Where is the Garden of Eden?

[SeattleUte]

If it weren't for the LDS endowment, I think the numbers would be much higher in favor of the metaphor/non-existent choice.

In my mind, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is a creation myth. These were clearly not literal people or a literal place.

But this myth can obviously still contain a number of religious and spiritual truths. Believing that this was an actual historical event is not necessary or even helpful, in my opinion.

God only wants us to believe in the truth.

Unlike, say, a belief in the divinity of Christ and the atonement--which is pure abstraction (helping you out here, Lebowski; that's the difference)-- I think creationism is actually invariably a harmful belief. I've compared it to female circumcision. It's atavistic.

Ironically, the Greco-Roman Jews who conceived Christianity (okay, perhaps by revolation, if you will), were fully on board with the idea of the Old Testament being allegorical. They learned this from the way the Greeks interpreted their seminal books, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and were comfortable with it. Paul explicitly talked about the Old Testament as allegory. Philo pioneered this approach, and he is regarded as one of the "Fathers of the Church" even though he never even knew about Christianity to our knowledge. There was a large body of literature interpreting the Hebrew Bible as allegory, and early Christians were comfortable with it. So have the old world monotheistic religions been mostly comfortable with it.

OT literalism is this weird throw back to pre-Christianity that has manifest itself primariliy in America and extreme factions of Islam.

[LA Ute]

wallah...the SeattleUte effect. This time with emoticon for emphasis.

I'm guessing you meant "voilà?"

[LA Ute]

I think it is pretty simple. Lots of folks don't place a premium on having an intellectually satisfying answer to this question.

I am with my buddy UtahDan on this one. I am, however, getting a kick out of watching SU work very hard at arguing that it is terribly important that people see this exactly his way, so as to avoid holding a "harmful" belief.

[CardiacCoug]

Those believing Mormons who answered B or C: What about the statements locating Eden in Jackson County? Cardiac--do you just blow these off? Do you think these are moving to the "less emphasized" category, along with JFS's statements on evolution? In 20 years, will we no longer be discussing Jackson County at all?

Maybe most are just following UD's approach in not really caring. I don't have a problem with not knowing everything, but I still feel like I have to at least come up with some models for resolving obvious violations of reason. I'm not quite ready to "embrace absurdity".

The early Mormons were apocalyptic in their outlook. They thought the second coming was imminent, just like early Christians. I think you have to interpret speculation about the Second Coming in Jackson County Missouri, and the idea that this was also the location of the Garden of Eden in that context. I think the literalism of this location is going to be gradually de-emphasized.


The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism by BYU professor Grant Underwood is a pretty interesting book about the apocalyptic outlook of early Mormons. Among other interesting things, he explains the difference between millenarianism and millennialism and how Joseph Smith sort of changed his mind during the last 18 months of his life and started to say that the second coming was not going to happen as soon as the Millerites thought it would come.

[woot]

Perhaps the benighted among us here should be grateful that you and woot are willing to spend time with us, patiently (well, maybe not) educating us. I'll give you credit, you at least have been known at times to admit you crossed the line into being offensive or insulting. Still looking for woot's maiden apology.

If you didn't have me ignored for so long you might have noticed. I understand it's hard to notice my lack of stridency when your beliefs are being picked on. Same reason, I assume, why a gentle, mild-mannered man like Dawkins is so often considered pugnacious. Don't confuse dickishness with not being afraid to argue against falsehood wherever I see it.

[tooblue]

Cmon people...
I'm honestly not attacking anyone's belief--I'm just curious to see how people's minds wrap around things.
To those who answered A: How do you reconcile this with the obvious conflicts with anthropologic evidence? clackamas at least gave it a shot with the simultaneous Edens thing (at least as far as I can comprehend what he's saying). I can even accept Eddie's model of God transplanting from Missouri to the Old World (God can do anything, right?). Any other ideas?
Those believing Mormons who answered B or C: What about the statements locating Eden in Jackson County? Cardiac--do you just blow these off? Do you think these are moving to the "less emphasized" category, along with JFS's statements on evolution? In 20 years, will we no longer be discussing Jackson County at all?

Maybe most are just following UD's approach in not really caring. I don't have a problem with not knowing everything, but I still feel like I have to at least come up with some models for resolving obvious violations of reason. I'm not quite ready to "embrace absurdity".

Perhaps the Garden of Eden is a metaphor for earth. Therefore, to ask where the Garden of Eden was/is, is to ask where the Earth is?

It is possible that Adam and Eve are/were literal beings and that the proverbial bite out of the apple is allegorical. I offer some thoughts from my research of this past year that are some what related and that I have previously posted:

Children even as young as nineteen months old are capable of what philosophers call counterfactual thinking. “Counterfactuals are the woulda-coulda-shouldas of life, all the things that might happen in the future, but haven’t yet or that could’ve happened in the past, but didn’t quite.”1 Counterfactuals permit humans the evolutionary advantage to “say what [is] possible or impossible, based on [our] causal knowledge of the physical, biological and psychological world.”2 In other words counterfactuals permit humankind to develop causal theories and in essence “consider alternative ways the world might be [or] act on the world and intervene to turn it into one or the other of [potential future] possibilities”.3 To place it in a different context, perhaps it could be argued that Eve’s choice in the creation story of Genesis is demonstrative of ‘counterfactual thinking’, the development of a ‘causal theory’ and the first recorded example of direct human intervention in the course of human history.

Furthermore, how long were Adam and Eve in the Garden? As well, how old is man?

[SoCalCoug]

So how many dumb things does one have to believe before you'd qualify them as dumb?

47.

[woot]

wallah...the SeattleUte effect. This time with emoticon for emphasis.

I'm happy to have a coinage for this phenomenon. It is interesting. ER is still trying to get people to answer honestly, but it's clear we've gotten to the point of the discussion when people are more likely to insult the questioners than to answer the question.

[UtahDan]

Maybe most are just following UD's approach in not really caring. I don't have a problem with not knowing everything, but I still feel like I have to at least come up with some models for resolving obvious violations of reason. I'm not quite ready to "embrace absurdity".

I didn't say it was my approach, just that I think it is a common one. Also, I said this earlier in the thread and it got no traction, but what is the scriptural authority for Missouri as Eden? When I perused it seemed like I didn't see any good direct authority for that. If there really isn't authority, it certainly would make it easy to toss that idea on the Zelph/Kinderhook Plates pile.

[SoCalCoug]

If it weren't for the LDS endowment, I think the numbers would be much higher in favor of the metaphor/non-existent choice.

I think you may be right, but it's confusing to me - I would think that the LDS endowment lends itself much more to the belief of Adam and Eve as being allegory - we're told flat-out that Adam and Eve "represent" us - mankind.

[creekster]

I didn't say it was my approach, just that I think it is a common one. Also, I said this earlier in the thread and it got no traction, but what is the scriptural authority for Missouri as Eden? When I perused it seemed like I didn't see any good direct authority for that. If there really isn't authority, it certainly would make it easy to toss that idea on the Zelph/Kinderhook Plates pile.

TO my recollection there is no scritpural authority, but there is a series of statements purportedly made by Joseph Smith (and recorded by others present) about Adam-ondi-ahman (sp?) and the gathering of all keys back to Adam at the last days to take place there, and that the garden and some key events refenced in scriptures taking place in the garden, being in Missouri.

It is hard to argue in the context of LDS belief that Adam was nto a person who possessed priesthood keys and was at the head of his dispensation. But to me, at least, that does not mean that the stroy of Adam and Eve was literal in all details. As to where the Ggarden of Eden was, to the extent it was somethign more than an allegory, I am not sure and I am not sure it matters.

[Lost Student]

I'm guessing you meant "voilà?"

Irregardless of what he meant, his post doesn't jive with my understanding of the situation. Doesn't bold well for DDD's popularity, does it?

[Babs]

Irregardless of what he meant, his post doesn't jive with my understanding of the situation. Doesn't bold well for DDD's popularity, does it?

:igiveup:

[Jarid in Cedar]

I think it is pretty simple. Lots of folks don't place a premium on having an intellectually satisfying answer to this question.

I don't think many even ask the question, let alone search for an answer.

[ERCougar]

Unlike, say, a belief in the divinity of Christ and the atonement--which is pure abstraction (helping you out here, Lebowski; that's the difference)-- I think creationism is actually invariably a harmful belief. I've compared it to female circumcision. It's atavistic.

Ironically, the Greco-Roman Jews who conceived Christianity (okay, perhaps by revolation, if you will), were fully on board with the idea of the Old Testament being allegorical. They learned this from the way the Greeks interpreted their seminal books, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and were comfortable with it. Paul explicitly talked about the Old Testament as allegory. Philo pioneered this approach, and he is regarded as one of the "Fathers of the Church" even though he never even knew about Christianity to our knowledge. There was a large body of literature interpreting the Hebrew Bible as allegory, and early Christians were comfortable with it. So have the old world monotheistic religions been mostly comfortable with it.

OT literalism is this weird throw back to pre-Christianity that has manifest itself primariliy in America and extreme factions of Islam.

This reminds me of the recent interview posted on mormonstories, which actually was a rebroadcast of a Speaking of Faith episode. I can't remember the woman's name, but she had written a book called "The Case For God", in which one of her points was that the attempt to literalize scripture is a modern, and inappropriate, phenomenon. It's certainly not isolated to Mormonism, although I agree we're pretty good at it.