BYU Studies on evolution and faith

[mfbukowski]

9 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

Hmmm. That certainly is an interesting possibility. The idea of existence following concept in the mind somewhat accords with Alma 40:8, which states that time doesn't exist for God but is measured only by man. 

I would argue, however, that animals are aware of the phenomenon of death, especially social animals. They might not have the capacity to muse on it and what comes next, but they at least know what death is. However, if Adam and Eve and their descendants did not exist to have the concept we now hold, would it still exist?

Interesting stuff. 

Humans DEFINE / ORGANIZE things into existence- what we experience is a human reality (through a glass darkly) and not "face to face".  We don't create- things - we organize and name things and create theories with words.

 

Quote

 

Genesis 1 King James Version (KJV)

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

² And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

³ And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

⁴ And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

⁵ And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were "the first day."

⁶ And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

⁷ And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

⁸ And God called the firmament "Heaven". And the evening and the morning were "the second day."

⁹ And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

¹⁰ And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

 

 

Quote

 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.....All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

 

 

[mfbukowski]

5 minutes ago, katherine the great said:

I don't have a problem at all with the belief that Adam and Eve were the first "covenant" people. It's really the only way I can believe that they were literal people (which I see as actual doctrine). I can't, however believe that 1. They were the first human beings on the planet.  2. Their children married each other. or 3. the millions of human beings that lived on the planet before them were some sort of sub human and did not have the same type of spirit the rest of us had. If Ted Bundy is a spirit child of God then so we the people of Cro Magnon. 😊 Besides, I really don't think that Elder Holland believes anything less than the traditional view of Adam and Eve as first parents of all earthlings; no birth and no death before them.

OK that's fine

Notice all these - every statement- is based on definitions and your willingness to define things YOUR way.

Some may see it differently.

If we DEFINE them as the "first humans" then we hit them with the magic wand, and they are!   All it does is change YOUR DEFINITION of where you draw the line between human and non human.

And I think trying to mind read is 1- hazardous in terms of accuracy since there is no way to confirm what "he really thinks" and 2- irrelevant to the discussion.

We are not I think talking about one man- we are talking about a theological position/paradigm/belief here, and if he does or does not hold that belief is irrelevant to the belief itself.

My story is just another paradigm - another story- than his story and is just as unprovable as his.

For that matter evolution cannot be "proven" - though I heartily endorse the idea just because it makes sense.  Almost too much sense- it becomes a virtual tautology.   What survives, survives.

Duh!

Ain't nobody hereabouts seeing things "as they are" anyhoo. 

 

[blueglass]

44 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Want to take literally the idea that there was no death before the fall- ?  Does something exist before we have a concept of it? Do dinosaurs and primates contemplate "death" and its ramifications for an afterlife? 

I think not!   If there is a world out there that we cannot in principle know anything about, does it exist for us?

Imagine right at this moment, there are interplanetary wars happening in "a galaxy far far away".

Do those wars "exist" for us?

So to with the concept of “death”

Before creatures could foresee their own ends and wonder about what happened after them, I would argue that there WAS no “death” practically speaking.

The concept of individual beings who ceased to move or interact at some point was not "death" as we know it.

There was no name for such a cessation nor contemplation of how an individual could somehow continue after stopping activity and decomposing

The idea had to be invented!

 

Humans had sacred burial ritual and carefully prepared graves for at least 34,000 years, with burial sites dating back over 100,000 years to Neanderthals. 

An article from Discovery magazine, '

"Some 34,000 years ago, two boys and a middle-aged man were buried in fantastic style. They were laid to rest wearing over 13,000 mammoth ivory beads, hundreds of perforated fox canine teeth and other adornments. Discovered in the 1960s, at the site of Sungir, Russia, the burials also contained spears, figurines and the hollowed out shaft of a woman’s femur, packed with red ochre. Archaeologists estimate the ivory beads alone would have taken 2500 hours of labor to produce.

We’ll never know what particular beliefs these ancient people held. But such elaborate, time-intensive burials strongly suggest they conceived of an afterlife and spiritual forces. It’s something that we see today in nearly every culture on Earth, and it’s usually tied to religious practices and beliefs. In fact, archaeologists often use graves like these as a rough marker for the emergence of religion in human societies."

 

[mfbukowski]

3 minutes ago, blueglass said:

Humans had sacred burial ritual and carefully prepared graves for at least 34,000 years, with burial sites dating back over 100,000 years to Neanderthals. 

An article from Discovery magazine, '

"Some 34,000 years ago, two boys and a middle-aged man were buried in fantastic style. They were laid to rest wearing over 13,000 mammoth ivory beads, hundreds of perforated fox canine teeth and other adornments. Discovered in the 1960s, at the site of Sungir, Russia, the burials also contained spears, figurines and the hollowed out shaft of a woman’s femur, packed with red ochre. Archaeologists estimate the ivory beads alone would have taken 2500 hours of labor to produce.

We’ll never know what particular beliefs these ancient people held. But such elaborate, time-intensive burials strongly suggest they conceived of an afterlife and spiritual forces. It’s something that we see today in nearly every culture on Earth, and it’s usually tied to religious practices and beliefs. In fact, archaeologists often use graves like these as a rough marker for the emergence of religion in human societies."

 

Noticed your name

Any relation to Steve?  LA area?

You can PM me if you like.

[OGHoosier]

21 minutes ago, katherine the great said:

 3. the millions of human beings that lived on the planet before them were some sort of sub human and did not have the same type of spirit the rest of us had. If Ted Bundy is a spirit child of God then so we the people of Cro Magnon. 😊 

I mean, according to evolution, our species was preceded by apes. At some point you have to have a turning point wherein children of God started being born to beings without that same distinction. It's really just a matter of when if human evolution is accepted. 

Also, I don't think Ted Bundy's actions in mortality can say anything at all about his condition before mortality. That would start to smack of predestination. 

[blueglass]

21 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Noticed your name

Any relation to Steve?  LA area?

You can PM me if you like.

We should definitely have lunch some time on me.  I always learn a lot in our discussions. 

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, blueglass said:

We should definitely have lunch some time on me.  I always learn a lot in our discussions. 

👍

[blarsen]

5 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

 Hypothesis #2: 

This one's a little simpler with the scriptural record and I personally prefer it. Basically, God created the earth and let/led evolution to get to a point where He was ready to start putting His children on earth. However, He also planted a Garden eastward in Eden which was sort of separate from the lone and dreary world wherein all the creative destruction was going on. He created Adam and Eve in a paradisaical state in the Garden of Eden, where they had a temple experience like I described in Hypothesis #1.  The Fall happened, Adam and Eve became mortal, and their children went out into the world and married and reproduced with the extant non-Adamite population. Eventually the whole global population was descended from Adam and Eve, with all being children of God. 

There is another wrinkle I personally am inclined to add to this particular scenario, which is that the 'evolution' of pre-Adamic men produced all the inherited/evolved fight-or-flight, etc., inclinations and abilities that allowed them to face and survive incredible physical hardships and dangers.  I.e., the "natural man" was extremely ramped up in them. 

Adam/Eve progeny who intermarried with them would then inherit these powerful proclivities which would give them both the ability to face the same hardships in the lone and dreary world, AND give them a tougher test to discern and to hold on to more spiritual values.  Which would make this world an extremely tougher test for the Adamic progeny.

Edited November 4, 2019 by blarsen

[katherine the great]

11 hours ago, blarsen said:

 

Adam/Eve progeny who intermarried with them would then inherit these powerful proclivities which would give them both the ability to face the same hardships in the lone and dreary world, AND give them a tougher test to discern and to hold on to more spiritual values.  Which would make this world an extremely tougher test for the Adamic progeny.

Interesting. We now are thinking ( in anthropology) that our modern human species benefited from some of the physical adaptations of the archaic Homo sapiens. For instance interbreeding with Neanderthals helped us adapt to the colder, harsher climate of Europe and Denisovan DNA helped us adapt to higher altitudes. So are you proposing that Adam and Eve did not have the DNA of other modern humans but were compatible enough to interbreed with them and their offspring had characteristics of both?

[OGHoosier]

46 minutes ago, katherine the great said:

Interesting. We now are thinking ( in anthropology) that our modern human species benefited from some of the physical adaptations of the archaic Homo sapiens. For instance interbreeding with Neanderthals helped us adapt to the colder, harsher climate of Europe and Denisovan DNA helped us adapt to higher altitudes. So are you proposing that Adam and Eve did not have the DNA of other modern humans but were compatible enough to interbreed with them and their offspring had characteristics of both?

Honestly that would make good sense to me. 

[CV75]

On 11/3/2019 at 8:21 PM, blueglass said:

Are you pretty convinced on this 6000 years ago time period for the fall of adam and eve, death, and sin in Missouri north america? 

I'm not convinced you understood what I wrote, otherwise you would not have asked this question.

ETA: Having more time this morning, I can explain better that just as Zion was taken up before the Flood, to be preserved and brought to the earth in the last days, The garden could have been similarly taken up and returned to the earth billions of years later (some 6000 years ago). That may be taken literally or figuratively; same principle. I presume all life gets sealed eventually under God's stewardship/kingdoms and that none are wasted just because Adam arrived so late. His story is still the same, as are Elder Holland's essentials.

Edited November 5, 2019 by CV75

[nuclearfuels]

On 11/3/2019 at 5:13 PM, katherine the great said:

He may have been. But he also says, "There were no spirit children of Heavenly Father on the earth before Adam and Eve were created."  I don't see any room at all for human evolution there (and I think human evolution is the biggest issue for most of our church members).  Unless he doesn't consider anyone born before, say, 10,000 b.c. fully human.

I thought agency / free will was an essential part of being human.

Not sure if those born 10,000BC were fully human meaning exercised free will

[blueglass]

On 11/4/2019 at 9:23 PM, CV75 said:

I'm not convinced you understood what I wrote, otherwise you would not have asked this question.

ETA: Having more time this morning, I can explain better that just as Zion was taken up before the Flood, to be preserved and brought to the earth in the last days, The garden could have been similarly taken up and returned to the earth billions of years later (some 6000 years ago). That may be taken literally or figuratively; same principle. I presume all life gets sealed eventually under God's stewardship/kingdoms and that none are wasted just because Adam arrived so late. His story is still the same, as are Elder Holland's essentials.

Interesting - pretty cool idea. A garden in a space ship temple.

[InCognitus]

6 hours ago, blueglass said:

Interesting - pretty cool idea. A garden in a space ship temple.

Ever see the old Sci-Fi movie, Silent Running?   Or even Battlestar Galactica had a greenhouse ship too, if I remember correctly.  Maybe Glen Larson got that right.

[CV75]

6 hours ago, blueglass said:

Interesting - pretty cool idea. A garden in a space ship temple.

Inasmuch as Zion is a city in a space ship! These are just ways we can explain the essentials of what happened. It is the plan of happiness that is revealed, not the tactical details.

What do other homo species and subspecies have to do with Adam? Perhaps they were human spirits all along, their bodies corrupted by the Fall and telestial processes, to be adopted into his family and perfected before the resurrection. As far as I am concerned (rather, care), all forms of life and life forms are part of Adan and Eve's "body" , but that might be getting a bit weird 

 

[blueglass]

46 minutes ago, CV75 said:

Inasmuch as Zion is a city in a space ship! These are just ways we can explain the essentials of what happened. It is the plan of happiness that is revealed, not the tactical details.

What do other homo species and subspecies have to do with Adam? Perhaps they were human spirits all along, their bodies corrupted by the Fall and telestial processes, to be adopted into his family and perfected before the resurrection. As far as I am concerned (rather, care), all forms of life and life forms are part of Adan and Eve's "body" , but that might be getting a bit weird 

 

If we combine adam and eve's names, adam meaning "red dirt" and eve meaning "life" we're giving a chance for God to breathe life into this stardust so that they can communicate with us and have more friends with which to share the joy of creation. 

Edited November 7, 2019 by blueglass

[CV75]

5 minutes ago, blueglass said:

If we combine adam and eve's names, adam meaning "red dirt" and eve meaning "life" we're giving a chance for God to breathe life into this stardust so that they can communicate with us and have more friends with which to share the joy of creation. 

I think that fits the general scheme. All forms of life, as I understand it, are to share some level of joy, and the highest levels are withheld from no one willing to abide the laws therein.

[stemelbow]

The issue isn't can you make faith and science combatable.  We compartmentalize too good, by nature, it seems to me.  The issue is where will faith be in 100 or 200 years as science continues to evolve?  We already have to have weird untenable explanations for how religion might possibly be, hoping the unknown can be plugged with a god.  I suppose we'll always have an unknown some place science has yet to explore.  But what does that make God into, in the end?  

If you're Holland or Nelson holding out hope for a ID type of position, pretending things like "no death before the fall" is God playing around making it look like He never really was, then you have something.  God is telling them that he's trying to trick humanity to test them, or something.  Then you have a trickster God playing games because ultimately most end up in the place lesser than He.  it's what he really needs.  It feeds his ego, or something.  I suppose that's why they are so into things like, not using nicknames, God being offended easily, and other such stuff.  

[blarsen]

On 11/4/2019 at 9:53 AM, katherine the great said:

Interesting. We now are thinking ( in anthropology) that our modern human species benefited from some of the physical adaptations of the archaic Homo sapiens. For instance interbreeding with Neanderthals helped us adapt to the colder, harsher climate of Europe and Denisovan DNA helped us adapt to higher altitudes. So are you proposing that Adam and Eve did not have the DNA of other modern humans but were compatible enough to interbreed with them and their offspring had characteristics of both?

Something like that.  The possible pre-"Adamic 'human' precursors undoubtedly went through genetic adaptations to adjust to various and severe environmental stressors.  But the environment stressors could also include the difficulties in hunting, fighting off large predators, fighting off various diseases, being able to reproduce,  etc., so would encourage adaptations to deal with these issues.  Part of this adaptation might have involved greater influence from the limbic nervous system; greater amative propensities, etc. 

At the same time,  pre-Adamaic hominids could as well be missing some of the advantages contained in Adamic genetics.

For instance, primates (including us) and guinea pigs lack the last step in being able to synthesize their own Vitamin C.  They have to get C from diet.  Primates/pre-humans probably lacked the ability to regenerate their cellular telomeres (we are still lacking in this area), leading to fairly early cellular senescence; i.e., they did not synthesize adequate quantities of telomerase to accomplish this.  Etc., etc.   Whereas, Adam/Eve genetics may have handled these and other issues.

So being thrown into the lone and dreary world was like being thrown into a much rougher environment that included being surrounded by death, potential destruction and disease.  Luckily, though, Adamic offspring could intermarry with pre-Adamites and their offspring could partake of the advantageous adaptations already accrued by their pre-Adamic precursors.  The pre-Adamites had already run the gauntlet.

The problem, however, is that these offspring were taking on propensities that countered more 'spiritual; pursuits, and included great swaths of fear, anger, lust, etc.; i.e., the "natural man".  A much tougher environment in which to exercise 'spiritual' qualities.

The apparent fact that this was happening can be seen in how the longevity (whether the ages stated in the Biblical text are correct or just indicators of great age) dropped off with succesive generations from Adam/Eve.  Irwin Ginsburgh (PhD physics) gets into this scenario in his book, First Man.  Then Adam!, 1978, having support for this thesis from various  rabbinical sources.

 

Edited November 7, 2019 by blarsen

[The_Monk]

On 11/6/2019 at 7:34 AM, nuclearfuels said:

Not sure if those born 10,000BC were fully human meaning exercised free will

David O. McKay said something very interesting about this in general conference. He quoted an evolutionary interpreter of Genesis on the development of human consciousness and the ability to resist instinct. 
https://benspackman.com/2016/08/03/david-o-mckay-genesis-and-evolution-part-2/ 

[katherine the great]

On 11/6/2019 at 7:34 AM, nuclearfuels said:

I thought agency / free will was an essential part of being human.

Not sure if those born 10,000BC were fully human meaning exercised free will

Huh? The elaborate cave paintings of Lascaux? The Venus figurines and other symbolic totems? The ritual burials of Paleolithic people don't indicate populations of people with free will?