Pope John Paul II was a wise man and he did a lot of really good things for the Catholic church, in my opinion. I'm glad you posted that info about your friend the zoology professor. I think he needs to have a little meeting with some LDS neighbors of mine, however. Apparently there is some unofficial doctrine floating around among groups of LDS people that dinosaurs and other now extinct species found in the fossil record never existed on this planet. The story goes that since dinosaurs at least weren't ever mentioned in the Bible or the D & C, that means they weren't here. Their explanation for fossils is that God made this planet from remnants of other planets and the dinosaurs and these other extinct species lived on one or more of those other planets. That's why the earth carbon dates as so old even though it really isn't that old in its present form. I heard that the explanation for all the layers of rock, etc. working out so well is that God made it that way intentionally to test people's faith. OK, I know this is not official LDS doctrine. I had checked this out with my close friends who are devout LDS a while back when another friend of mine was telling me that she has neighbors who believe this as official church doctrine and her own mom even believes it. One of my LDS friends in Arizona, when I asked her about it, said "oh my gosh, that's going around up there now too?" She said some kids at her children's schools were trying to tell the class teachers and non-LDS kids in their classes this stuff and her own children had come home from school wondering what the heck was going on. Anyhow, I recently spent about an hour with a non-LDS neighbor of mine defending the LDS church and explaining to her that no, this is not official LDS doctrine and no, LDS people are really not all a bunch of whackos. Even though I am not a fan of organized religion in general, I do believe in making sure that any organization's beliefs are not misrepresented whether I agree with their beliefs or not. But anyhow, have you heard these stories going around at all? What about the human evolution element? When I was at BYU in the early 80s I remember being taught in an Old Testament class there by an LDS Professor that man has not evolved at all. Man was created and put on the earth the same as he is today. There was a quote in the manual from Ezra T. Benson saying that and the Professor said to us the teaching came directly from the prophet and so was unquestionable. Is that what is still taught now? I'm not asking to criticize or make fun, I'm simply curious. Richard Tenney <retenney@yahoo.com> wrote: I believe the late Pope John Paul II said something to the effect that "Science can purify religion from error and superstition". I'll give my hearty "amen" to that. I was recently talking with a friend of mine, Duane Jeffrey, a zoology prof. at BYU, about an allegation that is brought up several times in the debate, which is the claim that "there is no direct evidence for macro-evolution", that is, one species evolving into another. He pointed out that there are, on the contrary, countless living examples, including the ones I tossed out recently about horses and donkeys and mules and ligers. In the plant kingdom for example, he said there are times when it's virtually impossible to tell where one species starts and another ends. And one example from the animal kingdom he gave me was of our own State bird, the seagull, which is found in virtually every part of the world. As you go from region to region, the gulls will vary slightly, but remain breed compatible with adjacent regions. So for an analogy, let's start in California with Gull "A". In Nevada you'll have Gull "B", which is breed compatible with A, and in Utah Gull "C", in Colorado Gull "D", and so forth; each adjacent Gull, however slightly different than the previous, remains breed compatible. But what's fascinating is where the ends meet, and it turns out that's someplace in Siberia; Gulls A and Z live in the same region, but are no longer breed compatible! Z however is compatible with Y, Y with X, X with W, and so forth on down the line, but the ends no longer are. For me anyway this is a perfect example of how the process works. The "ends" (Gull A and Gull Z) are no longer the same species. This is a simple example, but I believe it illustrates perfectly how it works. He told me there are hundreds of other examples that could be cited. -Rich --- South Jordan Mom wrote:
Point taken. The Catholics are definitely a good example.
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