Let's Get Started

What the heck is this blog?  Remember when you were sitting around in the evening after a day of tracting with your missionary companion, and discussion turned to some esoteric scriptural reference or gospel question, and you enjoyed kicking it around?  Or maybe it was Sunday night with your room mates at BYU.  Either way, you weren’t discussing doctrine, exactly, because there was no revealed or official doctrine; you just had speculative (although hopefully informed) opinions about stuff.  None of it was crucial to your salvation.  But it was fascinating stuff to talk about and speculate about and wonder about nonetheless.

I miss that.  I don’t really have a good forum for those kinds of discussions anymore.  These aren't really appropriate topics for Sunday School or Priesthood lessons, they aren't mentioned (anymore) in General Conference, and I'd really hesitate to allow a home-teaching visit or family home evening drift into topics like this either, because those all have spiritually edifying purposes that shouldn't be compromised by distractions.  So, I decided to set up this blog to roll with some ideas, just for fun.

Let’s get a few things straight first, though, shall we?

•  Needless to say, I don’t speak for the church in any capacity whatsoever.  I am, of course, a member of the church, but everything here is solely my opinion and may well be wildly wrong.  I’m OK with that.  I’d welcome any evidence that suggest that I’m wrong, especially if it suggests some other solution to these thorny questions.
• My faith (nor yours) should never hinge on any of these discussions.  A testimony is based on a personal witness from the Spirit that the Church is true, Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, the Book of Mormon is an inspired work, etc.  Nothing that you can say about evolution or dinosaurs or the age of the earth, or whatever, should make any difference to that.  I have, however, seen people occasionally fall prey to doubt because they felt that they had no answer to these questions.  I think exploring these types of questions and having an answer, even if it’s a provisional, speculative one, can help insulate yourself from falling victim to needless doubt, and insulate you from potential challenges when faced with a well-informed LDS critic who may spring one of these "controversial" topics on you.  But let us be very clear here; I make no claim at coming up with anything other than provisional, speculative opinionated answers to the questions that I will pose.  But that's better than simply being uninformed.  I recall when the article was released recently on plural marriage practices in the Church, that some of my acquaintance were a bit challenged by it.  My stance was that, barring specific personal details of the practice of specific individuals, there wasn't anything in it that I hadn't learned more than twenty five years ago as a teenager.  The whole thing was a bit of a non-event to me personally, because I was already insulated and prepared and sufficiently knowledgeable on the topic that there was no way I was going to feel surprised, betrayed, etc. by the release of new details.
• In the past; in the not even too distant past, it seems members of the church were more literate with questions such as these.  There were discussions about items such as this.  I suspect that it was starting to become a stumbling block to many, so officially the church backed off talking about evolution, for example.  But, as James A. Talmage said, with regards to science and religion, "The accounts cannot be fundamentally opposed; one cannot contradict the other; though man’s interpretation of either may be at fault."  At some point, apparent discrepancies will be resolved.  This will most likely involve direct divine intervention and revelation.  However, in the meantime, we can use the concept of the scientific method to propose models and see how well they hold up to what we know now.
• I don't consider myself any kind of expert on much of anything (although that hasn't stopped me from being extremely opinionated.)  If I'm talking about evolution, for example, well I've got a keen interest in the subject, having been a fan of dinosaurs since I was a little kid.  I've taught myself how to read professional publications and understand what they're talking about, and I follow developments in certain areas with interest.  But I'm not an evolutionary biologist nor a paleontologist, and I lack much of the specialized training necessary to be truly fluent, rather than merely conversant, in those fields.  The same is true for the scriptures and what has been taught by the prophets and apostles.  There may well be some point in either of those fields that I'm unaware of that renders much of what I say completely moot.  If so, feel free to point it out.  However, keep in mind, while not fluent, I certainly am conversant, and consider myself reasonably well read and reasonably well self-educated about subjects that interest me.  If you want me to consider your opinion as equally valid as my own, you'll need to demonstrate that it has an equally sound structural foundation.
• I will occasionally refer to quotations (and assertions) of the Brethren that are, nonetheless, not accepted as doctrine.  We learned recently, if for some reason we didn't already know this, that even the prophet can speak his opinion, and not necessarily everything he says is the LDS equivalent of "ex catedra" in the recently released article Race and the Priesthood.  This is crucial to having any kind of discussion about these types of topics; I consider The Brethren to be highly qualified experts when speaking in this fashion, but of course, they're not necessarily articulating official doctrine.  I'll always try to be very clear to draw a clean line around "doctrine" and "everything else" although for some of these topics, it's not always easy to tell (hence the fact that we've often been warned about being dogmatic about such questions or worrying overmuch about their answers, since our salvation does not, of course, depend on them.)
• Let’s just have fun, shall we?  It’s not my intention to challenge anyone or anything, really.  Rather, I’m interested in just noodling around with ideas, like I said, similar to how members of the church have often done in informal and very casual even discussions about topics that are on the fringe of having gospel relevance.  Nobody take this very seriously, please. It’s not meant to be serious at all, merely something to entertain in a way that’s hopefully more productive than just watching TV.  And I admit, I've always been a sucker for a good mystery.

I expect that in general, I’ll post a new topic once a week or so.  I may speed that up when I get excited about topics.  I may slow it waaaay down when I’m busy with other things.  But that’s my tentative plan, at least. (This plan obviously hasn't even come close to coming true, as I'm reviewing this post in retrospect.)

Here’s a partial list of topics that I’m interested in.  Not meant to be comprehensive, but I thought I’d put down my first ideas so I can refer back to this list when needed to remind myself of things I want to talk about.

• Evolution - also, see the post on the Pre-Adamites, listed below, for a bit more discussion on the topic in the background.
• The Age of the Earth
• Death and the Fall
• Dinosaurs
• Pre-Adamites (including some discussion on the four topics above)
• Ammonite mothers—this one evolved into this post
• The Cain/Bigfoot connection
• Watchers
• Where did the Lost Tribes go?
• Lamanites and Indians
• Book of Mormon geography
• Other people on other planets
• Polygamy
• Antediluvian longevity
• Satan's plan in the pre-existence - discussed in many posts, but not dedicated.  I don't have anything additional to add to this topic beyond what I've already said repeatedly, however.
• Brigham Young's Adam-God theory
• The relationship of modern populations to the sons of Noah
• Apocryphal scriptures
• The White Horse prophecy
• Were the Jaredites black?