I recently became aware of an interesting study related to beliefs on evolution among members of the LDS Church. The study led by BYU professors, including Steven Peck, polled LDS BYU students over 30 years to identify changes in these beliefs. From the abstract of the study:
Polling data reveal a decades-long residual rejection of evolution in the United States, based on perceived religious conflict. Similarly, a strong creationist movement has been documented internationally, including in the Muslim world. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, Mormon), a generally conservative denomination, have historically harbored strong anti-evolution sentiments. We report here a significant shift toward acceptance, compared to attitudes 30 years earlier, by students at Brigham Young University, which is owned and operated by the LDS church. This change appears to have multiple explanations. Students currently entering the university have been exposed to a much-improved introduction to evolution during high school. More importantly, there has been a significant decrease in negative messaging from Church authorities and in its religious education system. There is also evidence that current students have been positively influenced toward evolution by their parents, a large percentage of whom were BYU students, who earlier were given a strong science education deemed compatible with the maintenance of religious belief.
This graphic that shows the main question in the poll and the distribution of the responses was most interesting to me.
The answer “c. I reject evolution because it is in direct conflict with my religion faith” dropped from 16% to 2%. The common middle way type answer common from when I was in college “d. Evolution might apply to some limited circumstances” … ie “it may apply to lower forms, but not to man” dropped from 50% to 18.8%. The group that accepts evolution unconditionally f went from 10% to 60.6%. The question doesn’t specify, but I presume this includes the belief that man evolved from apes, which BYU professor and faithful LDS Steven Peck frequently professes.
That’s quite a remarkable change in approximately one generation. I was at BYU in ’88 and would have answered d. I have kids at BYU now and they would answer f.
What happened? If you go back 70 years, you would see very strong, very clear anti-evolution sentiment from Church leaders. If you go back to Joseph Smith’s teachings and the scriptures we have through him, we clearly had views of Adam and Eve and the creation that would be classified as fundamentalist today. Yet despite there being no official sanction of evolution, and Church leaders as recent as Elder Holland in 2015 have taught this in a way that makes it unclear whether it’s OK to believe in evolution, Latter-day Saints are changing their views on this.
This is great. Some may criticize the brethren for not leading the way, and letting members flail around wondering how to process this. But it’s great that LDS don’t need to be told what to believe. If they come to believe in evolution, they can modify their religious views to fit it in. It’s no small thing to make that shift from accepting the Bible’s creation story and Fall of Adam and Eve story and doctrines as literal to being understood metaphorically. You can go back to the Scopes Monkey trial time period in America and read quotes that assert that changing this belief is impossible and would completely destroy the foundation of Christianity.
Christian and Jewish traditions were faced with this and other historical and scientific issues related to fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible starting in the early 1900’s. Protestantism split with the mainline, moderate branches adopting a more science friendly view and Evangelical branches retrenching in fundamentalist-literal interpretations and rejecting modern science and scholarship. According to Greg Prince, LDS doctrine and views on this from 1900 to 1950 were shaped by Joseph F. Smith, and then his son Joseph Fielding Smith, and then his son-in-law Bruce R. McConkie. They aligned with the Evangelical Christian movement with how we were going to address these issues.
But in a modern world as it’s becoming increasingly more and more difficult to continue to reject science and scholarship, it appears that LDS are finding ways to make this change in their own personal beliefs.
From here, my next thought, is after evolution, “what next”?
My own journey with how I fit together modern science and scholarship related to Church history and scriptural events have led me to a few other positions that are different from the traditional-fundamentalist view, most notably Book of Mormon historicity. I bring this up so frequently, because of my views that I’ve modified to fit my new understanding of modern science and scholarship, this one gets the most push back from traditional members.
Recently in a facebook discussion, I was asked:
We simply can’t ignore this question: Where did those plates come from? If Joseph fabricated them, then we have a church-breaking problem. If the many formal and informal witnesses were deceived or in cahoots with Joseph, then we have a church-breaking problem. If we have dozens of group hallucinations happening, we have a church-breaking problem. The existence of plates seems to be the final (and biggest) hurdle, in the way to establish your theory. I think that’s why our scholars and leaders, and most of our members, will never go along with an entirely inspired theory. It simply causes too many problems…Said differently, would God really give Joseph an entire book of scripture through a rock, knowing that he’d need to fabricate plates to make the story seem believable? Why would an honest God in heaven, give Joseph all of these sacred words, about a fake people, knowing that these people weren’t real? Why fabricate a story about Christ’s appearance on the American continent? If any part of this story was inspired by God, through Joseph, but it isn’t real, then God himself has some explaining to do.
I don’t have any perfect answers for this, but I do not call it a “church-breaking” problem. If you imagine it’s 1930, and you’re wondering about evolution, you could convince yourself using this same logic that it would be impossible to ever accept. Why do the scriptures say this? Why did Joseph say that? If this isn’t meant to be literal, what else might not be literal? Can we trust the scriptures or the prophets? Does this cast doubt on the fact that God is even real??
Bruce R. McConkie in a famous talk, outlined the three pillars of eternity: The Creation, The Fall, and The Atonement. Each one of these events is critical for LDS doctrine. Changes in a view of evolution, require a major personal reframing on at least two if not all three of those. Of the two: evolution and BOM historicity, I think changing a paradigm on evolution is a much more complex and potentially “church breaking” issue. Many of us have been through this already. If we haven’t, we have LDS models like Steven Peck or others to process the paradigm shift.
For BOM historicity, we don’t have those faithful models, so it seems more difficult. But those faithful models are emerging (stay tuned for my new podcast). I predict a BYU study on BOM historicity now vs the next generation in 30 years will show very similar results as this evolution study. And the church will move forward, as valid to its members as it is today compared to 30 years ago.
Wheat & Tares 
I don’t see the parallel between evolution and Book of Mormon historicity. For one thing I’m not sure of what would count as unambiguous falsification of the Book of Mormon as history. After all most apologists will explain the obvious KJV paraphrases and quotes as a style of loose translation. What’s left that would falsify the text?
Contrast this with evolution where you first had a mechanism discovered with DNA and within the last few decades speciation in the lab. The very categories that tended to be the basis of opposition to evolution were completely undermined. These days with ubiquitous genetic engineering the idea of species essentialism seems quaint and untenable.
There’s really nothing like that for the Book of Mormon. Perhaps reasons to believe in historicity aren’t there in the historical record yet, but neither are there reasons to see it all as problematic IMO.
I think BoM historicity is a much bigger Mormon fish to fry than evolution. Like the Bank of America, it is too big to fail. It is the keystone of the credibility of everything Joseph Smith taught. The only path of survival, if the sciences continue to erode its historicity, is to move away from Joseph Smith before the collapse of his keystone. We show no sign of doing it. Compromise might be happening in peripheral issues but retrenchment is the order of the day for central doctrines.
For the record, Protestant Christianity hardly survived the changes of the last 50 years in good shape. In America the moderate churches have dwindled drastically. Fundamentalism grew for a time but is either flat or slowing declining now. Evolution is only one of a cluster of issues driving the process. Unaffiliated are growing about as fast as the group in the survey above (f) who find no conflict between faith and evolutionary science. They find no conflict between spirituality, morality versus complete lack of participation in organized religion.
In Western Europe Christianity is dying. Churches are empty and have become museums. More Muslims than Christians attend weekly worship meetings in may countries. I don’t have a good idea about a Christianity resurgence or not in Eastern Europe after throwing off the yoke of atheist communism 2 or 3 decades ago. Mormonism is hardly flourishing there.
Christianity is thriving in places with little access to the internet and with severe poverty, being associated with the wealth of the west where it is dying. Mormonism is also growing in some of these places but does not represent even close to 1% of converts which is about our proportion of believers in America.
What does Mormonism look like without the Book of Mormon, in an American religious landscape in the future that resembles western European society today? Ridiculous? Except for the principle of compound interest, if the almighty dollar and the economy that drives it also survives.
Clark—I tend to agree.
Not to mention that the Church paid for Talmadge to go on a pro-evolution lecture tour to emphasize that the question was open.
Clark, but I think you see that they’re different only in that you see the evidence as greatly different. ie for evolution, yes, for proving BOM is not historical, no. Others think it’s obviously parallel, because they are both religious foundational claims that are told as being historical that have been proven to be incorrect literally, so we must change our paradigm to accept as metaphorical to adapt our religion. Still others think neither have been proven and are using your same logic back on you to tell you not to accept scientific evolution and take Genesis literally. I am not trying to prove you wrong in that the BOM is not historical. But I’m making a point that it’s a very similar issue. I’m told it’s historical. For me, science shows it’s not. I adapt my paradigm to allow for it to be still meaningful.
Mike. “What does Mormonism look like without the Book of Mormon, in an American religious landscape in the future that resembles western European society today?” Adopting non-historical view is not the same as dropping it. Similar to the way a believer in evolution could still find power and meaning in the creation and garden of Eden stories and doctrines that come out of it.
Personally, I embrance The Lord of the Rings Trilogy as “more true” than the Book of Mormon. Over a lifetime, JRR Tolkien created the word of Middle-earth, it’s languages and cultures, it’s heros and villians and it’ over-arching theme of goodness conquering evil And, he did so (to the best of my knowledge) without the use of a seer-stone, golden plates, masonic rituals and/or visits from sword welding angels. Oh, how I love the goodness and loyalty of Samwise Gamgee. Long live Frodo!
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Churchistrue:
Ok, I understand that option. But how does it work without moving away from Joseph Smith’s claims of prophethood? He didn’t ask people to believe him because his teachings had power and meaning on their own merit, like say the works of Shakespeare or Tolkien. He claimed they were given to him in his weakness directly from God by revelation for us. The miraculous translation of the Book of Mormon is the proof of his prophethood. Without a literal BoM, he is just another New England mystical crackpot with serious character flaws. Some of his successors and associates were not much better until recent times.
The experience of moderate churches that take a more thoughtful and allegorical approach when facing new science honestly is that they lose members and money. President Hinckley will have to write another book called “Standing for Something Else.”
This is a fascinating topic for me. When I was in seminary and institute in the 90s the teachers openly mocked evolution. (“I don’t think everything just happened my accident,” is what they would say, in a tone of voice that implied “obviously, evolution is stupid.”)
For me, personally, I believed in evolution off and on throughout my early teen and adulthood, depending on my most recent religious and scientific studies. Eventually, in order to accept evolution I really had to restructure my entire faith paradigm. I’m not going to go into details here, because I don’t think that doing so would be faith-friendly. Suffice it to say that I did not see evolution as being compatible with a faithful reading of the scriptures.
I sort of agree with those that say book of Mormon historicity is different, that rejecting the historicity is a bigger change, but only to a point. I have to wonder if this is a form of presentism – assuming without justification that people in the past thought the same of the book of Mormon as we do now. Remember that Bruce McConkie (sp?) said that evolution was one of the seven deadly heresies; I don’t think many people would buy into that argument today. And I’m not sure if past generations venerated the BoM as much as we do now (Ezra Bensen certainly didn’t think they have the BoM its due, up to his time, and his elevation of the BoM may have elevated it’s status.) I have no way to really know if this is the case.
Very interesting data. On the evolution issue, the force of evidence and science has dragged the Church (against its will) or at least the membership into the 20th century. The membership was out in front of the leadership on evolution. The membership is out in front of the leadership on gays and gay marriage. The leadership better get its act together or “the membership” is going to figure out the leadership isn’t bringing a lot of value to the religious equation.
I don’t think the story on Book of Mormon historicity is going to be the Church abandoning historicity when the last apologetic argument finally dies a slow death. It’s going to simply be the slow normalization within the Church and its disciplinary system of historicity-rejecting members. At present, such members are in danger of discipline or excommunication by particularly orthodox local leaders. Eventually, rejection of historicity will move from being a deal-breaker (in discussions with your bishop) to being just another way to be a Mormon. The historicity of the Book of Abraham has already gone there, as evidenced by the Gospel Topic Essay on the subject.
The responses available move from “I reject evolution” to “I accept evolution”. Let me propose another response:
“I reject religious thought concerning creation; and although I may not totally accept theories of evolution, it allows me to maintain my anti-Supreme-Being philosophy”.
I could name some individuals through modern history that had this motivation. I’m not sure where it would be placed in the graph. I’m surprised that it wasn’t considered as a possible response.
As to the BOM, there’s not enough in it to say it is a complete and accurate history, but too much to dismiss it as fiction. 3 weeks ago my Sacrament talk on the BOM listed social conditions mentioned in the book, not existent in Joseph’s time that are in our time.
What about the purported repeated visitations to JS by Moroni? So, in a faithful ahistorical reading, a genuine angel repeatedly claims to be a character from a fictional book?
I wrote this piece in 2011 after my son was told some pretty outrageous anti-science BS by his early morning seminary teacher. https://wheatandtares.org/2011/09/13/evolution-vs-creationism-in-seminary/
He said he confronted her about it, and she admitted she had no college education and went to high school in Texas where creationism was all the rage (thanks, Evangelicals). I was very frustrated because this, coupled with Nelson make ill-informed digs at the Big Bang Theory in General Conference the following year pushed my science-minded son out the door. As Dave B points out, not only do the leaders need to start demonstrating some value and leading, but people need to quit asserting things that make us look absolutely ridiculous to anyone with an education. Kids in particular don’t have enough life experience to look for more than meets the eye when they encounter these types of fundamentalist views. They just think quietly, “Well, when I’m 18, I can get away from these buffoonish science-denying weirdos.”
In this vein, I think the parallel to the BOM and historicity is valuable. I do think the book is problematic (and moreover not very good writing), but I don’t think the question of historicity is a complete no-brainer like evolution is. How do you prove or disprove that an extinct people lived or didn’t live in an area of the world with no known written records for the time period that underwent a large scale natural disaster, changing the landscape dramatically? Having said that, proof of it is pretty squarely in black swan territory. So far, we’ve only got white swans. There is certainly evidence that it contains KJV errors and you can see the heavy hand of JS in its writing, but that doesn’t mean there were no BOM people in history somewhere. It’s not primarily a history book, just like the Bible is not a science text.
In 1986, when I started at BYU, I would have answered F to this questionnaire, but I went to high school in the north east and assumed everyone believed in evolution. It just seemed normal to me. When a random student overheard my conversation with another student in which I said Joseph F Smith and his cronies had no business making ill-informed authoritative statements on things they clearly didn’t understand, he called me to repentance for questioning “the brethren,” even though I pointed out that they all disagreed on this one. So, that was my first taste of a Mormon my age rejecting evolution on religious grounds.
And my son was pleased when his BYU biology prof opened her first class by saying, “We are not going to debate evolution in this class. Evolution is sufficiently well proven, that we are going to accept it. If you don’t like that, you’re in the wrong class.”
If you want to know where D (with a dose of A) came from, look no further than Boyd K. Packer: “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?”
As I told my son, monkeys everywhere were relieved they bore no responsibility for his teacher.
I just stumbled across this interesting post from 2008 by Andrew Ainsworth at the now defunct Mormon Matters (the group blog): https://www.mormonmatters.org/back-to-the-future-how-progressive-mormons-are-actually-regressive/
The gist of the post is that Mormons were more progressive in 1935 than they were in 1973!
The money quote: “In addition, BYU students were less-likely to hold strict creationist beliefs in 1935 than in 1973. For example, in 1973 the overwhelming majority of BYU students, 81%, believed that the creation did not involve evolution. But in 1935, only 36% believed the creation did not involve evolution, implying that the majority of BYU students in 1935 believed the creation did involve evolution. Similarly, in 1973 roughly a quarter of BYU students (27%) believed the creation did not take millions of years. But in 1935, only 5% held such a belief, implying that approximately 95% of BYU students in 1935 did believe the creation took millions of years.”
This was likely due to two factors pointed out in the article: 1) the dumbing down of our congregations through strident anti-science leaders like Joseph F Smith, Bruce R McConkie, et al (vindicating my 18 year old self!), and 2) the addition of an ecclesiastical endorsement requirement for admission to BYU, meaning that orthodoxy could be individually policed in ways it previously could not.
Interesting post and responses. To me, the question of evolution is settled and folks or churches who deny it will eventually become so marginalized that their voice likely won’t penetrate prevailing cultural conversations.
The issue of B of M historicity is an interesting one and, I agree, a bit different from the evolution conversation, in part because we basically just have Joseph Smith’s word that this happened; we have no original text (gold plates) to study or to translate ourselves, never mind the fact that apparently Joseph didn’t need the plates to translate them!? It’s my feeling, though, that, like the evolution conversation, the B of M historicity question will eventually end up being decided as not historical. I don’t want to step on anyone’s faith here and I say this with respect for other views, but the way the different groups of people are described as behaving simply doesn’t match our understanding of anthropology and sociology. Could this be a result of how Joseph translated the book? Maybe, but that’s a difficult claim to sustain, I think. Also, as the years and decades pass without any kind of archeological smoking gun that “proves” the B of M’s historicity, the less credibility that claim will have. I’d prefer to see the church embrace the “inspired fiction” or metaphorical models and move away from the kind of claims that cause a lot of people to be skeptical of religious claims about biblical (or B of M) literalism. And if the B of A (not to mention the Kinderhook Plates) is any kind of evidence of Joseph’s ability as a translator, then the B of M comes under even more scrutiny. It’s a shame its historicity is so tied to the validity (or not) of Smith’s prophetic claims. I actually think it offers a lot more depth and meaning and profundity if it’s read metaphorically instead of literally. So much for nuance, I suppose.
I wish the percentages among general members of the church were the same as among BYU students. I think part of the reason the BYU numbers are improving so much is that BYU students are getting smarter. I attended 15 years ago, and the average ACT score has gone way up even since then. I’d be more interested in the numbers at BYU-I, which, over the last couple of years, hasn’t seen quite as large of increase in average ACT scores. (Instead, BYU-I has expanded quickly, so that pretty much any student with the minimum allowed ACT/GPA can attend.)
Unfortunately, those numbers don’t reflect the reality in many (most?) wards within the U.S. The only wards I’ve ever been in where acceptance of evolution was above 25% were BYU wards (and possibly not even all of those) and a ward where a full 1/3 of the ward was graduate students and their families. My normal middle class Wasatch Front home ward and my current small town Mormon Corridor ward are very much anti-evolution.
I had another thought about this survey.
I noticed that the percent of BYU students who accept evolution as true went from 10% to 60%. I presumed that the other 40% would soon follow in a few years so that figure might become 80 or 90%..But what if the other 40% don’t? I find it disturbing thateven this deep into the 21st century, 40% of BYU students don’t accept evolution. I notice most of them are in the two categories immediately above with some reluctant acceptance. But still… 40%!!!.
BYU represents the best and brightest of our youth. Only about half the kids in my ward in the South can even get in and for my brother’s ward in Utah, less than 10% can get into BYU which is supposed to be the “Harvard of the West.” Move over Stanford, Berkeley, Cal Tech and UCLA! By every account (all second or third hand for me) BYU students are generally intelligent and motivated and accomplished. The professors are excellent. All the negative things magnified in the press are minor side shows, like the honor code problems, the tattling, the rape culture, a few “underground” students out getting drunk and messing around. One suicide in 30,000 students in about a hundred years.We can generally be proud of our cougars as students and fellow members of the church.
Gone are the days when BYU was a third rate community college for RMs who couldn’t get accepted anywhere else. Where they could go and date overweight, unambitious and unappealing girls who still wanted a temple marriage. They could find someone, have a bunch of kids and work at Geneva Steel or Kennecott copper mine or church security /administration or something else like that after graduation. (Even then I couldn’t get into BYU.) Notice, none of the GA’s now gone to their glory went to college at BYU.
If 40% refuse to accept evolution, then it is easy to see that at least 40% will never disbelieve BoM historicity. This is the future hope of the church. Not the 60% in this survey or anyone else like minded. The half-assedness of the church will hobble it but not cause its extinction. You know, half of the youth leave and half don’t marry at all and half screw around with their dates and half don’t serve missions, and half don’t do any number of things they should. Even when parsed down, a significant portion do comply and perpetuate the faith. Science be damned.
This survey shows how the church can and will survive while rejecting science on any topic they please as long as the number of disturbing topics is kept small.And the categories immediately above allow plenty of wiggle room.
A final thought. Evolution is insulting to the apes who never even come close to the level of violence, greed and ugliness of humanity.
Mike: “Evolution is insulting to the apes who never even come close to the level of violence, greed and ugliness of humanity.” I dunno, I went to the Sacred Monkey Forest in Bali, and those monkeys were all a-holes. In fact, studies have shown that it takes about 5 minutes after introducing monkeys to the concept of using money to get food for the monkeys to turn that into a venue for prostitution. Now those aren’t apes, but still. . .
Angela,
I agree 100% with your sentiment on monkeys. In fact, I was visciously attacked by a monkey in that very sanctuary. He drew blood, and I was convinced I had contracted monkey disease of doom. Over a decade later and I’m still alive, but I will be forever prejudiced against those furry little SOBs from the experience.
I was thinking more along the lines of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Uncle Ho from Hanoi, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-dumb dumb, Sherman, Hillary and maybe Trump. (He more resembles an ape than the rest). A close look at the many despots of less recent history also comes to mind. Cleopatra, the most powerful woman to ever live- she didn’t monkey around. Also less visible tyrants in Africa, and many other modern failing nations’ leaders take evil to ever new depths.
In the violent streets of any large American city, petty tyrants with less opportunity and power are just as bad in their own small ways. A girl in my ward and friend of my daughter, at the tender age of 10 years old, was strangled to death with a shoe string over a bag of skittles. (Maybe she witnessed something.) That was a funeral never to be forgotten. Many parents in the ward shielded their children by pretending to various degrees that it didn’t really happen. I did not. My daughter saw the turtle-neck white dress on her friend laying in a cheap casket and scooted the collar down to see the red marks on her neck, while crying quietly. It taught my daughter that the world really is an evil place and you have got to be strong, shrewd and lucky to survive. She prevented several of her friends in the teenage years from being victims of lesser but serious crimes.
The father of the murdered girl was from Africa and he was the primary suspect for about 8 years. He acted so strange because of his personal experiences being tortured in prison camps during a civil war in his home country. How do you treat a foreign man in your ward you are pretty sure strangled his daughter the same age as one of yours and skates? (Eventually the actual perpetrator confessed). During seminary graduation of the youth my daughter’s age, he was there on the back row and wept. I think I was the only parent who remembered and the only one to simply say to him: I know why you weep, I have not forgotten (girl’s name). The point is monkeys are not capable of this kind of evil with never-ending ramifications. Not all aspects of evolution were improvements.
5 minutes to go from food for money to prostitution- I thought that took humans thousands of years to figure out. Maybe the monkeys are smarter than we think.
Mike, your political hack comments don’t strengthen your other arguments. Best to leave them out, I’d say.
One can believe that evolution was central to Creation without thinking Darwin’s mechanism comes close to explaining how it happened. Random chance and natural selection? Years ago I heard from a stake president who also happened to be biology prof with a strong research background that while evolution seemed well-established, random chance had little actual backing in either science or the math of probability. It seemed plausible in Darwin’s day, but was much more untenable since the development of the field of molecular biology.
“Random chance and natural selection? Years ago I heard from a stake president who also happened to be biology prof with a strong research background that while evolution seemed well-established, random chance had little actual backing in either science or the math of probability”
I’m not quite sure what to make of that statement. The principles of natural selection are what humans have used to modify crops and develop vaccines. It explains why some people are not lactose intolerant and others better tolerate living at high altitudes. The concept is much more established today due to recent advances in genomics, a branch of molecular biology.
Dave C, I think the issue is that selection isn’t random but is tied to how well populations produce long term offspring and survive in a particular environment. Even mutation, while often simplified as random, is random only in the sense that it’s probabilistic. It’s not random in the sense that the probabilities of changes to DNA vary a lot based upon the chemistry or replication and cell’s mechanisms to correct errors. There’s also environmental changes to DNA that vary. So if you’re near a radioactive source you’re going to have more mutations than those who aren’t. Ditto for viral changes to DNA. This can be significant and may make phenotype changes one might expect to be ridiculously improbable actually quite predictable and very probable.
Most of those critiquing evolution have erroneous ideas of how probability (“randomness”) occur within it. A big part of this is, I’m convinced, due to the word random having different meanings in English. Most people take it to mean a flat probability curve. i.e. every change is equally probable. Whereas scientists typically just use it to mean “not deterministic.”
“Evolution” as a theory is garbage. Lots of smoke and mirrors.
Truth is, there’s no better evidence for an intelligent creator than the ingenious & extensively intricate irreducible complexity built into DNA, its coding, expression & attenuation, and its complimentary cellular hardware.
Interspecies evolution is a vile fantasy.
*I’ll include “abiogenlnesis” in that vile fantasy as well.