Pope Francis On Evolution And Big Bang

[MormonFreeThinker]

Does the theory of the evolution of humans support there being one man and one woman that we are all (all 7 billion of u) descendants of as little as 6000 years ago?

 

1st Possibility 

The Scriptures do not say when Adam and Eve lived.   

 

2nd Possibility 

Adam was the first child to receive a body.  Pre-adamites are creations of God, not Children of God.

Somehow Adam became the most recent common ancestor of the human race. 

 

3rd Possibility 

The spirits of the Pre-adamites belong to another family. 

 

4th Possibility

Maybe all humanity is simply adopted to the Family of Adam. 

Let me give you example, "Because each of us has many bloodlines running in us, two members of the same family may be declared as being of different tribes in Israel. It does not matter if a person's lineage in the house of Israel is through bloodlines or by adoption. Church members are counted as a descendant of Abraham and an heir to all the promises and blessings contained in the Abrahamic covenant" 

https://www.lds.org/topics/patriarchal-blessings?lang=eng

 

5h Possibility 

Something that no one has though of.  

Edited November 2, 2014 by MormonFreeThinker

[thesometimesaint]

Does the theory of the evolution of humans support there being one man and one woman that we are all (all 7 billion of u) descendants of as little as 6000 years ago?

This seems problematic when taking evolution into account as does the Bible teaching of the flood and Noah and really all of us descending from 8 persons maybe 4000 years ago.

 

No. What is supportable is the belief that we are the descendents of Adam and Eve within the last 10,000 or so. The exact mechanism(s) for it is not known.

 

I believe it is entirely possible to accept that Noah was a prophet of God, built a boat, tried to save what he could from a very massive but regional flood, and accurately recorded what he saw.

[MormonFreeThinker]

Here are the skulls of an African, Asian, and European. 

 

 

Here is the skull of a Neanderthal, another type of human, see the difference? Not just the color. 

 

[thesometimesaint]

We(Homo Sapiens Sapiens) are not the descendents of Neanderthals(Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis), but at one time we were closely related enough to interbreed.

[Freedom]

Let science figure out the how, let religion focus on the why. Concerning Adam being the first man, we have to first define the word 'first'. First does not exclusively refer to time, it more often refers to importance. I can be the last competitor in a singing competition but still come in first. Also, a woman can have lived 10,000 years go, some 90,000 years after humans started wondering about, but we may still be able to trace all of our lineages back to her. Adam and Eve can be the common ancestors of all humans without being the first and only ones on the earth at the time. Ultimately it just does not matter in the gospel sense. 

 

They may not even be our common ancestor in terms of DNA, but they would be in terms of priesthood lineage and of the formation of the first written record and organized community. They are the first humans in importance. After all, Jesus can rise up rocks to be of Abraham. 

[why me]

I believe that this is the first pope in a long time that seems to talk off the cuff and he will eventually get into trouble for doing so. Luckily, the media seems to love him and many people too because if not I do believe that he would be in trouble with the vatican. I think that catholics are now experiencing what the lds have experienced because they seem to have to see a difference between their doctrine and the opinion of the pope as the lds have to make a difference between GAs opinion and doctrine.

[Teancum]

1st Possibility 

The Scriptures do not say when Adam and Eve lived.   

 

2nd Possibility 

Adam was the first child to receive a body.  Pre-adamites are creations of God, not Children of God.

Somehow Adam became the most recent common ancestor of the human race. 

 

3rd Possibility 

The spirits of the Pre-adamites belong to another family. 

 

4th Possibility

Maybe all humanity is simply adopted to the Family of Adam. 

Let me give you example, "Because each of us has many bloodlines running in us, two members of the same family may be declared as being of different tribes in Israel. It does not matter if a person's lineage in the house of Israel is through bloodlines or by adoption. Church members are counted as a descendant of Abraham and an heir to all the promises and blessings contained in the Abrahamic covenant" 

https://www.lds.org/topics/patriarchal-blessings?lang=eng

 

5h Possibility 

Something that no one has though of.

Before I adress each point keep in mind the scriptures teach and the LDS church leaders and lessons manuals state there was no death before the fall. I know some faithful LDS people wrangle this in all sorts away to make it work but all of it is simple speculation and twisting of what has been taught officially. If Adam was real and we are all his descendants I do not see how one can honestly accept organic evolution as factual. I may be wrong but I can't seem to make it work out and be compatible with LDS doctrine.

1st: I think if you do the chronology laid out in the Bible if the dating is accurate at all it put Adam and Eve about 6000 years since the fall. If we want some wiggle room we can say maybe 10,000.

2nd: I am not sure how that helps. What happened to all the many pre Adamites? Are many of the humans today descended from these non Adamites?

3rd: how does this help? How do we get from 7 billion from two (ignoring the Noah problem) in even 10,000 years?

4th: this is your best answer but still does not solve the no death before the fall problem.

5th: that man evolved and there was no Adam and Eve and they re simply mythical.

[Teancum]

No. What is supportable is the belief that we are the descendents of Adam and Eve within the last 10,000 or so. The exact mechanism(s) for it is not known.

 

I believe it is entirely possible to accept that Noah was a prophet of God, built a boat, tried to save what he could from a very massive but regional flood, and accurately recorded what he saw.

Is 10,000 years enough time? How do you handle the problem of no death before the fall? What about the evidence for another humanoid people more than 10,000 years go. The Neanderthals, another humanoid species recently discovered in the Siberia area whose name escapes me all living and perhaps interbreeding with Homo Sapians for more than 100,000 years or so?

If you set aside the official doctrine of Noah and a global flood why not take it one step further for Adam and Eve? Is it because Noah and the flood are less critical to the over all doctrinal integrity of the church than Adam and Eve?

[Rob Osborn]

The Church takes no position on evolution. Individual members are free to believe whatever they want about evolution.

 

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MORMONISM

EVOLUTION

The position of the Church on the origin of man was published by the First Presidency in 1909 and stated again by a different First Presidency in 1925:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, basing its belief on divine revelation, ancient and modern, declares man to be the direct and lineal offspring of Deity.... Man is the child of God, formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes (see Appendix, "Doctrinal Expositions of the First Presidency").

The scriptures tell why man was created, but they do not tell how, though the Lord has promised that he will tell that when he comes again (D&C 101:32-33). In 1931, when there was intense discussion on the issue of organic evolution, the First Presidency of the Church, then consisting of Presidents Heber J. Grant, Anthony W. Ivins, and Charles W. Nibley, addressed all of the General Authorities of the Church on the matter, and concluded,

Upon the fundamental doctrines of the Church we are all agreed. Our mission is to bear the message of the restored gospel to the world. Leave geology, biology, archaeology, and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the soul of mankind, to scientific research, while we magnify our calling in the realm of the Church....

Upon one thing we should all be able to agree, namely, that Presidents Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, and Anthon H. Lund were right when they said: "Adam is the primal parent of our race" [First Presidency Minutes, April 7, 1931].

The encyclopedia of Mormonism is not official doctrine. We have gone over this before...it gets rather old.

[Teancum]

The encyclopedia of Mormonism is not official doctrine. We have gone over this before...it gets rather old.

Enlighten me Rob. What is your view?

What is the official position of the church on evolution in your opinion and understanding?

How can you account for a literal Adam and Eve and still beleive in evolution and staying true to LDS doctrine?

And if you can't does the official position of the church pose a problem for the church in light of what seems to be overwhelming evidence that all species, including humans, evolved over a long period of time.

[Grudunza]

I'm of the feeling lately that evolution is so well established that we need to adjust our understanding or interpretation of theology to gibe with that. The other way around doesn't work, unless we can accept that the best of observable science is somehow a lie or fabrication. I think resistance to evolution, at least for me as I used to think of it, is based on a lot of faulty assumptions, or taking some scriptures literally that are meant to be poetic. But I think our theology in particular is well-suited to embrace evolution and gain further insight about creation and existence based on that model.

[VideoGameJunkie]

Maybe Adam and Eve were in the garden for billions of years or they fell after dinosaurs died out.

[katherine the great]

We(Homo Sapiens Sapiens) are not the descendents of Neanderthals(Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis), but at one time we were closely related enough to interbreed.

I think DNA indicates that we are their descendants.  At least those of us with European and/or Asian blood.  I believe Svante Paabo's studies proved that.  I think the mistake is people thinking that Neanderthals evolved into modern humans.  That did not happen.

[Stone holm]

Hello people what about the Magic Wand part of the comment?

[Silhouette]

Maybe Adam and Eve were in the garden for billions of years or they fell after dinosaurs died out.

I have a similar theory about dinosaurs. I think perhaps they were on the outside of the Garden of Eden while Adam and Eve were living on the inside. Then when the fall came, the dinosaurs were destroyed by Heavenly Father of necessity, so that Adam and Eve didn't have to contend with them.

With this idea though, I can't reconcile what the purpose of the dinosaurs would have been.

I had a missionary tell me once that his theory was that God had allowed Lucifer to place them on the Earth in order to confuse mankind, thereby testing our faith.

[3DOP]

Hello people what about the Magic Wand part of the comment?

 

I haven't seen anything about Magic Wand. Maybe you could give us a link again?

[Calm]

I have a similar theory about dinosaurs. I think perhaps they were on the outside of the Garden of Eden while Adam and Eve were living on the inside. Then when the fall came, the dinosaurs were destroyed by Heavenly Father of necessity, so that Adam and Eve didn't have to contend with them.

With this idea though, I can't reconcile what the purpose of the dinosaurs would have been.

I had a missionary tell me once that his theory was that God had allowed Lucifer to place them on the Earth in order to confuse mankind, thereby testing our faith.

Assuming the garden is not just symbolic in the sense of there being no death there, all were in harmony, etc...

My position is that evolution more or less as we understand it including preparing a vehicle for man's spirit was used by God to organize (think of organization as taking elements and putting them in new configuration as a mother organizes a body for a child by formation and growth in her uterus) the earth in a myriad of ways to be a home for mankind. Dinosaurs evolved and died out with many other species during this time. Eventually the earth was ready as demonstrated by homo sapiens appearing and then when God's time came, he set apart a small area as a sacred space, a living temple so to speak for the first couple to live and learn and make covenants in and then when they had learned what they needed to know, the Fall occurred and the sacred space with its immortal qualities was removed until the time the whole world will be transformed into such. And they went out to share with the world what they had been taught.

For those who find it offensive to think of mankind whose parents are divine having bodies designed through stages that included scum on ponds and primates, how is that any different than the fact that the elements of what our bodies are actually made out of were at one time part the carbon atoms of disgusting smelling scum or the calcium in the bones of rats that fed off of dead bodies or the water out of the apple we just ate or the proteins of the chicken we consumed? How is that somehow sufficiently dignified, reverent and respectful of God and yet have "ancestors" of the same animals we eat to live is not? Whether we consume them ourselves or they were part of a long term organization/creation process, why is one thing elevating to man (we have dominion over them, top of the food chain etc, all these things for our good) and the other insulting (my grandfather was no monkey! type of thing). Either way we are in debt to lower animals for our existence as well as God who organized it all for our good.

Edited November 3, 2014 by calmoriah

[BCSpace]

I'm of the feeling lately that evolution is so well established that we need to adjust our understanding or interpretation of theology to gibe with that. The other way around doesn't work, unless we can accept that the best of observable science is somehow a lie or fabrication. I think resistance to evolution, at least for me as I used to think of it, is based on a lot of faulty assumptions, or taking some scriptures literally that are meant to be poetic. But I think our theology in particular is well-suited to embrace evolution and gain further insight about creation and existence based on that model.

 

 

As far as I can tell, Evolution doesn't conflict with LDS doctrine on the Creation in any way.  It does conflict with the Global Flood doctrine however.

 

 

Maybe Adam and Eve were in the garden for billions of years or they fell after dinosaurs died out.

 

Maybe Evolution happened just as science says it did and at some point just before the precipitous rise of civilization, the creation was considered finished and two extant homo sapiens, the first to be born with spirit children of God within their bodies as spirits (all previous homo sapiens had 'lesser spirits', preventing them, for example, from attaining the intelligence necessary to advance to civilization), were placed in the Garden in a state of no death to await the Fall. Perhaps they were there for only a few years or decades. Perhaps they were placed there originally as little children who grew up innocent.

 

This of course would necessarily move the traditional date of the Fall back to at least 8000 B.C. or so (Sumer, the first civilization) and one might need to work out some details depending on whether or not the state of no death was localized to the Garden or affected the whole Earth.

 

Personally, I go with an 8000 B.C. Fall date because of civilization, and a local garden state of no death and a local Flood.

 

With a local state of no death, one can postulate the homo sapiens on the outside died out, or because of interbreeding with the new homo sapiens, their children's spirits also were literal spirit children of God. Or they couldn't compete with the newer more intelligent homo sapiens. Or a mix of possibilities.

 

Think about it.  This resolves many issues in addition to being able to swim with LDS doctrine. Two big ones are:

 

1) Don't have to worry about mitochondrial Eve. The actual Adam and Eve in this hypothesis carry her genes.

2) Don't have to worry about the potentially incestuous population of the Earth via the children of just one couple and the genetic problems that go along with that.

 

The doctrinal basis for this starts with the 1931 statement which allows for the possible existence of pre-Adamite races of man and 2 Nephi 2:22 which distinguishes between a creative state and the garden state of no death and implies 'no death' didn't begin until after the creative state.

 

The only thing I really have to bridge is the notion of 'lesser spirits' which were not the literal spirit children of God, within homo sapiens before the garden state. However, this is not unreasonable as we see from the scriptures that spirits of a different type can inhabit other bodies (the evil spirits being forced into a herd of pigs for example).  It's a different direction, but I believe it sets a reasonable precedent.  Am I saying those 'lesser spirits' were those of an extant or previously existing animal?  No, I'm not. But perhaps unintelligent enough to go on for at least a quarter of a million years without developing civilization.

 

In that case, the Fall becomes a type of Uplift; either via a new kind of spirit within or teaching from Heaven or a combination of the two.

Edited November 3, 2014 by BCSpace

[BCSpace]

What is the official position of the church on evolution in your opinion and understanding?

How can you account for a literal Adam and Eve and still beleive in evolution and staying true to LDS doctrine?

And if you can't does the official position of the church pose a problem for the church in light of what seems to be overwhelming evidence that all species, including humans, evolved over a long period of time.

 

You didn't address this question to me, but try me anyway. I believe I have made a good case for Evolution within an LDS doctrinal context on the Creation in my previous post above. Is there anything you think I've missed? Over the decades, I believe I've nailed it down, but I am always looking for my hypothesis to be tested; perhaps I'll be confident enough to publish it one day. First man?  First flesh?  1909 statement? I believe I can address those doctrinally as well.

Edited November 3, 2014 by BCSpace

[MormonFreeThinker]

1st: I think if you do the chronology laid out in the Bible if the dating is accurate at all it put Adam and Eve about 6000 years since the fall. If we want some wiggle room we can say maybe 10,000.

 

Maybe 10,000, or maybe more.

http://www.reasons.org/articles/the-genesis-genealogies

 

 

2nd: I am not sure how that helps. What happened to all the many pre Adamites? Are many of the humans today descended from these non Adamites?

 

Yes, under that theory, Adam is special, Adam is the first human that is a spirit child. 

 

 

3rd: how does this help? How do we get from 7 billion from two (ignoring the Noah problem) in even 10,000 years?

 

There is no Noah problem, Adam is simply our most recent common ancestor. 

 

 

4th: this is your best answer but still does not solve the no death before the fall problem.

 

"No death before the Fall"  for all creation is not official doctrine, Adam and Eve were immortal in the garden of Eden, but it doesn't mean that all other creations were immortal. 

Edited November 3, 2014 by MormonFreeThinker

[Stone holm]

I haven't seen anything about Magic Wand. Maybe you could give us a link again?

When Pope Francis made the statement about evolution and the Big Bang, he also said that God didn't do things with a magic wand, in other words he worked through the laws of nature and science

[3DOP]

When Pope Francis made the statement about evolution and the Big Bang, he also said that God didn't do things with a magic wand, in other words he worked through the laws of nature and science

 

Ah...he uses the same reasoning as those who accuse Catholics of "hocus pocus" (a mockery of the words in Latin which begin "HOC EST", "This is"), because of the Catholic belief that at the words of consecration, the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. Which is the more difficult to believe? That God spoke the worlds into existence? Or that God's mediator, a mere priest of God, using God's words, effects the bread and wine into becoming God? To speak of a "magic wand" to characterize the belief that God's word and will can effect transformations of physical and spiritual realities seems a little demeaning to what those of us who disagree with the pope really believe about the authority of God's word and power.

Edited November 3, 2014 by 3DOP

[thesometimesaint]

I think DNA indicates that we are their descendants.  At least those of us with European and/or Asian blood.  I believe Svante Paabo's studies proved that.  I think the mistake is people thinking that Neanderthals evolved into modern humans.  That did not happen.

 

They were more like our 2nd cousins 3 times removed. Closely related but not descendent.

[Calm]

If there was interbreeding and just one child survived to have children who had children, how can we not be descendants?

[thesometimesaint]

In the same way as my cousins survived and have children, but I'm not a descendent of my cousins.