When Did Adam First Walk The Earth?

[ERayR]

So to clarify, you believe that death did occur outside the garden, but not inside the garden?

 

Yes.  What could I have said to make it plainer?

[mfbukowski]

Anything in church publications has been through Correlation review and is thus considered consistent with doctrine.

sez u

 

Heck everything I say is consistent with doctrine too, but it ain't doctrine.  We could talk about the 18 moons of Nanoo and THAT would be "consistent" with doctrine.

Edited October 10, 2013 by mfbukowski

[ERayR]

Most people before modern history don't have much evidence to show for their existence, however that a person named Adam may have existed is not really unscientific.

On the other hand, the idea that there was no death before 4,000 years ago is something on which science clearly does have something to say.

 

It doesn't matter science will not, can not, does not say anything about Adam nor can they.  This according to our scientific friends on the board.

[mfbukowski]

Before anyone loses too much money, if you are referring to me neither are correct.

I'm Baha'i, but with a heavy attraction towards spirituality and a liberal approach towards religion in general.

Terrific!

 

I seriously looked into the Baha'i faith in my journey and it opened me up to a lot of possibilities.  We Mormons actually have a lot in common with you- in a sense our Joseph Smith is to us what Bahá'u'lláh is to you.

 

For those who know nothing about it- here is at least a quick wikipedia version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%27u%27ll%C3%A1h

 

Now THAT is a thread you should start.  Modern day prophets- how do you choose between them!!??

 

Maybe I will do that myself, but coming from you it would be more authoritative, since I know very little about your faith really.

Edited October 10, 2013 by mfbukowski

[ERayR]

   

You may be a fine teacher, but as long as you keep your opinions to yourself, you can believe in flying saucers, the great spaghetti monster, or no death prior to 6000-7000 years ago. As long as you don't try to espouse those beliefs to your students.

But your statement shows an alarming lack of knowledge about early civilizations. Look up Göbeckli Tepe, in Turkey, or Naqada I, II or III, populations in southern Egypt. We know and can trace, with absolute certainty, the Egyptian written and artifact history in Egypt to 3100 BCE. The artifacts recovered in pottery and weaponry, show a clear development for another 1000-2000 years, at least, prior to that. And if you want to examine the black rimmed, red pottery from that era, that is not only beautiful but clearly made by humans, who had the artifacts buried in their graves with them, you might want to alter your dates somewhat.

http://www.aeraweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/egyptian-pottery-v1.pdf

http://xoomer.virgilio.it/francescoraf/cracow-2002/Baba-Saito.htm

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/pottery/

http://www.ancient-egypt.co.uk/brooklyn/index_5.htm

Or you can find such pottery in any decent Egyptian museum display in the Brooklyn Museum of Art, as stated above, the Oriental Institute in Chicago, Louvre Museum in Paris, Neues Museum in Berlin, British Museum in London, Egyptian Museum in Cairo, to name a few.

 

And this is an indication of what?

[mfbukowski]

Do you prefer fossils from a capitalist country such as the U.S?

This Astrodon fossil from Texas 112 million years ago indicates extinction by death.

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

Those are a capitalist Imperialist plot.  Better put a wink in there because you don't know me. 

[mfbukowski]

Daniel:

 

I believe that Adam and Eve were the first humans, that there was no death prior to the Fall, and that they lived ca. 6000-7000 years ago.

 

I also am a public school science teacher (currently 8th grade physics, but have taught high school biology as well). I'm sure that will make some people's heads explode.

I believe that too, actually though probably in a different sense.  I see that as speaking about the same things but in a different context, like perhaps the fabled story of the blind men and the elephant.

 

Except for me, there is no "elephant", just the stories 

[mfbukowski]

These are the ones who I think the LDS who do believe death occurred before 6,000 years ago should probably invite them to lunch and have a quiet friendly chat about why they disagree, but it doesn't hurt me to talk to them as a non LDS person, even though I can see why it would be more influential for their fellow LDS folk to discuss it with them.

These ones are putting in some effort, and I applaud them for that. I'm really not trying to tar everyone with the same brush.

Actually I'm not disagreeing with people who accept that death occurred prior to Adam, and I am happy to acknowledge that most LDS do accept that death occurred prior to Adam.

Well I would love to take you to lunch and talk about why none, and all, are right in their own ways

[mfbukowski]

These ones ...

Are you from So Cal?  I would bet somewhere in the southwest?

[mfbukowski]

To me, this is really the central point of the matter, in the Gospel it states in Romans 6:23;

"the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ"

It is assumed that by this, physical death is intended, (as opposed to spiritual death), however, this turns many statements of Jesus meaningless, for example in John 11:26 we read;

"whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."

Obviously if physical death were referred to it is evident that either Jesus never had a true believer, or He got it wrong.

Alternatively if we interpret death to mean spiritual death, then it at once becomes clear that physical death has always existed, which is something that science seems inclined to verify.

If physical death occurred prior to Adam, then physical death can be due to natural causes and not solely due to sin.

On the other hand, we can be certain that spiritual death is due to sin, in which case there is no need to deny the scientific and logical evidence that death has always existed by virtue of having a more plausible interpretation of the verse at the heart of the matter.

Further adding weight to the hypothesis as I see it.

But there is NO "death" until humans invent the word for it.

 

I suppose you could say that "prior" to that "animals" and "plants" were involved in a kind of "carbon cycle" consuming and being consumed by each other but there could be no "death" without the idea of an individual being which ceases to exist and "dies". 

 

Food is food and is required for life. 

 

We don't mourn carrots but we chomp them down with relish (or hummus- the crushed bodies of garbonzo beans mixed with the life-blood of olives)

 

All of these ideas, of course, even the carbon cycle are human inventions, as is even this sentence, and your reading it and your understanding or not understanding it.

 

Humans are gods, and God is an Idealized human and together we create worlds.  Anyway, in a few words, THAT is why I am Mormon and not Ba'hai

[mfbukowski]

It doesn't make my head explode, many people compartmentalise concepts which they feel unable to reconcile.

Ah yes, like your distinction between spiritual death and physical death? 

 

How is that NOT "compartmentalising"? 

 

rongo is one of the wisest here.

Edited October 10, 2013 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

Is a piece of fruit or perhaps grain an entity that "death" would apply to if the plant that it came from continued to live?

Exactly.  One must have a classification system like "living things" and "dead things" before one can say that something is in one category or the other.

 

Why don't rocks "die" when we crack them open, but if you crack open a squirrel it "dies"?

 

I actually mean this with reverence to show a point so don't get me wrong, but why de we regard the death of one man- "Jesus" we call him as more significant than the "death" of a nameless dinosaur millions of years earlier?

 

From a scientific perspective, there is no difference, death is death- it's humans who give such things significance.

 

All these are natural processes and we are the ones who make distinctions between rocks breaking and heads breaking, and some heads being more important than others.

[cinepro]

But there is NO "death" until humans invent the word for it.

Humans didn't invent the word for "death", God did. And according to the scriptures, God existed before the world was created.

The only way your theory makes sense is if there is no God, and "death" only became a reality at the point that humans evolved to a point of awareness of our own mortality.

Actually, that doesn't even makes sense. Even if humans didn't have a word for "death" until 4,000BC, it could still exist before that. According to your logic, "evolution" started in 1859 when Darwin published "Origin of Species", because humans didn't know about it until then so it couldn't have been occurring.

Death is the separation of the spirit from the mortal body. All living creatures have to have a spirit, so "death entered the world" the first time a spirit left a mortal body. LDS Doctrine teaches a "paradisaical creation" wherein nothing physically died until after the Fall. Obviously you can think whatever you want, but let's not pretend the Church teaches otherwise.

 

All living things—mankind, animals, and plants—were spirits before any form of life existed upon the earth (Gen. 2:4–5; Moses 3:4–7).

LDS.org - Spirit

 

A paradisical earth was created and immortal, paradisical bodies were prepared for Adam and Eve, the first of all of God’s spirit sons and daughters to come to this earth.

Pearl of Great Price Student Manual

This fall involved a change of status. All things were so created that they could fall or change, and thus was introduced the type and kind of existence needed to put into operation all of the terms and conditions of the Father’s eternal plan of salvation.

This first temporal creation of all things, as we shall see, was paradisiacal in nature. In the primeval and Edenic day all forms of life lived in a higher and different state than now prevails. The coming fall would take them downward and forward and onward. Death and procreation had yet to enter the world. That death would be Adam’s gift to man, and, then, the gift of God would be eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Christ and the Creation

The plan required the Creation, and that in turn required both the Fall and the Atonement. These are the three fundamental components of the plan. The creation of a paradisiacal planet came from God. 12 Mortality and death came into the world through the Fall of Adam. 13 Immortality and the possibility of eternal life were provided by the Atonement of Jesus Christ. 14 The Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement were planned long before the actual work of the Creation began.

The Creation

Edited October 10, 2013 by cinepro

[bcuzbcuz]

 

And this is an indication of what?

 

It indicates nothing, if you are willing to think of the dates stated in the Bible as being open to discussion. If you believe the Bible is correct for the dates of Adam and Noah, then you have problems.

Unless you can find something that suggests that the Garden of Eden was in Egypt, then you have a culture that was putting over a thousand people in graves (and we still have their complete skeletons) with a fair amount of grave goods, including weapons, harvesting tools and pottery, at the same time that Adam and Eve were just getting out of the garden. It certainly predates anything from Noah's ark.

The digs in Göbeckli Tepe have the monuments that date to long before the pyramids of Giza, by many thousand years. Göbeckli Tepe dates to roughly 11,500 BP.

[jkwilliams]

sez u

 

Heck everything I say is consistent with doctrine too, but it ain't doctrine.  We could talk about the 18 moons of Nanoo and THAT would be "consistent" with doctrine.

 

All I know is what I was told when I worked for the church, and the church's recent "approaching doctrine" says the same thing. If we take your example above, Correlation serves no purpose whatsoever.

[ERayR]

I believe that too, actually though probably in a different sense.  I see that as speaking about the same things but in a different context, like perhaps the fabled story of the blind men and the elephant.

 

Except for me, there is no "elephant", just the stories 

 

You have gotten hold of its tale.

[ERayR]

   

It indicates nothing, if you are willing to think of the dates stated in the Bible as being open to discussion. If you believe the Bible is correct for the dates of Adam and Noah, then you have problems.

Unless you can find something that suggests that the Garden of Eden was in Egypt, then you have a culture that was putting over a thousand people in graves (and we still have their complete skeletons) with a fair amount of grave goods, including weapons, harvesting tools and pottery, at the same time that Adam and Eve were just getting out of the garden. It certainly predates anything from Noah's ark.

The digs in Göbeckli Tepe have the monuments that date to long before the pyramids of Giza, by many thousand years. Göbeckli Tepe dates to roughly 11,500 BP.

 

I understand what you are getting at now and can safely (sigh of relief) ignore your post as it doesn't apply to me.  Thanks.

 

Nope the Garden of Eden was in Missouri.

Edited October 10, 2013 by ERayR

[danieldemol]

Are you from So Cal? I would bet somewhere in the southwest?

A bit further south, Sydney Australia

[danieldemol]

Ah yes, like your distinction between spiritual death and physical death?

How is that NOT "compartmentalising"?

The Gospel says it is possible for the spiritually dead to be physically alive.

One day a man approached Jesus and upon being asked to follow Jesus, requested leave to bury his physically dead father, whereupon Jesus replied with respect to the physically alive, spiritually dead Jewish grave diggers, "let the dead bury their dead".

Mathew 8:21-22 states,

"And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.

But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead."

In the Biblical scriptures, spiritual "death", "sleep" etc refer not to an absolute state of death and/or non existence, but rather to a relative state of the soul in which the spiritual qualities - love, patience, humility, faith etc lay dormant within the individual and they are overcome with worldly desire.

Hence there is no need to compartmentalise what are in my view two seperate, albeit not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts. These concepts do not negate each other.

[ERayR]

The Gospel says it is possible for the spiritually dead to be physically alive.

One day a man approached Jesus and upon being asked to follow Jesus, requested leave to bury his physically dead father, whereupon Jesus replied with respect to the physically alive, spiritually dead Jewish grave diggers, "let the dead bury their dead".

Mathew 8:21-22 states,

"And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.

But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead."

In the Biblical scriptures, spiritual "death", "sleep" etc refer not to an absolute state of death and/or non existence, but rather to a relative state of the soul in which the spiritual qualities - love, patience, humility, faith etc lay dormant within the individual and they are overcome with worldly desire.

Hence there is no need to compartmentalise what are in my view two seperate, albeit not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts. These concepts do not negate each other.

 

How does that relate to the question of whether there was death in the earth before Adam?

[danieldemol]

It doesn't, rather it relates to the quoted assertion that I am compartmentalising in regarding spiritual and physical death seperately.

[ERayR]

It doesn't, rather it relates to the quoted assertion that I am compartmentalising in regarding spiritual and physical death seperately.

 

Either your posts are too disjointed for me or i am really not interested enough to follow so Bye..

[danieldemol]

Bye

[brightpath]

Yes I believe Adam and Eve were the first people to walk the earth. I also believe that the Jaradites were the first people in the Americas followed by Lehi's seed and then the Mulekites. Follow me here people the human race is 4000 BC + 2000 AD + 13 = 6013 yrs old

Edited October 11, 2013 by brightpath

[mfbukowski]

 

Humans didn't invent the word for "death", God did.

I guess you didn't think that one through.

 

“As man now is, God once was; as God is now man may be.”