New Findings in the (Maybe Not So) New World

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, Tsuzuki said:

That is still very far fetched.

Yes, even if the Lord fetched them from afar.  Indeed, most people consider the Great Deluge story to be "far fetched," even though it is a worldwide story, and even though it dovetails nicely with the period of the great Pluvial rains at the end of the last Ice Age.

[PeterPear]

What do you call an elephant that doesn't matter?

An irrelephant.

[PeterPear]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, even if the Lord fetched them from afar.  Indeed, most people consider the Great Deluge story to be "far fetched," even though it is a worldwide story, and even though it dovetails nicely with the period of the great Pluvial rains at the end of the last Ice Age.

Speaking of deluges...

Why were the elephants the last to leave Noah's Ark?

Because they had to pack their trunks.

[CV75]

16 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

 So it leaves a ton of theological wiggle room if one doesn't accept the "whole earth, not just Adam and Eve, fell theory."

In the spirit of wiggle room, one way to look at the various types of human species is that “evolution” is not God’s perfect method but Adam’s (and his posterity’s) trial and error in getting his stewardship right. Finally, in this last dispensation of the current phase (this 7,000-year reckoning of this round of the earth’s temporal continuance), perfection is fast approaching in concert with the Second Coming of the Lord.

The idea goes like this: Adam falls and receives a temporal reckoning, lives in the world awhile, gets translated, and periodically/serially returns again in a subsequent reckoning where nature has taken her course over long periods of time to alter life on earth, mutating it in chance (or in the case of God’s cursing or mankind’s meddling) advancement or degradation and extinction of the species.

This cycle occurs over and over until now. With regards to his children, some generations die off, and others degrade into non-sapiens species, and ours succeeds in preparing for the Millennium (Adam wasn't translated, but actually died this time).

This also allows some wiggle room in the principle behind the likely misunderstood / misinterpreted (and thus rightly disavowed) Adam-God theory: it wasn’t an exalted Father returning over and over to different worlds, but a translated Adam taking on mortality in this one. In each iteration, he remained for sufficient period of time to attempt to plant a new race of faithful, covenant-making progeny before being translated to watch and wait. He is called a god for this reason—the only god of this kind with whom we have to do—and also for his close association with the Son, in which he is held to be an archangel.

So all sorts of things happen over the millions of years and his various attempts.

Edited April 28, 2017 by CV75

[clarkgoble]

8 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, even if the Lord fetched them from afar.  Indeed, most people consider the Great Deluge story to be "far fetched," even though it is a worldwide story, and even though it dovetails nicely with the period of the great Pluvial rains at the end of the last Ice Age.

I think it's the landing in upper Mesopotamia that's the far fetched part - and of course something not in any of our texts. The leaving America, particularly the Carolina's according to Joseph Smith, is plausible especially in a hurricane. A deep total flood is implausible for a wide variety of reasons not the least being extinctions and silt in caves.

Edited April 28, 2017 by clarkgoble

[katherine the great]

Just my 2 cents on the actual article: "This discovery is rewriting our understanding of when humans reached the New World."  I always perk up when I hear this type of statement.  Then I carefully comb through the mountains of evidence that should be presented to support it.  I'm frankly more than underwhelmed in this case.  I don't see any evidence whatsoever that can't be just as easily explained in more likely ways (like a stampede over the remains pushing the rocks into the bones, or natural forces).  It seems like a colossal waste of grant money to me.  No Acheulean or Mousterian stone tools, no lithic flakes, no human remains, no evidence of fire, no evidence of actual butchering.  This should not be called an "archaeological site" because this implies that there is some type of material culture left behind and it really stretches the imagination here.

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

I think it's the landing in upper Mesopotamia that's the far fetched part - and of course something not in any of our texts. The leaving America, particularly the Carolina's according to Joseph Smith, is plausible especially in a hurricane. A deep total flood is implausible for a wide variety of reasons not the least being extinctions and silt in caves.

I wasn't thinking of a deep, total flood which covers the mountains of the world.  I had in mind serious river flooding and storm surges which come inland and lift the boat, then the boat being at sea for quite awhile, finally coming to rest (again via storm surge) in a riverine system and far upriver.  No mountains need be involved, and upper Mesopotamia is mostly flat.   Even if it were southern Mesopotamia, there would have to be some hillock which would appear first and upon which the boat would go aground.  We do not in fact know what is being referred to as Mt Ararat, the current designation having nothing to do with Noah and his boat.

[clarkgoble]

40 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I wasn't thinking of a deep, total flood which covers the mountains of the world.  I had in mind serious river flooding and storm surges which come inland and lift the boat, then the boat being at sea for quite awhile, finally coming to rest (again via storm surge) in a riverine system and far upriver.  No mountains need be involved, and upper Mesopotamia is mostly flat.   Even if it were southern Mesopotamia, there would have to be some hillock which would appear first and upon which the boat would go aground.  We do not in fact know what is being referred to as Mt Ararat, the current designation having nothing to do with Noah and his boat.

Again storm surges for leaving I get. Storm surges for arriving seem more problematic IMO.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Again storm surges for leaving I get. Storm surges for arriving seem more problematic IMO.

I am not talking about small surges, but enormous ones.  If you have not seen video of the modest but extremely destructive ones in Japan which have large ships being run upriver and run aground, then (of course) arrivals will always seem suspect to you.

[clarkgoble]

22 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I am not talking about small surges, but enormous ones.  If you have not seen video of the modest but extremely destructive ones in Japan which have large ships being run upriver and run aground, then (of course) arrivals will always seem suspect to you.

The problem is that the geography of Japan and its proximity to the deep Pacific Ocean is simply radically different than Iraq/Syria and the nature of the Mediterranean or even the Persian Gulf around Kuwait if we allow southern Mesopotamia. That's why it's implausible even if an earthquake happened.

Now if you mean just being run aground by a few yards that's one thing. But the way you are speaking it sounds like you are talking well inland. If you bring up Google maps with the terrain feature enabled you'll see there's no way to really come inland from the Mediterranean. So effectively you're talking the Kuwait area and the Gulf. There are storm surges there but nothing major. The recent climate change is making some reevaluate that in case hurricanes might form that reach that region. The worst case according to scientists is a 4 meter surge. That's nothing compared to the surges in Asia or Australia though. (The cyclone of 1876 in Bengal had 12.2 meter surges) However even in lowland areas like Lousiana (where you can go hundreds of miles and be inches above sea level) you're talking a worst case scenario of 20 - 30 miles across swampy regions. While the Kuwait region is low, it is nothing like Lousiana or Florida. You can see this with flood maps of the area.

Edited April 28, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Calm]

4 hours ago, katherine the great said:

Just my 2 cents on the actual article: "This discovery is rewriting our understanding of when humans reached the New World."  I always perk up when I hear this type of statement.  Then I carefully comb through the mountains of evidence that should be presented to support it.  I'm frankly more than underwhelmed in this case.  I don't see any evidence whatsoever that can't be just as easily explained in more likely ways (like a stampede over the remains pushing the rocks into the bones, or natural forces).  It seems like a colossal waste of grant money to me.  No Acheulean or Mousterian stone tools, no lithic flakes, no human remains, no evidence of fire, no evidence of actual butchering.  This should not be called an "archaeological site" because this implies that there is some type of material culture left behind and it really stretches the imagination here.

Always great to get your input on this stuff.

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, katherine the great said:

Just my 2 cents on the actual article: "This discovery is rewriting our understanding of when humans reached the New World."  I always perk up when I hear this type of statement.  Then I carefully comb through the mountains of evidence that should be presented to support it.  I'm frankly more than underwhelmed in this case.  I don't see any evidence whatsoever that can't be just as easily explained in more likely ways (like a stampede over the remains pushing the rocks into the bones, or natural forces).  It seems like a colossal waste of grant money to me.  No Acheulean or Mousterian stone tools, no lithic flakes, no human remains, no evidence of fire, no evidence of actual butchering.  This should not be called an "archaeological site" because this implies that there is some type of material culture left behind and it really stretches the imagination here.

Your criticisms are on point, and other scientists are raising those very issues.  However, I heard a conversation today on NPR's "Science Friday," which has a podcast and an article accompanying at https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/new-world-could-be-way-older-than-we-thought/ (with photos of artifacts), and it has been published in Nature, https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v544/n7651/full/nature22065.html .  I am reminded of the complaint early on by Francois Bordes and Louis B. Leakey that early paleontologists didn't really know what to look for, and so missed the evidence right in front of them.  It may be hard for us to imagine Denisovans in America at that early date, perhaps later becoming extinct.

[Robert F. Smith]

9 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

The problem is that the geography of Japan and its proximity to the deep Pacific Ocean is simply radically different than Iraq/Syria and the nature of the Mediterranean or even the Persian Gulf around Kuwait if we allow southern Mesopotamia. That's why it's implausible even if an earthquake happened.

Now if you mean just being run aground by a few yards that's one thing. But the way you are speaking it sounds like you are talking well inland.

So, you have not seen the videos of the surging of the tsunamis and typhoons in Japan where large ships were being run upriver for miles, and thus are unaware of what a monster surge might do.  And you likely have no idea what the great Pluvial rains were like.  Am I correct in those assumptions?  One's estimate of plausibility is based on just such knowledge or lack of it.

[clarkgoble]

For one, the pluvial rains after the ice age seem to be the wrong time frame. So I'm not at all convinced that's relevant.

Second, again the geography of Japan is radically different than the geography of the Persian Gulf near Kuwait or the Mediterranean near Syria. I think Syria is just completely out for a wide variety of reasons but the high hills and mountains being the obvious ones. Even assuming a huge hurricane the geography of Kuwait is problematic due to the altitude going up to around 100 feet rather quickly. To get very far inland is dubious. But again, you just can't get surges there the same height as in Japan due to lacking a deep large ocean. The very nature of the Gulf changes what can happen. The worst case scenario by scientists is a 4 meter storm surge.

If you think the geography works for a storm surge dozens of meters high moving boat more than a few miles inland I'm all ears. But appealing to Japan doesn't really tell us much. Japan has extremely deep oceans and a Pacific open all the way to Vancouver. The Persian Gulf is a relatively sheltered area and shallow.

Edited April 28, 2017 by clarkgoble

[cinepro]

21 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

That's so weird to me. When it came out the Orem CostCo had hundreds of copies and they all quickly sold out. It was widely available for sale at BYU.

The only time I've ever heard someone say that was some relatives from small town Alberta. And I more or less said exactly the same thing about faith to them.

All that said, I certainly recognize some people are weak in faith or not ready to hear all things. So I recognize the issues there. But to even imagine someone seeing Rough Stone Rolling as a problem just strikes me as inherently odd.

Believing what they have been taught their entire lives by the Church doesn't make someone "weak in faith."  In fact, it could be argued that the opposite is true.

[cinepro]

14 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, even if the Lord fetched them from afar.  Indeed, most people consider the Great Deluge story to be "far fetched," even though it is a worldwide story, and even though it dovetails nicely with the period of the great Pluvial rains at the end of the last Ice Age.

A bunch of local floods at different times and places doesn't add up to a "Great Deluge".  It just means floods are pretty common in most parts of the world (since people tend to settle near rivers and bodies of water) and became a common part of lore for different people.

And if you're talking about the last "ice age", are you talking about the one that ended about 11,000 years ago?  Because that's way too long ago to have anything to do with Noah, whose place in the Biblical timeline is much later.

It also makes God a liar, because we are told He promised Noah that He wouldn't do it again, and if we're talking about catastrophic local floods, those have continued in the centuries after Noah.

[rongo]

20 minutes ago, cinepro said:

A bunch of local floods at different times and places doesn't add up to a "Great Deluge".  It just means floods are pretty common in most parts of the world (since people tend to settle near rivers and bodies of water) and became a common part of lore for different people.

And if you're talking about the last "ice age", are you talking about the one that ended about 11,000 years ago?  Because that's way too long ago to have anything to do with Noah, whose place in the Biblical timeline is much later.

It also makes God a liar, because we are told He promised Noah that He wouldn't do it again, and if we're talking about catastrophic local floods, those have continued in the centuries after Noah.

I know that some (by no means the majority of active members. Not even close) are comfortable believing that the Flood was a myth, and that it is unimportant if it didn't really happen. But, the spinning and contorting with various local flood theories is akin to horses/tapirs, to me. 

There are really good reasons why absolutely everything that has ever appeared in Church magazines and in talks by the Brethren is in complete agreement with a global flood, and why a Gospel Topics essay "nuancing" the Flood is extremely unlikely. Some have to do with the scriptures. Others have to do with putting the genie back into the bottle if you open that floodgate. 

I know that literal interpretation of scriptures really bothers some people in the Church, but the alternative sucks the vitality out of Mormonism and the Restoration. Once we start, as a church, trying to reconcile current science with the scriptures by jettisoning literal belief, we can turn the lights off and go home. The Flood is one front, literal historical figures and people, places, and events are another. The Resurrection is the biggest of all.

[clarkgoble]

53 minutes ago, cinepro said:

Believing what they have been taught their entire lives by the Church doesn't make someone "weak in faith."  In fact, it could be argued that the opposite is true.

That's not what I meant by weak in faith. There are some people who struggle for a variety of reasons. Throw something they're ill prepared for at them at such times and they'll almost certainly fall away.

My own view is that the problem is that the church has bent over backwards for such people for nearly a century all the while praising the trials of faith and struggles of 19th century Mormons who persisted. I think the balance was out of whack. I don't favor a "let the chips fall as they will" strategy but think the inoculation approach of having faithful people write explanations on these matters is best. Yes some people will fall away. But a person who stays in church without faith or a testimony isn't really helping them IMO.

[clarkgoble]

25 minutes ago, rongo said:

I know that some (by no means the majority of active members. Not even close) are comfortable believing that the Flood was a myth, and that it is unimportant if it didn't really happen. But, the spinning and contorting with various local flood theories is akin to horses/tapirs, to me. 

I think this is a false dichotomy in that a local flood theology isn't saying it was a myth. But you're right it's akin to horse/tapirs in that it requires we question our cultural expectations.

[katherine the great]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

Always great to get your input on this stuff.

Thanks Calm.  I just finished up teaching the sections on archaic Homo sapiens and early modern Homo sapiens so this stuff is on my mind.

[katherine the great]

2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Your criticisms are on point, and other scientists are raising those very issues.  However, I heard a conversation today on NPR's "Science Friday," which has a podcast and an article accompanying at https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/new-world-could-be-way-older-than-we-thought/ (with photos of artifacts), and it has been published in Nature, https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v544/n7651/full/nature22065.html .  I am reminded of the complaint early on by Francois Bordes and Louis B. Leakey that early paleontologists didn't really know what to look for, and so missed the evidence right in front of them.  It may be hard for us to imagine Denisovans in America at that early date, perhaps later becoming extinct.

I love the times when the unexpected shows up in paleoanthropology (like Homo floresiensis and Denisovans)!  However, this kind of thing makes me crazy.  I read the article and looked at all of the evidence and I still say that there is really no evidence.  The first link above contained this statement: "These early human arrivals may have been Homo erectus, Neanderthals, or Denisovans; we can’t know, because no hominid bones were recovered at the site. But they likely weren’t Homo sapiens. Our species had yet to leave Africa."  As an anthropologist, I find this statement fraught with contradictions.  To our knowledge, modern Homo sapiens had not left Africa at this time.  I agree 100%. However, to our knowledge, Neanderthal never made it further east than Central Asia, Denisovans stayed in Asia and no human of any kind ever set foot in the New World before 20-30 kya or so.  If these tiny marks were really made by humans, it is really no less likely that they were made by our species than an archaic species. I do admit that it would be oh-so-awesome to find solid evidence that these earlier humans ventured as far as the New World!  But, if that evidence is out there, they haven't found it yet.  I'm surprised that Tim White was so restrained in his criticism.  The way he unleashed on Lee Berger for his discovery of Homo naledi is legendary, and naledi had over 1250 fossil specimens.  Maybe he's just tired of being a jerk. 

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, cinepro said:

A bunch of local floods at different times and places doesn't add up to a "Great Deluge".  It just means floods are pretty common in most parts of the world (since people tend to settle near rivers and bodies of water) and became a common part of lore for different people.

And if you're talking about the last "ice age", are you talking about the one that ended about 11,000 years ago?  Because that's way too long ago to have anything to do with Noah, whose place in the Biblical timeline is much later.

It also makes God a liar, because we are told He promised Noah that He wouldn't do it again, and if we're talking about catastrophic local floods, those have continued in the centuries after Noah.

The great Pluvial rains at the end of the last Ice Age are considered by many anthropologists to have been the source of worldwide flood myths.  The biblical story is merely a late variant and does not need to be taken literally (quite aside from the jumble of variant biblical chronologies).  The huge regional floods caused by those Pluvial rains were extraordinary, and we have experienced nothing like them since.  The quickly melting ice caused worldwide flooding, freak storm surges, and permanent raising of coastlines.

The Great Deluge story doesn't make God a liar anymore than the NT parables make Jesus a liar.

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The problem is that the geography of Japan and its proximity to the deep Pacific Ocean is simply radically different than Iraq/Syria and the nature of the Mediterranean or even the Persian Gulf around Kuwait if we allow southern Mesopotamia. That's why it's implausible even if an earthquake happened.

Now if you mean just being run aground by a few yards that's one thing. But the way you are speaking it sounds like you are talking well inland. If you bring up Google maps with the terrain feature enabled you'll see there's no way to really come inland from the Mediterranean. So effectively you're talking the Kuwait area and the Gulf. There are storm surges there but nothing major. The recent climate change is making some reevaluate that in case hurricanes might form that reach that region. The worst case according to scientists is a 4 meter surge. That's nothing compared to the surges in Asia or Australia though. (The cyclone of 1876 in Bengal had 12.2 meter surges) However even in lowland areas like Lousiana (where you can go hundreds of miles and be inches above sea level) you're talking a worst case scenario of 20 - 30 miles across swampy regions. While the Kuwait region is low, it is nothing like Lousiana or Florida. You can see this with flood maps of the area.

You may note that I did not mention the Mediterranean or earthquakes, so don't understand why you mention them.  You do not understand the catastrophic nature of the great Pluvial rains, and so are going by modern surges or one kind or another which are minuscule in comparison.  In addition, the ancient coastline of southern Mesopotamia was quite different than today.

[cinepro]

1 hour ago, rongo said:

There are really good reasons why absolutely everything that has ever appeared in Church magazines and in talks by the Brethren is in complete agreement with a global flood, and why a Gospel Topics essay "nuancing" the Flood is extremely unlikely. Some have to do with the scriptures. Others have to do with putting the genie back into the bottle if you open that floodgate.

What are you talking about, Rongo?  The Church published an essay explaining why the "local" flood theory is perfectly logical and acceptable for members to believe.  The FAIR article on the "Flood" has several references to it:

https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Mormonism_and_science/Global_or_local_Flood

Oh, wait, I take that back.  That's a Sunstone article, not an essay by the Church.

 

[CV75]

2 hours ago, rongo said:

I know that some (by no means the majority of active members. Not even close) are comfortable believing that the Flood was a myth, and that it is unimportant if it didn't really happen. But, the spinning and contorting with various local flood theories is akin to horses/tapirs, to me. 

There are really good reasons why absolutely everything that has ever appeared in Church magazines and in talks by the Brethren is in complete agreement with a global flood, and why a Gospel Topics essay "nuancing" the Flood is extremely unlikely. Some have to do with the scriptures. Others have to do with putting the genie back into the bottle if you open that floodgate. 

I know that literal interpretation of scriptures really bothers some people in the Church, but the alternative sucks the vitality out of Mormonism and the Restoration. Once we start, as a church, trying to reconcile current science with the scriptures by jettisoning literal belief, we can turn the lights off and go home. The Flood is one front, literal historical figures and people, places, and events are another. The Resurrection is the biggest of all.

We are speaking of spiritual concepts here, and spirituality has to do with the meaning, not the factualness, of things. For example, in the temple children are sealed to parents and are as though they had always been born in the covenant. When I was sealed to mine as an adult, I miraculously felt as though I had always been sealed to them; I knew and know what it is like to be born in the covenant. The atonement makes this possible: it changes the past, or the meaning of the past, and thus changes the future, which is the cast of the malleable mold of the past. The miracle of becoming like Christ proceeds just as though things happened as the canon says they did, and for all we know, the meaning remains the same.

Though your sins may be as scarlet and crimson, they shall be as white as snow, or wool, and the Lord remembers them no more, just as if He never knew them (and just as he professes, “I never knew you.” -- Matthew 7:23)

I think that what is known of things past, present and future (the truth, per the D&C 93 description) is not so much factual as the meaning it contributes to becoming like God. As sin loses its meaning to, or its power over, us in the light of virtue, everything changes for the better. I think this has less to do with the relationship between knowledge (or truth) and agency and more to do with the very nature of knowledge—the more we have, the more agency we have, and they are virtually the same thing (also per D&C 93), or two aspects of the same process, just as faith and knowledge are.

God knows all things, or everything it takes to be God, which includes not remembering all the things that would have otherwise gotten in His way, including a dependency on literal interpretations and facts from the past that have nothing to do with being godly.