Patterns of Intelligence

Chapter 13: LDS Doctrine

Many very good people believe in the theory of evolution. In fact, many people who strongly believe in God believe in the theory of evolution.

The reason good people believe in the theory of evolution is because they have been taught to believe in the theory of evolution. Perhaps they were convinced by a teacher, a professor, a book, a website, etc. that the theory of evolution had strong scientific evidence behind it.

This book, hopefully, has demonstrated that the overwhelming scientific evidence is that the theory of evolution could not have happened. There is no reason to believe in the theory of evolution because there is no evidence for it.

If my short book and/or long book convince someone that the theory of evolution could never have happened on this planet or on any other planet, their natural response could be: "Well, if humans were made by God instead of evolution, where did God come from?"

So where did God come from? What was the "first cause" of all things? I have never seen a better answer to these questions than a quote from President Brigham Young. President Young was the second President of the LDS church (i.e. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or the Mormons) and was a contemporary of Charles Darwin, though they probably never met.

This what President Young said about where God came from:

• Many have tried to penetrate to the First Cause of all things; but it would be as easy for an ant to number the grains of sand on the earth. It is not for man, with his limited intelligence, to grasp eternity in his comprehension ... It would be as easy for a gnat to trace the history of man back to his origin as for man to fathom the First Cause of all things, lift the veil of eternity, and reveal the mysteries that have been sought after by philosophers from the beginning.
  Brigham Young

Ponder for a moment how long it would take a single ant to count the grains of sand on the ocean shores, plus the deserts, and in many other places on this earth!!

The answer is that we mortals cannot comprehend where God came from, even if we were told. As President Young stated, it would be as easy for an ant to count the number of grains of sand on this planet as for a human to comprehend the origin of God.

Now let us take this another step forward. We can safely assume that God can comprehend the "First Cause" of all things. Thus, we can be assured that it would be as easy for an ant to count the number of grains of sand on this planet as it would be for a human to comprehend the mind of God!!

If you ever wonder whether God knows you personally, you can rest assured that as long as that ant is trying to count the grains of sand on this earth, that God not only knows you by name, but knows you better than you know yourself!!

Yet, we are the children of God and can, in the course of many years, become like God!!

The Potential of Humans

To LDS doctrine, God is not some abstract power in the Universe. God is a sentient being. Not only that, but LDS doctrine clearly states that God (i.e. officially "Heavenly Father") is literally the father of our spirits, as mentioned in the chart in the prior chapter.

Humans not only have a spirit body, but also a spirit intelligence. We do not know where our spirit intelligence came from, but our spirit bodies came from God.

This makes all humans, good or bad, literal children of God (i.e. our spirits are literally the children of God).

As children of God; not only does He know us personally, but we have the potential to become like God. We will not "evolve" into becoming like God, we must "progress" into becoming like God.

This is what the First Presidency of the church, in 1909, said about this issue:

• "Man, by searching, cannot find out God. Never, unaided, will he discover the truth about the beginning of human life. The Lord must reveal Himself or remain unrevealed; and the same is true of the facts relating to the origin of Adam’s race—God alone can reveal them. Some of these facts, however, are already known, and what has been made known it is our duty to receive and retain.

  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, basing its belief on divine revelation, ancient and modern, proclaims man to be the direct and lineal offspring of Deity. God Himself is an exalted man, perfected, enthroned, and supreme. By His almighty power He organized the earth and all that it contains, from spirit and element, which exist coeternally with Himself. He formed every plant that grows and every animal that breathes, each after its own kind, spiritually and temporally—“that which is spiritual being in the likeness of that which is temporal, and that which is temporal in the likeness of that which is spiritual.”

  He made the tadpole and the ape, the lion and the elephant, but He did not make them in His own image, nor endow them with godlike reason and intelligence. Nevertheless, the whole animal creation will be perfected and perpetuated in the Hereafter, each class in its “distinct order or sphere,” and will enjoy “eternal felicity.” That fact has been made plain in this dispensation (see D&C 77:3).

  Man is the child of God, formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes, and even as the infant son of an earthly father and mother is capable in due time of becoming a man, so the undeveloped offspring of celestial parentage is capable, by experience through ages and aeons, of evolving [i.e. progressing] into a God.
  "The Origin of Man"
  Joseph F. Smith, President (plus the rest of the First Presidency), November, 1909

The long book on this website goes into far, far more detail about LDS doctrine than this book is designed to do.

The Scientific Establishment

There are several reasons scientists [i.e. the scientific establishment] do not like the quote of Brigham Young.

First, scientists want final and absolute answers.
Second, scientists want people to believe they know everything.
Third, scientists want people to believe they can answer all questions with their "theories."
Fourth, scientists don't like being told they are as dumb as an ant compared to God.
Etc.

To better understand the quote by Brigham Young, let us consider a cat that jumps up on your table and looks at your computer screen.

As you move your cursor around the screen the cat may reach out and try to touch the cursor. What is going through the mind of the cat as it reaches for the cursor? Not much.

Does the cat understand all of the computer programming that went into writing the operating system? Not a chance. The cat could not even play a simple game with a human, much less write a computer program.

The gap in intelligence between a cat and a human is much smaller than the gap in intelligence between a human and God, but we can use the cat to teach a key principle.

Here is the key principle: Can a cat comprehend the gap in intelligence between a cat and a human? The answer, of course, is 'no'. A cat cannot comprehend how dumb it is compared to a human because it is at the bottom of a huge gap in intelligence!!

The entity at the bottom of the gap cannot comprehend the size of the gap!!

In fact, a cat probably "thinks" (if it could think) that it is as smart as a human because it cannot even begin to comprehend the intelligence of a human, and thus cannot comprehend the size of the gap between its intelligence and the intelligence of a human.

So if a cat cannot comprehend the gap in intelligence between a cat and a human; why would a human be surprised that he or she cannot comprehend the gap in intelligence between a human and God?

While we are in fact the literal children of God (i.e. our spirits are literally a child of God), we are mental infants compared to God.

In other words, according to Mormon Doctrine, our spirits are literally the children of God and some day, if we meet the requirements, we can become like God, because He is our literal Father.

Consider this quote from a booklet officially published by the First Presidency of the church:

• "In the premortal existence, Heavenly Father prepared a plan to enable us to become like Him and receive a fullness of joy. The scriptures refer to this plan as "the plan of salvation," "the great plan of happiness," "the plan of redemption," and the "plan of mercy."
  True to the Faith, page 115

While we cannot comprehend the gap in intelligence between humans and God today, any more than an ant can comprehend the gap in intelligence between itself and a human, the day may come when we have slowly qualified to bridge the gap!!

But for now understand that our current lack of intelligence is not a proof that God does not exist. It just means that we are children, compared to our Heavenly Father.

For whatever reason, many people don't like the idea that there is a Supreme Being who is smarter than they are. They would rather believe and claim that humans are the most intelligent beings in the Universe. While this may put humans at the top of the intelligence chart in their minds, it is nothing but vain imaginations.

The "philosophies of men" (i.e. the arrogance of men) are the main reason the theory of evolution exists. If there is no God, then scientists are the most intelligent beings in the Universe. How convenient.

But if humans were at the top of the intelligence chart, there would be no Universe, there would be no DNA, and so on.

The theory of evolution is clearly a philosophy (i.e. a religion). But the philosophy of scientists today, who support and push the theory of evolution, is not to try to comprehend the origin of God, but rather to try to avoid God altogether by claiming that all things in the Universe happened by accident (i.e. evolution).

Ponder this carefully: according to the scientific establishment, everything in the Universe happened because of a scientist or an accident. God is left out of the equation.

Because scientists want people to think they are at the top of the intelligence chart, they invent a "philosophy" (which scientists call a "theory," but is technically a religion) that does not include God. That is one way to avoid the competition; you create a "theory" that excludes your competition!!

Other LDS Doctrine [Related to Evolution]

Let us discuss how LDS doctrine (i.e. Mormon doctrine) deals with some of the issues created by the theory of evolution. Examples will be the age of this earth, claims about the age of dinosaur bones, etc.

Remember that all of the books I will quote from were published about 30 years before Darwin published his "Origin or Species!!"

LDS doctrine makes it very clear that before this earth was created, all of us were alive and well. We lived in what was called the "pre-existence" as spirits, meaning we did not have a physical body yet. However, we were very much alive and sentient and we were required to make some very, very important decisions!!

It was in this pre-existence that the plans were drawn for the design and creation of this earth. Consider this verse in the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price (the events discussed occurred before the creation of this earth):

• [On the pre-existent world] there stood one among them that was like unto God [this is Christ], and he said unto those who were with him [which included Abraham]: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell.
  Abraham 3:24 - [emphasis added]

Note that when given the assignment to create an earth, Christ was given a previously existing planet (i.e. "we will take of these materials")! Did "these materials" include an earth which already had dinosaur bones on it?

This question is not answered in the scriptures. However, the members of the church should have no concerns about the age of dinosaur bones because we have not been told whether they were on this planet prior to when Christ was given this planet.

Furthermore, even if the planet turned over to Christ did not have dinosaur bones on it, we have also not been told how long Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve may have lived on this earth for millions of years before the "fall." During this time they may have played with dinosaurs like a child plays with a baby lamb.

It would have been after "the fall" of Adam and Eve that dinosaurs became vicious and started to eat each other. Before the fall they would have been very tame.

While dinosaur bones have been dated by modern science to be many, many years old, I have already talked about the bogus dating techniques intentionally used by modern science. We cannot even remotely depend on any of their dates because they intentionally ignore relevant facts which would interfere with the justification of their philosophies!!

Consider the things that the members of the LDS church do not know:
1) How old was the earth before it was given to Christ?
2) What was on this earth (e.g. were dinosaur bones on this earth?) when it was given to Christ?
3) How long were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before their fall?
4) What are the scientific truths that the scientific establishment has buried by their intentionally distorted and intentionally deceptive tactics (e.g. the bogus dating of bones and fossils)?

Because we do not know these things, and many other things, the members of the LDS church should have no reason to be concerned about the self-serving claims of the scientific establishment related to how old dinosaur bones are, how old the earth is, and many other subjects!!

In fact, there is so much intentional deception by "science" that church members should have no concerns about any claim or aspect of the theory of evolution!!

The goal of the scientific establishment is self-gratification, not in finding truth. This is evident by their continuous ignoring of scientific facts, their constant assignment of every discovery in biology to the theory of evolution (without one shred of evidence); and many other things.

Their absolute lack of a quest for truth gives the scientific establishment zero credibility for anything they say about evolution, radiometric dating and a whole host of other issues.

As if that weren't enough, members of the church also need to understand that the scientific establishment totally ignores any criticism of the theory of evolution and strongly pushes "theories" which are scientific nonsense, and in many, many cases are even fraudulent and/or deceptive.

Not all individual scientists agree with their scientific establishment because many individual scientists think the theory of evolution is absurd. These scientists are blacklisted as a minimum and fired by their university if necessary (see the very excellent film: Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed, by Ben Stein).

Many young students of science are not even aware that many scores of books and movies have been written or made which are very, very critical of the theory of evolution!! I am not the only author who thinks the theory of evolution is scientific nonsense. In fact, there are many of us!! See this article:
List of Books and DVDs Critical of Evolution

A truly unbiased and honest person who studied my main book and studied several other key anti-evolution books which are very, very critical of the theory of evolution, would conclude that the theory of evolution is not in any way a "proven" scientific theory. In fact, the person might go so far as to say that the theory of evolution has absolutely no scientific evidence to support it.

I go so far as to call it "scientific nonsense."

Chapter 14: The Position of the LDS Church on Evolution

Chapter Index of Patterns of Intelligence

Chapter 1: The History of the Theory of Evolution
Chapter 2: The Key Definitions
Chapter 3: The Great Deceivers
Chapter 4: Why the Theory of Evolution is False
Chapter 5: The Interaction of Randomness and Natural Selection
Chapter 6: Patterns of Intelligence
Chapter 7: Other Histograms of Intelligence
Chapter 8: The Location of Mutations (i.e. "Genetic Chaos")
Chapter 9: About the Scientific Establishment
Chapter 10: The Nail in the Coffin of Evolution - Part 1
Chapter 11: The Nail in the Coffin of Evolution - Part 2
Chapter 12: The Iceberg of Evolution
Chapter 13: LDS Doctrine [This Chapter]
Chapter 14: The Position of the LDS Church on Evolution

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