I guess that’s just sort of missing the point perhaps. But that’s just my opinion. Other parts of the scriptures aren’t meant to be taken metaphorically, I realize that. Anyway.

That’s my attempt.

How’s that?

I took the “everybody” Biology class at BYU in 2003 or 2004 (along with several hundred other BYU students, and that was just one section in one semester). I also took a Geology class a year or two before that. At the time I was staunchly opposed to evolution. To my recollection, they didn’t mince words about it. They (my professors) were unapologetically believers and teachers of evolution. I got the vague impression that there were other professors who held different views, but that the majority had no problem with reconciling evolution and Mormonism.

They didn’t ram it down our throats, I recall that although I held a different opinion I was not offended. And by the end of the semester I had begun to come around. Now I, too, take the scientific evidence at face value without feeling that it threatens my religious and spiritual beliefs (though it has helped to mold them).

Required reading in one of those courses (I don’t remember which) was the book “Finding Darwin’s God” which I recommend reading. I need to go back and read it again, too, now that I find myself on the other side of the fence. http://tinyurl.com/nsfflb

According to Giorgio de Santillans, “In later centuries historians may declare all of us insane, because this incredible blunder was not detected at once and was not refuted with adequate determination. Mistaking cultural history for a process of gradual evolution, we have deprived ourselves of every reasonable insight into the nature of culture. It goes without saying that the still more modern habit of replacing ‘culture’ by ‘society’ has blocked the last narrow path to understanding history. Our ignorance not only remained vast, but became pretentious as well.”

http://sciencebysteve.net

“Although writing more than 700 years ago, [Rabbi Moses] Nachmanides’ message is even more clear and relevant today. His writings directed the person of faith to realize that there is much more hidden than revealed, both in the traditional Biblical writings and also in the natural world. Our challenge is to continually study and investigate both realms, with the realization that apparent conflicts are merely artifacts of temporary incomplete understanding in one or both realms. This avoidance of intellectual pride, allows the person of traditional religious faith to work comfortably within the framework of rigorous scientific hypothesis and empiricism. This is also in keeping with the rationalist approach in Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed.”

Science claims that the earth has been around for billions of years and organisms have lived and died for millions of years. Is this true? I think the physical evidence is overwhelmingly yes.

Scripture claims that all organisms on the earth (including man) were created by God in an immortal state and that death did not enter the world until the Fall of Adam which occurred around 6,000 years ago. Is this true? The Holy Spirit witnesses to me that it is.

Now, the great paradox is not that they contradict each other but that they don’t. The answer to this great riddle is not how to change one to fit the other but how to change neither. Neither side should ridicule the other because neither side has yet to solve the riddle. Once it is solved, there will be no more sides. Look to the scriptures, for there is the answer.

I view the creation narratives as representations of something literal, but not being literal. But I take Michael the archangel as a literal pre-existent being that had dealings with Jehovah, and Adam is his mortal identity. And I cannot invoke “gap” theology in the timelines of the bible, or in modern revelation. I must assume since I’m a literalist in this sense, that Michael the archangel came 6000 years ago to start this “probationary” time period. therefore, the probationary time period did not exist before Adam, theologically. Therefore, I must conclude that the people before Adam were not here for a probationary state, but were in a state much like people with handicaps are in our day, who cannot sin or comprehend things to know good from evil.

I don’t see prophets as infallible in any way, but that is true especially outside the scope of their callings – as the Church’s own statement I referenced at the end of comment #75 says. Scriptures give us the understanding of the ages about the “why”, and they give us a very sketchy overview of the “how” outline, but those “how outlines” are very rough sketches, imo – painted in very broad brush strokes based on the scientific understanding of those times. I think, with few exceptions, God speaks to His children in words and images they can understand – and I accept the limitations inherent in that construct.

If this is true for me with regard to some of our collective, mistaken views of what the Book of Mormon says, it is true even more fundamentally for me with regard to the OT and the creation narratives – especially when I view the Garden narrative as figurative anyway.

I would just like to add some encouragement to you as you seek the answers to your questions. I encourage you to ask the Lord for guidance but look for your answers in the scriptures. Remember that the scriptures are true and science is also true and changing one truth to seemingly fit another will only create a truth and a fallacy. The answers are there and I wish you luck in finding them.

#100 – Aboz, you said:

“God would not tease us with science. He would expect us to pay attention to what is revealed through it. He would expect us to pay attention to Darwin and archaeology just as much as we do to Newton and gravity.”

I agree totally. Science can’t tell us the “why” – and science can’t tell us with absolute certainty the “how” of lots of details, but I believe God gave us (or clothed us in pre-existent) intelligence in order to learn exactly those details eventually.

You invoke the fact that modern revelation establishes the 7000 year time period. I would agree. As does the biblical timeline, establishing adam as round about 4000 BC. That isn’t the point really, that I’m getting at. The point is, how does one harmonize the fact that intelligent humans were constructing things around 10000 BC, such as the new megalithic site in Turkey that is carbon dated to that date, with this revelatory information? How do we harmonize the cave paintings from France with this. I don’t want to play games with this. Are we going to suppose that non-Adamic humans constructed these things? I’m not bashing you. I want a good answer, since I dont have one, and I’ve been looking for one for a long time. And invoking the idea that carbon dating is inaccurate is not the answer I’m looking for. If we say Adam was the first of our species, does this or does this not force use to admit that these pre-Adamic humans had real minds that were actually technologically capable? Furthermore, do our genealogies intermingle with these “people”, even if Adam was the first “man” from 4000 BC, whatever that means? I guess what I’m saying is that I’m looking for revelation from God on this one, not man, and I’m searching for some bit of feedback from people before I take these things to the Lord, because I’m not really bothered by these things, but I do want to know the truth.