WOW. The natural history sure blows holes in LDS Theology!

[Palerider]

My perception is the LDS leaders believe in a God who lacks humility and/or meekness: ie. the Church. They like large buildings and large gatherings.

You mean like great and spacious buildings??

[wtfluff]

Or another reply is: "Which God? Zeus? Ra? Vishnu? Dumbledore? Allah? Elohim? Any one of the other thousands of deities that humans have invented?"

Or say, "yes, in fact, I believe in all of them. Mention the ones listed above and add, "and even all of the baby and toddler gods that Joseph Smith told us are out there."

Dear Godzilla, I forgot about those guys!

“Eternity is full of thrones, upon which dwell thousands of children, reigning on thrones of glory, with not one cubit added to their stature."

I need to remember to pray to the cubit-less children on thrones at some point in the future, if not always...

[Hagoth]

“Eternity is full of thrones, upon which dwell thousands of children, reigning on thrones of glory, with not one cubit added to their stature."

I need to remember to pray to the cubit-less children on thrones at some point in the future, if not always...

Imagine the shock of devoting your life to a God who, when you finally meet him, is wearing a diaper and sucking on a pacifier.

[2bizE]

This....
http://westerndigs.org/ice-age-hunting- ... ah-desert/

[wtfluff]

“Eternity is full of thrones, upon which dwell thousands of children, reigning on thrones of glory, with not one cubit added to their stature."

I need to remember to pray to the cubit-less children on thrones at some point in the future, if not always...

Imagine the shock of devoting your life to a God who, when you finally meet him, is wearing a diaper and sucking on a pacifier.

As long as she does a better job of god-ing that Elohim (or any of the other absentee deities as currently constituted via humanity,)
it will be a step up.

[Rob4Hope]

My perception is the LDS leaders believe in a God who lacks humility and/or meekness: ie. the Church. They like large buildings and large gatherings.

I see this as well. "Do you have any money?"...."We have sufficient for our needs..."....yeh right.

[sunstoned]

Let's not forget about the Tower of Babel and the confusion of Earth's languages. This one is just about as believable as the global flood. It is also something the church can't really walk away from as it is tied directly to the story of the Jeridites in the BoM.

[Hagoth]

Let's not forget about the Tower of Babel and the confusion of Earth's languages. This one is just about as believable as the global flood. It is also something the church can't really walk away from as it is tied directly to the story of the Jeridites in the BoM.

I imagine a new apologetic for this could be that the Jaredites were misinterpreting the situation. They were encountering others who spoke differently and assumed that God had scrambled their language. They then applied that misconception to some rumors that were going around about a Babylonian tower. God saw that as a fortunate narrative to help motivate them to do his bidding and perpetuated it to get them into the wilderness. I have actually seen apologetics along those lines for the "skins of blackness" in the BoM. They contend that the Book of Mormon is not racist but the Nephite authors of it were, but we shouldn't let ourselves get bogged down in someone else's bigotry.

[blazerb]

I'm not really responding to the conversation, but someone reminded me of this story the other day. It seems to fit the topic. Basically, DNA shows that a man in England is a descendant of a 9000 year old skeleton found nearby. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/the- ... 71542.html

It is a little confusing. If I understand correctly, they share a maternal ancestor. This fascinates me.

[Rob4Hope]

I'm further into the book. The pyramids of Egypt. They are an enigma to the scholars. And, in that arena, its quite interesting how they parallel TSCC with regard to arrogant hierarchical authority.

Hancock points out there are some INTERESTING anomalies associated with the pyramids, such as its height/base ratio being almost a perfect "pie" ratio (as in 3.14159...etc). Something similar is part of the larger pyramid in the Western Hemisphere. The fact that the Great Pyramids line up with Orion's belt in a rather uncanny way; the fact that the pyramids are so close to perfect 'true north' and so forth, with almost perfect right angles; etc. I could go on for pages with this.

So, along come the Egyptologists, and they pull on (I agree with Hancock on this) flimsy evidence to age the place, claiming it is about 4,500 years old of something. But its like a MASSIVE ANACHRONISM! The Egyptologists claim to know something of the technological abilities of those people back then, and those folks couldn't build the thing--no more than we could 50 years ago!

But!!!....the arrogant Egyptologists will NOT budge from their perspective and consider other options. Why?...because to do so would unravel the whole system. No more slow evolution; no more biblical creation myth for that matter; no more slow rise of technology; no more considering man as the ONLY intelligent species to ever achieve our current state of technology, etc .

In my mind, it actually does make sense that perhaps there have been others on this planet who just might have been advanced. But for me to consider that, I have to allow myself to actually consider that what I was taught about the creation myth may be wrong--that just maybe this earth had life BEFORE ADAM....etc.

The parallels to the LDS leadership are pretty stark. Those guys CAN'T even consider differences. In their mind, there is ONLY one way to believe, and that way is rigid, unyielding, and just plan stubborn. Didn't someone once say "man will never fly"....? oops. That's all I can say.

[slavereeno]

So because of my upbringing I have always avoided a lot of natural history stuff, especially evolution. I decided about 15 years ago that it was ok for me to accept evolution, and eventually embrace it. That being said I never actually studied it. Because of this thread I have been devouring information about the origin of humans. (I blame Rob4Hope for the hours I have spent on this in the past few days) Its fascinating, while there are gaps I had no Idea how much fossil, DNA and archeological evidence they have uncovered. Tons of it going back millions of years.

[Rob4Hope]

So because of my upbringing I have always avoided a lot of natural history stuff, especially evolution. I decided about 15 years ago that it was ok for me to accept evolution, and eventually embrace it. That being said I never actually studied it. Because of this thread I have been devouring information about the origin of humans. (I blame Rob4Hope for the hours I have spent on this in the past few days) Its fascinating, while there are gaps I had no Idea how much fossil, DNA and archeological evidence they have uncovered. Tons of it going back millions of years.

Doesn't knowing about the fossil record make you look at Bruce McConkie a different way? I remember hearing him speak. I sat in AWE as this man, in calm command, declared the word of God,...and boy I believed it...boy I BELIEVED it!

He spoke with authority. He spoke with conviction. He spoke with clarity. He made it absolutely clear that NO DEATH happened before Adam partook of the fruit!

So, all those dinosaur bones really didn't exist. Nope. They were "transported here" from someplace else...but those animals didn't die on this planet. They couldn't have....they were too old, and Bruce was a "Man of God".

What a mind f***!

[Hagoth]

Its fascinating, while there are gaps I had no Idea how much fossil, DNA and archeological evidence they have uncovered. Tons of it going back millions of years.

Yup, once that genie gets out of the bottle the arguments against it sound truly desperate and flimsy, based entirely on appeal to authority. I especially enjoy the proposition that people who believe in evolution are somehow elevating themselves above God, despite the fact that what they're really saying is pretty much the opposite: that I'm not so special after all, I'm just part of nature like every other living thing.

Kind of funny when the condemnation is coming out of the mouths of people who actually believe they are going to become gods.