Evidentially I'm descended from Adam

[Johnnie Cake]

Yeah I know in another post I said good bye but I have no where else to share this. 

Today my daughter stopped by to share some amazing news. She has evidently traced my ancestry back to the very first human beings, Adam & Eve 6,000 years ago. 

She was effervescent when she told my wife and I the great news. 

Knowing that nearing 3% of my DNA is descended from my Neanderthal ancestors I asked her if she was going to continue her research so that our 40,000 year old Neanderthal ancestors might also receive their blessings?  She looked at me like I had two heads and said there weren't any humans before Adam and Eve. I feel that I've failed as a father. Why are so many so afraid of knowing the truth

Edited July 19, 2016 by Johnnie Cake

[JLHPROF]

1 minute ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Yeah I know in another post I said good bye but I have no where else to share this. 

Today my daughter stopped by to share some amazing news. She has evidently traced my ancestry back to the very first human beings, Adam & Eve 6,000 years ago. 

She was effervescent when she told my wife and I the great news. 

Knowing that nearing 3% of my DNA is descended from my Neanderthal ancestors I asked her if she was going to continue her research so that our 40,000 year old Neanderthal ancestors might also receive their blessings?  She looked at me like I had too heads. I feel that I've failed as a father. Why are so many so afraid of knowing the truth

Maybe the truth isn't what you think it is.
 

[BCSpace]

9 minutes ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Yeah I know in another post I said good bye but I have no where else to share this. 

Today my daughter stopped by to share some amazing news. She has evidently traced my ancestry back to the very first human beings, Adam & Eve 6,000 years ago. 

She was effervescent when she told my wife and I the great news. 

Knowing that nearing 3% of my DNA is descended from my Neanderthal ancestors I asked her if she was going to continue her research so that our 40,000 year old Neanderthal ancestors might also receive their blessings?  She looked at me like I had too heads. I feel that I've failed as a father. Why are so many so afraid of knowing the truth

You need to learn how LDS doctrine is pro-evolution.  I have many posts on the subject...

[Storm Rider]

26 minutes ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Yeah I know in another post I said good bye but I have no where else to share this. 

Today my daughter stopped by to share some amazing news. She has evidently traced my ancestry back to the very first human beings, Adam & Eve 6,000 years ago. 

She was effervescent when she told my wife and I the great news. 

Knowing that nearing 3% of my DNA is descended from my Neanderthal ancestors I asked her if she was going to continue her research so that our 40,000 year old Neanderthal ancestors might also receive their blessings?  She looked at me like I had two heads and said there weren't any humans before Adam and Eve. I feel that I've failed as a father. Why are so many so afraid of knowing the truth

Such a small mind for such a towering ego.  Johnnie, oh, I give up.  Good luck with that high horse and may God bless your daughter and protect her from curmudgeons that only think they know so much more than they do.  May she always have a joy of learning, may she continue to grow and learn, may she revel in each new discovery in her life.  May you learn to smile and see her for who she is and keep your judgments to yourself.  

In blindness man begins to think he is enlightened.  Pride is never greater than when found in total darkness. 

[Johnnie Cake]

54 minutes ago, Storm Rider said:

Such a small mind for such a towering ego.  Johnnie, oh, I give up.  Good luck with that high horse and may God bless your daughter and protect her from curmudgeons that only think they know so much more than they do.  May she always have a joy of learning, may she continue to grow and learn, may she revel in each new discovery in her life.  May you learn to smile and see her for who she is and keep your judgments to yourself.  

In blindness man begins to think he is enlightened.  Pride is never greater than when found in total darkness. 

Was I just rebuked?  So you take umbridge with my approach...but what in the science do you disagree with?

Edited July 19, 2016 by Johnnie Cake

[TheSkepticChristian]

1 hour ago, BCSpace said:

You need to learn how LDS doctrine is pro-evolution.  I have many posts on the subject...

LDS doctrine is pro-evolution when you see it as pro-evolution, it is all interpretation. It is not hard to get creative. 

[VideoGameJunkie]

Do Neanderthals need temple work or are they more like animals who don't need temple work?

[waveslider]

2 hours ago, BCSpace said:

You need to learn how LDS doctrine is pro-evolution.  I have many posts on the subject...

How is it pro Evolution? I thought that to believe the evolutionary process you had to believe that species came to be by chance, and that it couldn't have possibly been controlled in any type of way to have us created in God's image. Am I wrong in this thinking? Or is that Evolution would always end up with the same result of having human beings evolve the same way by chance, each and every time? I always thought that LDS doctrine, as far as I have ever learned as a life long member, teaches that God is both omniscient and omnipotent, meaning nothing can happen by chance. If random chance happened then that would mean that God could be caught by surprise, therefore He couldn't be omniscient if he couldn't know the outcome before hand.

[Calm]

http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/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 souls 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, Apr. 7, 1931].

Bibliography

 

[thesometimesaint]

wave:

Evolution isn't chance.

SEE

 

Edited July 19, 2016 by thesometimesaint

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, VideoGameJunkie said:

Do Neanderthals need temple work or are they more like animals who don't need temple work?

Good question.  I surmise that if they were created capable of committing sin, then they require redemption/atonement.  If not, then they don't.  We haven't been told anything about this, and it is, to coin a phrase, "above our pay grade".  Their salvation, if it is needed, is out of our responsibility.

[TheSkepticChristian]

50 minutes ago, Calm said:

The scriptures tell why man was created, but they do not tell how

"Evolution does not require a God, but it does not rule one out either. In that respect, it is no different from almost all other fields of interest...biochemistry, farming, engineering, plumbing, art, law, and so forth"

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA602.html

Edited July 19, 2016 by TheSkepticChristian

[bcuzbcuz]

4 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

Maybe the truth isn't what you think it is.
 

Cute. But do you have anything other than opinion to explain what the truth might be?

[UtahTexan]

5 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Was I just rebuked?  So you take umbridge with my approach...but what in the science do you disagree with?

The science that said the earth was flat.....oh wait...the definitive science that said the sun revolves around the earth....or the science that claimed there are nine planets.....or the science that said ulcers are caused by stress.....etc etc etc......

[bcuzbcuz]

7 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Yeah I know in another post I said good bye but I have no where else to share this. 

Today my daughter stopped by to share some amazing news. She has evidently traced my ancestry back to the very first human beings, Adam & Eve 6,000 years ago. 

She was effervescent when she told my wife and I the great news. 

Knowing that nearing 3% of my DNA is descended from my Neanderthal ancestors I asked her if she was going to continue her research so that our 40,000 year old Neanderthal ancestors might also receive their blessings?  She looked at me like I had two heads and said there weren't any humans before Adam and Eve. I feel that I've failed as a father. Why are so many so afraid of knowing the truth

I remember a similar feeling when a relative made a statement so blantantly rasist that I blushed and reddened with a fury that someone I considered learned and experienced could state something so utterly stupid, biased and judgemental. There is that dominating feeling of "Do I know you?"

Believing in Adam and Eve as the first human beings, rejects and denies the simple evidence of each and every person's trail of DNA. We European have slight amounts of Neanderthal DNA. We Europeans have a DNA trail that leads back to northern Africa....and that trail has nothing to do with the bottleneck of DNA that would have arisen from a global flood of Noah and his three sons and their wives. Our DNA shows no bottleneck that would have arisen from us all being the children of Adam and Eve.

We Europeans can all trace our DNA back to Africa from roughly 70,000 years ago. That means that every one of us who can trace their DNA lineage will find that we are, for the most part, not related back to the Middle East, but to Africa. All we Europeans are black. Not the blood of Cain, nor the blood of Ham, or any of that nonsense, but African from the rift valley of the Eastern horn of Africa. 

[jkwilliams]

8 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Yeah I know in another post I said good bye but I have no where else to share this. 

Today my daughter stopped by to share some amazing news. She has evidently traced my ancestry back to the very first human beings, Adam & Eve 6,000 years ago. 

She was effervescent when she told my wife and I the great news. 

Knowing that nearing 3% of my DNA is descended from my Neanderthal ancestors I asked her if she was going to continue her research so that our 40,000 year old Neanderthal ancestors might also receive their blessings?  She looked at me like I had two heads and said there weren't any humans before Adam and Eve. I feel that I've failed as a father. Why are so many so afraid of knowing the truth

I thought you were going on hiatus.

[Storm Rider]

7 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Was I just rebuked?  So you take umbridge with my approach...but what in the science do you disagree with?

Johnnie, I don't disagree with the science at all, but your approach to what you think is truth or science.  Since when was evolution deemed incompatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ?  I have degrees in Chemistry and Finance and have never had a problem understanding the reality of theory of Evolution or the importance and truth of the Gospel.  

Please go easy on your daughter.  I have been a genealogist for 16 years and I have gone back further than 1100 A.D. If she has put in the effort the work hard enough to go back further than be joyful for her accomplishment. 

I still believe in a first man and that everything else prior to that being was not man.  The ape-hominid divergence remains a sticking point in the theory of evolution.  Archaeology has the older bones, but nothing that definitively ties humans and apes to a specific common ancestor; I find that interesting if not strange.  If the topic was Mormonism rather than Evolution it would be tossed to the scholastic curb for a complete lack of evidence.  Strange how we create one standard for one theory and another standard for other things.  Humans do that a lot and have a very difficult time using the same standard for all things.   

[Atheist Mormon]

9 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

Maybe the truth isn't what you think it is.
 

A life, which depends on "maybe's", "perhaps" or "personal revelations", would be nothing short of HELL for me, when I know I can get the most basic answers withing half mile walk into Museum of Natural Science.

[Kevin Christensen]

It's easy enough to point out the possibilities in our own scriptures:

Quote

The book of Moses tells of multitudes of Adam’s children born before Cain and Abel (Moses 5:12, 16). They had followed Satan by choice and were disqualified as sons of God. We read in Moses: “And unto thy brethren have I . . . given commandment, that they . . . should choose me, their Father. . . . But behold, their sins shall be upon the heads of their fathers; Satan shall be their father.” (Moses 7:33, 37.) Those who accepted the covenant were called sons of God and also the sons of Adam: “And this is the genealogy of the sons of Adam, who was the son of God.” (Moses 6:22.) Only those qualify as Bene-Adam who are still in the covenant. Bene-Adam, however, is the normal Jewish word for human beings. The Septuagint considers Adam a proper noun from Genesis 2:16 on; the Vulgate from 2:19 on; Adam appears for the first time as a proper noun in the standard Hebrew Bible only after Genesis 4:25. In that text twenty-two of the twenty-seven occurrences of the name are accompanied by the article: “the man.” They are not proper names. In Genesis, E. Lussier concludes that Adam has four senses:

1. “Man,” a particular man, the first man (sixteen times).

2. The first husband (nine times).

3. Generic, “mankind” (two times).

4. As a proper name—once!⁴⁴

So we might well ask: What about those people who lived before Cain and Abel? What about those who disappeared from sight? What about those who were not even warned of the Flood? What about those many, many who visited the earth as resurrected beings? What about the Watchers? What about the sons of God who should not marry the daughters of men, and vice versa? And what about the giants they begot when they did marry? What about the comings and goings of Enoch’s day between the worlds? What about his own status as “a wild man, . . . a strange thing in the land”? (Moses 6:38.) Who were his people, living in a distant land of righteousness, who never appear on the scene? What about the Three Nephites, whose condition so puzzles Moroni, until he is told that they are neither mortal nor immortal? (Mormon 8:10—11.) What about the creatures we do not see around us? What about the Cainites? What about the nations among whom Noah will have surviving progeny?

Speaking of Noah, God promised Enoch “that he [God] would call upon the children of Noah; and he sent forth an unalterable decree, that a remnant of his seed [Enoch’s through Noah] should always be found among all nations, while the earth should stand; and the Lord said: Blessed is he through whose seed Messiah shall come.” (Moses 7:51—53.) Methuselah boasted about his line as something special. (Moses 8:2—3.) Why special if it included the whole human race? These blessings have no meaning if all the people of the earth and all the nations are the seed of Noah and Enoch. What other line could the Messiah come through? Well, there were humans who were not invited by Enoch’s preaching—not included among the residue of people not entering Enoch’s city. They were “the residue of the people which were the sons of Adam; and they were a mixture of all the seed of Adam save it was the seed of Cain, for the seed of Cain . . . had not place among them.” (Moses 7:22.)

One thing we should understand is that the image of the pre-hominid is not a discovery of modem science any more than the idea of evolution is. Primitive man is the easiest thing in the world to imagine. Just look at your neighbor. The Greeks were fascinated with him, and so were the Middle Ages. Albrecht Altdorfer’s painting “Der Wilde Mann,” done in the early sixteenth century, showing a real ape-man at home with his family, is as good as anything H. F. Osborne ever turned out. Albrecht Dürer also was intrigued by the subject. Herbert Spencer had only to lean back in his armchair to turn out the First Principles. I have never found students the least hesitant to write papers on “A Day in the Life of Primitive Man.” They know all about it. They don’t have to look up a thing.

 

Quote

Do not begrudge existence to creatures that looked like men long, long ago, nor deny them a place in God’s affection or even a right to exaltation—for our scriptures allow them such. Nor am I overly concerned as to just when they might have lived, for their world is not our world. They have all gone away long before our people ever appeared. God assigned them their proper times and functions, as he has given me mine—a full-time job that admonishes me to remember his words to the overly eager Moses: “For mine own purpose have I made these things. Here is wisdom and it remaineth in me.” (Moses 1:31.) It is Adam as my own parent who concerns me. When he walks onto the stage, then and only then the play begins. He opens a book and starts calling out names. They are the sons of Adam, who also qualify as sons of God, Adam himself being a son of God. This is the book of remembrance from which many have been blotted out. They have fallen away, refused to choose God as their father, and by so doing were registered in Satan’s camp. “Satan shall be their father, and misery shall be their doom.” (Moses 7:37.) Can we call them sons of Adam, bene-Adam, human beings proper? The representative Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans, to name only the classic civilizations of old, each fancied themselves to be beings of a higher nature, nearer to gods than others who inhabited the land with them (and before them), or who dwelt in other lands. And yet they did not deny humanity to them.

Adam becomes Adam, a hominid becomes a man, when he starts keeping a record. What kind of record? A record of his ancestors—the family line that sets him off from all other creatures. Such records begin very early, to judge by the fabulous genealogic knowledge of the Australian aborigines (A. P. Elkin) or the most “primiitive” Africans (L. Frobenius). Even written records go back to ages lost in the mists of time—the Azilian pebbles, the marking of arrows, and the identity of individuals in their relationships with each other.⁴⁸ Whether former speculation about life on other worlds is now to be upgraded to life from other worlds remains to be seen, but Adam is wonderful enough without that. That gap between the record keeper and all the other creatures we know anything about is so unimaginably enormous and yet so neat and abrupt that we can only be dealing with another sort of being, a quantum leap from one world to another. Here is something not derivative from anything that has gone before on the local scene, even though they all share the same atoms.

http://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=997

Nibley, Before Adam.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[Gray]

9 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Yeah I know in another post I said good bye but I have no where else to share this. 

Today my daughter stopped by to share some amazing news. She has evidently traced my ancestry back to the very first human beings, Adam & Eve 6,000 years ago. 

She was effervescent when she told my wife and I the great news. 

Knowing that nearing 3% of my DNA is descended from my Neanderthal ancestors I asked her if she was going to continue her research so that our 40,000 year old Neanderthal ancestors might also receive their blessings?  She looked at me like I had two heads and said there weren't any humans before Adam and Eve. I feel that I've failed as a father. Why are so many so afraid of knowing the truth

Adam just means "man". He's a symbol. So yes, you are a part of the family of Adam (in other words, humanity). 

[Johnnie Cake]

1 hour ago, Storm Rider said:

Johnnie, I don't disagree with the science at all, but your approach to what you think is truth or science.  Since when was evolution deemed incompatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ?  I have degrees in Chemistry and Finance and have never had a problem understanding the reality of theory of Evolution or the importance and truth of the Gospel.  

Please go easy on your daughter.  I have been a genealogist for 16 years and I have gone back further than 1100 A.D. If she has put in the effort the work hard enough to go back further than be joyful for her accomplishment. 

I still believe in a first man and that everything else prior to that being was not man.  The ape-hominid divergence remains a sticking point in the theory of evolution.  Archaeology has the older bones, but nothing that definitively ties humans and apes to a specific common ancestor; I find that interesting if not strange.  If the topic was Mormonism rather than Evolution it would be tossed to the scholastic curb for a complete lack of evidence.  Strange how we create one standard for one theory and another standard for other things.  Humans do that a lot and have a very difficult time using the same standard for all things.   

The rebuke was appropriate...but please try to understand that I used poetic license and distilled down the conversation to illicit the most impact on this post...I was very appreciative for her work, was loving and kind and  broached the subject of my DNA in a loving and questioning manner...but thank you for your comments...she was not hurt by my questions nor did she shed any tears...she merely responded with a I don't know

[Johnnie Cake]

3 hours ago, CountryBoy said:

The science that said the earth was flat.....oh wait...the definitive science that said the sun revolves around the earth....or the science that claimed there are nine planets.....or the science that said ulcers are caused by stress.....etc etc etc......

With all due respect...it was actually science that dispelled these false human notions that were held by the religions of the day...Ever hear of Galileo and his run in with the Catholic church? I hope you are not anti science CountryBoy for every advancement we enjoy in our lives today came through science and a questioning human mind seeking answers to questions.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Johnnie Cake

[JLHPROF]

2 hours ago, Atheist Mormon said:

A life, which depends on "maybe's", "perhaps" or "personal revelations", would be nothing short of HELL for me, when I know I can get the most basic answers withing half mile walk into Museum of Natural Science.

Of course - because you trust man more than God.
Man's understanding of the world may yet prove to be wrong as it has many times in the past.
God on the other hand...

[thesometimesaint]

9 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

Of course - because you trust man more than God.
Man's understanding of the world may yet prove to be wrong as it has many times in the past.
God on the other hand...

I have no problems with God. I do have problems with some of those that claim to speak for him.

[thesometimesaint]

4 hours ago, CountryBoy said:

The science that said the earth was flat.....oh wait...the definitive science that said the sun revolves around the earth....or the science that claimed there are nine planets.....or the science that said ulcers are caused by stress.....etc etc etc......

It wasn't science that claimed those things. Your first 3 is the Christian Bible.

BTW. Science is always tentative. It is subject to correction based not on someone God, but on the evidence.