Ok – travel + end of school year + (mild) family illness = this is going to be my shortest post ever. But it’s based on a recent event so didn’t want to wait to start a discussion.
On Sunday evening during a Young Adult fireside, President Nelson commented that “God has been sending humans to the earth for over six millennia.” Now, it’s possible that by “over” he meant “300,000” but I find that somewhat implausible given the actual words he used. In addition, he’s previously taught that there’s no way a “Big Bang” created life. It’s deeply ironic to me that someone who claims to know so much about heaven and the afterlife seems to know so little about the earth and the present. Undermines his credibility some.
In general, I have noticed during his presidency a trenchant return to fundamentalism and literalism, a focus on the literal gathering of Israel, and an apocalyptic focus on the second coming (which he seems to think is literal and just around the corner). I find his young earth assumption particularly strange because, when I was growing up, I just didn’t see a conflict between science and religion. Why couldn’t God have leveraged the natural process of evolution to “create” the earth? I thought that evolution denial was something that anti-intellectual fundamentalist evangelical Christians did. Not Mormons.
Maybe I was just clueless, or maybe things really have changed. What do you all think?
- In your experience have Mormons been anti-evolution and science? Have you seen this change—in either direction—over time?
- Why do you think Nelson insists on a literal view of scripture? My best guess is that a metaphorical Bible poses unique problems to LDS truth claims (like Book of Mormon reliance on biblical stories like Babel, and like Joseph Smith claiming to have conversed with Adam and referring to various likely-mythical biblical figures in the D&C). Anything else?
Wheat & Tares 
“Why do you think Nelson insists on a literal view of scripture? ”
To bolster his own self-conception as being on part with (or perhaps greater than, since he’s imminently preceding the return of Jesus) literal biblical prophets.
God has sent humans here for over 6,000 years the same way Elon Musk has more than $1 million dollars.
Educated Latter-day Saints have no problem with science. Contrary to the concerns revealed in the op, I have noted a trend to greater acceptance of evolution among high school students. I’m not so sure that President Nelson exemplifies Biblical literalism. I have never noticed any suggestion of current biblical scholarship in President Nelson’s speeches.
Personally, count me among those who take the Bible seriously, with the understanding that it is an ancient document which required interpretative reading. I believe that we really should focus on what the Bible authors were trying to say in their narratives. In doing so, I have found that I take the Bible far more seriously than those who are more fundamentalist in their approach and try to engage in silly apologetics, making the Bible say things it never said or not say things it most definitely said. Ben Spackman is a helpful resource in what I am describing.
In my experience, yes, Mormons tend to be anti-evolution. A lot of that is because of Bruce R. McConkie and Joseph Fielding Smith and their strong anti-evolution views. If I remember correctly from Greg Prince’s David O. McKay biography, Smith wrote a whole anti-evolution book and spent a lot of time and effort promoting his opinions to CES instructors. We are still dealing with the consequences of that decades later with CES instructors who think that evolution is against Church doctrine. Members of the Church mostly outgrew old-fashioned beliefs about things like birth control, but they are having a harder time letting go of anti-evolution. So now you end up with young Mormons studying science and realizing that of course evolution happened, and if they think that’s not an acceptable belief, it’s another good reason to leave the Church altogether.
Just because there were pre-Adamites, doesn’t mean they need to be referred to as human. The Human race began with Adam.
@cachemagic, I have no clue what a pre-Adamite is, or what it means that the human race began with Adam. But in any event, Genesis was never intended by its authors to be a scientific account of the creation of the earth or humans.
@Old Man, I would be interested in any evidence that Nelson does not take the Bible literally. I see none, and only see the contrary. The way he talks about creation, the second coming, ancient prophets, etc all strongly suggests he is a literalist.
I agree that many high schoolers believe in evolution, so they are pretty confused when their seminary teachers tell them it’s not real (which is still happening, and is shocking).
I also grew up with the idea that God used evolution to create all life. I grew up under David o McKay, and I think later prophets were more fundamentalist and started saying things in General Conference about evolution being wrong. I remember a discussion my first year in full fledged adult gospel doctrine class when I was probably 19, and a big argument broke out between the Bensonite John Birchers in the ward and others who I can’t even remember. One old guy was saying that evolution was all Satan’s idea and he planted fossils to fool people and the others in the class were trying to say that “president McKay says…” I remember dismissing the Mormon anti evolution as the rantings of an old man right along with his political opinions. But then Benson became prophet
Then when the Big Bang theory came out, it wasn’t hard to say if God used evolution to create animals and didn’t try to explain it to Bronze Age prophets, why wouldn’t he use the Big Bang to create the many universes that we know are out there. And granted God failed to explain what the ancient people could not comprehend. But if God did explain, and Abraham looked at him like I look at Dr Who fans when they try to explain some arcane detail, then wouldn’t God have said, “you know what? Never mind all that, just put down that I created everything.”
Mormon aversion to evolution is one of my pet peeves. There is simply too much evidence to the contrary. I’ve brought it up a few times in Sunday School after some comment about a young earth and it’s usually uncomfortable silence for a moment. The irony is there is no official church stance on evolution but it seems about 90% of active membership doesn’t accept evolution as scientific fact. This doesn’t seem to be as troublesome a topic for younger members like say LGBT recognition and equal treatment; I think most people don’t think about it, at not currently with all the other crazy crap happening.
Church leaders need to stay in their lane when it comes to science. President Nelson should know that being a doctor.
Also, related. I don’t understand how a doctor / surgeon can look at all the weird things in the human body and not accept that – just perhaps – – we aren’t the best imaginable design for intelligent life forms.
@Toad, only a man would think that human reproduction is designed by a loving higher being. Because a man’s contribution to reproduction is significantly more pleasant that a woman’s (with decades of painful and inconvenient periods, hormonal swings, discomfort of pregnancy and childbirth, physical toll of birthing and breastfeeding and raising children, not to mention it’s not only possible but common for women to get pregnant without experience sexual pleasure).
No. That’s evolution. And it’s comforting, honestly, to believe that instead of believing that God cares so little for women’s health and well-being that that would entirely bear the physical brunt of reproduction.
@Elisa. My father taught high school biology but believes that while evolution in animals is real, it stops with Adam and that humans were literally placed on earth by the hand of God. He is college trained biology teacher. Of course he’s also a temple sealer which maybe counters that education.
I have a similar view to yours about it being comforting. I’m an amateur astronomer and I find comfort that my grand problems are fleeting when I see the universe sprawled out above my head at night. However if I’m honest with myself, I might be happier believing God put us here. I don’t really believe in an afterlife and sometimes wish I did. This may partially explain human (Mormon?) propensity to disbelieve evolution and the Big Bang.
It seems like the Smith-McConkie-CES campaign against evolution had run its course and had faded away. BYU biology profs teach it and use it (almost impossible to be a biologist and not use it in some manner). Religion profs tend to stay away from it and if they don’t people just ignore them. It’s a settled issue in the Church.
Or it was. It’s different when the President of the Church, as opposed to a CES instructor or a Seventy, drops anti-evolution and pro-Young Earth remarks from time to time. That’s sort of kicking the hornet’s nest. It’s not like LDS leadership needs one more self-inflicted whack at their credibility. After decades of Pres. Hinckley and Monson, who at least had the good sense to avoid these sorts of lose-lose issues, it’s just so puzzling to see Pres. Nelson jump on them again.
@Dave B, that’s part of what’s so bizarre. It was not a very relevant comment to his talk, so why on earth kick the hornets nest?!? It almost seemed intentional? Like I can’t imagine it not being.
Elisa,
I also would be interested in more information on Nelson’s views on creation and the Bible, but he really hasn’t said much about that. Also, I think we would agree there is a pretty broad spectrum of how leaders and members interprets scripture. Nelson’s views are likely more nuanced than they appear.
Also, I teach at a Utah high school. Few LDS kids reject evolution. Released time seminary teachers who do so are off the reservation on the subject. I am friends with some CES supervisors. This is very different from what it was 20 years ago. I tease them about it. Can’t speak to other parts of the country.
My step-mom in 2017 to my 8yo child who was watching Neil deGrasse Tyson on TV: “Good Mormons don’t believe in evolution.”
@Elisa, The pre-Adamites Cachemagic references is religious speak for the life forms from which homo sapiens evolved. One way the story of the creation was/is reconciled with principles of organismic adaptation is to draw a bright line in the evolutionary timeline and say right here is when the first man and woman were organized and endowed with an eternal soul. While it has been a while since my deep reading on this topic, Apostles who believe in pre-Adamites included John Widtsoe, James Talmage and later Hugh B. Brown. It makes sense Widstoe and Talmage would seek to reconcile the theory of evolution, which they embraced, and the creation since they were two of the first members to earn PhD’s in science. But this idea (Adam and Eve descending from pre-adamites) was not adopted beyond some of the educated elite in Utah.
Rancor over this continued on–as one commenter referenced Greg Prince’s category killing biography of David O. McKay–as Joseph Field Smith and Hugh B. Brown faced off in competing firesides with Smith putting forth a literal creation and Brown espousing principles of evolution with the start of the human race at Adam and Eve, arguing that organismic adaptation was God’s means of creation.
Why isn’t evolution more broadly accepted and understood in the church? Certainly because of Smith and McConkie’s prolific evolution-critical writings, but also, more recently (maybe 10 years ago?), because of Boyd K. Packer’s Ensign article condemning the vulgarity of the idea God used evolution–Packer was a literal creationist as well. I was tasked around 2014 to teach a HP quorum meeting on the church’s position on evolution and how it was understood by church authorities over the past century. A few quorum members were unsettled by what I was teaching, with one even firing off, “Well I’ll put my money on Boyd K. Packer no matter who you are referencing as authoritative,” and then he got up and left. You know the type.
I agree Gen Z students embrace evolution as a ‘no duh’ matter of science. As my daughter who studied cellular biology and evolutionary biology at an ivy league school once said to me, “Dad, do you think members understand that a scientific theory is more highly regarded than a scientific law? That a scientific theory essentially means there is no evidence to the contrary of the theory, and that all known scientific observations support the theory. It not only models a natural phenomenon, but has extraordinary predictive power.” I think Gen Zers embrace it because they are simply much better educated than my generation was on the topic.
For a hilarious and extremely irreverent treatment of evolution and literal creationism, search for Louis Black’s comedy segment on George W. Bush when, as the newly elected US President, Bush made the comment about evolution, saying, “Well I don’t know. I think the jury is still out on evolution.”
I think it’s fairly well established that even in the Americas there were indigenous groups living here as long as 13,000 and 15,000 years ago. What we don’t have is written records. Even in the Middle East there weren’t any written narratives until about 900 BC. Everything before that would have been from oral traditions or ‘revealed’ to later prophets.
In my experience, Mormonism has been anti-evolution to the core. Some believing intellectuals have tried to make the case that Mormonism doesn’t inherently teach that the teaching of evolution is bad and wrong, and biology professors at BYU teach the prevailing ideas of science (alongside a healthy dollop of teachings about how Mormonism and science are somehow reconciled), but Mormonism, its core leadership and wider culture, are anti-evolution. At best the attitude is “well, we don’t know, we’ll find out in the afterlife,” and at worst it is “evolution is a false teaching of the ‘world.'” Leaders have never promoted the idea that human history predates 6,000 years and still do not. Leaders and the rank-and-file alike are vaguely aware of the basic outline of what is taught in larger world of science about human life before 6,000 years, but how dare any of us speak of that time period with any sort of certainty as true and having happened. And how dare we speak of that time period as refuting what the scriptures teach. Adam and Eve are real. The temple video says so. Joseph Smith’s ‘revelations’ aver as much. How dare you say they aren’t, and entertaining evolution too much is walking a dangerous path and slippery slope that leads to doubting Adam and Eve, and then maybe doubting what Joseph Smith taught, and then maybe killing people or some horrific act.
I remember while at BYU 1988-2004, taking classes from Stephen Robinson and Jeffrey Chadwick, both of whom tried to justify why people lived so long back then, as if to give validity to the long longevity of Old Testament characters. And these were considered to be nuanced thinkers who pushed the boundaries a little bit in regards to Mormon teachings. Still, they couldn’t bring themselves to dismiss Genesis stories as tall tales and long ages as simple myth like unto what we see in the Hindu Vedas and Hesiod’s Theogony.
I grew up hearing conflicting information on evolution. I remember hearing simultaneously that the earth was 6000 years old, but maybe each day in the creation was a thousand years, which would make it 13000 years old, or maybe the days were really creative periods of undetermined length, so the earth could be really old.
One seminary teacher wouldn’t say explicitly that evolution wasn’t real; he said this multiple times almost word for word: “do you believe in evolution? I don’t think we’re all here by accident? [chuckles scoffingly]”
I know many people reconcile evolution with the church. In spite of the many members who don’t believe in evolution, there are many many believing members who also believe in the science behind the age of the earth and evolution. If that is you, good for you.
I do not understand that nuanced view myself. I could reconcile old earth with traditional Christianity, but not with the truth claims of Mormonism because I find it in direct conflict with both the D&C and the BoM.
I suspect Nelson sees it a similar way to me. We both see evolution of humans as incompatible with canonical Mormonism. The difference is that he believes that Mormonism is true so evolution must be false. I believe something different than that.
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I almost always disagree with cachemagic, but in this case I’m surprised by the like/dislike ratio on his comment. I think if a person is to believe in something akin to traditional Mormonism and evolution, then they have to reconcile the question of who needs saving ordinances. So many members spend so much time going to the temple to do proxy work, which they expect to continue into the millennium. An important question will eventually be when to stop. Do we need to do proxy work for homo erectus? Homo Neanderthalis? Perhaps the common ancestor with chimpanzees? It should be possible, because revelation could reveal all their names in the millennium. But it would make as much sense to me to stop at some rando a guy named Adam born 6000 years ago. Nobody born before that needs saving ordinances. Because we say so. So the question of who was or wasn’t a pre-Adamite would be a crucial one.
Way back, maybe 10 years ago, then Elder RMN visited our stake. Because of my leadership calling, I had to listen to him 3 different times that weekend. I have never heard a more anti-intellectual general authority. He talked about how in medical school he wouldn’t read scientific papers which used false use of ideas like evolution. He made it very clear he was a bible literalist. It was around Christmas time and he also did one of his I learned this Hebrew word so now I am an expert on what this passage of scriptures means talks. It reminded of a similar talk he gave in the MTC nearly 30 years before when I was there. At the MTC, I remember thinking he wasn’t much of a speaker or spiritual leader and wondered why he was called.. At the stake conference he came to many years later, I remember thinking, which will be worse, if he or BKP lives long enough to become President of the Church? I don’t know the answer, but with him in charge, I definitely lost any hope that the LDS church would find its way back to Jesus Christ any time soon. I do think he has brought back out the fundamentalist tendencies of the LDS tradition that were slowly fading.
‘organismic adaptation’
Scrolled down too fast, thought you were using a… um… different word
@rockwell hadn’t thought about the temple ordinances component. I am not into the pre-Adamite stuff because it seems to insist Adam was an actual specific person, and I think that’s a misreading of the Bible. But your comment makes sense.
In the late 1990’s I wrote a BYU Biology paper where the thesis was essentially, “If as Mormons we believe man can evolve to Godhood, why would we be offended by the belief humans had evolved from lesser life forms.” My more conservative roommate accused me of being under the influence of Satan for believing such heresy.
My son is 10 years old and has never really liked attending church meetings. He told me recently, “One of the reasons I don’t like church is because they say things that aren’t true.” I asked him if he could share anything specific (because I was really interested in what he had to say) and he responded, “They say the earth was created in 6 days. I believe in evolution!” The conversation continued and he said later, “I know some things they say are true, like 10%. Or maybe 25%. But how am I supposed to know which things they tell me are the true things?” Needless to say, it was a very interesting chat. At age 10 for my son, the way way creation is generally presented in the church has already highlighted a trust issue!
Rockwell, God will take care of all the pre-Adamite stuff, just like God will take care of the battered wife still stuck sealed to the abusive jerk 20 year later because the church refuses to grant her wishes to not be sealed at all rather than to him. We say, “don’t worry God will take are of it,” all the time, about polygamy, about widows being sealed to all husbands, about gays turning straight. So, evolution is still possible, because if we trust everyone before recorded history will come to us with their names and dates of birth, then everyone before Adam can too. God will take care of figuring out which if any Neanderthals need ordinances done. If we can trust God not to leave the divorced woman stuck with her abusive husband, then trust that
God can figure out that problem too
When I was a freshman in college and still had that recent returned missionary zeal, I got into an uncomfortable argument with a couple of member friends who could not understand why I didn’t believe in evolution. I told them it contradicted Church doctrine. They still give me crap for that argument years later. My views on the validity of evolution have changed, but the fact of the matter is I still think that evolution is incompatible with the current doctrine of the Church, and not just from an anti-intellectual, Biblical literalism perspective.
Setting aside for a moment the direct Church arguments for or against evolution, a core doctrine of the Church is that Jesus came to Earth to overcome physical, as well as spiritual, death. That’s a pretty fundamental Mormon teaching on the Atonement, and even extends to some degree into larger Christianity. So death is bad, unnatural. Where did it come from? If God sent Jesus to overcome death, then surely death can’t be a good thing. Enter Mormonism teachings on the Fall, and how Adam and Eve introduced both kinds of death into the world. A nice, clean explanation, until you loop back to evolution. The theory of evolution reveals that death as natural selection is an important feature of evolution, and so 1) death couldn’t have started at Adam and Eve (or anytime after the advent of life) and 2) death can’t be completely a bad thing if it is a tool of creation. Being a tool of creation seems to me to be a crucial sticking point, as that makes it not just natural, but Godly. So what do you believe, Mormon doctrine or evolution? I used to choose doctrine, but came to my senses and changed my beliefs to the more scientifically verifiable position.
Some caveats. By Church doctrine, I mean dogma, or what is commonly taught as law in the Church at the present. I know some people might disagree with position, but it seems safe in a Church with continuing revelation to not insist that doctrine is synonymous with canonicity. I don’t think doctrines are unchangeable (unlike some of the Q15), but that for whatever reason they are what is taught in the Church, like Newtonian gravity as a scientific law that was widely accepted until it required revision with Einsteinian Relativity. Church doctrines, not just policies, can change; they’re just more resistant to change. Which is to say I think that our doctrinal resistance to evolution can change too, but it requires some serious revision of doctrine to do. I think the flimsy-ness of “Pre-Adamites” shows how important robust doctrinal change is to have members really accept evolution. We need to understand not just Eden, but the whole Atonement differently, and that’s a real challenge for a Church that has decided to lean hard into God’s embodiment and the importance of overcoming death. In current doctrinal teachings, if death is the enemy, then so is evolution.
I’m addicted to this blog. I read this post and every comment even though I don’t have the slightest interest in this topic. Well done W&T.
Eliza, preadamites doesn’t necessarily presuppose a single Adam. When we covered this in our amazing Sunday School lessons, it was basically discussed that Adam simply meant man, in a lot of the earlier chapters and only later a specific man, depending on the particular Hebrew construction. So if I’m recalling correctly the whole creation stuff is man, not a specific man. It was only looking at the genealogy that a specific man comes into play, as this is their origin myth.
The more I see ridiculous assertions like this resurface (BYU unequivocally teaches evolution in the Biology dept, although YMMV with the unqualified fools CES hires), the less I believe in the Church’s ability to evolve. As the dog returneth to his vomit, so doeth the fool to his folly. This is another byproduct, IMO, of our current leadership’s making of strange bedfellows with the Evangelicals. Those guys are so anti-evolution that they built a museum that has Adam riding a dinosaur! It’s like we wanted to sit at the cool kids’ table in the high school cafeteria and misjudged which kids were cool.
As a BYU bio-ag student in the early ’90s, this has become a fascinating topic. IMO, Ben Spackman (benspackman.com, I think) is the current best expert on the Church’s relationship to evolution through time. A few ideas that come to mind:
1) I don’t know what Pres. Nelson actually believes. He has hinted at maybe holding a few fundamentalist beliefs, but, to my knowledge, has never publicly come out and said the kinds of absolutist things that Elders McConkie (evolution is a deadly heresy) or J. Fielding Smith (the chasm between the gospel and evolution is unbridgeable or some such). From what I can see in his readily publicly available, he has never taken those kinds of absolutist stances on evolution. He might believe them personally, but he seems to have been aware enough that the Church has no official position on evolution that he keeps the absolutism out of his public speeches.
2) Along the same lines, I think the big mistake (if I can use that word here) that Elders McConkie and Smith made was to express their ideas with certainty (you don’t call something a deadly heresy if you are uncertain about it). It often seems to me that, it was just that they held fundamentalist beliefs, but that they taught them with certainty that leads to the divisions and frustrations on the topic today. Their certainty is interesting because the official Church position was always neutrality and uncertainty. (I think it is interesting how easily the certainty of a couple of apostles could override the Church’s official, neutral, uncertain position.) Without their certainty, I don’t think evolution would be among the most contentious issues in the Church today.
Without delving at all into this rabbit hole, one of things I cringe at from last GC was the certainty with which Oaks spoke in that last talk. Words like unchangeable and irrevocable and other signs of extreme certainty often make me cringe (whether I agree with the topics under consideration) because I am perhaps too acutely aware of how much the certainty of prior apostles on the topic of evolution has poisoned that issue for decades.
3) I have long felt that, at the heart of these kinds of questions and disagreements is the underlying idea of prophetic fallibility/infallibility. If you are on the evolutionist side of the fence (or maybe even neutrally sitting on the fence waiting for God to spew you out of His mouth), there is often an appeal to some form of apostles and prophets make doctrinal mistakes or overstate the truth or some such. Finding the topic so divisive in the Church suggests to me that we have not yet really addressed the questions of what happens when prophets make doctrinal errors. Are we supposed to just shut up and follow along? Is it some kind of loyalty or obedience test? Is it just God respecting their agency and tolerating their errors? In many ways, I see evolution as only one of many possible case studies looking at how prophets and apostles can make doctrinal errors and how that effects the Church (sometimes for generations).
Just a few ideas that come to my mind. I find it unfortunate that we unofficially/quasiofficially adopted a fundamentalist creationist concept of creation in the mid-20th century. I think the Church official neutral stance is the correct stance for the Church to take and let individual members come to their own diverse conclusions (without calling each other heretics). I think this particular issue would be much less divisive if we did.
I’ve seen a lot of variation on how strongly Mormons accept evolution, but the general trend is: the younger the person, the more likely they are to accept evolution as reality. There are many who believe in God’s involvement in the evolutionary process to some degree.
About 8 years ago I was taking an institute class with a teacher who loved learning about symbolism in the scriptures. Very gung ho about finding symbolism in everything. It shocked me when, halfway through the semester, he started talking about the creation story as a literal account of six 1000-year periods of hands-on creation.
Saw a few reactions to cachemagic’s earlier comment about not calling “pre-Adamites” (whatever in the world that means) human. This is exactly the kind of stuff I regularly heard growing up, heard it repeatedly on my mission among other missionaries, and the kind of stuff I still hear. Just a couple of weeks ago my QAnon brother-in-law, an image-conscious libertarian Mormon living in American Fork, went off on members who are unsure of Old Testament miracles because they are expressing doubt in God’s power and ability to perform amazing miracles such as part the Red Sea, enable Noah to survive a global flood with two of every animal species aboard, carry Muhammad on the back of a winged horse from Mecca to Jerusalem in one night, and allow thousands to witness the virgin Mary in Portugal 1917….Wait a minute, I might be confusing real miracles with fake ones again, I have to consult him on which ones we’re supposed to believe and place stock in.
One of my favorite things about Russell Nelson is how open he is about his thought processes. I saw the source for this in the past, but couldn’t find it for this post—Does anyone have it? In 2014 at the U of U or so he talked about still reading cardiac journals but that he skipped articles that had evolution related ideas in the abstract because it contradicted his beliefs. The good thing about that story is it shows that instead of having special insight into this problem, he has firmly and consistently avoided situations that challenge the ideas he inherited from church leaders when he was young. Maybe the secret to belief is to just avoid material and thoughts that challenge one’s beliefs.
My sense is that a large majority of members accept evolution as true. I find it somewhat baffling that some commenters seem to feel the opposite. My own experiences might be strongly influenced by my natural inclination to only discuss evolution with people that I expect to believe in it, as I don’t have the mental energy to deal with those who don’t. (To be clear, I’m not accusing anyone of being dishonest about their own assessment, and it’s entirely possible that my life is a non-representative sample. I don’t even know how my own parents would answer the question!)
My first inclination to decipher RMNs “over six millennia” is that he does believe in evolution, but is deliberately phrasing things to not offend the bible literalists. Or maybe he doesn’t believe in evolution, and doesn’t want my head to explode by claiming that it isn’t true. Either way, my first thought is that he’s trying to talk out of both sides of his mouth.
What I really can’t figure out is why he would need to obliquely make a statement one way or another. If he wants to make a prophetic statement about the evolution, he should do it. And if not, why include such a phrase at all? I don’t care enough to find the line and understand the broader context, so I guess we’ll leave that as an exercise for others . . .
Jeff, on Lindsay Hansen Park’s site, Living Under the Banner of Heaven, writes this:
“ One of Bruce R. McConkie’s daughters lived close to us and attended our ward. Her influence was palpable and so we all considered the book, “Mormon Doctrine” to be scripture, even the extremely racist parts which bled into openly justified prejudices. I don’t know if living in a place where Mormons were a tiny minority had an impact or perhaps living so close to Nauvoo, but our ward was very into doctrinal deep dives with a focus on last day prophecies. I firmly believed the earth was hollow and the 10 lost tribes resided in the core of the earth and that John the Beloved lived with them as well as the 3 Nephites and that they were extremely technologically advanced and were monitoring us with flying saucers waiting for the right time to return at which time a land bridge would rise out of the ocean giving them a highway to march down and the whole earth would feel the tremble of their feet there would be so many… and that wasn’t the weirdest thing. Disclaimer, I no longer believe any of those things and actually resigned from the LDS church in large part due to my efforts to dig deep into doctrines, especially those from the early days. “
Why are such teachings ^^^ more acceptable than the Theory of Evolution? How does it fit into Bible literalness? How does it not leave more questions unanswered than it “solves”?
I am willing to take Jeff’s word for it (I don’t really have the will to dig deeper).
President Nelson is 98 years old. His contribution to cardiology is valuable. Undoubtedly, cardiology has continued advancing (evolved) since 1984 when he was ordained to be an apostle. @10ac’s & @plvtime’s descriptions of his proudly rejecting science that didn’t fit with his understanding of religion is insightful. And disturbing. His 2012 GC talk comparison of the Big Bang Theory to an explosion in a printing shop producing a dictionary was disappointing at best. He may have felt repercussions from it, so when he dedicated a new paleontology museum at BYU a bit later, he tried to strengthen his science creds. Maybe it just didn’t last.
Count me in with those who are comforted by the practical, studiously, methodically attained and substantiated knowledge we have achieved through the scientific process.
I have recently been reading my grandfather’s old weekly sermons/letters to his children. He would be a few years older than RMN, and was definitely a biblical/scriptural literalist. So I think it’s probably a generational thing. Still, I’ll take one of Grandpa’s letters any day (who often wove in quotes from Virgil, with the writings Paul, while talking about [a literal] “Father Adam”), over RMNs covenant path, take your vitamins, you get a temple routine. If you’re going to be a literalist, at least use some imagination. I don’t think today’s youth are any more inspired by the whole “choice generation reserved for the super duper lastly of the lastest days (we,re not kidding this time),” any more than we were in the 90s, but that seems to be Nelson’s M.O. You kind of need a literalist view to make this work. As for evolution, most Mormons I know either take at face value or never give it a second thought. Neither group are particularly fun to talk to.
MTodd: that has always been my thought. Mormons believe in “evolution”, they just call it “eternal progression”.
I’m not going to take the time to look up the reference, but in one of RMN’s GC talks since becoming president of the church he described a breakthrough in methods for restarting a heart that has been temporarily stopped for surgery. He described his colleagues as being skeptical that the method was reliable, but he confidently told them it would work every time without fail, because it was scientific law and divine law. In my complete ignorance of medicine (dammit, Jim, I’m an engineer, not a doctor!), I was shocked to hear this world renowned surgeon describing a then experimental technique with such certainty. What about accounting for different dosage levels in different patients, etc? How can you be sure that this will work every time, on every patient, infallibly? That attitude seemed reckless to me, but its brash dogmatism seems consistent with someone who would dogmatically refuse to read any medical paper that refers to the science of evolution. But what do I know about medicine, why should I second guess how he tells the story? I only know about orbital mechanics and nothing else. As other people in this thread have noted, saying “more than 6000 years” seems like a canny way to speak to members who accept and reject evolution without explicitly alienating either. So thumbs up to that, I guess.
Elisa says,
I agree 100 percent it’s a misreading of the Bible. But D&C takes it quite literally; so does the BoM. The church I grew up in insisted on it. My parents would talk about when the Mormons may have to return some day to Jackson County Missouri to meet at Adam-Ondi-Ahman, where Adam built an altar and made a sacrifice.
I think it’s fine for people to take a non literal view of the Bible, but what does that mean for the parts of D&C that rely on a literal reading? If section 77, which says the temporal existence of the earth is 7000 years, is to be taken as not literal, then really any other section of the D&C could be reinterpreted as being non literal. I mean, the whole point of section 77 is to describe what certain symbols in the Bible literally mean. If we say that section 77 is not literal, what is to stop us from saying that any other passage is subject to reinterpretation? Perhaps “hot drinks” doesn’t really mean coffee and tea. Maybe baptism is not really required?
Actually l think this is a great idea. Give every member the responsibility to determine how to interpret the scriptures for themselves and their own family based on their personal knowledge, understanding, and moral compass. It would be a lot easier for me to attend church if that were a common view among the membership.
Evolution is obviously a real process that has shaped life on this planet and left abundant evidence behind, but I don’t blame Mormons for being scared of it.
Humans didn’t like the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun because we felt it diminished our cosmic importance. Ditto evolution. It casts a serious doubt on the idea of intelligent design, as was well said in the comments above. It’s skewers some of the “chauvinisms” that Carl Sagan used to talk about.
Why would a human God create humans by rolling dice on a billion tiny decisions that just happen to magically produce humans billions of years later? That’s not how evolution works. It’s not working it’s way towards some pre-determined design. It just selects for what works in any given moment.
Evolution is scary to a fundamentalist worldview because it suggests that we are not the show. We are not the reason for the universe’s or the earth’s existence. We are simply temporary guests, one link in a very long chain and nowhere near the end of the chain. We think the history of the universe was all just a prelude to this moment when instead this moment is just a prelude to something else. If there is a God, God is more likely a member of some advanced species yet to evolve billions of years from now rather than human. And that would make us the “pre-Adamites” of some future Adam. And that Adam’s descendants will debate whether we had souls and needed salvation or if we were just monkey stepping stones on the road to creating the real children of God.
I certainly think evolution is the best explanation we have for life. I was floored to hear Nelson’s anti intellectual stances esp given how he is viewed. In case it hasn’t been referenced he has been clear that he doesn’t believe in evolution at all. The quote in this blog post is really odd and shows a basic misunderstanding of so much science. Then again I wasn’t taught evolution in school in the 1980s. I had to learn it all in college. Talk about some catch up.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/bycommonconsent.com/2007/05/20/elder-nelson-doesnt-believe-in-evolution/amp/
@davew, as I mentioned in the OP, it’s *possible* that he meant “6,000-300,000” years – but why say that? Why not say “many thousands of years”? I think 6,000 was deliberate. Also, he has said on other occasions (such as in conference in 2012, and in other talks referenced in comments) that he doesn’t believe in evolution. So I don’t think there’s really a basis to think he’s just trying not to freak out the literalists although I do imagine he often talks out of both sides of his mouth.
But your second point “what I really can’t figure out is why he would need to obliquely make a statement one way or another” is also puzzling to me. The comment had little to do with the talk and could have been dispensed with or phrased another way—easily. He knows people hang on his every word. So I honestly can’t figure out why he’d say something that specific.
I try to take leadership talks at face value. That means I try not to assume the worst or bad intent, but it also means I won’t bend over backwards to impose a more positive or intelligent meaning. They are smart guys and can do that themselves. I think we set ourselves up for disappointment when we give them more credit than is due (and we are also unfair to them when we assume the worst possible meaning or intent).
@hedgehog, yes, I know “Adam” means “human.” There are so many reasons to believe that story isn’t about a specific person … but many in the Church (including Jeffrey Holland!) do. I think that’s largely because of Joseph Smith’s claims.
I mean really, I will never be on board with pre-Adamites because we come at things with fundamentally different beliefs and understandings. I’m not worried about doing temple work for cavemen and I don’t think we need to take scriptures literally.
@rockell, I agree re the D&C and Adam-ondi-Ahman (which you don’t hear much about now but I heard a ton about growing up).
I was really puzzled when I heard a Holland talk that insisted on a literal Adam and Eve because I’d long thought it was kosher to think that was non-literal. Then last year when I read the D&C carefully for the first time in a long time and saw all the references to Adam and other probably-not-historical prophets in it, I realized that was probably why. It wasn’t so much about how to interpret the Bible as it was reconciling and protecting the D&C.
Attended a meeting today where the newly called Stake President said that the BOM teaches us how to “combat the evils of socialism, organic evolution, and humanism.” This is where we have arrived, folks.
Perhaps somewhat ironically, my acceptance of the fact of evolution came from a spiritual experience. I was in the evolution denier camp for many years, but as I learned more about the data, the theory became compelling. I prayed to understand how it fit into creation. One night I had a dream where I was standing at the top of a mountain watching the spirits of future humanity herding and guiding the vast populations of organisms on earth. I had a conversation with an angel about how many of us participated in creation by nudging the progress of evolution toward creating bodies that would be able to house our spirits.
Now, I don’t claim to know that this is definitely how things are, but I have come to accept that there is nothing in the gospel that conflicts with scientific knowledge, and our understanding of “the way things are”, both spiritually and temporally, is only a tiny sliver of the ultimate truth. From that point on, I have tried to keep on open mind to an ever-increasing understanding of the nature of God and the nature of nature.
Funny update –
Was quite pleased when today in sacrament meeting the speaker (the previous bishop & a physician) talked about how humans 8000 years ago had larger, stronger mouths and wider naval cavities for breathing but as we ate softer food that changed.
@Chet, that’s an Ezra Taft Benson quote from the April 1975 General Conference when he was Q12 president. Sorry to hear that your stake president trotted out that old tired line recently. I hope he doesn’t also shake his fist and yell at the clouds.