Pre-Adamites?

[thesometimesaint]

I discussed this topic and the various comments in the thread with my Ultimate Earthly Authority today, and she seems to agree about a conclusion that i have come to. No matter how hard I try to keep the issue of evolution out of the discussion -- and it is not necessary to discuss whether Adam and Eve were descendants of cave men, in order to discuss who these hominids were and where they came from -- it becomes impossible to keep the evolution issue at bay, and the whole discussion gets characterized as an assault on religious belief. That suggests to me that there is a modern cultural issue in play here on both sides of the issue. If you are on the pro-Science side you immediately discount any discussion which involves considering Adam and Eve as historical specific individuals, which in my mind, outside the Temple expediencies which are clearly explained, is very difficult to deny. On the fundamentalist side you immediately discount any discussion which questioning a very simplistic view of creation as being something just short of blasphemous, even though various GAs from time to time have done just that. Are we bringing a bunch of cultural baggage to the table? And if so, what impact does that have on trying to puzzle out mysteries such as accounting for non-human hominid bones. Why is it considered putting a topic through a "trash compactor" in order to understand possibilities? Is there some religious imperative which requires us to take a position which maximizes the conflict between religious belief and science? Is it completely wrong to seek possible common ground, or at least to avoid deliberately throwing sand in the gears? Why do we have to put scientists and believers constantly in a confrontational mode? Is that a cultural defense mechanism of some kind?

I firmly believe that some day we and God will come to a complete agreement as to how he did it. But it is highly unlikely that that day is today.

That cultural defense mechanism has been with us for a very long time now. It was the ancient Egyptians that used the morality play of the Temple to explain the Cosmos. See Nibley's Temple and the Cosmos

[Tacenda]

This is the great advantage of belonging to a church led by a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator. We don't have to guess and wonder at things like this. We can look to the Prophet for guidance and learn from the Lord what the truth is and then know of a sureity what is the truth - - - or not.

[media=]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5BkP9-HG8-I

"The Church Doesn't Like the People to Grow Up."~ Bishop John Shelby Spong.

Just saw this clip on "A Thoughtful Faith Support Group". Interesting take on religion, one I hadn't thought of before, and one that counters the belief of being a "bornagain" though I think the EV's look at it differently than being a forever child.

Edited June 12, 2013 by Tacenda

[thesometimesaint]

2 Nephi 28:22-23

Edited June 12, 2013 by thesometimesaint

[Stone holm]

I firmly believe that some day we and God will come to a complete agreement as to how he did it. But it is highly unlikely that that day is today.

That cultural defense mechanism has been with us for a very long time now. It was the ancient Egyptians that used the morality play of the Temple to explain the Cosmos. See Nibley's Temple and the Cosmos

My apologies for potentially derailing the discussion. Don't know about the Egyptian morality plays, but issues pertaining to the Creation seem to have become sort of litmus tests on both sides of a cultural divide that isn't conducive to discussions. My wife says why bother with discussing such issues. Besides the fact that they are intensely interesting, I think in some cases they are in fact important to the development of faith. If a person becomes comfortable with dealing both with science and potentially different religious points of view within an overall Mormon context, then I think they are more likely to be able to withstand a "crisis of faith" as opposed to setting a lot of "litmus tests" where the baby potentially flies out the window with the bath water, if one suddenly has a epiphany on a scientific issue. While there are likely to be substantial changes in both our scientific knowledge and our religious doctrinal knowledge, we should recognize that we shouldn't expect that in either case these are likely to be so hugely massive as to throw core understandings completely out the window. It is unlikely, for example that we are going to suddenly wake up one day and find that a new breakthrough in science has determined that the age of the Earth should be measured in thousands rather than millions of years, equally unlikely is that we are going to suddenly wake up one day and find that the church has thrown the idea of an historical Adam into the dustbin of religious concepts deemed unwarranted. Given that fact, it does make sense to play with different possiblities and work out ways of measuring whether they make sense without doing violence to either discipline. In essence, that is the kind of searching for answers that God expects of us, I don't think He expects us to just sit around praying so He can dump answers into our skull. If so, Oliver Cowdrey would have been a whiz bang translator.

[mfbukowski]

I discussed this topic and the various comments in the thread with my Ultimate Earthly Authority today, and she seems to agree about a conclusion that i have come to. No matter how hard I try to keep the issue of evolution out of the discussion -- and it is not necessary to discuss whether Adam and Eve were descendants of cave men, in order to discuss who these hominids were and where they came from -- it becomes impossible to keep the evolution issue at bay, and the whole discussion gets characterized as an assault on religious belief. That suggests to me that there is a modern cultural issue in play here on both sides of the issue. If you are on the pro-Science side you immediately discount any discussion which involves considering Adam and Eve as historical specific individuals, which in my mind, outside the Temple expediencies which are clearly explained, is very difficult to deny. On the fundamentalist side you immediately discount any discussion which questioning a very simplistic view of creation as being something just short of blasphemous, even though various GAs from time to time have done just that. Are we bringing a bunch of cultural baggage to the table? And if so, what impact does that have on trying to puzzle out mysteries such as accounting for non-human hominid bones. Why is it considered putting a topic through a "trash compactor" in order to understand possibilities? Is there some religious imperative which requires us to take a position which maximizes the conflict between religious belief and science? Is it completely wrong to seek possible common ground, or at least to avoid deliberately throwing sand in the gears? Why do we have to put scientists and believers constantly in a confrontational mode? Is that a cultural defense mechanism of some kind?

Bingo.

100% of every word uttered by mankind are cultural biases- which are manifested in language itself. "Spirit" is not "matter" because we have two words for them,for example, and then we have this attempt to set it straight:

7 There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes;

8 We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.

It's very hard to talk about talking- but of course that is do- when you understand that all talk is talk about talking.

Essentially, Wittgenstein says that every "philosophical problem" we have arises out of the semantic problems associated with talking about talking.

[mfbukowski]

[media=]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5BkP9-HG8-I

"The Church Doesn't Like the People to Grow Up."~ Bishop John Shelby Spong.

Just saw this clip on "A Thoughtful Faith Support Group". Interesting take on religion, one I hadn't thought of before, and one that counters the belief of being a "bornagain" though I think the EV's look at it differently than being a forever child.

"Salvation is making yourself more fully human"- pure Mormon doctrine as I see it.

God is human and the more human we become the more godlike we become. Send the missionaries to this guy's house.

We just need to understand this better ourselves, I think, and we will see why the world needs Mormonism.

Actually, this very point was one of the intellectual reasons I became a member

Edited June 12, 2013 by mfbukowski

[Stone holm]

Bingo.

100% of every word uttered by mankind are cultural biases- which are manifested in language itself. "Spirit" is not "matter" because we have two words for them,for example, and then we have this attempt to set it straight:

It's very hard to talk about talking- but of course that is do- when you understand that all talk is talk about talking.

Essentially, Wittgenstein says that every "philosophical problem" we have arises out of the semantic problems associated with talking about talking.

If that is the case, then one thing is imperative, namely that we keep trying to talk in order to overcome cultural biases and semantics.

[mfbukowski]

If that is the case, then one thing is imperative, namely that we keep trying to talk in order to overcome cultural biases and semantics.

I'm tryin'!

You can't overcome them- you can just see the errors they produce and work around them.

Edited June 12, 2013 by mfbukowski

[canard78]

I wonder though since this hymn has fallen from grace, so to speak, whether we can rely on it as valid teaching anymore. I suppose that depends on whether it was removed from the hymn book because the brethren no longer felt comfortable with its doctrinal status, or whether it was removed because of a general preference for doctrinal pablum in the later twentieth century. My guess would be that since they retained her Hie Unto. Kolob, that this one was removed because they no longer felt that the lyrics were doctrinally sound. If that is the case, the whole notion of a planet flying through space to a different system might be questionable. What are the thoughts of others?

Run through the whole creation story (and the full temple endowment) and replace the word world/earth with body. The whole symbol of the earth's creation is a parable to conception and birth and then going from a paradise state of innocence to accountability.

So even the notion of the earth falling through space, to it's current place in a corner of his universe before being drawn back near to God at a later stage makes far more sense to me in that adjusted context.

The endowment is supposed to be symbolic after all.

[Stone holm]

Run through the whole creation story (and the full temple endowment) and replace the word world/earth with body. The whole symbol of the earth's creation is a parable to conception and birth and then going from a paradise state of innocence to accountability.

So even the notion of the earth falling through space, to it's current place in a corner of his universe before being drawn back near to God at a later stage makes far more sense to me in that adjusted context.

The endowment is supposed to be symbolic after all.

My personal feeling is that you just cause confusion if you start bringing the endowment into the analysis because we are talking about a whole different realm of education in the Temple than outside. The Temple very clearly involves symbology, role playing, etc. That is why I tend to avoid it in these discussions. But if you were to include it, then I think you would clearly lean towards the notion that the Garden was a separate discrete location on the Earth and that you could walk out of the Garden and find yourself in a Telestial World. Plus the whole 7 day spiritual creation and 1 day physical creation thingy gets awfully confusing if you start referring to it. So I just leave it out as a separate form of knowledge.

[canard78]

My personal feeling is that you just cause confusion if you start bringing the endowment into the analysis because we are talking about a whole different realm of education in the Temple than outside. The Temple very clearly involves symbology, role playing, etc. That is why I tend to avoid it in these discussions. But if you were to include it, then I think you would clearly lean towards the notion that the Garden was a separate discrete location on the Earth and that you could walk out of the Garden and find yourself in a Telestial World. Plus the whole 7 day spiritual creation and 1 day physical creation thingy gets awfully confusing if you start referring to it. So I just leave it out as a separate form of knowledge.

For me, it's my experiences and epiphanies in the endowment that have changed my entire view of the creation story in all its sources.

Never mind a garden in a discrete location. No garden at all for me. It's a story that teaches a clear principle. It doesn't need a location other than in the book, in my mind and heart.

[thesometimesaint]

For me, it's my experiences and epiphanies in the endowment that have changed my entire view of the creation story in all its sources.

Never mind a garden in a discrete location. No garden at all for me. It's a story that teaches a clear principle. It doesn't need a location other than in the book, in my mind and heart.

I don't have a problem with a literal garden or with A&E as the literal first children of God. Someone had to be the first. That being said I do believe the Temple Ceremony is symbolic and representative. The Covenants we personally make there with God are very much literal and binding on earth and in Heaven.

[Stone holm]

I don't have a problem with a literal garden or with A&E as the literal first children of God. Someone had to be the first. That being said I do believe the Temple Ceremony is symbolic and representative. The Covenants we personally make there with God are very much literal and binding on earth and in Heaven.

Yeah. I think when we try to introduce the experiential spiritual knowledge we gain from the Temple dramas into trying to understand the religious history involved with the Creation, we are asking for confusion.

[Questing Beast]

"Salvation is making yourself more fully human"- pure Mormon doctrine as I see it.

God is human and the more human we become the more godlike we become. Send the missionaries to this guy's house.

...

Spong said that God is not a Christian, or Jew or Buddhist, that these are all concepts created by man. He's not interested in even being a "bishop", but that's what he is so he teaches from where/what he is. His personal religion has transcended all man-made dogma. Mormonism would hold no interest for him....

[SamIam]

My personal feeling is that you just cause confusion if you start bringing the endowment into the analysis because we are talking about a whole different realm of education in the Temple than outside. The Temple very clearly involves symbology, role playing, etc. That is why I tend to avoid it in these discussions. But if you were to include it, then I think you would clearly lean towards the notion that the Garden was a separate discrete location on the Earth and that you could walk out of the Garden and find yourself in a Telestial World. Plus the whole 7 day spiritual creation and 1 day physical creation thingy gets awfully confusing if you start referring to it. So I just leave it out as a separate form of knowledge.

There is no telestial world until after the fall. Prior to that it is terrestrial. We have provided multiple quotes to sustain that perspective.

Edited June 12, 2013 by SamIam

[Stone holm]

Spong said that God is not a Christian, or Jew or Buddhist, that these are all concepts created by man. He's not interested in even being a "bishop", but that's what he is so he teaches from where/what he is. His personal religion has transcended all man-made dogma. Mormonism would hold no interest for him....

Spong is lightyears from being a Mormon, although I think there was a considerable portion of what he said that resonates with Mormons, but where he disconnects with Mormonism is his notion of what God is. I agree that he may be on to something that we should be talking about Christ enhancing us rather than rescuing us, but he is still into the god is everywhere, but nowhere in particular thing. So, I don't think his views add much to this thread.

[mfbukowski]

Spong is lightyears from being a Mormon, although I think there was a considerable portion of what he said that resonates with Mormons, but where he disconnects with Mormonism is his notion of what God is. I agree that he may be on to something that we should be talking about Christ enhancing us rather than rescuing us, but he is still into the god is everywhere, but nowhere in particular thing. So, I don't think his views add much to this thread.

As usual, this is only true if you get hung up in dogma and semantics.

Because God is immanent, that doesn't diminish his greatness- it IS his greatness. Otherwise he might as well be some Universal Force or some Unmoved Mover or some other metaphysical nonsense. Instead, he can hear and answer our prayers and knows each of us.

The whole problem with unmoved movers is that they are unmoved.

[mfbukowski]

Spong is lightyears from being a Mormon, ....

Not from my Mormonism.

[Stone holm]

As usual, this is only true if you get hung up in dogma and semantics.

Because God is immanent, that doesn't diminish his greatness- it IS his greatness. Otherwise he might as well be some Universal Force or some Unmoved Mover or some other metaphysical nonsense. Instead, he can hear and answer our prayers and knows each of us.

The whole problem with unmoved movers is that they are unmoved.

Well this topic is pretty dogma oriented and Joseph Smith did emphasize the importance of getting a correct understanding of the nature of God.

[Calm]

If a person becomes comfortable with dealing both with science and potentially different religious points of view within an overall Mormon context, then I think they are more likely to be able to withstand a "crisis of faith" as opposed to setting a lot of "litmus tests" where the baby potentially flies out the window with the bath water, if one suddenly has a epiphany on a scientific issue.

If one examines exit narratives, there is a commonality of a fundamentalist viewpoint when it comes to creation and other aspects of science among many of them so I believe you are correct.

[Calm]

"Salvation is making yourself more fully human"- pure Mormon doctrine as I see it.

My own reaction...

[Calm]

Mormonism would hold no interest for him....

Yes, heaven forbid one actually takes the time to listen to what others believe once one has reached that ultimate point of enlightenment...

I wonder if he holds the same disdain as you do for such things...why are you even here on this board?

Edited June 13, 2013 by calmoriah

[tagriffy]

If one examines exit narratives, there is a commonality of a fundamentalist viewpoint when it comes to creation and other aspects of science among many of them so I believe you are correct.

It certainly precipitated the faith crisis that eventually led me to Mormonism.

[Questing Beast]

Yes, heaven forbid one actually takes the time to listen to what others believe once one has reached that ultimate point of enlightenment...

I wonder if he holds the same disdain as you do for such things...why are you even here on this board?

I mean that Mormonism would not be able to replace his personal theology. Why would he drop his religious career to become a Mormon?

There is no "ultimate point of enlightenment". Learning about "God" never ends. I am "here" simply because I have not had my attention taken to some other "place"....

[thesometimesaint]

I mean that Mormonism would not be able to replace his personal theology. Why would he drop his religious career to become a Mormon?

There is no "ultimate point of enlightenment". Learning about "God" never ends. I am "here" simply because I have not had my attention taken to some other "place"....

I believe we will always be progressing, but there is a point at which we do know about God.

John 17: 3

And this is life eternal, that they might know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.