I have been wondering, as I've seen it a few places on the forum:

Do Mormons believe the earthy is really only 6,000 years old like some other crazy religions? If so, I totally missed this growing up, and would have debated it earlier on.

Though, i remember my parents discussing dinosaurs, and millions of years.... though they did skirt around the who "when did god create the dinosaurs issue"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2012 09:51AM by intjsegry.

I never heard that until I read it here

It seems like it must be a new development, because when I was a good church-going Mormon 30 years ago, nobody even talked about it.

I'm sure I would have used that ammunition against my family if I'd known. LOL!

Joseph Smith and Brighham Young certainly taught it. It's been my view, that the church slowly distanced itself from the 6,000 year old age cap for most of the twentieth century. The same seemed to be true of most of the non-Mormon Christian churches too. Then in the 1990s, something happened, and Christianity started going all fundamental, and the Mormons jumped on the trend.

I think a lot of this has had to do with so many of the brightest leaving, not just Mormonism, but organized religion in general. There are fewer voices left inside these groups to tell them when an idea is just stupid, and why, so they are bringing out all their old baggage to place on display, and wondering why no one is taking them seriously any more.

Because in all seriousness I don't recall a lesson or a discussion or anything else that would indicate otherwise. But I was well out of Mo-ism by 1985, so who knows what they were talking about in Priesthood & Sunday School after that.

The first time I heard about it again was when the Intelligent Design people got big, and boy-howdy did I have fun at their expense.

They started really hammering it in the last ten years, though you started hearing a lot about it in the late 90s when the teachings of the Prophet's manuals started to appear.

D&C 77:6

Q. What are we to understand by the book which John saw, which was sealed on the back with seven seals?
A. We are to understand that it contains the revealed will, mysteries, and the works of God; the hidden things of his economy concerning this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance, or its temporal existence.

Q. What are we to understand by the seven seals with which it was sealed?
A. We are to understand that the first seal contains the things of the first thousand years, and the second also of the second thousand years, and so on until the seventh.

Kismet Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> D&C 77:6
>
> Q. What are we to understand by the book which
> John saw, which was sealed on the back with seven
> seals?
> A. We are to understand that it contains the
> revealed will, mysteries, and the works of God;
> the hidden things of his economy concerning this
> earth during the seven thousand years of its
> continuance, or its temporal existence.

Well if you put this into the context of mormon teaching, then its "temporal existence" is the time after Adam fell. That would mean if you counted the garden time as "zero" days, and the earth took 7,000 years to make, that would make 13,000 years.

But if you take into account that Adam supposedly had enough time in the Garden to name every creature (again, mormon context here) then he could have litterally been in the garden a thousand years, making the earth then 14,000 years old now.

Now if we get REALLY into it and you accept the "Enoch" teaching that a "day unto the Lord is as 1,000 years unto man", but that it only applies to the earths temporal existence, then you can't actually suppose that the "days" mentioned in the creation are temporal days, they could be more like "ages" which He called days, but in the context of "in the day" and not a litteral day.

SO

Mormonism doesnt in the end teach anything solid about the age of the earth, only about its fallen state.

Whoohoo, go go evangelical mormons!

I first heard about in church, in Sunday school while I was in High School... My father, who knows more doctrine than pretty much anyone I knew at the time, confirmed it for me later that day.

Dinosaur bones were, of coarse, placed here either because parts from other worlds were used to create our, or the more popular explanation, Satan put them there to mess with our heads.

My dad (a TBM) and a geologist, believes that the earth is millions of years old and that the dinosaurs walked the earth. He gets around this by saying that God created the earth in 6,000 years of his time, not man's, and no one knows how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden. They could have been in the Garden for millions of years and during that time the dinosaurs and other animals were evolving outside of the Garden. This obviously contradicts some Mormon beliefs but he is a scientist so this is the best "mormon" explanation he could come up with.

That pretty much used to be the standard Mormon line, but they were trying really hard a few years back to suppress it, and the official party line now is that there are no death on earth, anywhere, until after Adam's fall.

When surfing an AM channel on my radio one sleepless night, I came across a radio preacher. I don't remember his name but I have heard his preaching in the past and he is a fundamentalist Christian like the late Jerry Falwell.

He said over and over again: "There were no dinosaurs." "There were no dinosaurs." "There were no dinosaurs."

Ah, that explains it!

...but I doubt it.

When I was in high school I was troubled over this issue, since science generally assigned a much older age to the earth.

Then I heard President George Albert Smith say that the earth was about 6000 years old, in spite of what scientists said.

So that settled it, and I didn't worry about it any more.

That's how dumb I was.

They may not believe it, or teach it but it is part of their theology. GBH can say:

"I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. I haven't heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don't know. I don't know all the circumstances under which that statement was made. I understand the philosophical background behind it, but I don't know a lot about it, and I don't think others know a lot about it."

His feigned ignorance is really just arrogance. Mormon theology is that humans have only been around for 6000 years, no amount of "I don't know that we teach it" can make up for the fact that it is theologically necessary.

We believe in using subterfuge and half truths, to cover up our adulterous past, that we may appear chaste, benevolent, and virtuous. We believe in doing good to only a few special men; indeed you may say we follow the admonition of Joseph. We believe anything we are told, we hope that no one finds out about our seedy motives, we will coerce our adherents to endure all things. If it there is something embarrassing, stupid, or easily disproved we seek to bury these things.

Even if you show them the scriptures and statements from prophets that say otherwise, 90% of mormons will insist it isn't doctrine, even in the upper echelons.

Here is the official Doctrine.

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/77.6?lang=eng

Q. What are we to understand by the book which John saw, which was sealed on the back with seven seals?

A. We are to understand that it contains the revealed will, mysteries, and the works of God; the hidden things of his economy concerning this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance, or its temporal existence.



Never forget what the "D" in D&C stands for ;)

Naturally though do to the fact that the word "mysteries" now means in Mormonspeak "don't touch" this is a Doctrine that now gets generally ignored. And that in a nutshell is the #1 danger with Mormonism in how they can so easily dismiss some former ironclad truth with such dishonesty in order to keep up their manipulation games.

Wow. Never having been a fan of the Most Boring Book in Mormondumb, I never realized that Mormonism's Young-Earthism was so clearly spelled out.

Thanks for that!

My DW is now saying that D&C 77 just refers to the time of the earth's history just since Adan fell. So 77 doesn't apply to anything else, but only for time since the fall, cuz we have no real history before that. Heedle-dee hee...

And nothing else matters before the fall either, no hominids count cuz they are not Adam and Eve. The "no death before the fall" part she is not so clear on ... yet...

we actually had a whole fireside topic devoted to this by an 'expert'. He said the earth was thousands of years old, not millions or billions.

He said things like continental drift and radio carbon dating assume a constant rate. He asserted that the rate changed some time ago and makes it appear as if the earth is older than it is.

And apologists wonder why some Mormons believe these things - BECAUSE WE WERE TAUGHT THEM IN CHURCH!!!

One of the prime points that led Anointed One away from the doctrine was the claim that there was no death before Adam and Eve. This doctrine walks hand-in-hand with the 6000 year old earth idea. Since it's obvious that there was physical death for billions of years, they sometimes nuance that with either --"God's days are really long" or --"We're talking about death of spirit-containing beings only, and spirits weren't put into living things until Genesis."

They can always come up with some bat dung to counter doubts, but those are always even more fantastic and ungrounded than the ideas they're trying to shore up.

I never heard that until this board, as most TBM's I've known accepted the theory that the earth is billions of years old. They were the types who never took the story in Genesis to mean 7 24 hour days that we have now.

Yes, growing up in the church through the 80s and most of the 90s, I was always taught that the earth was around 7000 years old. The age of the earth was set at that because God created the earth in 7 days and each day was representative of 1000 years so the earth will continue its existence for 7000 years.

Dinosaurs were leftover fossils from bits of "matter unorganized" that God used to create the earth.

This is what I was taught. I never really believed it because the empirical evidence simply disagrees with this so I put it on my shelf. You know what happens to that shelf eventually.

Edit to add: This is - incidentally - why Mormons always think that Jesus is coming back at any second now. The earth is entering the 7000th year of existence and so Christ MUST be returning any day!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2012 01:44PM by cecil0812.

Only if they believe the scriptures to be the word of God. They don't talk about it much though.

It is a pretty big belief backed by some older doctrine. Most Mormons will talk about things that happened millions of years ago but still go on believing the 6,000 year theory.

The trick with many believing Mormons is to not let the two thoughts cross and confound.

This has nothing to do with Mormonism, but may be of relevance:

My husband has an employee who is a sincere and devoted member of her far-right evangelical Christian church. The doctrine of her religion, which evidently the overwhelming percentage of her denomination believe, is that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

In addition, she is a college student, at a serious, recognized university in a majorly important area of the country--and she is a science major.

She explained to my husband that she does, in fact, personally believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old...but in order to pass her course work in her science classes (and in order to get the faculty recommendations necessary in her specialty), she simply "goes along" with discussions about carbon dating, etc. because "THEY believe" that the planet is vastly older than the Bible says it is. She thinks they are being very foolish, since what the Bible says (or what she has been told it says) is so self-evidently true and factual, but this is, in effect, the "price" she has to pay in order to get her science degree in her subject and earn the credentials she needs to become qualified and licensed in her scientific field.

She's figured this out very, very carefully. (Though she is now legally an adult, her parents monitor her beliefs and her life activities.)

And she's one of the nicest, most well meaning, and most NAIVE "adults" I have ever known.

I am unable to understand how her continuing hard science classes have made what appears to be no dent at all in her religious beliefs.

She has just learned how to live a whole life on double tracks, and she does it very, very well (so far as any outsider can see).

i remember being taught this and asking how come they found dinosaurs bones .only to be told that god just took parts of the universe and prehaps they were from another planet and just bought here to help make the earth RIGHT hahahahahahaha even now i think its down right stupid

Im Pretty Sure that Cleon Skousen published his affirming stmnts thru TSCC, either BookCraft or Deseret Books (?)

I don't think he was a GA, but taught at YBU (?).

In a bigger matter... it's interesting how TSCC 'half' approves of stuff.

If you still want to believe/understand the Bible account of the Earth's creation ----- not the 6000 years. The bible states "in the beginning" God created the heavens and the earth -- no definition of when the beginning was. The beginning could have been billions of years ago where dinos, evolution, etc. etc. obviously existed. The bible then goes on to tell us about the 6 creative periods ---creation and separation of the light (1st day), etc.. Just a different way to read the bible instead of jumping to the conclusion that the earth and heavens was created the 1st Day!

Ok, you can take your day-age creationism and tell me where Adam and Eve fit in the apologetic picture?

Adam is a term for man and represents all mankind rather than a particular single being. The story in the garden is only an explanation for the fact that good and evil exist, not a literal history lesson. Everything prior to the flood is only meant alegorically. Once this is understood, the absurd attempt to create the fiction of the BoM, is self-evident.

Though non-LDS fundamentalists hold to a literal garden and timeline, Christians who do not take the Bible literally believe in an old earth and in evolution. Indeed, we are still evolving.

Why did God have to explain it the way It did? Why couldn't have God explained exactly how it happened instead of explaining it as if it happened a different way? If there are fundies out there who believe in the literal flood, or the literal Adam and Eve, isn't it God's fault and not their own limited understanding?

"Adam is a term for man and represents all mankind rather than a particular single being."

...says which modern preacher?

The Adam and Eve story that we find both inside of Christianity and within the myths of dozens of other ancient and modern religions doesn't tell the story of all of mankind. Rather, almost universally they talk about one man.

That's absolutely what I was taught. My friends still believe it.

I would wonder how on earth that could be, but then I got the dinosaur bones coming from a planet used to create this earth explanation.

And there is definitely something wrong with carbon dating. They don't trust it at all, because it's obviously way off, according to them.

I was taught that the Earth was a minimum of 6000 years old and more than likely Much, Much Older.

I was also taught that the age of the earth was not important and that all things would be made known, "in due time of the lord".

You must not have read the Mormon scriptures before coming to this site then. Check out D&C 77:6.

So, which tradition to people follow? Should they follow the oral tradition or the written one?

Clearly you follow the written tradition. However, in the oral tradition of Mormonism it is common for people to believe in exactly what mormonista is talking about.

The cringe worthy part of this is how easily a phrase such as "in due time of the lord" can be used to brainwash people into forgetting the multitudes of inconsistencies encountered within Mormon doctrine.

snb Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So, which tradition to people follow? Should they
> follow the oral tradition or the written one?
>
> Clearly you follow the written tradition.

Uh....what?

I don't follow this at all.

Many of these posters are old enough to have seen this "doctrine" both in speeches, and in writing.

I've seen it in both speeches and in writing too.

To divide it up seems convoluted at best.

It makes no sense to pretend that Mormonism has "traditions" when doctrine often comes first from the pulpit and then is recorded, and then defended by other speeches which are later redacted by disingenuous apologists.

Almost every church president has stated that man has been aroundnfor 6,000 years. The only ones that I have not read statements of are the most current ones, who never talk about doctrine.