I don't believe in Evolution because No Death before the Fall is in the scriptures

[SamuelTheLamanite]

6 minutes ago, Calm said:

Has this been mentioned?....

I am open to the possibility of Fast animal Evolution after the Fall. Yes I agree the scriptures don't say how man was created, but they say there was no human death, and that Adam was the first flesh. 

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

Yes, leaders make mistakes, but the mistakes are usually outside authoritative sources. If authoritative sources have many mistakes then why would we even need them or trust them?

and like I told Clark "Again, it was probably Satan. The scripture teach Satan has power. The only safe thing is what the church today considers as authoritative "

You like to equivocate a great deal, which is mighty convenient when faced with your own confusion and the instability of your views.  Then there is always the blame it on Lucifer routine.  Another mighty convenient ploy.  But those are cop-outs, Samuel.  Just substitutes for real arguments, which you don't have.

[Calm]

"Organic evolution is the honest result of capable people trying to explain the evidence to the best of their ability. From my limited study of the subject I would say that the physical evidence supporting the theory is considerable from a scientific viewpoint, [but] I’d be just as content to find out that God stirred up some dirt and water and out stepped Adam, ready to occupy the Garden of Eden. The only important thing is that God did it. I might say in that regard that in my mind the theory of evolution has to include a notion that the dice have been loaded from the beginning in favor of more complex life forms. In my mind, God is behind it all whether we evolved or not."

Henry Eyring

http://eyring.hplx.net/Eyring/faq/evolution/EyringReflections.html

Edited August 31, 2017 by Calm

[ttribe]

3 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

He has a testimony of "No Death", but his solution to the conflict might  be wrong.

Again, it was probably Satan. The scripture teach Satan has power. The only safe thing is what the church today considers as authoritative. 

Another argument of convenience...if you can't explain a problem in a teaching just blame it on Satan! I remember someone like that...

[Calm]

1910 Official statement:

"Origin of Man.-- "In just what manner did the mortal bodies of Adam and Eve come into existence on this earth?" This question comes from several High Priests' quorums.

Of course, all are familiar with the statements in Genesis 1: 26-27; 2: 7; also in the Book of Moses, Pearl of Great Price, 2: 27; and in the Book of Abraham 5: 7. The latter statement reads: "And the Gods formed man from the dust of the ground, and took his spirit (that is, the man's spirit) and put it into him; and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul."

These are the authentic statements of the scriptures, ancient and modern, and it is best to rest with these, until the Lord shall see fit to give more light on the subject. Whether the mortal bodies of man evolved in natural processes to present perfection, through the direction and power of God; whether the first parents of our generations, Adam and Eve, were transplanted from another sphere, with immortal tabernacles, which became corrupted through sin and the partaking of natural foods, in the process of time; whether they were born here in mortality, as other mortals have been, are questions not fully answered in the revealed word of God..."

http://eyring.hplx.net/Eyring/faq/evolution/ImpEra1910.html

[Calm]

Published by the Church:

"Life and Death Before Man's Advent

According to the conception of geologists the earth passed through ages of preparation, to us unmeasured and immeasurable, during which countless generations of plants and animals existed in great variety and profusion and gave in part the very substance of their bodies to help form certain strata which are still existent as such. [This was written before the introduction of radioactive isotope dating techniques.]

The oldest, that is to say the earliest, rocks thus far identified in land masses reveal the fossilized remains of once living organisms, plant and animal. The coal strata, upon which the world of industry so largely depends, are essentially but highly compressed and chemically changed vegetable substance. The whole series of chalk deposits and many of our deep-sea limestones contain the skeletal remains of animals. These lived and died, age after age, while the earth was yet unfit for human habitation.

From the Simple to the Complex

From the fossil remains of plants and animals found in the rocks the scientist points to a very definite order in the sequence of life embodiment, for the older rocks, the earlier formations, reveal to us organisms of simplest structure only, whether of plants or animals. These primitive species were aquatic; land forms were of later development. Some of these simpler forms of life have persisted until the present time, though with great variation as the result of changing environment.

Geologists say that these very simple forms of plant and animal bodies were succeeded by others more complicated; and in the indestructible record of the rocks they read the story of advancing life from the simple to the more complex, from the single-celled protozoan to the highest animals, from the marine algae to the advanced types of flowering plant -- to the apple-tree, the rose, and the oak.

What a fascinating story is inscribed upon the stony pages of the earth's crust! The geologists, who through long and patient effort has learned at least a little of the language in which these truths are written, finds the pages illustrated with pictures, which for fidelity of detail excel the best efforts of our modern engravers, lithographers and half-tone artists. The pictures in the rocks are the originals, the rest at best but copies.

In due course came the crowning work of this creative sequence, the advent of man! Concerning this all-important event we are told that scientists and theologians are at hopeless and irreconcilable variance. I regard the assumption or claim, whichever it be, as an exaggeration. Discrepancies that trouble us now will diminish as our knowledge of pertinent facts is extended. The creator has made record in the rocks for man to decipher; but He has also spoken directly regarding the main stages of progress by which the earth has been brought to be what it is. The accounts can not be fundamentally opposed; one can not contradict the other; though man's interpretation of either may be seriously at fault."

http://eyring.hplx.net/Eyring/faq/evolution/Talmage1931.html

"Address Delivered in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Utah Sunday, August 9, 1931

[Originally published in the Deseret News, Nov. 21, 1931; subsequently published as a pamphlet by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1931; later published in The Instructor, vol. 100, no. 12 (Dec. 1965), pg. 474-477; continued in vol. 101, no. 1 (Jan. 1966), pg. 9-15. This is a transcription of the 1931 pamphlet.]"

Edited August 31, 2017 by Calm

[clarkgoble]

3 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

Yes, leaders make mistakes, but the mistakes are usually outside authoritative sources. If authoritative sources have many mistakes then why would we even need them or trust them?

and like I told Clark "Again, it was probably Satan. The scripture teach Satan has power. The only safe thing is what the church today considers as authoritative "

If the manuals and Journal of Discourses could have been magically changed by Satan how do you know he didn't rewrite Mormon Doctrine and those manuals you are appealing to? Seems pretty likely from my view that you're being deceived by Satan into believing Young Earth Creationism. Much more likely than God trying to deceive people. After all it's Satan, not God, who is the deceiver. In fact I bet he changed your scriptures so they read different from the rest of our scriptures. He seems to be targeting you since the rest of us seem to be active Mormons who reject your Young Earth Creationism. Sounds pretty likely to me your library has been corrupted.

Edited August 31, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Robert F. Smith]

15 minutes ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

I am open to the possibility of Fast animal Evolution after the Fall. Yes I agree the scriptures don't say how man was created, but they say there was no human death, and that Adam was the first flesh. 

So you take Gen 1, Moses 2, and Abr 4 as spiritual creation only, which entirely removes the day-sequence liturgy from actual creation (which does not accord with LDS esoterica), and which likewise removes any need for a foreshortened creation period.  This likewise leads to the seven thousand years of D&C 77:6-7 applying only to the "temporal existence" or "continuance" of Earth after the Fall, and says nothing about what preceded that -- nor how long it took -- which is why I quoted Joseph Smith on his view that the Earth had been around for at least 2.55 billion years.  You make the Garden of Eden to have included the whole Earth, while Scripture plainly has it in a very discrete temenos east of Eden, not far from Adam-ondi-Ahman.

The Hebrew Bible does not require a short creation period in any case, aside from being a fully liturgical text and not a history or science text.  Quite aside from the fact that some parts of the Genesis text must really be read as sexagesimal, and not decimal.

[blueglass]

Samuel, just send a DNA sample to 23andme and discover what % of your DNA is related to neanderthal.  Changes were made to the 2013 Bible dictionary entry on the fall of man which overthrows Nelson's gen conference talk.  The book of Mormon essay on DNA approved by the first pres and q12 also overthrows Nelson's views as an evolution-denier.   Yes that means that Nelson himself signed off on a document which invalidated the pseudoscience of his own GC talk.

[CV75]

13 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

No Death Before the Fall though argues no death on earth. If the Garden of Eden wasn't on earth but was a terrestrial world then it's irrelevant what was going on in the garden. The alternative view is that Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden but that the garden was the same as it ever was. Adam and Eve were then put on our telestial world which was already in progress.

There are compelling reasons to think this by the way if you think to your movement in the temple. (This is more obvious in live sessions at the SLC temple or those temples that use multiple rooms with video like the Cardston temple)

The other compelling reason to think Eden still the way it was are scriptures about eating of the fruit such as Rev 2:7. There is a tradition that spirits awaiting the resurrection are in paradise. (See 2 Ne 9:13 - although this is a Jewish notion and likely the third heaven Paul talks of in 2 Cor 12:2-4 -- Rev 2-3 has interspersion where each church represents one of the seven levels in heaven along with typical merkabah practices such as eating the fruit)

The idea of the fall as a fall from a heavenly place still present is in Ezekiel's allusion for the King of Tyre as well. (Ezek 28:1-17 "You were in Eden, the garden of God;...So I have struck you down from the mountain of God, and I have destroyed you, O shielding cherub, from among the stones of fire. You grew haughty because of your beauty, you debased your wisdom for the sake of your splendor; I have cast you to the ground. "

Of course there's an easy way to test all of this according to your own approach. Simply see if the passages related to No Death Before the Fall get eliminated from manuals as they are edited. Much like they've been editing them on race issues.

Of course, time will tell, and I’m simply thinking that “evolution” as we observe and understand it did not begin until after the Fall, regardless of where Eden is/was physcially located.

I’m looking at it two ways:

If the Garden of Eden was on this planet as a terrestrial earth, then upon the Fall, death became a property of the elemental and life forms that by virtue of the Fall transitioned from a terrestrial to a telestial estate. This change did not happen in an instant. Just as all creatures are not born at once, or die at once, or are resurrected at once, not all became telestial at once (Alma 40:8, “Now whether there is more than one time appointed for men* [and everything else] to [fall] it mattereth not; for all do not [becoem telestial] at once, and this mattereth not…”  ). *In a sense, “men” can refer to the earth as an organism and the actual “man” since the name “Adam” is a Hebrew wordplay on “earth.”

The river that parted into four heads might symbolize various means, orders and passages of time to allow a gradual “telestialization” of the earth through the same natural, physical processes we see around us. Whatever emptied out of Eden as she died came in an order that established telestial life on earth. Adam and Eve watched over paradise and the gushing out of her contents as she died, along the same theme as Noah overseeing the emptying of the ark. The rivers poured forth and telestial features and life evolved on earth akin to the flood abating for earth’s features and life to expand. Adam and Eve were the last to travel down the river as Eden disappeared (taken up with the tree of life? descended into a hole in the earth? overgrown and decomposed?). By that time, they found the telestial world ready for them and the Lord, inhabited by the evolutionary descendants of the first materials that left Eden.

The second way I see it, as you point out, is that Eden was a separate place and all the above occurred over a great distance as well as time through the various governing media mentioned in Facsimile 2, these represented by the parting “river.”

[clarkgoble]

52 minutes ago, CV75 said:

Of course, time will tell, and I’m simply thinking that “evolution” as we observe and understand it did not begin until after the Fall, regardless of where Eden is/was physcially located.

Given the fossil record that would commit you to having the fall around when life began nearly 3-4 billion years ago. (Depending upon when you decide life began - it's very blurry in those early days) There are real problems with that though since humans wouldn't have been able to live in those conditions. 

It seems pretty hard to say evolution only began with the fall due to those problems. In these early days before complicated life a fallen human couldn't survive. Yet we have abundant evidence evolution was going on.

[thesometimesaint]

11 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

I am open to the possibility of Fast animal Evolution after the Fall. Yes I agree the scriptures don't say how man was created, but they say there was no human death, and that Adam was the first flesh. 

That fast of evolution is not possible. Adam literally could not be the first flesh.

[blueglass]

23 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Given the fossil record that would commit you to having the fall around when life began nearly 3-4 billion years ago. (Depending upon when you decide life began - it's very blurry in those early days) There are real problems with that though since humans wouldn't have been able to live in those conditions. 

It seems pretty hard to say evolution only began with the fall due to those problems. In these early days before complicated life a fallen human couldn't survive. Yet we have abundant evidence evolution was going on.

For me when I read that Adam was made of the dirt  "the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature."  this is referring to the process of abiogenesis.  The problem right now is the predominance of left-handed chirality.   Jeremy England at Harvard has some good ideas which have promise.  As for the "sapiens" part of human evolution I like the articles on language, and the "homo prospectus" view put forth by Seligman and tierney, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/opinion/sunday/why-the-future-is-always-on-your-mind.html?mcubz=0  Also 

Pinker and Deacon in Language Instinct, and  "Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter".  We're facing the back side of this now with AI software development.   Flynn in tron says, "They manifested, like a flame. They weren't really from anywhere. The conditions were right, and they came into being. For centuries we dreamed of gods, spirits, aliens, and intelligence beyond our own. I found them in here, like flowers in a wasteland."  So in a way the "fall" came to us through a combination of our minds becoming powerful enough to create new worlds.  See also biocentrism work by Lanza, https://edgylabs.com/life-after-death-according-to-quantum-physics/

Edited August 31, 2017 by blueglass

[CV75]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

Given the fossil record that would commit you to having the fall around when life began nearly 3-4 billion years ago. (Depending upon when you decide life began - it's very blurry in those early days) There are real problems with that though since humans wouldn't have been able to live in those conditions. 

It seems pretty hard to say evolution only began with the fall due to those problems. In these early days before complicated life a fallen human couldn't survive. Yet we have abundant evidence evolution was going on.

It depends on who and/or what left the garden and when. If Adam and Eve were the last to leave, they would have had to wait a long time but would have eventually stepped comparatively comfortably into their new telestial world 6,000 years ago. If the rivers (or meteorites, depending on whether Eden was “here” or “there”) carried non-living elements out of Eden first, these could have naturally contributed to the earliest life forms on the planet. If they carried out various forms of life, whenever that was, these could have perished immediately or gone extinct and become assimilated into the raw materials that eventually gave rise to telestial life; or, if they were an eligible kind of single-cell life form, they could have survived the passage, become established and proceeded to evolve. The eventual human beings, while the products of evolution, would still be considered every bit Adam and Eve’s offspring (in a roundabout or virtual way!) and have claim on those whose terrestrial choice led to their telestial existence as their "first parents."

Of course there are variations on this, such as where Adam and Eve could have periodically gone back and forth between the garden and the telestial earth to produce and supervise a generation or two themselves, in vivo, until they took up permanent residence 6,000 years ago.

Edited August 31, 2017 by CV75

[cinepro]

13 hours ago, Calm said:

"Organic evolution is the honest result of capable people trying to explain the evidence to the best of their ability. From my limited study of the subject I would say that the physical evidence supporting the theory is considerable from a scientific viewpoint, [but] I’d be just as content to find out that God stirred up some dirt and water and out stepped Adam, ready to occupy the Garden of Eden. The only important thing is that God did it. I might say in that regard that in my mind the theory of evolution has to include a notion that the dice have been loaded from the beginning in favor of more complex life forms. In my mind, God is behind it all whether we evolved or not."

Henry B. Eyring

http://eyring.hplx.net/Eyring/faq/evolution/EyringReflections.html

That's Henry Eyring, his dad.  You can lose the "B."

[Calm]

11 minutes ago, cinepro said:

That's Henry Eyring, his dad.  You can lose the "B."

Thanks...I doubleckecked it because I didn't want to confuse the two and was too stoned (Am bien hits me like that every now and again still) to remember which was the older one to be honest, obviously trusted the wrong source.

Edited August 31, 2017 by Calm

[Robert F. Smith]

9 hours ago, blueglass said:

Samuel, just send a DNA sample to 23andme and discover what % of your DNA is related to neanderthal.  Changes were made to the 2013 Bible dictionary entry on the fall of man which overthrows Nelson's gen conference talk.  The book of Mormon essay on DNA approved by the first pres and q12 also overthrows Nelson's views as an evolution-denier.   Yes that means that Nelson himself signed off on a document which invalidated the pseudoscience of his own GC talk.

We probably ought to add that Pres Nelson is an M.D. and therefore has some acquaintance with genetics, and may have a more than passing acquaintance with Dr Ugo Perego -- the  man the LDS Church turns to for information on DNA.

[blueglass]

13 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

We probably ought to add that Pres Nelson is an M.D. and therefore has some acquaintance with genetics, and may have a more than passing acquaintance with Dr Ugo Perego -- the  man the LDS Church turns to for information on DNA.

Robert, I agree with you that he should have a familiarity with the mechanics which produced the phylogenetic tree of life, but unfortunately his interview on the pew forum "In Focus: Mormonism in Modern America" on May 16, 2007 was embarrassing.  By 2004 the ancestral genome accuracy down do the ancient clades was within 98%.  Now sequencing entire genomes is fast and cheap.  A few excerpts; Nelson:  "We owe a lot to those lower species. But to think that man evolved from one species to another is, to me, incomprehensible.",   Pew forum:  "Why is that?"  Nelson: "Man has always been man. Dogs have always been dogs. Monkeys have always been monkeys. It’s just the way genetics works."   Everyone in the dept of bio informatics at BYU did a huge face palm on that blunder.   Someone just needs to walk him through how the clades split at boreoeutheria where it breaks between laurasiatheria and euarchontoglires.  Nelson's just not familiar with modern gene sequencing.  It was a lot like the comment where he laughs at cosmologists and astrobiologists,  "Could an explosion in a printing shop produce a dictionary?".  I just wish someone would ship to him a copy of Francis Collins, "The language of God".  I think the way Collins wrote the book would make it very approachable for him.  It would be wonderful to finally move Nelson at least to a position accepting the anthropic principle and basic CMB charts, and dial down the strong deterministic ID position.  Just because science has taken us to artificial production of amino acids but not RNA - yet, does not mean the discoveries won't be made soon.  Huxley's landmark modern synthesis work was available  just after the time  he completed his MD and PhD so it just doesn't make sense that he's completely in denial of our relationship to australopithecus or the 2% neanderthal dna flowing through his veins.  I understand for a while during the Th morning meetings they would pass out a 1lb box of chocolates with of course jr members of the quorum making there choice last.  It would be hilarious to see Nelson sneeze after taking a bite of dark chocolate!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[blueglass]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

We probably ought to add that Pres Nelson is an M.D. and therefore has some acquaintance with genetics, and may have a more than passing acquaintance with Dr Ugo Perego -- the  man the LDS Church turns to for information on DNA.

Robert,  - I also agree that Ugo Perego, someone he trusts or even Elder Renlund might be able to approach Nelson on the topic of Hardy-Weinberg as the topic relates well to the book of mormon dna essay. 

[snowflake]

On 8/30/2017 at 3:15 PM, thesometimesaint said:

Your idea of Abiogenesis is almost as accurate as Astrology is to Astronomy. They are not the same thing.

Abiogenesis is not random. Fatty acids don't form to just random substances.

SEE http://evolutionfaq.com/articles/probability-life

The most recent evidence for abiogenesis that I know of is.

SEE

 

It is impossible mathematically. 

[Robert F. Smith]

43 minutes ago, blueglass said:

Robert, I agree with you that he should have a familiarity with the mechanics which produced the phylogenetic tree of life, but unfortunately his interview on the pew forum "In Focus: Mormonism in Modern America" on May 16, 2007 was embarrassing.  By 2004 the ancestral genome accuracy down do the ancient clades was within 98%.  Now sequencing entire genomes is fast and cheap.  A few excerpts; Nelson:  "We owe a lot to those lower species. But to think that man evolved from one species to another is, to me, incomprehensible.",   Pew forum:  "Why is that?"  Nelson: "Man has always been man. Dogs have always been dogs. Monkeys have always been monkeys. It’s just the way genetics works."   Everyone in the dept of bio informatics at BYU did a huge face palm on that blunder.   Someone just needs to walk him through how the clades split at boreoeutheria where it breaks between laurasiatheria and euarchontoglires.  Nelson's just not familiar with modern gene sequencing.  It was a lot like the comment where he laughs at cosmologists and astrobiologists,  "Could an explosion in a printing shop produce a dictionary?".  I just wish someone would ship to him a copy of Francis Collins, "The language of God".  I think the way Collins wrote the book would make it very approachable for him.  It would be wonderful to finally move Nelson at least to a position accepting the anthropic principle and basic CMB charts, and dial down the strong deterministic ID position.  Just because science has taken us to artificial production of amino acids but not RNA - yet, does not mean the discoveries won't be made soon.  Huxley's landmark modern synthesis work was available  just after the time  he completed his MD and PhD so it just doesn't make sense that he's completely in denial of our relationship to australopithecus or the 2% neanderthal dna flowing through his veins.  I understand for a while during the Th morning meetings they would pass out a 1lb box of chocolates with of course jr members of the quorum making there choice last.  It would be hilarious to see Nelson sneeze after taking a bite of dark chocolate!

 

33 minutes ago, blueglass said:

Robert,  - I also agree that Ugo Perego, someone he trusts or even Elder Renlund might be able to approach Nelson on the topic of Hardy-Weinberg as the topic relates well to the book of mormon dna essay. 

It occurs to me that you might do well to write a letter to Pres Nelson going over some of these matters -- in a nice way, of course, and leaving out the funny part where he could possibly sneeze due to an inherited chocolate reflex.  The latter you should retain for your future gothic horror novel, Thursday Morning at the Temple.

[SamuelTheLamanite]

5 hours ago, thesometimesaint said:

That fast of evolution is not possible. 

It is a philosophical possibility.   

[SamuelTheLamanite]

17 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You like to equivocate a great deal, which is mighty convenient when faced with your own confusion and the instability of your views.  Then there is always the blame it on Lucifer routine.  Another mighty convenient ploy.  But those are cop-outs, Samuel.  Just substitutes for real arguments, which you don't have.

I am just speculating why the church doesn't consider JoD as an "authoritative source of Church doctrine". It is not because the JoD contradicts my beliefs. 

17 hours ago, ttribe said:

Another argument of convenience...if you can't explain a problem in a teaching just blame it on Satan! I remember someone like that...

We learn in D&C 10:10-13 that it has happened before,  and it had to look original.  You don't believe Satan has the power to change a passage?  

[SamuelTheLamanite]

17 hours ago, Calm said:

[Originally published in the Deseret News, Nov. 21, 1931; subsequently published as a pamphlet by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1931; later published in The Instructor, vol. 100, no. 12 (Dec. 1965), pg. 474-477; continued in vol. 101, no. 1 (Jan. 1966), pg. 9-15. This is a transcription of the 1931 pamphlet.]"

 I don't feel the Deseret News and the Instructor are as important as General Conference talks and Gospel Topics. A similar article published on "I have a Question" states "Questions of general gospel interest answered for guidance, not as official statements of Church policy". I wonder if it is the same for The Earth and Man. 

We don't have "not as official statements" in General Conference or the Gospel Topics. 

[CV75]

20 minutes ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

 I don't feel the Deseret News and the Instructor are as important as General Conference talks and Gospel Topics. A similar article published on "I have a Question" states "Questions of general gospel interest answered for guidance, not as official statements of Church policy". I wonder if it is the same for The Earth and Man. 

We don't have "not as official statements" in General Conference or the Gospel Topics. 

I think the message from all these statements is that the physical, temporal processes we refer to as evolution are not the eternal origin of mankind. Our ultimate origin is spiritual with the Father and terrestrial with Adam and Eve in the Garden. We had to transition into the fallen world, and saying we came by way of evolution is no different than saying we are of goodly parents, or have a genealogy descending from Adam and Eve or God. This mortal phase is but a split second compared to what happened before and after, and its mechanics are just as relatively significant or meaningful in comparison to those of resurrection and exaltation.