No Death Before The Fall

[mfbukowski]

Must a garden, tended by two people in a ritual temple drama, be not only global in extent, and unlimited in time but inter-galactic? "No death," need only be a "when an where" reference to be meaningful, not a absolute cosmic constant.

And as far was what gets taught by various people who show up in the buildings those who write the books at various times, the only reason to stumble is to obsess over the existence of something despite the known limitations and the people and determined refusal to consider viable options presented by other people who show up in the same buildings and who write other books at other times.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

Pure, pure wisdom at its best.

Thanks

[Jeff K.]

I agree.

[LeSellers]

I agree.

... with what?

Please, please, please, use the "Reply" feature. It's just not that hard.

Lehi

[Jeff K.]

If I place it directly under a post, It will by default reference that post. I see it as redundant to always hit the reply button. Sometimes I will err, and in posting, take too much time and thus have other posts between my post and the post I wish to reference, when this happens I will be fix it and edit in the reply.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[LeSellers]

If I place it directly under a post, It will by default reference that post. I see it as redundant to always hit the reply button.

Redundancy is not a sin.

More information is better than too little.

(That said, quoting a sixty-seven page document and then saying "I agree" is not wise, either.)

Your convention of assuming the reply refers to the message immediately prexceeding yours (which, as you note, you xcannot control), is not universal and not obvious. It really does not take any extra effort to use "Reply".

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Go thou and sin no more.

Lehi

[Craig Paxton]

Science is all about massaging. Science constantly changes and massages itself for the perceived reality of its adherents, other scientists. Science is not, nor ever has been a bedrock of principles that never changed, in fact they constantly change. And yet, people will tell us that science is the way, but science isn't the way, anymore than those crazy cloverleaf on and off ramps here in California are "the way". So if science is so confused, why do we hold it up as the ancient touchstone to verify the gold of other things? I ask this because I recall placing another question in regard to plate tectonics. Tecttonics was not the original harbringer of a belief that the continents were all one mass, many people thought so or rather knew so for hundreds of years before the theory of plate tectonics, that the continents were one. The how and the why are what plate tectonics rest upon. But until that very sound scientific theory became accepted, it was not a sound scientific theory. Science changes, constantly, it shifts, it is "massaged". Should it be the standard by which we judge all things? I see it as too chancy.

People are wont to classify and place their classification and understanding of they think they know and what they perceive to be truth. So sometimes we end up fighting an idea before it is fully understood. We end up dismissing it, and rationalizing what we think we know in order to downplay the idea we "think" is threatening. Some will refuse to see a middle ground. It must be one or the other. Any attempt to tie the two, even tentatively will be considered an admission of failure for one side or the other, a "massaging" of the numbers or the facts. But what is it that when we know science always "massages" and changes itself, and the gospel, oft misunderstood as we rationalize the infinite, is itself often attached to finite minds in rationalization.

I see no need for reconciliation since reconciliation, like plate tectonics exists even if we do not know it yet. We can, as scientists do, classify and rationalize what little we understand in the gospel and sometimes get it right, and sometimes get it wrong. As prophets, apostles, scientists and individuals.

Interesting that if you replace the word science in your post with the word Mormonism it still makes perfect sense...

Mormonism is all about massaging. Mormonism constantly changes and massages itself for the perceived reality of its adherents, other Mormon's. Mormonism is not, nor ever has been a bedrock of principles that never changed, in fact they constantly change. And yet, people will tell us that Mormonism is the way, but Mormonism isn't the way, anymore than those crazy cloverleaf on and off ramps here in California are "the way". So if Mormonism is so confused, why do we hold it up as the ancient touchstone to verify the gold of other things? ... Mormonism changes, constantly, it shifts, it is "massaged". Should it be the standard by which we judge all things? I see it as too chancy.

Yup...seems to fit perfectly...

[Jeff K.]

Your problem Paxton is you do not understand. Our doctrine does not change, but we do have a propensity to rationalize the commandments in one way or another in order to classify them for our understanding. It is part of being human. There is no covenant that what we rationalize is the correct reason for the commandment, often we rationalize incorrectly. You seem to exist or pounce upon mans rationalization of the commandments of God, rather than the doctrine itself. You confuse that rationalization and call it doctrine, which it is not. So does rationalization get massaged? If science which depends upon (but does not always follow) rational thought, then why cannot those who rationalize doctrine?

Your arguments do not appear to be about doctrine, but upon opinions as to why doctrine exists. In that you massage like a parlor in Vegas, but it does not negate doctrine.

[mfbukowski]

Interesting that if you replace the word science in your post with the word Mormonism it still makes perfect sense...

Mormonism is all about massaging....

Yup...seems to fit perfectly...

Good for you. You've been reading your Kuhn I see. You are finally learning something.

If you ever DID in fact learn that what you are making fun of here is true, you might be a lot closer to the truth in several areas in your life.

[Kevin Christensen]

Science constantly changes because it not a static body of knowledge, but an approach to learning, a self-correcting process.

So is Mormonism. It is not a set of static creeds which say, "Hitherto thou shalt come, and no further," as Joseph Smith explained, but a society in which change and learning have a place. The hierarchy is in place to ensure not only that we don't blow around with every wind of doctrine (Ephesians 4), but also that there ways and means to accept and encourage change. If having a self-correcting process is a virtue in science, why not in Mormonism? D&C 1 describes a well-pleasing, true and living faith community, not an exclusive repository of static, unchanging, instant, pre-packaged, and on-the-shelf omniscience.

Take a look at the Perry Scheme for Cognitive and Ethical Growth, which I have linked in my profile. Perry made a study of the transitions made by students coming from small, parochial communities to the diverse University environment. It had relevance for religious experience as well. And unlike the Fowler stages of faith, it is more concerned with how individuals come to process information than their conclusions. For instance:

POSITION 2 - Multiplicity Prelegitimate. (Resisting snake)

Now the person moves to accept that there is diversity, but they still think there are TRUE authorities who are right, that the others are confused by complexities or are just frauds. They think they are with the true authorities and are right while all others are wrong. They accept that their good authorities present problems so they can learn to reach right answers independently.

Eventually, a person can move to POSITION 6:

POSITION 6. Commitment Foreseen.

FROM HERE ON THE PERSON WILL FEEL FRUSTRATION IN TOO-STRUCTURED OF AN

ENVIRONMENT.

Now the person thinks he is alone in an uncertain world, making his own decisions, with no one to say he is right. He makes choices aware of relativism and accepts that the agency to do so is within the individual. He sees that to move forward he must make commitments coming from within. He foresees the challenge of responsibility and feels he needs to get on with it. He also senses that the first steps require arbitrary faith or willing suspension of disbelief. He knows he needs to narrow his focus, center himself and become aware of internal, what could be called, spiritual strength.

He starts to see how he must be embracing and transcending of: certainty/doubt, focus/breadth, idealism/realism, tolerance/contempt, stability/flexibility. He senses need for affirmation and incorporation of existential or logical polarities. He senses need to hold polarities in tension in the interest of Truth.

He begins to maintain meaning, coherence, and value while conscious of their partial, limited, and contradictable nature. He begins to understand symbol as symbols and acknowledges the time-place relativity of them. He begins to affirm and hold absolutes in symbols while still acknowledging them to be relativistic. He begins to embrace viewpoints in conflict with his own. Now the person has a field-independent learning style, has learned to scan for information, accepts that hierarchical and analytic notes are evidence of sharpening of cognition. He is willing to take risks, is flexible, perceptive, broad, strategy-minded, and analytical.

And hopefully, on to 7, 8, and 9

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[thesometimesaint]

Article of Faith #9. We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

[mfbukowski]

Your problem Paxton is you do not understand. Our doctrine does not change, but we do have a propensity to rationalize the commandments in one way or another in order to classify them for our understanding. It is part of being human. There is no covenant that what we rationalize is the correct reason for the commandment, often we rationalize incorrectly. You seem to exist or pounce upon mans rationalization of the commandments of God, rather than the doctrine itself. You confuse that rationalization and call it doctrine, which it is not. So does rationalization get massaged? If science which depends upon (but does not always follow) rational thought, then why cannot those who rationalize doctrine?

Your arguments do not appear to be about doctrine, but upon opinions as to why doctrine exists. In that you massage like a parlor in Vegas, but it does not negate doctrine.

Even what we call "science" is nothing more or less than metaphor- "massaged" and codified interpretation of experience. Explain string theory without a metaphor.

The Copenhagen interpretation is an attempt to explain the results of the experiments and their mathematical formulations, in terms of quantum mechanics. It was devised by Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and others in the years 1924–27. They theorised a new world of energy quanta, entities which fit neither the classical idea of particles nor the classical idea of waves. They thereby stepped beyond the world of empirical experiments and pragmatic predictions of such phenomena as the frequencies of light emitted under various conditions. According to their interpretation, the act of measurement causes the calculated set of probabilities to "collapse" to the value defined by the measurement. This feature of the mathematics is known as wavefunction collapse.

The Copenhagen interpretation is, in form, a composite of those statements which can be legitimately made in natural language to complement the statements and predictions made in the language of instrument readings and mathematical operations. In substance, it attempts to answer the question, "What do these amazing experimental results really mean?" The concept that quantum mechanics does not yield an objective description of microscopic reality but deals only with probabilities, and that measurement plays an ineradicable role, is the most significant characteristic of the Copenhagen interpretation. One consequence of this, derived by Heisenberg, is that knowledge of the position of a particle limits how accurately its momentum can be known—and vice versa.

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

[Craig Paxton]

Your problem Paxton is you do not understand. Our doctrine does not change, but we do have a propensity to rationalize the commandments in one way or another in order to classify them for our understanding. It is part of being human. There is no covenant that what we rationalize is the correct reason for the commandment, often we rationalize incorrectly. You seem to exist or pounce upon mans rationalization of the commandments of God, rather than the doctrine itself. You confuse that rationalization and call it doctrine, which it is not. So does rationalization get massaged? If science which depends upon (but does not always follow) rational thought, then why cannot those who rationalize doctrine?

Your arguments do not appear to be about doctrine, but upon opinions as to why doctrine exists. In that you massage like a parlor in Vegas, but it does not negate doctrine.

Jeff K...I believe you are a sincere person who honestly holds a deep belief in all things Mormon. I respect that. But to see change in science and not see the shifting sands within your own religion is paramount to not acknowledging that there has always been death in this world since the beginning of time.

[thesometimesaint]

Craig Paxton:

I'm fine with some changes in science as practiced in the 21 Century in the US of A. I don't expect any huge changes though. Saying claiming to be able to change lead into gold by simply chemical means.

Just as I am fine with some changes in my religion. I don't expect any huge changes though. Say Shiva is now the god we should worship.

[Jeff K.]

I see rationalization of doctrine shift, I see how people earnestly classify things, just like in science, and often think they have the absolute understanding of why something is. Just like in science. It may be that our rationalization of doctrine, like our understanding of science is based on man's understanding and not Gods. Again, you presume rationalized positions of doctrine are doctrine.

Jeff K...I believe you are a sincere person who honestly holds a deep belief in all things Mormon. I respect that. But to see change in science and not see the shifting sands within your own religion is paramount to not acknowledging that there has always been death in this world since the beginning of time.

Now was there death in Eden even though we can see death as recorded in the world? Doesn't it depend on whether or not Eden represented the entire world? The possibility exists either way. The rationalization does not change the doctrine, only our perception of the doctrine.

[Jeff K.]

Craig Paxton:

I'm fine with some changes in science as practiced in the 21 Century in the US of A. I don't expect any huge changes though. Saying claiming to be able to change lead into gold by simply chemical means.

Just as I am fine with some changes in my religion. I don't expect any huge changes though. Say Shiva is now the god we should worship.

I think we will see some big changes in science, we are neophytes when it comes to understanding the universe and major theories are apt to change and our perceptions will change likewise.

Changes in religion always exist, the question is whether or not doctrines that make religion what they are change. I think the distinction is important.

[Loran Blood]

Ummm...just like the theory of gravity or the theory of plate tectonics are just theories and open to future emendation on a substantial scale? I think not.

That's a rather apples/oranges situation in the sense that the core concepts and empirical claims of macroevoloution cannot be verified through observation and experiment. Microevolution, of course, but not the radical changes claimed to have occurred. They are far outside the normal channels of verification by independent observers. The theory of gravitational attraction (what it is and how in functions) is, indeed, a theory, as the substantial modifications it underwent moving from Newtonian to Einsteinian understandings of the phenomena attest. There is no reason to think that, at some time in the future, a better and more inclusive explanation will subsume the Einsteinian concept within it and supersede it.

The natural world does not work without the theory of evolution.

This is a meaningless statement. The natural world "works" as we find it even though not a spec of evolutionary change is observable or discernible save in the most minor ways (bacterial resistance to antibiotics etc.) .

Using “theory" as you are defining it suggests that it is not settled scientific fact...nothing could be further from the truth.

If you actually understood what "science" is, you would not be making statements or religious faith in science as a metaphysical template for understanding the totality of all there is, which is essentially the position you have staked out. Macroevolution is not in any conceivable way a "fact" as none of it can or has been empirically confirmed in any direct way (and, given the nature of the evidence required, probably never an be, by scientific means). That it remains, in empirical scientific terms, the best theoretical model or explanatory framework we have of the manner in which life developed, I am not arguing.

While there are certainly areas within the theory of evolution that science has yet to fully explain...as an overall theory that explains what science observes in the natural world...it is fact and it is reality. Evolution exists; it happened and is still happening.

This sentance contains conceptual contradictions that negate each other. If evolution is an "overall theory" (as I have said it is above), then it is in no way, as a body of claims about the natural world, a "fact." nor a direct representation of reality. It is a theoretical construct of what reality may by like, to greater or lessor degrees of accuracy, which, with maroevolutionary phenomena, cannot be tested directly at all, save through deeply indirect if suggestive evidence such as the fossil record.

Long before there was any evidence for it, evolution claimed that whales evolved from a land cousin, we now know that to be true since science has discovered ancient whale fossils with legs...we even know that they share a common ancestor with the modern cow thanks to DNA advances.

Here's where positivism meets a much more humble and intellectually carefully understanding of science and what it can actually tell us. We do not know that whales developed from a terrestrial ancestor (beyond core epistemic problems, we could include other aspects such as the engineering problems involved in the the nearly complete rearrangement of that land ancestors morphology, internal organs, and brain hard wiring (including alterations in intrinsic instinctual reactions and behavioral routines), are quite literally jaw dropping, not to mention the fact that there is no reason to think that a terrestrial mammal long adapted to terrestrial conditions would ever have evolved along such lines in the first instance) . We theorize that they did, based upon suggestive evidence from the fossil record and the nature of evolutionary changes as understood in the general theory itself. It is a belief, not a fact. It is believed, not "known." Whales with legs, while certainly suggestive and an arrow in the quiver of evolutionary theory, does not substantiate the theory in the case of whales because it cannot be conceived of as an intermediary animal. As with all such fossil examples, the whale with legs is a...whale with legs, interesting, but not what is required to prove large macro changes. The legged whale appears in the fossil record already as a legged whale - already adapted, like turtles or lungfish, to life both on land and in the water. They may represent at transition in process of occurring, but they have no morphological elements that are themselves in transition. The legs are functional, and the other elements that allow it to function as a whale at sea are also present in fully functional form.

This whole argument here, as you have approached it, is a textbook example of what happens when science becomes scientism and then comes into contact with a philosophy of science that is much more congnizant of the severe limitations of science as a product of human intellection and the "event horizon" beyond which science has little or nothing to say because its methodologies are not adequate. As you will notice, I am not arguing against the correctness of evolution in broad outline, only against your philosophy of Darwinism, a philosophy that credits evolution with explanatory powers it does not posses, and fails to understand the difference between theoretical model and reality, which, if it could simply be grasped as "reality" in a direct way, would negate the need for the concept of "theory" at the outset.

Science doesn't claim that events can only have natural causes...but that the only causes that we can understand scientifically are natural ones.

Scientism, philosophcial naturalists, positivism, does and has traditionally made this claim, and many of the modern world's most popular science populizers (Saga, Gould, Dawkins etc.) have also been staunch philosophical materialists.

But science cannot simply cede the unknown in nature to God; if it did there would be no science at all. If the history of science has taught us anything it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance 'God' or by ignoring the reality of evolution just because it is called a theory.

This is the standard positivist throw away argument that Sagan et al was using back in the seventies. The problem is its implied premise. The problem with scientism is not that it believes science should not cede intellectual territory to God, but that it attempts to invade and colonize areas of the unknown that its own methodologies have no way of intellectually grasping. When it finds that it cannot comprehend or explain that unknown, it simply (following, for example, Skinner) claims that nothing exists beyond that methodological horizon, or it falls back on its metaphysical assumptions and claims, "well, we don't understand it yet, but in time, science will advance to the point that it will.) This leads to classic reductionism, in which, at some future point, all the phenomena of the universe (including religion, mind, consciousness, and any claimed spiritual phenomena, such as, for example, the witness of the Spirit) will be reduced to the laws and principles of biology, chemistry, and physics.

Edited July 27, 2011 by Loran Blood

[cdowis]

Interesting that if you replace the word science in your post with the word Mormonism it still makes perfect sense...

Mormonism is all about massaging. Mormonism constantly changes and massages itself for the perceived reality of its adherents, other Mormon's.

Please help us.

Start a new thread, examine each of the Articles of Faith -- the bedrock of Mormonism, and show us how they have changed over the years. I personally think you are full of baloney, but let's see what you got.

[Loran Blood]

trg

Edited July 27, 2011 by Loran Blood

[Loran Blood]

Ummm...just like the theory of gravity or the theory of plate tectonics are just theories and open to future emendation on a substantial scale? I think not.

That's a rather apples/oranges situation in the sense that the core concepts and empirical claims of macroevoloution cannot be verified through observation and experiment. Microevolution, of course, but not the radical changes claimed to have occurred. They are far outside the normal channels of verification by independent observers. The theory of gravitational attraction (what it is and how in functions) is, indeed, a theory, as the substantial modifications it underwent moving from Newtonian to Einsteinian understandings of the phenomena attest. There is no reason to think that, at some time in the future, a better and more inclusive explanation will subsume the Einsteinian concept within it and supersede it.

The natural world does not work without the theory of evolution.

This appears to be a meaningless statement. The natural world "works" as we find it even though not a spec of evolutionary change is observable or discernible save in the most minor ways (bacterial resistance to antibiotics etc.) .

Using “theory" as you are defining it suggests that it is not settled scientific fact...nothing could be further from the truth.

If you actually understood what "science" is, you would not be making statements or religious faith in science as a metaphysical template for understanding the totality of all there is, which is essentially the position you have staked out. Macroevolution is not in any conceivable way a "fact" as none of it can or has been empirically confirmed in any direct way (and, given the nature of the evidence required, probably never an be, by scientific means). That it remains, in empirical scientific terms, the best theoretical model or explanatory framework we have of the manner in which life developed, I am not arguing.

While there are certainly areas within the theory of evolution that science has yet to fully explain...as an overall theory that explains what science observes in the natural world...it is fact and it is reality. Evolution exists; it happened and is still happening.

This sentance contains conceptual contradictions that negate each other. If evolution is an "overall theory" (as I have said it is above), then it is in no way, as a body of claims about the natural world, a "fact." nor a direct representation of reality. It is a theoretical construct of what reality may by like, to greater or lessor degrees of accuracy, which, with maroevolutionary phenomena, cannot be tested directly at all, save through deeply indirect if suggestive evidence such as the fossil record.

Long before there was any evidence for it, evolution claimed that whales evolved from a land cousin, we now know that to be true since science has discovered ancient whale fossils with legs...we even know that they share a common ancestor with the modern cow thanks to DNA advances.

Here's where positivism meets a much more humble and intellectually carefully understanding of science and what it can actually tell us. We do not know that whales developed from a terrestrial ancestor (the engineering problems involved in the the nearly complete rearrangement of that land ancestors morphology, internal organs, and brain hard wiring (including instinctual reactions, are quite literally jaw dropping, not to mention the fact that there is no reason to think that a terrestrial mammal long adapted to terrestrial conditions would ever have evolved along such lines in the first instance) . We theorize that they did, based upon suggestive evidence from the fossil record and the nature of evolutionary changes as understood in the general theory itself. It is a belief, not a fact. It is believed, not "known." Whales with legs, while certainly suggestive and an arrow in the quiver of evolutionary theory, does not substantiate the theory in the case of whales because it cannot be conceived of as an intermediary animal. As with all such fossil examples, the whale with legs is a...whale with legs, interesting, but not what is required to prove large macro changes. The legged whale appears in the fossil record already as a legged whale - already adapted, like turtles or lungfish, to life both on land and in the water. They may represent at transition in process of occurring, but they have no morphological elements that are themselves in transition. The legs are functional, and the other elements that allow it to function as a whale at sea are also present in fully functional form.

This whole argument here, as you have approached it, is a textbook example of what happens when science becomes scientism and then comes into contact with a philosophy of science that is much more congnizant of the severe limitations of science as a product of human intellection and the "event horizon" beyond which science has little or nothing to say because its methodologies are not adequate. As you will notice, I am not arguing against the correctness of evolution in broad outline, only against your philosophy of Darwinism, a philosophy that credits evolution with explanatory powers it does not posses, and fails to understand the difference between theoretical model and reality, which, if it could simply be grasped as "reality" in a direct way, would negate the need for the concept of "theory" at the outset.

Science doesn't claim that events can only have natural causes...but that the only causes that we can understand scientifically are natural ones.

Scientism, philosophcial naturalists, positivism, does and has traditionally made this claim, and many of the modern world's most popular science populizers (Saga, Gould, Dawkins etc.) have also been staunch philosophical materialists.

But science cannot simply cede the unknown in nature to God; if it did there would be no science at all. If the history of science has taught us anything it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance 'God' or by ignoring the reality of evolution just because it is called a theory.

This is the standard positivist throw away argument that Sagan et al was using back in the seventies. The problem is its implied premise. The problem with scientism is not that it believes science should not cede intellectual territory to God, but that it attempts to invade and colonize areas of the unknown that its own methodologies have no way of intellectually grasping. When it finds that it cannot comprehend or explain that unknown, it simply (following, for example, Skinner) claims that nothing exists beyond that methodological horizon, or it falls back on its metaphysical assumptions and claims, "well, we don't understand it yet, but in time, science will advance to the point that it will.) This leads to classic reductionism, in which, at some future point, all the phenomena of the universe (including religion, mind, consciousness, and any claimed spiritual phenomena, such as, for example, the witness of the Spirit) will be reduced to the laws and principles of biology, chemistry, and physics.

Edited July 27, 2011 by Loran Blood

[Loran Blood]

yurty.

Edited July 27, 2011 by Loran Blood

[Loran Blood]

Ummm...just like the theory of gravity or the theory of plate tectonics are just theories and open to future emendation on a substantial scale? I think not.

That's a rather apples/oranges situation in the sense that the core concepts and empirical claims of macroevoloution cannot be verified through observation and experiment. Microevolution, of course, but not the radical changes claimed to have occurred in a macroevolutionary sense. They are singular, historical, vastly improbable random (and hence, unrepeatable) empirical events well outside the normal channels of verification by independent observers. The theory of gravitational attraction (what it is and how in functions) is, indeed, a theory, as the substantial modifications it underwent moving from Newtonian to Einsteinian understandings of the phenomena attest. There is no reason to think that, at some time in the future, a better and more inclusive explanation will subsume the Einsteinian concept within it and supersede it.

The natural world does not work without the theory of evolution.

This appears to be a meaningless statement. The natural world "works" as we find it even though not a spec of evolutionary change is observable or discernible save in the most minor ways (bacterial resistance to antibiotics etc.) .

Using “theory" as you are defining it suggests that it is not settled scientific fact...nothing could be further from the truth.

If you actually understood what "science" is, you would not be making statements of a kind of quasi-religious faith in science as a metaphysical template for understanding the totality of all there is, which appears to be the position you have staked out. Macroevolution is not in any conceivable way a "fact" as none of it can or has been empirically confirmed in any direct way (and, given the nature of the evidence required, probably never an be, by scientific means). That it remains, in empirical scientific terms, the best theoretical model or explanatory framework we have of the manner in which life developed, I am not arguing.

While there are certainly areas within the theory of evolution that science has yet to fully explain...as an overall theory that explains what science observes in the natural world...it is fact and it is reality. Evolution exists; it happened and is still happening.

This sentance contains conceptual contradictions that negate each other. If evolution is an "overall theory" (as I have said it is above), then it is in no way, as a body of claims about the natural world, it can be understood as a "fact." nor a direct representation of reality. It is a theoretical construct of what reality may by like, to greater or lessor degrees of accuracy, which, with maroevolutionary phenomena, cannot be tested directly at all, save through deeply indirect if suggestive evidence such as the fossil record.

Long before there was any evidence for it, evolution claimed that whales evolved from a land cousin, we now know that to be true since science has discovered ancient whale fossils with legs...we even know that they share a common ancestor with the modern cow thanks to DNA advances.

Here's where positivism meets a much more humble and intellectually carefully understanding of science and what it can actually tell us. We do not know that whales developed from a terrestrial ancestor (despite the general epistemic problems inherent in that claim, there are other theoretical considerations, such as the engineering problems involved in the the nearly complete rearrangement of that land ancestors morphology, internal organs, and brain hard wiring (including instinctual reactions, are quite literally jaw dropping, not to mention the fact that there is no reason to think that a terrestrial mammal long adapted to terrestrial conditions would ever have evolved along such lines in the first instance) . We theorize that they did, based upon suggestive evidence from the fossil record and the nature of evolutionary changes as understood in the general theory itself. It is a belief, not a fact. It is believed, not "known." Whales with legs, while certainly suggestive and an arrow in the quiver of evolutionary theory, does not substantiate the theory in the case of whales because it cannot be conceived of as an intermediary animal. As with all such fossil examples, the whale with legs is a...whale with legs, interesting, but not what is required to prove large macro changes. The legged whale appears in the fossil record already as a legged whale - already adapted, like turtles or lungfish, to life both on land and in the water. They may represent at transition in process of occurring, but they have no morphological elements that are themselves in transition. The legs are functional, and the other elements that allow it to function as a whale at sea are also present in fully functional form.

This whole argument here, as you have approached it, is a textbook example of what happens when science becomes scientism and then comes into contact with a philosophy of science that is much more congnizant of the severe limitations of science as a product of human intellection and the "event horizon" beyond which science has little or nothing to say because its methodologies are not adequate. As you will notice, I am not arguing against the correctness of evolution in broad outline, only against your philosophy of Darwinism, a philosophy that credits evolution with explanatory powers it does not posses, and fails to understand the difference between theoretical model and reality, which, if it could simply be grasped as "reality" in a direct way, would negate the need for the concept of "theory" at the outset.

Science doesn't claim that events can only have natural causes...but that the only causes that we can understand scientifically are natural ones.

Scientism, philosophcial naturalism, positivism etc., does and has traditionally made this claim, and many of the modern world's most popular science popularizes (Sagan, Gould, Dawkins etc.) have also been staunch philosophical materialists.

But science cannot simply cede the unknown in nature to God; if it did there would be no science at all. If the history of science has taught us anything it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance 'God' or by ignoring the reality of evolution just because it is called a theory.

This is the standard positivist throw away argument that Sagan et al was using back in the seventies. The problem is its implied premise. The problem with scientism is not that it believes science should not cede intellectual territory to God, but that it attempts to invade and colonize areas of the unknown that its own methodologies have no way of intellectually grasping. When it finds that it cannot comprehend or explain that unknown, it simply (following, for example, Skinner) claims that nothing exists beyond that methodological horizon, or it falls back on its metaphysical assumptions and claims, "well, we don't understand it yet, but in time, science will advance to the point that it will.) This leads to classic reductionism, in which, at some future point, all the phenomena of the universe (including religion, mind, consciousness, and any claimed spiritual phenomena, such as, for example, the witness of the Spirit) will be reduced to the laws and principles of biology, chemistry, and physics.

Edited July 27, 2011 by Loran Blood

[Loran Blood]

Whether that's due to ignorance or revelation, I don't know. But if evolution (including countless generations of death and mutation) did happen in the creation process, this is a problem that the Church seems totally incapable of dealing with.

Its probably due to the fact, as has been endlessly repeated, that evolution, has nothing more than the mechanics or the means through which organic life developed on earth, as so little relevance to our salvation and exaltation, as to be, for the most part, irrelevant.

What concerns me much more are those who place inordinate weight on evolutionary theory, not only respecting its actual explanatory powers and its relevance to the human condition (which, as a philosophy, has not been a pretty picture, especially during the 20th century), but as to what accepting it, or discussing it, say in Sunday school or Priesthood Quorum, would actually mean and what importance it would represent.

Why, in other words, would the church move into discussions of evolutionary theory (not origins, or pseudo-scientific forays into quasi-metaphysical areas such as evolutionary psychology - just the nuts and bolts of the development or organic life) in its manuals and educational materials, which, by definition, is a theoretical model in perpetual and indefinite process of expansion, emendation, modification, and rethinking, and which has no apparent relevance to our salvation per se, as understood in LDS theology, accomplish?

Or perhaps, you've already answered this question, in one way or another:

Whether that's due to ignorance or revelation, I don't know. But if evolution (including countless generations of death and mutation) did happen in the creation process, this is a problem that the Church seems totally incapable of dealing with.

A very simply question is in order here: why does the Church need to "deal" with the theory of evolution (I can see a need to deal with the philosophy of Darwinism, but not evolutionary thery per se)?

Edited July 27, 2011 by Loran Blood

[cinepro]

We will be studying the Old Testament again in 2014. Would anyone in this thread like to volunteer to submit an article for the Ensign about how the Church has no official position on evolution, and explain the different ways in which creation by evolution can be compatible with the doctrine of the Fall?

There have been many eloquent and well-reasoned explanations made in this discussion for how the theory of (macro)evolution might be compatible with LDS doctrines. But sadly no one has been able to get any Church publication to acknowledge this possibility. While to the contrary, there are many anti-evolution statements made in General Conference and continually published in Church magazines and curriculum to this day.

For people who believe that conference talks and official Church publications and curriculum are the most reliable expressions of LDS doctrines (and the most reliable explainers of the scriptures), this will continue to be a problem.

Edited July 27, 2011 by cinepro

[BCSpace]

We will be studying the Old Testament again in 2014. Would anyone in this thread like to volunteer to submit an article for the Ensign about how the Church has no official position on evolution, and explain the different ways in which creation by evolution can be compatible with the doctrine of the Fall?

Sure. But I'll bet it's already been done.

For people who believe that conference talks and official Church publications and curriculum are the most reliable expressions of LDS doctrines (and the most reliable explainers of the scriptures), this will continue to be a problem.

The problem remains one of recognition that, for example, most statements (like the 1909, etc.) don't say anything bad about evolution, or if they attempt to, they don't address evolution but atheist conclusions about evolution (after their own kind, etc.). Also many don't realize that doctrine and scripture allow for a creative period without a state of no death.

There has also been quite the softening by those who oppose evolution from the likes of BRM (Seven Deadly Heresies) and ETB (BoM combats), as welll as Nelson being corrected and recovering recently.

[thesometimesaint]

cinepro:

Information travels at the speed of light, but ignorance is instaneous at all known points of the universe.

The Church traditionally has been a very conservative(not being political here) institution. We don't change unless there is a very compelling reason. Right now I am satisfied that the Church takes no position, but allows each member to decide for themselves. I am content to say that God did it, and here is a good explanation as to how.