Mormonism resists evolutionThe

[deacon blues]

The LDS church resists evolution on so many levels. 1. It insists that the doctrine is the same for everyone from Adam to today. 2. The missionary program is still fundamentally what was in the 1830's. 3. It devalues biological evolution in order to defend its 6000+1000 years view of world history. 4. It insists on literalism over metaphor, unless forced by confrontation with reality, to surrender. Where will be in 500 years. I think it must evolve or die.

[RubinHighlander]

I work with some smart guys that are TBMs; smart in the technology space but not smart in the Earth sciences. Sometimes the evolution thing comes up. Some just play dumb like they are ignorant of current scientific evidence of the fossil records. Even recent human history with an 12,000 year old camp site found out in the Utah desert with evidence of tobacco seeds, campfire, tools, etc. Add to that the pretroglyphs around Utah that are 8,000 plus years old (not the Fremont ones from a few hundred years ago). Other TBMs compartmentalize it with their mental gymnastics with a view there was an older pre-Earth that was all those dinosaur things (not be be confused with pre-Earth life) and the Earth that began with Adam and Eve, the first real humans. I feel a lot of empathy for those TBMs because I used to be there.

[MalcolmVillager]

So true. It is hard to change officially when there are scriptures, modern and ancient, that claim a young earth work specificity. If that changes it means the prophets were wrong about yet another thing.

On a positive note 2 days ago my 10yo daughter asked me how Adam and Eve fit in to Lucy's timeline. We watched some videos about evolution. The next day she told me "she knows evolution is true. Otherwise where did Lucy come from?!"

Winning them over one child at a time.

[True Believer]

They also don't really believe in Doctrinal evolution either. Most TBMs believe that what is believed and taught in Modern LDS chapels is pretty much what was taught in ancient Israel 4000 years ago. Sure they had that law of Moses stuff, but they all really practiced modern Christianity and knew that the law of Moses was just to prepare them for Jesus. Historians can see drastic evolution is Mormon theology in just 150 years, but TBMs reject that, and believe that LDS temple endowments were practiced by the apostles of Jesus in ancient times, and that baptism and laying on of hands for the holy ghost were practiced by Abraham and Moses (even though the scriptures never say that).

[Hagoth]

I think the biggest hurdle is the doctrine that the literal Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden in Jackson County, Missouri. Although apologists like to dance around it, this is as doctrinal as any other teaching of the church. It was stated by at least three prophets: Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and Joseph Fielding Smith, and is canonized in scripture. And yet the Book of Mormon DNA essays steps right over it and acknowledges that the first Americans arrived from Siberia many thousands of years before the scriptural Adam and Eve and the flood.

This is one of many damning doctrines that the church wishes would just go away, but they're stuck with it. A lot of general authorities have denied biological evolution. Several have also tried to include it into the fabric of creation, but the idea of a multi-billion year old earth where mankind developed through an evolutionary process is diametrically opposed to the actual, demonstrable doctrine of the church.

This I Have a Question column from the Ensign tries to divert the questioner with reminiscences about how Missouri merely reminded the early saints of the Garden of Eden, but finally gives into doctrinal reality by quoting JFS from The Doctrines of Salvation: "When Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, they eventually dwelt at a place called Adam-ondi-Ahman, situated in what is now Daviess County, Missouri. … We are committed to the fact that Adam dwelt on [the] American continent."

https://www.lds.org/ensign/1994/01/i-ha ... n?lang=eng

I think the best summary Mormon doctrine concerning the history of the earth, and of the Americas particularly is Jeffrey Hollands A Promised Land article from the June 1976Ensign.
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1976/06/a-pr ... d?lang=eng
This should always be companion reading to the BoM DNA essay or any other apologetics about the peopling of the earth and the Americas.

[ulmite]

There's a beautiful pot in the Louvre (and many other more shabby ones) that predates Adam. Having it a few inches from your face drives home that there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that Genesis is literal. I can't wait to bring it up next time someone speaks up about how we are so privileged to know that the Earth was created by God in 4000 BC. Pushing back creationism by a few millennia might be enough tip the balance by a few more million/billion years.

[deacon blues]

Great summary, Hagoth. Not only must TBM's disbelieve evolution, but they have to believe a narrative that includes Adam and his posterity having a huge meeting @ 3070 B.C. Then Noah and his wife and son's wives and ALL living things repopulating the earth from some mountaintop (Asia or America?) @ 2500-2350 B.C. and the Jaredites populate the Americas @ 2500-2200 B.C. Then they must believe all the Jaredites killed each other off just before Coriantumr was found by the Mulekites. I guess all the other Native Americans just stood aside and watched the Jaredites kill each other off, and them mixed their seed with the Lehites until all the Lehite DNA disappeared. Now I'm wondering did the Lamanites have dark skin and then mix with Native Americans or did Native Americans have dark skin and God used that to give dark skin to the Lamanites? And after the flood, did the Native Americans (who HAD to be descended from Noah) beat the Jaredites to the Promised land or did they cross after the Jaredites already got there?

I'm just realizing that the DNA essay seems to have forgotten that everybody but Noah's family was killed in the flood. What the.....?

[Hagoth]

There's mountains of evidence that many societies lived right through the flood without noticing they were underwater, and that there were many languages before the Tower of Babel. Also, lots of Bible stories were lifted from earlier writing, like the Garden of Eden, the dry land from water creation, the legged serpent associated with a fruit that affects mortality. And of course there's the flood story that was recorded even before Gilgamesh and the story of Sargon I cast into the river in a reed boat to be rescued dowmsyream and later empowered by his god(dess).