there was a literal, personal, Adam ind Eve, specially created miraculously who are literally our first physical parents, and whose story mirrors our individual spiritual journeys. So affirming the truth of your position is not incompatible with a literal Adam and Eve.

Just trying to find common ground here.

That quote you referenced from McConkie was a perfect one to illustrate that. The most on-point portion of the article:

Thus, as the scripture explains,

[DonBradley]

Are you saying we were not capable of good and evil in the pre existence? If so how is it that one third of the spirits followed Satan? What am I missing?

I miswrote. I meant "good and bad." I once wrote a paper exploring the Fall story and looking at the use of the terms translated "good" and "evil" in the story. The Hebrew words do not have the meaning of moral good and moral evil, but of good and bad. What I'm saying is that we didn't have most of the dichotomies of experience that we do in the present world, of which pleasure and pain are two examples.

Don

[Hughes]

After he did it though, he wouldn't be God. Presumably he would no longer have any power.

With reference to the idea of creation. Seems to me that God is the creator of all things. All the laws of physics, all the matter and energy that we experience and see. So, the fact of his creating wouldn't be a violation of anything now would it?

In essence, he wouldn't have a reason to limit himself to the laws of physics as we know them today, since he created them in creation week (presumably before everything else).

[Hughes]

Ceeboo:

Hotly debated: Yes. Age of the earth: Not doctrine.

However all the physical evidence to-date shows a very old earth(4.5 billions of years). With life starting about 1/2 of billion years after it was formed.

All the physical evidence doesn't show any dates at all. All supposed dates are interpreted. And if you're honestly interested, more and more physical evidence doesn't indicate an old earth.

[FutureTwitBlog]

All the physical evidence doesn't show any dates at all. All supposed dates are interpreted. And if you're honestly interested, more and more physical evidence doesn't indicate an old earth.

To which journal articles are you referring?

[urroner]

To which journal articles are you referring?

The Watchtower.

[FutureTwitBlog]

The Watchtower.

[Lightbearer]

In the story of the Fall, Adam (meaning "man" and "many") and Eve (meaning "life"), who represent each of us, begin in a pre-mortal life. (They have not yet become mortal.) In this paradise "Adam and Eve" live in the presence of God, are immortal, do not experience pleasure or pain, good or bad, or the vicissitudes of mortal life, and are unable to have children or to become like God.

...In fact, as LDS doctrine clearly indicates, each of us, similar to what is said of Adam and Eve in LDS scripture and doctrine, once lived in the presence of God, but were unable to become like Him. We were there immortal but unable to feel pleasure and pain, or good and evil, or to have children.

But we each made a choice, which could readily be symbolized by the partaking of the fruit in the Eden story, to leave His presence and take on ourselves mortality.

This is what we know as the Fall.

Don

The only problem with this theory of a Pre-mortal world-fall, is where does the war in heaven fit in? Was Lucifer the first to "fall"? If so how could Adam be the first man? I understand the symbolism used in the teachings of the fall but I must disagree that it could not have been a Pre-mortal spirit fall... when did Adam enter his body? Before or after the fall? The veil of forgetfullness was already over the minds of Adam and Eve when they were in the Garden. They did not have a Pre-mortal knowledge, his name was Adam, it was no longer Michael who along with the heavenly hosts fought Lucifer and cast him and one third of the hosts out with him. How did physical death enter the world? While there were two types of death both spiritual (separation from God) and physical the separation of the mortal body from the spirit... These would have been meaningless in the Pre-mortal world, in effect spiritual death there would have meant suffering the fate of Lucifer who became Satan. Again this physical death is distictively caused by Adam's fall but how could that be if the place this occurred was before coming to this earth? That is the big question, was this mortal existence caused through an act of ours? Or Adam? Or has death always been a part of this earth? If you take the figurative Eden to it's ultimate conclusion that is what we must suppose. If that is the case, that death has always existed and not caused by the fall of Adam, then what does that say about the resurrection? Do we assume it is figurative as well? While I do believe the Adam and Eve story does have symbolic application to us all, I do believe that it must be a real event and not a pre-birth event. The way I have always seen the fall taught in an LDS setting was as a post-creation event, not an event that occurred in the Pre-mortal world where we were all spirits.

[Hughes]

To which journal articles are you referring?

Not referring to any articles at this time. Simply stating a simple fact, that *all* physical evidence doesn't say the earth is old. More than anything that blanket statement is as much as statement of faith than anything else.

[urroner]

Not referring to any articles at this time. Simply stating a simple fact, that *all* physical evidence doesn't say the earth is old. More than anything that blanket statement is as much as statement of faith than anything else.

So, basically you are saying that the sciences of archeology, paleontology, astrophysics, geology, and other similar physical sciences are on the same level as your faith in the flood and a young Earth. Interesting.

[thesometimesaint]

Hughs:

Simply your quibble.

Literally books don't tell us anything either, except for talking books. Most of us got over your quite literal stage as young teenagers.

[Hughes]

So, basically you are saying that the sciences of archeology, paleontology, astrophysics, geology, and other similar physical sciences are on the same level as your faith in the flood and a young Earth. Interesting.

Not what I said now is it?

[Hughes]

Hughs:

Simply your quibble.

Literally books don't tell us anything either, except for talking books. Most of us got over your quite literal stage as young teenagers.

"Literal Stage" excuse me?

If you mean to insult me, oh well. My goal is to understand the world, and I used to believe that the earth was 4.6 billion years old. But there just too much evidence that contradicts that view, that people (scientists) simply ignore because of their rather large commitment to the myth that "of course it happened this way..."

You see. I don't care how it happened. I don't care how God did it. I'm simply trying to understand how he did it.

[urroner]

Not what I said now is it?

What did you say? The reason why I asked you was because that was how I understood you.

[changed]

because of the Fall,

[ERayR]

I believe it but perhaps I don't read/understand it the way you do.