Comments about ‘Evolution, dinosaurs and faith: Navigating the world of discovery’

RE: Jeff, Logical reasons to believe the Biblical account of creation is a better explanation for origins than evolution.

A.Creation is intricately designed, integrated, purposeful, and full of aesthetic beauty. These attributes can only be satisfactorily explained by virtue of an intelligent, personal, meaningful Creator, since the only alternative is randomness with no purposeful, orderly cause.

B.The natural creation and all living creatures are filled with systematic information that cannot have originated by itself. Information requires intelligence. Increasing orders of information from simple levels of life to the most complex cannot be explained naturalistically because you can never get MORE information from LESS information.

C.To exclude the purposeful intelligence of the Creator from the creation requires one to believe that natural physical elements are eternal and that those elements, left to themselves over time, can randomly produce all the vast variety of living things. Such false reasoning is similar to expecting the chemistry of paper to produce the knowledge of the encyclopedia to be written on it without the external application of intelligent creativity.

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Tax exempt foundations like the National Science foundation put lots of money into Universities trying to support their erroneous theorys.

Why?

Thinkman - In response to your question to ironandclay - yes Hinckley did say that, but remember that mormons can always use the phrase "it was his opinion" when something goes against their arguement. So they will say that was Hinckleys opinion, Joseph Smith was giving his opinion when he taught that, it was never doctrine. It is how they get around all of the issues of their doctrine...

@Ron Hilton,

"But Evolution (with a capital 'E') is still only a theory, not an observable scientific fact, regardless of how much it may appeal to the secular atheistic mind."

Religion is also a theory, not an observable scientific fact, regardless of how much it may appeal to a theistic mind.

Notice how these things always appeal to those raised into church. How many people, with no prior exposure to religion, give it any serious thought and inquiry?

@Brahmabull

"Thinkman - In response to your question to ironandclay - yes Hinckley did say that, but remember that mormons can always use the phrase "it was his opinion" when something goes against their arguement. So they will say that was Hinckleys opinion, Joseph Smith was giving his opinion when he taught that, it was never doctrine. It is how they get around all of the issues of their doctrine..."

Didn't understand, don't know, and myths and folklore are other excuses when things no longer fit.

R Hilton: "But Evolution (with a capital 'E') is still only a theory..."

Isaac, An Index to Creationist Claims, Claim CA201

Bluviking: "Remember, scientists thought the world was flat for a long time, until they were proven wrong."

Ibid, CA250

sharrona: "designed, integrated, purposeful... information that cannot have originated by itself "...requires one to believe that natural physical elements... can randomly produce all the vast variety of living things."

Ibid, CI generally, but especially CI101 and CI120, also CB102, CF002, CF003

Also, remember that natural selectiion is not a random process. It is decidedly nonrandom (hence "selection"), though undirected. At least yopur encyclopedia example is more creative than the tired tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747 cliche.

zoar63: "Assuming men evolved as science States what does that tell us about Adam and Eve of which the scriptures state were the first people on the planet."

Well, maybe it tells us that the creation stories of Bronze Age goatherders, honed through generations of oral tradition before being written, make for lovely literature and metaphor, but should not be interpreted literally.

I'm not seeing any new ideas from the evolution skeptics. Just the same old, same old.

Lvalfre - yeah that is true too. I had to adjust my comment 5 times so that the moderators would approve it. Even this comment had to be changed to let it go through. Can't say any opinion that they don't agree with or they deny it.

@The Truth
Neither the scriptures nor modern revelation tell us how God created man. We don't know how he did it. Period.
Maybe it was evolution, maybe it wasn't. Doesn't really matter to anyone's salvation.

I think you should find another cause because you are getting too caught up in it. It's fine to have your opinion on this ... but you act as if to believe in evolution is heresy and it is not.
If evolution is false then science will probably figure it out eventually. If it is true ... then so what? My testimony of God is not hurt by evolution or any other science.

@LDS Liberal
"By denying evolution,
You are ineffect denying Eternal Progression.
Perfecting is an evolutionary process."

Garbage! LIke I told "The Truth" Nothing in scripture or revelation tells us how God created Man.
It also doesn't tell us HOW we progress. We don't need to believe in the theory of evolution to believe in Eternal progression.

You are just as wrong as "The Truth" but on the other extreme.

2 Nephi 2:22. About as straightforward as it gets....

2 Nephi 2:22 - About as silly and Platonically absurd as it gets.

RE: Captain Kirk

There are several scriptures that hint at how it was created and more certainly that evolution is not it.

2 Nephi 2:22
Abraham 3:22-26

We were created spiritually before we were created physically, our spirits look like us. we did not inhabit random bodies, we were an intentional creation. We existed before the earth was created, ponder that.

Abraham 5:7 (see also genesis 2:7) And the Gods formed man from the dust of the ground, and took his spirit (that is, the man’s spirit), and put it into him; and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

Doesn't sound like evolution. sounds much more direct.

Genesis 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after HIS kind
Genesis 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after HIS kind

"HIS" emphasized, not evolution, all animals, plants created and reproduce after an existing pattern, not random.

No death in Garden of Eden. How does evolution explain that? It can't, with evolution death must exist.

That's just a few scriptures. There are many more.

RE: Captain Kirk

There are several scriptures that hint at how it was created and more certainly that evolution is not it.

2 Nephi 2:22
Abraham 3:22-26

We were created spiritually before we were created physically, our spirits look like us. we did not inhabit random bodies, we were an intentional creation. We existed before the earth was created, ponder that.

Abraham 5:7 (see also genesis 2:7) And the Gods formed man from the dust of the ground, and took his spirit (that is, the man’s spirit), and put it into him; and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

Doesn't sound like evolution. sounds much more direct.

Genesis 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after HIS kind
Genesis 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after HIS kind

"HIS" emphasized, not evolution, all animals, plants created and reproduce after an existing pattern, not random.

No death in Garden of Eden. How does evolution explain that? It can't, with evolution death must exist.

That's just a few scriptures. There are more.

@ The Greater Truth

Still just hints and interpretations.

I am not saying that you don't have good points.
In fact my own personal belief is probably close to yours ... but I would never preach it over the pulpit nor would I feel someone is wrong for believing in evolution. We simply don't know and I wouldn't be that surprised if evolution is true.
In the end, it just doesn't have much importance to our salvation and should not be a point of contention.