"So if there is a Garden of Eden, he said, it's the continent as a whole"

[Spicy McHaggis]

Recently discovered fossils show Homo Sapiens are 100,000 years older than thought.

http://www.sltrib.com/home/5377715-155/ ... er-than-we

I lost my testimony in mormonism long before I came to the conclusion Adam & Eve did not exist. If there is definitive proof that the church and Christianity isn't real, it is this fact.

In order for Jesus to be literally a savior over sin & death, Adam & Eve must be literally the first humans. No A&E, no need for Jesus.

[Corsair]

This is an amazing discovery and I look forward to a new narrative for anthropology. I suspect the the institutional church will do as much as they can to ignore this finding. The have nothing to gain form trying to shoehorn an apologetic explanation into a scientific narrative.

[moksha]

300,000 years ago in Morocco, eh? How do we know this person did not travel from Missouri to Morocco on the Marrakesh Express? He could have said,

Trying to make the train
Through clear Moroccan skies
Cureloms and Curmoms heed the call
Animal spirits wall to wall

Sweeping McConkie from the edges of my mind
Had to get away to see what we could find
Hope the days that lie ahead
Bring us back to where they've led
Listen not to what's been said

Did you know we're leaving Adam-ondi-Ahman?
Leaving Missouri seeking after Mammon
They're taking me to Marrakesh,
All on board that train!

[Hagoth]

So, let me see if I can patch together a simple timeline:

300,000 years ago: Modern(ish) humans lived throughout Africa (supported by evidence)

15,000 years ago: Siberians crossed Beringia into the Americas (supported by evidence)

6000 years ago: Adam and Eve were created from dust/rib in Missouri, which was at a higher plane of existence than the modern earth (no evidence)

5500 years ago: Sumerian and Egyptian writing were in use (supported by evidence)

4500 years ago: the entire earth was inundated by a flood (no evidence)

4499 years ago: cultures all over the world continued uninterrupted by any sort of global deluge (supported by evidence)

4300 years ago: all languages are created in a single event (no evidence)

4299 years ago: Sumerian and Egyptian writing are still in use, unaware that they were just created (supported by evidence)

2600 years ago: Lehites arrive in the Americas and start building cities and fighting wars (no evidence)

15,000 years ago-1492: Many civilizations arise throughout the Americas with no connection to the BoM narrative (supported by evidence)


It's almost as if the parts of the story that are based on evidence form a completely different narrative than those that aren't. Hmm.

[redjay]

300,000 years ago in Morocco, eh? How do we know this person did not travel from Missouri to Morocco on the Marrakesh Express? He could have said,

Trying to make the train
Through clear Moroccan skies
Cureloms and Curmoms heed the call
Animal spirits wall to wall

Sweeping McConkie from the edges of my mind
Had to get away to see what we could find
Hope the days that lie ahead
Bring us back to where they've led
Listen not to what's been said

Did you know we're leaving Adam-ondi-Ahman?
Leaving Missouri seeking after Mammon
They're taking me to Marrakesh,
All on board that train!

Could have picked up some striped Djellebas and took them back home

[oliver_denom]

The only way you can square Mormon theology with scientific findings such as these is by either: 1) Denying the science 2) Coming up with an unsubstantiated fairy tale (they were on another planet for instance) 3) Creating an extremely racist narrative about where humans come from.

[Mad Jax]

I still know people who are Christian (or identify that way) who accept all of the above. Which is odd to me, but I try not to dismiss the ideas people propose about looking at scripture as pure metaphor. I don't think I've met a member of the LDS church who identifies as TBM who accepts it, but I suppose if the former can exist, the latter can.