Evolution

[creekster]

It's been discussed yes, but not extensively. Maybe you can link the CG threads and we can go over there and discuss it with Mike.

CG's search function works just like this one. You guys are smarter than me and could find it faster than I could.

[LA Ute]

I'll use this thread for the title. Anyone else read this post over at By Common Consent?

http://bycommonconsent.com/2011/12/0...eminar-at-byu/

It will be interesting to see what (if anything) becomes of it.

I am curious about one aspect of the BCC post. (Background: I am open-minded about evolution. I believe God created the earth and "worlds without end," but I am not sure how he did it. I don't see evolution as incompatible with any of my religious beliefs.) What interested me was the author's statement that we (LDS)need to be more humble in our interpretation of the scriptures. Is there a corresponding need for humility in our interpretation of scientific data?

I am not a scientist but am inclined to think that many scientists think there is such a need. As I've said before, when the day comes when I finally learn the answers to my questions about the how's and why's of eternity, I expect to be surprised often and to understand things in a way I had never contemplated before. In other words, a lot of "aha" moments. Do those of you with a scientific bent think so too?

[Moliere]

CG's search function works just like this one. You guys are smarter than me and could find it faster than I could.

You missed the point of my post.

[creekster]

You missed the point of my post.

My board personna is not evolved enough to pick up such things

[myboynoah]

My board personna is not evolved enough to pick up such things

Triangulate, man, just triangulate.

[Moliere]

Cool article.

There's actually a lot of significance to that talk and I'm going off of memory but I'll try to summarize:

There had been for some time a division among church leaders in whether or not the church doctrine was for creationism or evolution. Obviously there was a lot of people leaning towards creationism with Brigham Young's statements about the creation, Kolob, and the lack of death before the fall, but I imagine as scientific evidence advanced the theory of evolution many in the church wanted answers. They got one kind of answer in the 1st presidency statement released in 1909, which ends with this:

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 into a God.

The 1909 statement doesn't rule out evolution, but it kind of limits it to happening within species and says that Adam was the first human, which tends to be a common theme in a lot general conference talks from the 1920s and 1930s that touch on evolution.

Then in the early 1930s, Joseph Fielding Smith began to publish and speak pretty vehemently against evolution. He was pushing pure creationism (and his literal reading of the Genesis account) and he was doing it through some official church channels, and it was being taken as doctrine by the members since he was an apostle at the time.

There were 3 church leaders that had an issue with what JSF was doing and they felt the official church position, which I think was later stated in 1925, that said "we know God created the world but we don't know how" was being infringed upon. The 3 church leaders were BH Roberts (seventy presidency), John Widtsoe (apostle) and James Talmage (apostle but might have been in the 1st presidency by then) and they were all scientists, or at least I know Widstoe and Talmage were scientists. They went to President Grant and he gave them the okay to give that 1931 talk in the Church tabernacle. I think the talk was later handed out in pamphlet form as well. But the intention of the talk being given was to present another side of the evolution debate and to show that the church had no official position on the matter other than the statement that God created man in his own image.

It wasn't until Robert, Talmage and Widstoe all died that JSF published his book "Man, His Origin and Destiny" that took a very hardline on dismissing evolution. Then Bruce R. McConkie came out with Mormon Doctrine that quoted a lot of JSF's book and with the two books together they basically set the Creationism tone in Mormonism that has pervaded for the past half-century. I believe it was JSF's book that caused President McKay to reiterate that the church had no official position on evolution and it was McConkie's book that forced DoM to require the 1st presidency to review all books written by church leaders before they were published.

It's interesting that JSF and BRM's works are the ones used extensively in CES materials and within the Bible Dictionary. Thus the extensive belief in creationism in Mormonism today can almost be singularily traced back to these two leaders.

Hopefully I didn't mistate too much as I'm going mostly off of memory from reading DoM's biography and also from reading through the evolution packet that is handed out to BYU students when they take biology classes.

[Moliere]

Couple of things I just looked up:

The 1909 statement came about because it was the 50 year anniversary of Darwin's book "Origin of Species"

In terms to references to evolution in GC talks, there was a definite spike in the 1910s (21) and 1920s (23) but not all references were to the theory of evolution. I'd wager 1/3 to 1/2 were in reference to the actual theory and the rest were discussing the evolution of something else (i.e. testimony).

Also, the last reference to evolution in a GC talk was in 1984 when both BRM and BKP talked about it.

Here's an excerpt from BKP's talk:

The pattern for all life is the pattern of the parentage. This is demonstrated in so many obvious ways, even an ordinary mind should understand it. Surely no one with reverence for God could believe that His children evolved from slime or from reptiles. (Although one can easily imagine that those who accept the theory of evolution don't show much enthusiasm for genealogical research!) The theory of evolution, and it is a theory, will have an entirely different dimension when the workings of God in creation are fully revealed. Since every living thing follows the pattern of its parentage, are we to suppose that God had some other strange pattern in mind for His offspring? Surely we, His children, are not, in the language of science, a different species than He is?

I'll admit that I believe in the theory of evolution and I am not enthusiastic about genealogical research, so BKP is right!

[Dwight Schr-ute]

It wasn't until Robert, Talmage and Widstoe all died that JSF published his book "Man, His Origin and Destiny" that took a very hardline on dismissing evolution. Then Bruce R. McConkie came out with Mormon Doctrine that quoted a lot of JSF's book and with the two books together they basically set the Creationism tone in Mormonism that has pervaded for the past half-century. I believe it was JSF's book that caused President McKay to reiterate that the church had no official position on evolution and it was McConkie's book that forced DoM to require the 1st presidency to review all books written by church leaders before they were published.

Thank you for the history lesson. I found your post very interesting. One can not dismiss the relationship between JFS and BRM. If I'm remembering correctly, BRM married one of JFS's daughters, correct? They made quite the team.

[Moliere]

Thank you for the history lesson. I found your post very interesting. One can not dismiss the relationship between JFS and BRM. If I'm remembering correctly, BRM married one of JFS's daughters, correct? They made quite the team.

Yes, BRM was JFS's son-in-law. Their relationship was pretty key in turning current Mormon thinking against evolution. On one hand you have an apostle that published a book that took an uber-creationistic viewpoint and that apostle later became a prophet, which lends further credence to his prior book.

Then you have BRM who wasn't an apostle when he published MoDoc but was later called to be an apostle, which then lends further credibility to MoDoc and cements a lot of his thinking and literalist viewpoints into current Mormon doctrine.

It's interesting that in both instances you have a person who wrote a book that caused the church to make a statement to distance themselves from the doctrine in the book, but then the person gets "promoted" in spite of the unofficial viewpoints they expressed and were chastised for in some instances. However the "promotion" led to further acceptance of their viewpoints to the point where they pretty much became doctrine.

It's a shame that DoM didn't just chastise the crap out of BRM for publishing MoDoc and that DoM didn't just come out publicly and say that he believed in evolution, whcih was something he privately expressed to ????(I'm drawing a blank on the name).

[LA Ute]

I am curious about one aspect of the BCC post. (Background: I am open-minded about evolution. I believe God created the earth and "worlds without end," but I am not sure how he did it. I don't see evolution as incompatible with any of my religious beliefs.) What interested me was the author's statement that we (LDS)need to be more humble in our interpretation of the scriptures. Is there a corresponding need for humility in our interpretation of scientific data?

I am not a scientist but am inclined to think that many scientists think there is such a need. As I've said before, when the day comes when I finally learn the answers to my questions about the how's and why's of eternity, I expect to be surprised often and to understand things in a way I had never contemplated before. In other words, a lot of "aha" moments. Do those of you with a scientific bent think so too?

I really am curious about others' views on my question. Is it that boring?

[YOhio]

I really am curious about others' views on my question. Is it that boring?

There were two questions in the post you cited. I think it's probably just confusing people.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I've posted this before

http://lds.org/ensign/1998/01/the-fl...babel?lang=eng

I think there are plausible explanations to explain the Bible accounts (ie creation, Noah's flood, and tower of Babel/dispersion myth) that disagree with science. "They're not meant to be literal," etc, etc.

What I find to be challenging from an LDS perspective is how to reconcile the points in this talk with science. Other Mormon scripture and teachings of Joseph Smith seem to rely on the literal interpretation of the Bible.

Ugh... I don't like that article at all.

[LA Ute]

There were two questions in the post you cited. I think it's probably just confusing people.

You're not helping.

[Moliere]

I really am curious about others' views on my question. Is it that boring?

It's not the question that is boring...

I'm no scientist so I can't really help, but I would say that most scientists try to interpret their findings with humility, meaning they just take their findings and extrapolate them in ways that are supportable. They usually don't have an agenda and just want to understand the world around them.

I think I've said this before, but I like to think of religion and science in terms of Plato's cave. The two are interpreting the dancing shadows but from different perspectives. One is not better than the other, they are just different. Of course I can say this because I believe in spirituality and something beyond the physical realm. I agree with you in that I think both the religious and scientific will be shocked to find out really how things work in the hereafter when we finally exit the cave.

[Dwight Schr-ute]

Ugh... I don't like that article at all.

Wow. I couldn't even finish that article. I couldn't even finish the section on uniformitarianism. The author completely misses the boat (pun intended) on using this principle to interpret any geologists "lack of evidence" argument. My favorite paragraph by a mile though is this:

Further, with all of the advancements of science in recent decades, we still cannot explain how angels are able to defy gravity and descend or ascend through a building’s ceiling (see JS—H 1:43); how rapid interplanetary travel is possible for heavenly beings (see D&C 130:6–7); how a righteous man can raise the dead using God’s power (see 1 Kgs. 17:17–23); how heavenly messengers can appear to mortals (see D&C 110:2, 11–13); or how Jesus Christ’s divine sacrifice is able to atone for our sins.

This is the best he could do? The biggest hurdle in arguing for a literal translation of The Flood is that the earth is essentially a closed system. Therefore, essentially the same amount of water is one the earth today as there were hundred years ago and a 100 million years ago, whether that was in the form of liquid, solid, or vapor. Despite Mel Gibson's best efforts, the amount of water required to cover the whole earth would be about three times the amount of available and potentially available water that exists on the earth.

I am curious about one aspect of the BCC post. (Background: I am open-minded about evolution. I believe God created the earth and "worlds without end," but I am not sure how he did it. I don't see evolution as incompatible with any of my religious beliefs.) What interested me was the author's statement that we (LDS)need to be more humble in our interpretation of the scriptures. Is there a corresponding need for humility in our interpretation of scientific data?

I am not a scientist but am inclined to think that many scientists think there is such a need. As I've said before, when the day comes when I finally learn the answers to my questions about the how's and why's of eternity, I expect to be surprised often and to understand things in a way I had never contemplated before. In other words, a lot of "aha" moments. Do those of you with a scientific bent think so too?

LA. I think that you are correct in what you've stated above. Science is full of so called "aha" moments in which something that was unexpected and I think that the best scientists are those that approach their study in humility. Humility isn't concerned about bias, only truth. Science has had to make the most educated possible with the level of information available. In retrospect, this has resulted in some pretty embarrassing hypotheses and likely will continue to do so. But all science ever purports to do is run collected data through a null hypothesis suing statistics. Science is really just a game of probability. This game gets significantly more challenging when data is difficult to collect. In no case is this more true than trying to recreate the genealogy of the world using the fossil record. I think once all the pieces of the puzzle eventually get revealed, there will be many surprises and many aha's on all sides of the spectrum.