I hope that the gathering to Missouri starts TOMORROW.

The sooner the chaff is burned, the better.

I am the son of a man that bought a nice pair of hiking boots that he couldn't really afford, in case he had to WALK to Missouri. His blood is my blood.

So you accept the idea that there was a giant land mass on the earth at one point? And yet you ridcule the notion in regards to the Garden of Eden. And yet was such knowledge common knowledge in the time of Joseph Smith?

Fascinating.

LOL :)

Lay out the evidence ... there's lots of it. Of course you might struggle a little to make it all fit together in a nice neat little package to prove your assumptions.

I don't know how to respond to that. I doubt Joseph Smith considered many of the implications of his assertion. That you seem to believe that a garden of eden 250 million years ago conforms to his beliefs doesn't make him right. It makes both of you wrong.

Which assumptions? You admitted yourself that pangaea existed 250 million years ago, not 5000 years ago, as the Bible suggests. Unless you can come up with a scenario in which Adam and Eve existed 250 million years ago, that's already plenty of evidence to refute the whole story.

I agree with you that the Garden of Eden story is not literal, and you are right that thinking of the Genesis creation myth as metaphor is presumptuous. Metaphors assert (and all metaphors assume a metaphysics, but that's another discussion for another day) a significant similarity between two referents or concepts. I'm more apt to value the Genesis creation myth as metonym.

I'd caution you not to implicitly equate truth with fact when you declare things like the Genesis creation myth false. I'm well aware of the scientific arguments you are marshalling against TB and I probably agree with them (In this thread you haven't as of yet made a factual claim that I'd dispute). But indicting the Garden of Eden in terms of fact is not the same as indicting it in terms of truth. Fiction can have great truths when it speaks to how we understand the human condition. Nonfiction, such as autobiography, can be jam packed with lies. People can find truth in the Genesis creation myths if they find the human condition in them, regardless of their factual foundation. A psychoanalyst could find them to be true to the degree that they accurately depict patterns of sexual repression that beset Western culture. A transcendentalist, like Emerson, could find that they teach truths about how humans relate to nature.

I'm sure you are aware of these things. I wrote them mostly for the benefit of passersby.

Indeed, I actually find the Judeochristian creation myth to be quite beautiful, and there might certainly be profound meaning in there for those willing to look for it. I am personally more apt to think that the writer thereof was simply wrong due to inevitable ignorance, but certainly whoever it was included some very interesting and potentially meaningful stuff besides.

It just saddens me when people insist on thinking that it's literally true, when it just obviously isn't. It really does reduce our ability to look at it in the same way we look at various other creation myths. If nothing else, it provides a window into the lives of ancient people, but when so many people are foolish enough to think it's actually true, it just sours the whole endeavor.

You suggested they HAD to exist 250 million years ago. I merely suggested that at one time there was one giant land mass on the earth ;)

Who said anything about the story being literally true ... Me thinks you are projecting.