- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
I won’t go on and on about my testimony of scripture. It just makes no sense to me that God would give an answer booklet to you if life is to be a test. It also does nothing to progress ones eternal knoledge. Scripture is a learning aid and guide but not an instruction manual. Scriptoral debate on what something says gives me a headache sometimes but maybe that’s the point. The unspecificity gives scripture a timeless relavence that enables it to trancend time, people, and culture. Yeah, FD, I see it very similarly. Old-Timer wrote:DA, fwiw, the relationship between evolution and creationism (and the attendant question of whether the Garden of Eden narrative is literal or figurative) is a heavily debated topic among the leadership – and has been for at least 100 years. There never has been a consensus among the apostles and Prophets on the topic.
The Church’s official position is that we don’t know the exact details of the creation – and the last official statement from the FP was in 1909..It states very clearly that Adam was the first “man” – but it also says there is nothing in that statement that means he couldn’t have started his physical existence as an embryo.
Old-Timer wrote:Fwiw, evolution is an easy issue for me to reconcile …As I said, the “current” official position of the Church explicitly leaves open the possibility that evolution was the source of the creation of Adam’s physical body. …Adam being the first man ONLY means that at some point there was someone who differed from all other creatures in that he consisted of a mortal body and an immortal spirit child of God – thus, he was the first “man”, as the Church defines that term…
I think this is a great example of how scriptures can be interpreted to mean various things, how it’s important for us to be open to different ways to take them…how we don’t have to throw out the baby (I am a child of God.) with the bathwater (young earth creationism that rejects evolution entirely). It is VERY easy for me to reconcile physical evolution with the Plan of Salvation as it is taught in the Church. I just have to be ok with not everyone agreeing with me…
I know that the Church has never really come to an official consensus about evolution and it was mostly just a few individual leaders such as John Taylor, Joseph Fielding Smith, and Bruce R. McConkie that have openly condemned it on their own. In fact, BH Roberts had a big argument with Joseph Fielding Smith over the idea of “pre-Adamites” and “no death before the fall” but the Church Presidency and apostles refused to take an official stance on these issues either way.
Of course, Joseph Fielding Smith didn’t just pull some of his ideas about “no death before the fall”, young-earth creationism, and a global flood out of thin air, it looks like they were mostly based on a nearly literal interpretation not only of Genesis but many LDS scriptures as well such as 2 Nephi 2:22-26, D&C 77:6-7, Moses 8:29-30, etc. I can see why he would interpret them this way because the meaning seams fairly clear and the assumption is that this must have been the way God wanted them to be written down otherwise he could have easily corrected these points or left more room for different interpretations.
I have thought about the ideas of something like a human soul, speech, etc. possibly making all the difference between Adam and earlier humans and that perhaps he was simply the first man from God’s perspective if God dealt with him directly not necessarily that he had to be the first physical human from our perspective. It was fairly easy for me to reconcile evolution with the Church’s doctrines at first as well, until I finally continued reading the rest of the Old Testament and kept running into one problem after another such as men living to be 900+ years old, a global flood, talking donkeys, Moses ordering genocide, Jonah living 3 days in the belly of a whale, etc.
The more I read the more I really started to suspect that much of this almost certainly did not happen exactly the way the Bible says and after that I didn’t really trust it as being the authoritative and inspired word of God the way many have claimed that it is supposed to be. So then I started to interpret the “scriptures” mostly as the writings of imperfect men, not God. Even if God did not typically intervene to magically preserve the integrity of everything people have tried to pass off as his words that doesn’t necessarily mean that there can be no revelation and inspiration whatsoever mixed in with all kinds of myths, legends, hearsay, human opinions and errors, etc. Now I take it all with a grain of salt without dismissing the ideas of revelation, inspiration, and prophecy entirely.
I agree, DA. The OT is the epitome of “as far as it is translated correctly” for me – and, since I view the Garden of Eden narrative as a figurative description of the pre-mortal existence, I have no problem at all with there being no human death before the Fall. (Fwiw, I reached my conclusion about the Garden narrative long before I learned about the “no death before the fall” issue. When I heard someone talk about ndbf, I said, “So?” 
FenixDown wrote:I won’t go on and on about my testimony of scripture. It just makes no sense to me that God would give an answer booklet to you if life is to be a test. It also does nothing to progress ones eternal knoledge. Scripture is a learning aid and guide but not an instruction manual. Scriptoral debate on what something says gives me a headache sometimes but maybe that’s the point. The unspecificity gives scripture a timeless relavence that enables it to trancend time, people, and culture.
Although I agree the non-specificity of scripture DOES make it timeless and applicable to a wide variety of situations, I find its silence or lack of specificity on core issues of salvation disturbing — I reflect on the People’s Temple and Jim Jones. His followers probably thought they were following God and doing the right thing. But found their faith was in something that wasn’t true after all….personally, I’d like the basics a given, and the challenge to be getting with the program. Trying to figure out which of the hundreds of programs is the right one s for the birds, in my view.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.