Evolution And Mormonism

[bcuzbcuz]

Actually, they must come in negative as well, because quite frankly although i have sensed a strong Spiritual aura from a very few people in my life, but I have felt a strongly negative aura many times -- and in one case that I can remember it made my skin crawl and my secretary felt it as well -- we couldn't get the prospective client out of the office fast enough to suit either of us. I remember once as Bishop we had a guy wander into the Church a couple times asking questions and I had a similar reaction, not quite as strong, but pretty strong. We used to call it "vibes" though not "auras". I also knew a person who claimed to be able to see auras as well, can't say that I have ever visualized anything like that though.

I don't think "creepy" is a gene.

I've interviewed people who have definitely given an aura of "creepiness" but I also know, from sad experience, that some people can come across as shining examples of humanity and yet, when the truth comes out, you would definitely not want them around your children.

If there is such a thing as "aura", there are those who can fake it.

[Ahab]

If there is such a thing as "aura", there are those who can fake it.

Yes, just as Satan can appear as an angel of light... with the key word being appear. Appearances can be deceiving. But then there is something extra and special, whatever you might want to call it, that isn't like the fake thing. A true light, or a brighter light than a fake light can pretend to be. The fakes can get close to being like what they approximate, but those who know the differences can tell the fake from the real (or true) things.

[bcuzbcuz]

Yes, just as Satan can appear as an angel of light... with the key word being appear. Appearances can be deceiving. But then there is something extra and special, whatever you might want to call it, that isn't like the fake thing. A true light, or a brighter light than a fake light can pretend to be. The fakes can get close to being like what they approximate, but those who know the differences can tell the fake from the real (or true) things.

Ah, yes,

"Sincerity - if you can fake that, you've got it made.”

[Stone holm]

Ah, yes,

"Sincerity - if you can fake that, you've got it made.”

I think people can fake appearances, but I also believe people can develop or be blessed with the discerrnment to see through it. You do realize of course that what we have been talking about for the most part here is the Holy Ghost. It may be that He communicates visually for some people, in fact I seem to remember some of the early saints talking about those kind of phenomenon . When you people started talking about faking it, a memory of a news documentary about the harassment which a Christian Right minister's flock was laying on some of the cadets at the Air Force Academy flashed through my mind. They were interviewing the minister and he had this smile stuck on his face, and he struck me strongly...this guy is evil to the core and he is capable of doing some truly nasty things to get his way. It's funny how that just zap immediately came to mind when the faking concept was brought up.

[bu11fr0g]

The other apostles couldnt spot Judas when Christ mentioned the Betrayer.

[Stone holm]

The other apostles couldnt spot Judas when Christ mentioned the Betrayer.

The jury is still out on Judas, the GAs can't even agree on him or his fate. Talmage calls him a son of perdition, Joseph F. Smith says no he isn't, and Spencer Kimball said "I don't know and you can quote me on that."

[thesometimesaint]

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

[Stone holm]

http://en.wikipedia....ectral_evidence

How did we ever get by without wikipedia. So you think we may get pressed under stones or burned? Actually, C.S. Lewis once wrote that we would still be burning witches if we actually still believed in them. Oh the Hogwarts days how I miss them good old days...

[thesometimesaint]

How did we ever get by without wikipedia. So you think we may get pressed under stones or burned? Actually, C.S. Lewis once wrote that we would still be burning witches if we actually still believed in them. Oh the Hogwarts days how I miss them good old days...

Wiki is a useful tool when used for the purposes it was intended for.

Ever see The monsters are due on Maple Street?

Wicca is alive an well in America. So some do actually believe in witchcraft. As well as those believe in opposing it. Happily we have laws against murder as opposed to the Biblical injunction to not suffer a witch to live.

While I enjoyed the Harry Potter movies. When looked at with a critical eye. It is really a pretty scary place. Death-eaters still gives me the creeps.

Edited March 21, 2013 by thesometimesaint

[Stone holm]

Wiki is a useful tool when used for the purposes it was intended for.

Ever see The monsters are due on Maple Street?

Wicca is alive an well in America. So some do actually believe in witchcraft. As well as those believe in opposing it. Happily we have laws against murder as opposed to the Biblical injunction to not suffer a witch to live.

While I enjoyed the Harry Potter movies. When looked at with a critical eye. It is really a pretty scary place. Death-eaters still gives me the creeps.

Yeah the character in the Harry Potter movies that i always thought to be the scariest was the gal in the pink pillbox hat and dress with all the kitten plates on the wall -- for some reason I always identified her with Laura Bush...oops, I shouldna said that....

[Ahab]

Ah, yes,

"Sincerity - if you can fake that, you've got it made.”

No, that's not it. People can be sincere and be sincerely wrong and sincerely evil. It takes something else to have a good aura, or countenance, or spirit (or whatchamacallit)

[Stone holm]

No, that's not it. People can be sincere and be sincerely wrong and sincerely evil. It takes something else to have a good aura, or countenance, or spirit (or whatchamacallit)

Yeah, I think you are correct there. It never crossed my mind but what Hitler was sincere.

[thesometimesaint]

Yeah, I think you are correct there. It never crossed my mind but what Hitler was sincere.

The reason we read novels, go to plays, watch movies, is that the characters are good at acting sincere. We would not pay to see someone bad at it.

[Stone holm]

The reason we read novels, go to plays, watch movies, is that the characters are good at acting sincere. We would not pay to see someone bad at it.

Yeah and sometimes they have to act sincerely insincere -- oh the complications

[gree0232]

I asked three questions because it is these questions that, given certain answers to them, might seriously put LDS theology in trouble.

1. If humans did evolve through evolution, what did God do? If we are made in the image of God, did God also evolve or why does he have the physical traits we have? The whole evolution thing starts to look like a very manipulated process by God, but yet no explanation of what he actually did? Did he start the ball rolling and created the mountain in such a way that he knew what way the ball was going to roll? Did he (and does he) kill some preys to predators can reproduce more or kills predators so the preys can reproduce more and affect the environment like that? Etc.

2. If Adam and Eve were NOT real people but symbols only for something else, what is one to make of the necessity of the Atonement and verses like 1 Corinthians 15:21,22? How did whatever-the-symbol-for-Adam-and-Eve-are create the necessity for a LITERAL Savior? Clearly, Jesus Christ's sacrifice is not symbolic so, what did he died for?

And yet we already have evidence of Eve ...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100817122405.htm

There you are, Mitochondrial Eve ... 200,00 years ago, a progenitor whose genetic code rests in all of us. Was that happenstance? Or Chance?

It is a bit odd that thousands of years before man even knew of genes, he somehow gathered the idea that we descended from a single mother ... rather than from tribe of ancestors?

The Aztecs believed we descended from a Goddess who emerged from a war between their own children.

Native Americans, like the Cherokee believed we descended from a great floating Island ... and the first man and woman were brother and sister.

The Mongols believed that one of their gods came down an swirled the waters to create land ...

Etc.

[thesometimesaint]

Adam and Eve( Ancestral Stories) stories keep getting older and older as we find cultures older and old than ours. IIRC "Dreamtime" is one of the oldest.

[ERayR]

I have heard that dark spirits tend to hang around battlefield or areas where much blood has been shed. Being a Civil War buff and visited many such places, have never felt that...but I may just be insensitive.

That's the way my wife describes me in this area.

[williamsmith]

Adam & Eve were/are their own species. While man did "evolve" we did not evolve from Apes as evolution claims.

This is what the Church has contested against. Otherwise, the Church and it's members are perfectly fine with Evolution.

All species are/were created after their own kind. Yes, there are some strange evolutions therein, but that's it.

A fully developed man having evolved from some cell, zygote whatever didn't happen (other than occurring in an already existing Woman of course).

Edited May 27, 2013 by williamsmith

[changed]

What I don'tunderstand is the motivation for evolution - to say the motivation is survival is wrong I think, as what actually survives? species do not survive - they change into something new so that the old becomes extinct... so what exactly survives? and what started the process? and if it is a result of purely random processes, why don't inanimate things evolve? the same random conditions are happening to everything - to the rocks, to dirt, to ice etc. etc. but ice does not evolve, rocks don't evolve - who do only living things evolve, while rocks do not? what differentiates living from non-living entities if they are both subject to the same random processes?

Edited May 27, 2013 by changed

[bcuzbcuz]

What I don'tunderstand is the motivation for evolution - to say the motivation is survival is wrong I think, as what actually survives? species do not survive - they change into something new so that the old becomes extinct... so what exactly survives? and what started the process? and if it is a result of purely random processes, why don't inanimate things evolve? the same random conditions are happening to everything - to the rocks, to dirt, to ice etc. etc. but ice does not evolve, rocks don't evolve - who do only living things evolve, while rocks do not? what differentiates living from non-living entities if they are both subject to the same random processes?

Motivation for evolution? What exactly do you mean? Individual species strive to survive and to have successful offspring. In competitions for food, advantages ensure survival, until something better comes along. Is that what you mean by motivation?

Living organisms evolve when successful mutautions create a survival advantage. Rocks and ice are not living but they do change. Sufficient heat and pressure can change rocks. Weight and pressure can change ice. Metamorphic processes can completely change the qualities of a stone. I suppose a loose defintion could call it evolution but that is streching a word when an already sufficient descriptor is available.

[changed]

Motivation for evolution? What exactly do you mean? Individual species strive to survive and to have successful offspring. In competitions for food, advantages ensure survival, until something better comes along. Is that what you mean by motivation?

They don't survive though - evolution is a process of extinction, older species become extinct, they are replaced by new/different/better adapted species. The only thing that survives is life in general - but species themselves do not survive.

I'll tell you what does survive - the rocks survive, they last longer than any species does, and they don't change to survive. What's going on in evolution is not mere survival - it's progression. I wish the focus was not so much on "survival of the fittest" because that's not what's going on - it's about progression, not mere survival.

Rocks and ice are not living but they do change. Sufficient heat and pressure can change rocks. Weight and pressure can change ice. Metamorphic processes can completely change the qualities of a stone. I suppose a loose defintion could call it evolution but that is streching a word when an already sufficient descriptor is available.

Here's the thing between living and non-living entities. I have a PhD in the non-living realm. We use things called phase diagrams to very predicatbly reproduce atomic mictrostrutures given set formation temps/pressures/compositions. Microstructures are determined and predicted by interaction potentials, bonding, etc. etc. A given T/P/compostion will produce exactly the same crystal structure a billion years ago as it will today - the structure of iron, copper, zinc, salt, ice etc. etc. does not evolve with time - in order for it to evolve, the atomic forces would have to somehow change, the laws of physics would have to change, the fundamnetal constants of science would have to change... I don't see such a nice/exact science when it comes to the living world ... what happened to the notion that "science must be reprodcable and testable"? Evolutionary processes are not reproducable, they are the opposite of reproducable - reproducable is "each after their own kind", not something new and unique coming along. science does not like "unique" it likes predictable, and reproducable. I don't see anything equivalent to "phase diagrams" for the living world - that given different initial conditions, the DNA of a mouse will change to produce more fur if it's cold etc. etc. You can simulate what things like temperature differences do to atomic bonds in the non-living world, predict, and reproduce the phase changes that it produces - you can predict the microstructures... instead of a nice science based on interaction forces and bonding potentials, what do we hear from the biologists? we hear something akin to psychology of what the animal must be "feeling" or "thinking" or "wanting", and to me that's not really science. When we talk about the different types of steel - high C/low C steels, or heat treated steels etc. etc., we don't say the microstructure changed "because it wanted to survive" or "because it felt threatened" or because it felt anything - you would fail your exams if you answered with such nonsense. The microstructure changes because you added C that breaks up slip planes in the microstructure and therefore causes it to be harder - or you quenched it causing fast nucleation - small grains instead of large ones, etc. etc. I do not hear evolutaionary biologists talking about things like atomic interations potentials when they study different DNA microstruictures. (note, I said "evolutionary biologists" - not the generic biologists - the real biologists do use exact science.) Anyways, until I see some exact, reproducable, science - you know, explanations that detail the atomic interaction potentials - formation kinetics driven by something other than thought/feeling/motivation, I will view evoluationary "scientists" as just a bunch of philosphical liberal arts types speculators. Nothing wrong with philoophy of coarse, just don't call it science, because it isn't.

It appears to me that genetic codes are not based on atomic interaction potentials, but are indeed based on thoughts - just as the information stored on computer chips is based on thought. So for computers, inforamtion is stored in "bits", each "bit" consists of an electron either filling a hole or not (o or 1), there is a science behind making the silicon wafers, of how to make a semiconductor etc. etc. ... but if you take a computer that was programmed, there is no science that can trace back the information on the computer as coming from something as simple as T/P/composition, because the programmed information did not come from the material world - it came from the world of thought/mind/conscience/intelligence/spirit. There is a problem with trying to apply materialist science to spiritually created formations - you cannot link the two. Thought/feeling/motiviation is not confined by the same rules, it's not predictable, it doesn't have to be reproducable, and that is what biology is in part dealing with - it's dealing with thought/conscience rearanging the positions of atoms, rather than the natural forces of T/P rearanging atoms... reproducing evolution would be like trying to re-create a fully programmed computer without a programmer - from just making the wafer etc. that goes into it... at some point, everyone needs to recognize there is a programmer, and stop wasting everyone's time claiming anything just happens "randomly".... nothing happens randomly. Does a rock just get off the ground and start randomly floating through the air? nothing happens randomly -

look at this nonsense:

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

"contain random mixtures"

"tend to "drift" upward or downward randomly"

random walk

Genetic drift

saying things just "randomly drift around" is avoiding what is actually happening - intelligent design is what is actually happening - to use the words "feel, thought, survive" might be ok afterall, because it really is directed by feelings/thoughts/intelligence/conscience/spirit. It certainly doesn't just "randomly" happen though.

Edited May 27, 2013 by changed

[thesometimesaint]

They don't survive though - evolution is a process of extinction, older species become extinct, they are replaced by new/different/better adapted species. The only thing that survives is life in general - but species themselves do not survive.

I'll tell you what does survive - the rocks survive, they last longer than any species does, and they don't change to survive. What's going on in evolution is not mere survival - it's progression. I wish the focus was not so much on "survival of the fittest" because that's not what's going on - it's about progression, not mere survival.

Here's the thing between living and non-living entities. I have a PhD in the non-living realm. We use things called phase diagrams to very predicatbly reproduce atomic mictrostrutures given set formation temps/pressures/compositions. Microstructures are determined and predicted by interaction potentials, bonding, etc. etc. A given T/P/compostion will produce exactly the same crystal structure a billion years ago as it will today - the structure of iron, copper, zinc, salt, ice etc. etc. does not evolve with time - in order for it to evolve, the atomic forces would have to somehow change, the laws of physics would have to change, the fundamnetal constants of science would have to change... I don't see such a nice/exact science when it comes to the living world ... what happened to the notion that "science must be reprodcable and testable"? Evolutionary processes are not reproducable, they are the opposite of reproducable - reproducable is "each after their own kind", not something new and unique coming along. science does not like "unique" it likes predictable, and reproducable. I don't see anything equivalent to "phase diagrams" for theliving world - that given different initial conditions, the DNA of a mouse will change to produce more fur if it's cold etc. etc. You can simulate what things like temperature differences do to atomic bonds in the non-living world, predict, and reproduce the phase changes that it produces... instead of a nice science based on interaction forces and bonding potentials, what do we hear from the biologists? we hear something akin to psychology of what the animal must be "feeling" or "thinking" or "wanting", and to me that's not really science. When we talk about the different types of steel - high C/low C steels, or heat treated steels etc. etc., we don't say the microstructure changed "because it wanted to survive" or "because it felt threatened" or because it felt anything - you would fail your exams if you answered with such nonsense, and yet these are the types of explanations the evolutaionary biologists use. (note, I said "evolutionary biologists" - not the generic biologists - the real biologists do use exact science.) Anyways, until I see some exact, reproducable, science - you know, explanations that detail the atomic interaction potentials - formation kinetics driven by something other than thought/feeling/motivation, I will view evoluationary "scientists" as just a bunch of philosphical liberal arts types speculators. Nothing wrong with philoophy of coarse, just don't call it science, because it isn't.

What on Gods green earth are you talking about?

Evolution doesn't concern itself with rocks, ice, or billiard balls. It is only concerned with the living organism.

We still have the amoeba, the simplest oldest one celled animal.

Rocks AREN'T LIVING.

Evolution is not progression. For over a billion years the most complex life form on this planet we're simple one celled animals. ALL evolution says is that all living things are related, and those that reproduce win.

Survival of the fittest works fine. Change the environment and those individuals that best meet the demands of that environment long enough to reproduce win. Drop you off in the middle of the ocean. You'd quickly become fish food. Human beings didn't evolve to live in water.

Life is a highly complex electrochemical reaction.

We do prove evolution every day. How do you think we get antibiotic resistant germs?

Inanimate things aren't living they can't evolve.

Without evolution biology becomes untenable.

Evolution merely states that living things pass on their traits to their offspring. Frogs don't morph into sheep, but frogs and sheep have a common ancestor.

[ERayR]

Evolution doesn't concern itself with rocks, ice, or billiard balls. It is only concerned with the living organism.

Rocks AREN'T LIVING.

That would depend on how one defines living. If living is defined as changeable then rocks are living. Rocks are evolving. In the case of rocks we just call the instrument of evolution erosion.

Survival of the fittest works fine. Change the environment and those individuals that best meet the demands of that environment long enough to reproduce win. Drop you off in the middle of the ocean. You'd quickly become fish food. Human beings didn't evolve to live in water.

According to the theory of evolution in use he should begin evolving to conform to his environment and in a million years he would be quite comfortable in the middle of the ocean.

Life is a highly complex electrochemical reaction.

That it is and to just think it all came about quite by accident.

We do prove evolution every day. How do you think we get antibiotic resistant germs?

But the are still germs.

Inanimate things aren't living they can't evolve.

Oh but they can. See rocks above.

Without evolution biology becomes untenable.

Not really, it would just be a lot different.

Evolution merely states that living things pass on their traits to their offspring. Frogs don't morph into sheep, but frogs and sheep have a common ancestor.

[media=]

But that is what you are talking about. Frogs may not morph into sheep (red herring by the way) but you are asserting that something morphed into frogs and sheep.

[changed]

What on Gods green earth are you talking about?

Evolution doesn't concern itself with rocks, ice, or billiard balls. It is only concerned with the living organism.

are you suggesting that living organizsms are made up of something different than non-living organisms? It's all just atoms, right? if it's all just atoms, then it should all behave the same - it shouldn't matter if it's alive or not. But what is alive is not just made up of atoms - it is also made up of intelligence/spirit/conscience/mind - that's the point, you have to recognize that intelligence is involved.

We still have the amoeba, the simplest oldest one celled animal.

I know - long periods of stasis counter the concept of gradual change, because most things don't gradually change - the fossils when they first appear on the scene, look like the fossils when they exit - long periods of stasis. New species appear suddenly - you know, Cambrian "explosion" - in an explosion, not through gradual random changes.

Rocks AREN'T LIVING.

Rocks are made up of atoms - the same things that make up your body - the same types of interaction potentials etc. etc. so why should it matter if it is alive or not?

Evolution is not progression. For over a billion years the most complex life form on this planet we're simple one celled animals. ALL evolution says is that all living things are related, and those that reproduce win.

If there is a "winner" and a "loser", then there is a "better" and a "lesser", there is a "more evolved" and a "less evolved"... I know the latest trend is to deny progression (because categorizing things into "better/more evolved" vs. "more primitive" leads to the horrible racist ideas of Darwin and Hitler and evolutionists want to distance themselves from that - but if you are going to argue a purelyf materialistic viewpoint - with no spirit or intelligence as a driving mechanism - then I am sorry, that is what you are left with - racism... that's what racism is you know, judging someone based on the material that they are made up of - just looking at their skin color, rather than looking at their spirit.)

Survival of the fittest works fine. Change the environment and those individuals that best meet the demands of that environment long enough to reproduce win. Drop you off in the middle of the ocean. You'd quickly become fish food. Human beings didn't evolve to live in water.

You make the false assumption that living things are confined by their environment. It's not about meeting the demands of an environemnt - we don't just react , we act- we're not robots - we create our own environments, we're not just reacting to what is around us - we create what is around us. Rocks change with the environment, we change our environment. We don't like the water? my kids are in the water swimmning right now - a nice clean, temperature controlled man-made environment

Life is a highly complex electrochemical reaction.

LOL, I love it when people say things like "it's just so highly complex", - playing "science of the gaps" science of the missing links? If it's a simple reproducable reaction that produces a given sequence - that produces the actual program, the information - then let's see it. Let's see abiogeneiss.... that's what abiogenesis is you know, a simple understanding of the formation kinetics devoid of intelligent design. If you can't produce abiogenesis - if these structures cannot be created without intelligent design, then what is the simplest solution? And even if you are able to perform abiogenesis, you would still have to prove that your specimen wasn't contaminated with something called "spirit", and that would be rather hard to do.

We do prove evolution every day. How do you think we get antibiotic resistant germs?

Understanding the mechanisms, vs. watching it happen, are two very different things. I'm fine with micro-evolutaionry processes, and I believe the mechanism is intelligent design, and a will to progress and learn. Learning, surviving, progressing - these are all products of intelligence, of spirit. The rocks do not learn, living things do, the difference between them is the quality of their spirit.

Inanimate things aren't living they can't evolve.

exactly - why is that do you think? Again, it's because we're talking about more than just atoms, interaction potentials, and robots. If there was no such thing as a spirit, living and non-living things would behave exactly the same. They would both fall under gravity (instead of fly like a bird), they would both erode and increase entropy, there would be nothing new under the sun - there would just be the same old laws making the same old things.

Without evolution biology becomes untenable.

I know some biologists who would disagree with you...

Evolution merely states that living things pass on their traits to their offspring. Frogs don't morph into sheep, but frogs and sheep have a common ancestor.

Common ancestor.... assumeing a common ancestor is the classic mistake of confusing corrolation with causation... just because two things corrolate with one another, does not mean they have the same cause - the same parents. By assuming a common ancestor you asume that DNA can only be inherited through ancestory - which is a false asumption.... Vertical gene transfer is not the only form of gene transfer - ever hear of horizontal gene tranfer?

http://en.wikipedia....l_gene_transfer

HGT means you can share the same genes WITHOUT sharing the same ancestor... to assume that because their DNA is the same they have the same parents, is akin to saying two chunks of steel came from the same mine because they have the same microstructure.... it's non-sequitur. Just becuase two aniamls have similar DNA (corrolation) Does not mean they came from the same parents.... yes, sometimes they do come from the same parents, and sometimes they do not. Two snowflakes that are the same (it happens) - does it mean they came from the same cloud? no. It means they are both made up of the same element with the same interaction potentials and obey the same laws of physics. Corrolation is not causation. it's bad science to assume a common ancestor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In short, put ID in evolution, and I have no problem with it. Claim that it happens through random processes devoid of ID - and I will disagee with you (so perhaps we are not disagreeing as I don't know your viewpoints on ID). Living/intelligence entities with a spirit evolve, non-living/non-intelligent entities without a spirit do not evolve. I think a simple comparison of the behavior of living vs. non-living entities is proof enough to show what is going on.

Edited May 27, 2013 by changed

[changed]

That would depend on how one defines living. If living is defined as changeable then rocks are living. Rocks are evolving. In the case of rocks we just call the instrument of evolution erosion.

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

"It is a challenge for scientists and philosophers to define life in unequivocal terms.^{[23][24][25]"}

Perhaps life is hard to define, because spirit is hard to measure?