FaithBased: Refining Mormon Cosmology

[_Dr. Shades]

[MODERATOR NOTE: The new rule on flagging a thread as "faith-based" is hereby overturned.

Now back to your regularly-scheduled programming.]

[_bcspace]

BC, do you think that the metaphor of Adam and Eve could be extended to the first progenitors of Modern Man to have evolved on the plains of the Serengeti?

Anything is possible. But I don't see any conflict with my theory of how evolution fits in LDS doctrine and the notion that the Garden is in Missouri or Iraq or anywhere you like.

by the way, while LDS doctrine is that the Garden was in Missouri, I find the verses used to show that doctrine too circumstantial for that to be in stone.

[_haleray]

The whole book of Revelation is allegorical, but that doesn’t mean that the core of what it is talking about, that is the Second Coming, isn’t true, he had a vision(s?) about the Second Coming, saw things that nether he, or anyone that he was talking to, had any concept of, he talked in the way that was common back then, that is, in allegory.
There is times in the scriptures that the earth is said to be on pillars. Does this mean that the writers thought that the world sat on pillars? No! It just means that the writer is talking in a way that the people would understand.
For an example, today we say, “I love him/her with all my heart,” this is an old concept, when people thought that the heart was believed to be the source of feelings like love, we now know this isn’t true, yet we still say the phrase. It’s a new form of allegory; it doesn’t mean that the core of the statement isn’t true.

[_Chap]

There is times in the scriptures that the earth is said to be on pillars. Does this mean that the writers thought that the world sat on pillars? No! It just means that the writer is talking in a way that the people would understand.

No. They thought the earth was on pillars. And they were deeply wrong about that.

People in those days knew very little about the nature of the universe. For some reason this is not felt to be a good reason for not listening to what they say about what the alleged creator of that universe wants us to do.

[_Sam Harris]

My guess is the Creation story was fine in its day but now that we understand God's handiwork a bit better, it can be appreciated as allegory. Perhaps religion can be like coffee and the Creation story can be like sugar. You can take it straight or with superstition.*




*sorry for the mangled metaphors. The aforesaid coffee was of course Decaf.



What do you think?


.

Hey Mok,

I appreciate your attempts to keep the "it's just not logical" criers out of the thread. But that'll never happen. Not here. After Jan '07, the ability to come up here and simply talk about these subjects without having Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, or the word "illogical" thrown in simply died out.

I think that in religion in general, if we could finally look at the creation story (and religious texts in general) from a more allegorical POV, a lot of good would be done. The religious community could finally be done with exclusive behavior. There's too much fear in religion, there are too many people who cling to religion because they can't bear answering the deep questions on their own, they're too afraid of being wrong.

What's so wrong about being wrong?

I just do not understand why it is so wrong to say that perhaps parts of the Bible and the Book of Mormon are fiction. What does that take away from the moral of the story? Why can we listen to Aesop, but not an allegorical Bible?

It's almost painful to see people insist that you have to go to either extreme in the science/religion debate. I'd rather be in the middle, able to both appreciate the progress that science has made, but able to have faith that I don't have all the answers yet, and that perhaps there is a bigger pattern present that we can't see because we're too close to what we're experiencing.

I'm sorry that I can't explain this in more eloquent terms, my vocabulary is limited due to lack of credentials.

I love this quote from Anne Rice, though. I think she touches on what religion does for people very well in these words:

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ASK. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds.

I forgot which book this was in, I had to look up some quotes on her. But it's very true. Even for those who do not believe in God, they are going according to faith that they're correct. They say science backs them, but they are still alive, and hence do not know what comes next. They rely on their faith that nothing comes next.

Within parts of the Christian community, to take away the literal nature of the Bible for them would be like finding the bones of Christ. There are some who just would not be able to keep their faith in tact. They are just as proof-addicted as some of those who insist that there is no God at all.