If Evolution Is Fact page 2
Minds Above Our Own
The prophet Isaiah wrote:
55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
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Lorenzo Snow was a leader and teacher famed for setting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on a sound economic path at the turn of the 19th century. But as a younger man he is also famed for sharing this couplet with Joseph Smith.
‘Man is as God once was, God is as man may become.’
In one of the quotes above Brigham Young mentions,
‘the Gospel.’ It is life, eternal life; it is bliss;
it is the fullness of all things in the gods and in the
eternities of the gods (DBY, 3)’
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Joseph Smith in his last public sermon said,
‘God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret.’
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In the hymn ‘If you could hie to Kolob,’ at church we sing:
Verse 1.
If you could hie to Kolob
In the twinkling of an eye,
And then continue onward
With that same speed to fly,
Do you think that you could ever,
Through all eternity,
Find out the generation
Where Gods began to be?
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While in modern times the doctrine of plurality of gods is not openly discussed it once used to be.
Our scriptures plainly indicate that God did not reveal the creation of all things as he would to an astrophysicist; he revealed what Moses was capable of understanding; as in:
Moses 1:33
‘And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.
34 And the first man of all men have I called Adam, which is many.
35 But only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you. For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them.’
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The precise meaning of v34 is open to speculation but what is enlightening in relation to modern understanding is that the life of planets is finite, as is ours, that new worlds are being born and old ones are dying. Also that Adam is not one person.
Conclusion 1
So, at this point, what do I conclude? My hope is that with a free mind I can fully embrace the science of how the universe, this planet and every living thing upon it came to be and how it will develop in the future, including the timescales involved and the processes of evolution by natural selection, but still maintain a full and deepening faith in Jesus Christ and His Gospel. Jesus Christ was born, lived, died, was resurrected and ascended to a place we label Heaven. All truth comes from God to the minds of those who seek it, by whatever methods they use. We believe there is much more God has to reveal to us regarding all things both in Heaven and in the Earth. Therefore I will now avidly read and to the best of my ability try to understand the evidence for evolution that is now available that Richard Dawkins and others declare to be fact.
I Recommend this book! ...
Accepting Evolution
In his book ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ Dawkins argues a point of view that accepting evolution does not come easy because we are programmed into what has been called ‘essentialism.’ In other words we see species as being immutable. For example a rabbit is a rabbit and has always been a rabbit and that there is in our heads what essentially makes a rabbit a rabbit. But if we could work a thought experiment and look back over many generations of rabbits we will notice how much they alter and the further back we go eventually we come to a ‘hairpin’ in the path where the ancestor of a rabbit is also the ancestor of a leopard or some other modern animal. When we compare wild rabbits with domesticated rabbits of many shades and sizes it is easy so see how they have evolved, through artificial selection. Given a long enough timescale we would see the same is true with wild rabbits but by natural selection as described by Darwin.
Thought experiments are useful. Applying a similar thought process to the evolution of religion or more particularly Christianity might therefore be applied.
For me the starting point in belief in God is with the question, who has he sent for us here and now? For example, one of the biggest challenges the world is faced with is climate change due to global warming. So who has God sent to pull us back from the brink? There would seem to be many.
. This Guardian article :
