Is Mormonism And Science Compatible? Attn Bcspace

[Jeff Walsh]

I do not know what all the fuss is about, all truth comes from the same source, God.

Where did life come from, the chance coming together of the millions of lifeless sub-microscopic particles by chance, and the developement of this primitive life form evolving over millions if not billions of years culminating with mankind? When was the life force or spirit placed into this life form and who placed it there. Science says that evolution took place by natural selection, but where are the millions of missing links to prove this.

Mr Dawkins and co. would have us believe that the contest is between the facts of science and faith in God. My contention is that you need more faith to believe in organic evolution, the big bang, the developement of mankind by chance, etc etc etc, than to believe in a Loving Heavenly Father who organised this earth as the place for the development of His spirit children.

The truths that this loving Father has revealed to mankind is all part of the plan of salvation, it is the height of arrogance that man could come up with all these advancements without God's help.

Heavenly Father reveals basic laws to mankind and then allows these to be developed to bless his children, misuse of these laws brings about sinful conditions that result in wars and contention. To say that science brings good and religion results in evil is preposterous. if everyone lived fully the teachings of Christ there would be no war, starvation or evil in the world, the misuse of science and technology brings sin and poverty.

The apostle Peter in 2Pet 3:3-6 tells how he saw our time, He said:-

"Knowing this first that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,

And saying Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation,

For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water.

Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water perished.

This graphically explains the uniformatarian thinking of these scoffers who, not believing in God, would assume and build their theories on the assumption that everything has continued from the big bang that brought the world into being by chance untill now. So all the time clocks which their theories are built on are flawed because if the flood in Noah's day actually took place as given in Genesis, then all their scientific theories come to naught. No wonder they discredit the belief in God and the Bible!!!!!

Please let us have less speculation and theorising and more faith in God. Jeff Walsh

[Robert F. Smith]

I do not know what all the fuss is about, all truth comes from the same source, God.

Where did life come from, the chance coming together of the millions of lifeless sub-microscopic particles by chance, and the developement of this primitive life form evolving over millions if not billions of years culminating with mankind? When was the life force or spirit placed into this life form and who placed it there. Science says that evolution took place by natural selection, but where are the millions of missing links to prove this.

Mr Dawkins and co. would have us believe that the contest is between the facts of science and faith in God. My contention is that you need more faith to believe in organic evolution, the big bang, the developement of mankind by chance, etc etc etc, than to believe in a Loving Heavenly Father who organised this earth as the place for the development of His spirit children.

The truths that this loving Father has revealed to mankind is all part of the plan of salvation, it is the height of arrogance that man could come up with all these advancements without God's help.

Heavenly Father reveals basic laws to mankind and then allows these to be developed to bless his children, misuse of these laws brings about sinful conditions that result in wars and contention. To say that science brings good and religion results in evil is preposterous. if everyone lived fully the teachings of Christ there would be no war, starvation or evil in the world, the misuse of science and technology brings sin and poverty.

The apostle Peter in 2Pet 3:3-6 tells how he saw our time, He said:-

"Knowing this first that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,

And saying Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation,

For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water.

Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water perished.

This graphically explains the uniformatarian thinking of these scoffers who, not believing in God, would assume and build their theories on the assumption that everything has continued from the big bang that brought the world into being by chance untill now. So all the time clocks which their theories are built on are flawed because if the flood in Noah's day actually took place as given in Genesis, then all their scientific theories come to naught. No wonder they discredit the belief in God and the Bible!!!!!

Please let us have less speculation and theorising and more faith in God. Jeff Walsh

Favoring and privileging the anti-scientific and early creationist thinking of some evangelical christians (a foundation of sand) does nothing to explain reality and does much to discredit the actual Judeo-Christian tradition. See Mike Rhodes & Ward Moody, "Astronomy and the Creation in the Book of Abraham," in Gee & Hauglid, eds., Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant (FARMS, 2005), 17-36, online at http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=40&chapid=162 . I see no disjuncture between science and religion, nor between faith and secular reality. Remember "by study and also by faith"?

[thesometimesaint]

Jeff Walsh:

Look to God for the why he did it. Look to science for the how he did it.

[changed]

I think Mormonism is compatible with science -

(Book of Mormon | Alma 32:27)

27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words,

at least we encourage everyone to use the scientific process to uncover religious truths. (Search it out, think about it, make your hypothesis, then experiment, observe the results of your experiment, and come to a conclusion.)

The problems come when people don't actually do the experiment...

[Jeff Walsh]

Favoring and privileging the anti-scientific and early creationist thinking of some evangelical christians (a foundation of sand) does nothing to explain reality and does much to discredit the actual Judeo-Christian tradition. See Mike Rhodes & Ward Moody, "Astronomy and the Creation in the Book of Abraham," in Gee & Hauglid, eds., Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant (FARMS, 2005), 17-36, online at http://maxwellinstit...d=40&chapid=162 . I see no disjuncture between science and religion, nor between faith and secular reality. Remember "by study and also by faith"?

Robert Hi, please do not get me wrong I have no problem with science finding and teaching much that is true, my gripe is where they say that truth came from, Mr Dawkins along with scientists who take God out of creation are the ones who I disagree with, their God would seem to be "chance". The creation happened by chance, mankind came into being by chance, the development of life came about by chance. This does not make sense to me. Does it to you? If science takes God out of creation it has to come up with some other explanation and it would seem that evolution is the only feasable one. So we are faced with a choice, creation of evolution, in which faith system do you choose, I know where my alleigence is. Jeff

[changed]

Robert Hi, please do not get me wrong I have no problem with science finding and teaching much that is true, my gripe is where they say that truth came from, Mr Dawkins along with scientists who take God out of creation are the ones who I disagree with, their God would seem to be "chance". The creation happened by chance, mankind came into being by chance, the development of life came about by chance. This does not make sense to me. Does it to you? If science takes God out of creation it has to come up with some other explanation and it would seem that evolution is the only feasable one. So we are faced with a choice, creation of evolution, in which faith system do you choose, I know where my alleigence is. Jeff

imo, throwing your hands in the air and saying "it just randomly happened" isn't science.... but now they are getting away from that a bit, and saying the laws of nature did it, but of coarse they won't say where those laws came from.

nothing just randomly happens of coarse. In order for something to move randomly, you would have to turn off all the laws of physics, turn off gravity, and atomic interaction potentials etc. etc.

I do like this list of fine tuning constants:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/designun.html

many people think that if constants were just a little different, there would be just a slightly different universe, when in reality, everything else produces either one giant black hole, or a bunch of dust - I don't see how any life form, carbon based or not, would exist in either of those two scenarios. then people talk about the multiverse, but that untestable theory doesn't x out God either, because in a multiverse, everything would exist, including God, so either way...

[changed]

Where did life come from, the chance coming together of the millions of lifeless sub-microscopic particles by chance, and the developement of this primitive life form evolving over millions if not billions of years culminating with mankind?

evolution is an interesting thing to ponder. I think God is cleaning up a mess He did not make...

(Doctrine and Covenants | Section 93:29)

29 Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.

I'm a fan of panspermia, that instructions were sent to earth to help guide the process along a bit...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-XWAXe4xJg

I also think we're not the first world on this planet, I think new worlds get built on the ruins of older ones, and that Adam and Eve came and brought in a new age, or a new world, to a planet that had become spiritually void. In any event, there's the natural man, and the changed one - I don't think the natural man, with all it's faults, was a creation of God. That is one of the things that drew me to the Mormon church, that God is no longer the hypocritical creator of everything, but rather a being who can transform dark into light etc. etc.

[thesometimesaint]

changed:

imo, throwing your hands in the air and saying "it just randomly happened" isn't science.... but now they are getting away from that a bit, and saying the laws of nature did it, but of coarse they won't say where those laws came from.

nothing just randomly happens of coarse. In order for something to move randomly, you would have to turn off all the laws of physics, turn off gravity, and atomic interaction potentials etc. etc.

I do like this list of fine tuning constants:

http://www.godandsci...s/designun.html

many people think that if constants were just a little different, there would be just a slightly different universe, when in reality, everything else produces either one giant black hole, or a bunch of dust - I don't see how any life form, carbon based or not, would exist in either of those two scenarios. then people talk about the multiverse, but that untestable theory doesn't x out God either, because in a multiverse, everything would exist, including God, so either way...

Sorta. If there was an exactly equal amount of matter and antimatter at the beginnings of the universe there wouldn't be anything at all. No matter anywhere. The difference is what counts. That 1/10,000 parts matter advantage over that of antimatter that gives us a universe. Now whether that was God or simple chance science isn't prepared to say.

[changed]

Sorta. ...

It seems like it is a "which came first?" kind of a game... the old chicken or the egg conundrum. There's the Snow couplet that suggests God evolved, but then there's the scripture that states time doesn't really exist for God, and without time, where is progression? I'm personally a determinist (I think God knows the future, so it must be set in stone - but that we still have free will because agency concerns who sets it in stone, not if it is set) and determinism sort of takes time out of the picture, because the past/present/future are all knowable at any instant (at least if you have the powers of the LaPlace demon).... I think it's a tie between the chicken and the egg... I think the intelligences might have existed before matter though, but that is just a hunch, those might have been a tie too. I don't think matter was first though.

[Robert F. Smith]

changed:

Sorta. If there was an exactly equal amount of matter and antimatter at the beginnings of the universe there wouldn't be anything at all. No matter anywhere. The difference is what counts. That 1/10,000 parts matter advantage over that of antimatter that gives us a universe. Now whether that was God or simple chance science isn't prepared to say.

Yet based on science, one should expect equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. Why isn't it there?

[Robert F. Smith]

Robert Hi, please do not get me wrong I have no problem with science finding and teaching much that is true, my gripe is where they say that truth came from, Mr Dawkins along with scientists who take God out of creation are the ones who I disagree with, their God would seem to be "chance". The creation happened by chance, mankind came into being by chance, the development of life came about by chance. This does not make sense to me. Does it to you? If science takes God out of creation it has to come up with some other explanation and it would seem that evolution is the only feasable one. So we are faced with a choice, creation or evolution, in which faith system do you choose, I know where my alleigence is. Jeff

Well, I'm a Mormon and I believe in Mormon theology -- which does not accept ex nihilo creationism, but instead opts for the organizing of already existing elements by God and his hosts. Life is then brought in from elsewhere (transmitted), all of it based on the same basic DNA blueprint. We have not been told how all that was done, but you can rest assured that it was done naturally, according to the standard laws of the universe.

[Robert F. Smith]

It seems like it is a "which came first?" kind of a game... the old chicken or the egg conundrum. There's the Snow couplet that suggests God evolved, but then there's the scripture that states time doesn't really exist for God, and without time, where is progression? I'm personally a determinist (I think God knows the future, so it must be set in stone - but that we still have free will because agency concerns who sets it in stone, not if it is set) and determinism sort of takes time out of the picture, because the past/present/future are all knowable at any instant (at least if you have the powers of the LaPlace demon).... I think it's a tie between the chicken and the egg... I think the intelligences might have existed before matter though, but that is just a hunch, those might have been a tie too. I don't think matter was first though.

Matter (and energy) can neither be created nor destroyed -- the Law of Conservation of Matter & Energy.

There is no chicken & egg controversy. There was no beginning and there will be no end. Intelligence(s) is eternal, just as eternal as matter & energy.

[Jude2]

Sorry I haven’t read through this whole discussion so maybe I’m repeating what someone else has said but I thought I’d add this quote from Talmage

“Within the Gospel of Jesus Christ there is room and place for every truth thus far learned by man or yet to be made known.”

[changed]

Matter (and energy) can neither be created nor destroyed -- the Law of Conservation of Matter & Energy.

There are some who believe that only applies in the macroscopic world.

[ERayR]

There are some who believe that only applies in the macroscopic world.

To me it would seem reasonable that's where it would happen. A star goes nova. On the macro level observation tells us it is destroyed. On the microscopic level it is only changed and its parts scattered.

[ERayR]

Sorry I haven’t read through this whole discussion so maybe I’m repeating what someone else has said but I thought I’d add this quote from Talmage

“Within the Gospel of Jesus Christ there is room and place for every truth thus far learned by man or yet to be made known.”

The question is: What is truth and what is somebody's interpretation of the data?

[thesometimesaint]

Yet based on science, one should expect equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. Why isn't it there?

No one really knows, right now, the answer to that problem. IE: In throwing up a coin to see if it lands heads or tails. It is always a 50/50 chance. But that doesn't preclude you tossing that coin up one hundred times and it landing heads all those times. Why did it land that way? No one knows, but it did.

[Robert F. Smith]

There are some who believe that only applies in the macroscopic world.

No physicist has ever found an exception to the First Law of Thermodynamcs, anywhere. If you know of one, I'd love to hear about it.

[CASteinman]

No physicist has ever found an exception to the First Law of Thermodynamcs, anywhere. If you know of one, I'd love to hear about it.

I think that they feel that way even on a universal scale.

Buckminister Fuller -- who was not exactly claiming to have found an exception, nevertheless hinted at something along those lines by arguing for a slightly offsetting concept to entropy which he called syntropy.

I hope and believe that Life and the Work of God is a direct challenge to the overall gist of entropy. If that is not what God is about and doing -- I am more totally mystified about how anything works in eternity -- mystified to the point of feeling like I have lost a mooring.

[Robert F. Smith]

I think that they feel that way even on a universal scale.

Buckminister Fuller -- who was not exactly claiming to have found an exception, nevertheless hinted at something along those lines by arguing for a slightly offsetting concept to entropy which he called syntropy.

I hope and believe that Life and the Work of God is a direct challenge to the overall gist of entropy. If that is not what God is about and doing -- I am more totally mystified about how anything works in eternity -- mystified to the point of feeling like I have lost a mooring.

Maybe God is a very, very smart version of Bucky Fuller. Maybe that is where all of us are headed. Hopefully. The sentient design and creation of a watch is a challenge to entropy. I love the notion of synergy and syntropy. It sounds like forever.

[mfbukowski]

Maybe God is a very, very smart version of Bucky Fuller. Maybe that is where all of us are headed. Hopefully. The sentient design and creation of a watch is a challenge to entropy. I love the notion of synergy and syntropy. It sounds like forever.

Or maybe Bucky Fuller is a embryonic version of God.

Hmmm that sounds familiar for some reason...

[Robert F. Smith]

Or maybe Bucky Fuller is a embryonic version of God.

Hmmm that sounds familiar for some reason...

[ERayR]

No one really knows, right now, the answer to that problem. IE: In throwing up a coin to see if it lands heads or tails. It is always a 50/50 chance. But that doesn't preclude you tossing that coin up one hundred times and it landing heads all those times. Why did it land that way? No one knows, but it did.

Now that is a real scientific answer. An answer that the science groupies deem unacceptable from the religion groupies.

[Jeff Walsh]

Well, I'm a Mormon and I believe in Mormon theology -- which does not accept ex nihilo creationism, but instead opts for the organizing of already existing elements by God and his hosts. Life is then brought in from elsewhere (transmitted), all of it based on the same basic DNA blueprint. We have not been told how all that was done, but you can rest assured that it was done naturally, according to the standard laws of the universe.

I agree President Brigham Young has some very interesting things to say about the natural way it was done. Jeff

[thesometimesaint]

Entropy is simply that in any closed system randomness increases with time. We haven't yet found anywhere where that is not true.