God created (organized) heaven and earth, but He didn’t make matter. Matter, like God, has always existed.
God caused life of all kinds to spring forth on this earth and He breathed the breath of life into Adam. But God no more invented life than He invented Himself. Life has ALWAYS been. God BROUGHT life here from other realms – the plants, the animals, every manner and kind – but He sired Adam Himself, as a father sires his son. The genealogy of Adam is, thus, the genealogy of the present race and all of us, uniquely, trace our lineage to that true and living God, our Father in heaven. We are literally begotten in His likeness and image. Like all other living things, God, too, begets after His own kind.
It is no coincidence that the Biblical record of creation coincides with the scientist’s sequence of events, explaining how life “evolved” on this planet: beginning with a molten, formless earth, shrouded in clouds; then the condensation and division of vapors into atmosphere and seas; the formation of land; and then the appearance of life – flora and fauna erupting in the oceans, in the air, and across the earth. The scientist observes, but cannot explain, the “pre-Cambrian explosion” -- the appearance of life in all its forms, billions of years ago, without evidence of transitional species -- and still searches for the missing trunk and branches to that “evolutionary tree.” The “six-day” believer acknowledges the divine order of creation but cannot allow the process to span billions (or even millions) of years as God sequentially introduced appropriate life forms, much as a master gardener, landscaper, or zookeeper prepares the way before introducing higher orders of life.
Each devout adherent to solely the scientific or religious creed becomes a slave to his own misunderstandings and preconceptions, his vision distorted and diminished by his own dogma.
The history of Earth, as told in Genesis, is not complete. Worlds without number (species of animal and civilizations of man) have come and gone and remain unaccounted for. The Bible is Adam’s book: the REMAINING words of the FIRST man of the LAST family to inhabit this world. It is filled with sacred knowledge. And someday we will add to it (from both religious and scientific sources).
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So, on the subject of being a slave to one's own misunderstandings and preconceptions, with vision distorted and diminished by dogma: how much of the factual assertions made in that post do you actually have firsthand knowledge of?
ReplyDeleteI originally titled this post "The Truth about Adam and Eve".
ReplyDeleteBut knowing that you're a pedantic "stickler" for defining "knowledge" as something you can't gain except by personal experience, I scrapped "The Truth about" and just left it as "Adam and Eve".
I'm arguing for "the middle ground". The truth is to be found somewhere in the middle. Not a purely "scientific" (and godless) explanation for our origins nor a purely "creationist" (fantastic) pedigree either.
A "scientific Creator" is not out of the question. Indeed, the evidence (to my mind) suggests that God -- a Creator -- introduced life to this world -- in the order the "scientific" types and record indicates it happened.
I see NO scientific evidence that life originated on its own...and little to suggest that the vast array of life forms we have evidence of could have "evolved" in the way proposed by those who dispense with "higher beings" having any hand in it.
My house didn't just "create" itself and we humans didn't just "sit around" waiting for that to happen! Yes, my home is made "of the stuff of this world", but it was actively organized and I presume that this planet, indeed the worlds, are organized with life by those who possess it. (Just as we would do were we capable of interplanetary travel.)
My final paragraph is a proposition. I know enough of science and religion to understand that "truth" may be derived from both sources and I see no reason to believe that more truth won't be added to our common knowledge base by either means.
But, come to think of it, I don't really know much of anything. Really. It's all silly conjecture, in the end. And what difference does it make?
ReplyDeleteI've got a life to live. I might as well make the most of it, trying to "express" the "divine" (if there is any) in me, taking from among the best I find and giving it to others, as they wish to receive.
I'm sorry that I came across so "pompous". I'm a "know-nothing", really, just trying to make sense of the world around me (and myself).
Here's some part of the difference it makes.
ReplyDeleteLet's say a prophet, acting as such, says the Earth has had a temporal (as opposed to eternal) existence on the order of 6000 years. But scientists, relying upon the philsophical assumptions of naturalism and uniformitarianism, say the evidence is overwhelming that the Earth is really on the order of 4,000,000,000 years old. That is, the evidence interpreted as though those assumptions were true implies that the Earth is several orders of magnitude older than the prophet claims.
Clearly the conflict between the claim of the prophet and the claims of the scientists hinges upon whether those philosophical assumptions are true or false. If the prophet is telling the truth, then those philosophical assumptions are false. If those philosophical assumptions are true, then the prophet is not telling the truth. There is no middle ground.
Does it make a difference which one is right? I think it does. If you have a lying prophet that makes claims about what we have to do to make some magical sky fairy like us so he won't burn us in hell forever, why should he be believed on those claims versus the claims he makes which are contradicted by scientists based on philosophical claims which, in and of themselves, entail the falsity of the prophet's claims?
Since you asked, I have ALWAYS interpreted the "6000 years of earth's temporal existence" to mean the time frame that MAN -- this iteration of "man" or mankind, since OUR Adam and Eve were introduced here -- has been on the earth (i.e., during this "cycle" of things). I believe there have been MANY "temporal existences" of mankind on this planet; that this earth is "recycled" -- not utterly destroyed, but "cleansed" and "re-used", at least with regard to its morally capacious inhabitants -- again and again, like the scripture I referred to at the end of the above post.
ReplyDeleteThis "prophetic" determination is NOT in conflict with the scientist's more generalized "physical age of the earth" calculation. One is speaking of "phases" (that repeat, like weeks on a calendar) verses the entire calendar itself.
There is no conflict.
Well, if you saw no conflict, methinks this post, and your other on the same subject, wouldn't have been written.
ReplyDeleteUgh.
ReplyDelete(This is what I mean, Log. You GO OUT OF YOUR WAY to pick a fight where none exists.)
I was speaking of "creationists" -- specifically, YECs (like yourself), who imagine this earth to have been CREATED 6000 years ago, fossils and all! -- and "unbelieving" scientists (of which I am not one) who think God had nothing to do with it.
I think they're both wrong.
YOU, Log, re-pitched the "battle" between "a prophet" (speaking of earth's 7000 years of "temporal existence") and said "scientists" (who claim the earth is actually 4 billion years old). I DON'T THINK THESE TWO CAMPS ARE SPEAKING ABOUT THE SAME THING. We're talking apples and oranges. Hence I see NO CONFLICT.
The ORIGINAL conflict (about which I wrote) is DIFFERENT from the one you dispute (which, in my opinion, stems from your "misunderstandings and preconceptions, [and] vision distorted and diminished by [your] own dogma."
But to address YOUR "battle (not mine): I believe this earth's 6,000 (or 7,000) years of "temporal" existence refers to the time during which THIS GENERATION OF MANKIND is on this earth, from the days of Adam until the end of the millennium. This is "our" time. (I believe this earth could be used for ANY NUMBER of said "days", "years" or "times" -- 7,000 or otherwise -- in various iterations of "temporal existence".)
Moses was shown other "worlds" that have come and gone. (Perhaps those worlds were OTHER iterations of this earth's "temporal existence". Maybe not. I don't know.)
After this earth's "temporal existence" is "done", there will be a "new heaven" and a "new earth", we are told. Yet Joseph Smith taught this earth would be "celestialized" and become a sea of glass, a Urim and Thummin unto all those who DWELL on it. ("Temporal existence" anyone? Or "timeless"?) Physical (as we know it) or some "higher frequency", or "spiritual"? Again, I don't know.
So STOP it already!
You might be right. Maybe God DID magically "speak" the earth into existence 6,000 years ago with deceptive "plausible alternative narratives" woven into its creation to potentially "mislead" us with regard to its actual age (according to our scientific tools, measurements and reason).
But I DON'T THINK SO. I see no evidence of that. I see no REASON for it. God never said it (as far as I know) so I'm not "buying" it.
You can believe what you want.
But I see NO CONFLICT between what the prophets have taught and what the scientists have said, except as I have outlined here.
If you disagree with me, the "controversy" exists only in YOUR mind.
YECs, you say, are "wrong," yet in what are they "wrong?" It is because they are "wrong" in your view, apparently, in not interpreting the prophets in a way that the scientists can also be "right." That is to say, they take the scriptures at face value, and they see the conflict between the prophets - taken at face value - and the scientists, and resolve the obvious conflict in favor of the prophets.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to resolve the conflict the same way - you are free to add to or take away from the scripture so that in your reading there is no evidentiary conflict between the claims of the scientists and the prophets.
I would like to suggest that Lehi would disagree with your first sentence. 2 Ne 2:13
ReplyDelete