mormonsandscience

In aviation it’s called a “course correction”.  When a flight crew realizes that they’ve deviated from the pre-established direction of flight, they correct their course.  

It seems the BYU Biology department needs a course correction.  

The biology department’s mandate is to teach the science of biology, including evolution, within the light of the gospel.  I am sure they are doing an excellent job of teaching the principles of biology and evolution, but when it comes to integrating the principles of biology with the principles of the gospel, they’ve goofed.  They are way off course.  That’s right; if they were NASA, the Mars rover would have crashed landed on Venus.

A faculty member recently said, “We [the biology department] spend time dispelling the myth that evolution and religion are incompatible” (Feb. 9, 2009 BYU newspaper, The Daily Universe).  In other words, they are teaching that the doctrines of evolution and religion are in complete harmony.  I can only assume that this statement includes the restored gospel.   

Can someone please tell me how a godless and directionless theory of the descent of mankind is in harmony with a purpose-driven and divinely-directed theology of creation?  BYU biology professors who do not recognize these inconsistencies between the evolutionary and gospel accounts of the creation of mankind need to do some reading.  Those who avoid the conflict by compartmentalizing dissimilar gospel and evolutionary teachings and then tell their students that the two are compatible are being disingenuous.  In either event, a course correction is needed.

Apparently I am not the only member of the church who has pointed out the glaring inconsistencies between gospel and evolutionary accounts of the origin of mankind.   

Joseph Fielding Smith, John Taylor, Joseph Fielding McConkie, and Boyd K. Packer also recognized the inconsistencies.  Here is what they said:

Joseph Fielding Smith
“This idea that everything commenced from a small beginning, from the scum upon the surface of the sea, and has gradually developed until all forms of life, the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, and the plants upon the face of the earth, have all sprung from that one source, is a falsehood absolutely.  There is no truth in it, for God has given us his word by which we may know.” 

John Taylor
According to gospel doctrine, “The principles [of creation] do not change, as represented by evolutionists of the Darwinian school, but the primitive organisms of all living beings exist in the same form as when they first received their impress from their Maker. There are, indeed, some very slight exceptions, as for instance, the ass may mix with the mare and produce the mule; but there it ends, the violation of the laws of procreation receives a check, and its operations can go no further.”

Joseph Fielding McConkie
"Is the theory of evolution compatible with the doctrine of the Fall?  No. We can tug, twist, contort, and sell our birthright, but we cannot overcome the irreconcilable differences between the theory of organic evolution and the doctrine of the Fall. Some have argued for a form of theistic evolution—that is, a God-inspired evolution—in which lower forms of life progressed over great periods of time to the point that God could take the spirit of the man Adam and place it in an animal and declare it to be the first man. The argument is at odds both with scripture and with an official declaration of the First Presidency on the origin of man."

Boyd K. Packer
"No lesson is more manifest in nature than that all living things do as the Lord commanded them in the Creation. They reproduce after their own kind.  They follow the pattern of their parentage. Everyone knows that. Every four-year-old knows that! A bird will not become an animal nor a fish. . . . Each is a child of God. He is not a monkey; neither were his ancestors."

It is time for the BYU biology department to change course on their approach to evolution and Mormonism.  First, they need to stop spreading the myth that Mormon theology and evolution are in complete harmony.  Second, they should study the underlying differences, acknowledge that differences exist, tell their students about the inconsistencies, and let their students make up their own minds on the matter. 

The BYU Biology Department’s efforts to lionize Darwin and find meaningful parallels between his life and those of great men have me wondering.  Perhaps the BYU Darwin Bicentennial celebrations attempted to make a Darwinian mole hill into a Darwinian mountain.  Of course Darwin did a great job at uncovering a mechanism driving microevolutionary processes (he did not “invent” evolution), but I am not inclined to put him into the same category as other great men.  I would argue that in the grand scheme of things, his scientific accomplishments and their impact on society pale in comparison to those from scientists like Boyle, Newton, Galileo, Faraday, and James Clerk Maxwell.

Let's take Galileo, for example.  Not only was he a great scientist, his work is directly connected to the Restoration. 

- Joseph Smith and Galileo encountered stiff resistance from apostate religionists when they tried to tell the world of truths they had discovered.  Joseph Smith had truths about the nature of the godhead and religions, and Galileo had truths about the nature of our solar system and our place in the universe.  

- Also, Galileo and Smith encountered the same sort of opposition as they challenged deep-seated apostate views.  The prophet Joseph Smith declared, “I soon found that my telling the story had excited a great deal of prejudice against me among the professors of religion, and was the cause of great persecution.”  And Galileo similarly wrote, “I discovered in the heavens many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them . . . stirred up against me no small number of professors.”

- And attempts were made to disprove each man’s discoveries.  In the case of Smith, clergy members attempted to deny and disprove it by claiming that “there were no such things as visions or revelations in these days; that all such things had ceased with the apostles and that there would never be any more of them.”  And in the case of Galileo, “[Theologians] sought to deny and disprove the new things which, if they had cared to look for themselves, their own senses would have demonstrated to them.”

- Galileo’s efforts to loosen the shackles that constrained free thinking prepared the earth for the Restoration which Joseph Smith brought forth centuries later. 

- Finally, each man lost his freedom as a result of challenging apostate religious dogma.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, who is the head of the Catholic Church’s Pontifical Council for Culture, recently affirmed the church’s full fledged acceptance of neo-Darwinism as the mechanism by which God created the world and mankind.  He wrote, “In fact, what we mean by evolution is the world as created by God.”  

How did they goof up again? 

They overstepped their religious boundaries by making formal scientific assertions.  (Steven Jay Gould, the late biologist who argued for a vigorous separation of religious and scientific domains, might be turning in his grave right now.)  You see, the Catholic Church made the same sort of mistakes with Galileo in the 1600s.  He said that the earth and all the planets move around the sun; the Catholic Church said he was wrong and they locked him up.  The church claimed the sun and all the planets revolve around the earth.  It turns out Galileo was right and the church was wrong.

There are 2 good reasons why churches should refrain from making such statements. 

First, as Galileo pointed out to the Catholic Church hundreds of years ago, churches are in the business of saving souls, not scientific theories.  Hearing the Catholic Church make scientific truth claims is a bit like going to the butcher shop and being given legal instruction on how to write a binding contract, or going to the bank and being given medical instructions on how to treat a sports injury.  I am pleased that the LDS church has refrained from making formal statements about scientific issues.  It seems to understand better than other religions that its purpose is to bring souls unto Christ.

Second, science is an ever changing enterprise.  It is a bit hard for us to realize that well-accepted theories come and go because so many of us don’t have the benefit of living long enough to see this happen.  Here are a few recent examples.  The once widely accepted scientific theory of Phlogiston is now debunked.  The once widely accepted theory of Luminiferous Ether is now debunked.  Even several of Newton’s “irreplaceable and irrefutable” ideas have now been replaced by Einstein’s Relativity.  The geocentric (earth-centered) theory of the universe which dominated science for over 1400 years was eventually replaced, and, yes, one day evolution may also be replaced by a superior theory of the diversity of life forms.  Hard to believe?!  That is what the advocates of ether and Newton’s mechanics once thought.

What happens when a scientific theory changes or is debunked, as history has shown?  This is an important question for religions to consider.  If a religion thoroughly embraces a scientific theory, what does it say when that theory changes or is debunked?  If it claims inspiration from God, how will its leadership appear to others when it says, “Uh. Umm . . . We made a mistake, guys”?  It will appear foolish.  This is exactly what happened with the Catholic Church in its handling of the Galileo affair.

American philosopher George Santayana wrote “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”  The Catholic Church would be wise to consider this sage advice.

In 1861, upon reading the Origin of Species, he exclaimed: “Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a natural scientific basis for the class struggle in history.”

Who is he? Karl Marx (author of the Communist Manifesto and father of communism).

Nearly 2 thousand years before Origin of Species went into print, this man taught ideas that bear a striking resemblance to the assumptions underlying evolutionary principles. He taught the following:

- There is no need to believe in God (a theory of human existence devoid of deity)
- Every man fared in this life according to the natural “management of the creature” (a'la natural selection)
- Every man “conquered according to his strength” (a'la survival of the fittest)
- “Whatsoever a man did was no crime” (moral relativism)
- “When a man was dead, that was the end thereof” (atheism)

Who was this man? Korihor (ancient American atheist extraordinaire and deceiver of many). Sorry I couldn’t find his picture.

 

In 1891 in Gori, Georgia, a 13-year-old choirboy with dreams of becoming a priest, Iosef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, was discovered by his mother at dawn, having stayed awake through the night reading Darwin’s Origin of Species.

“I loved the book so much, Mummy, I couldn’t stop reading,” he explained. He later told a friend that God “doesn’t actually exist. We’ve been deceived.”

“How can you say such a thing?” the friend exclaimed.  The boy responded by handing his friend a copy of Darwin's Origin of Species.

Who is the boy?  Joseph Stalin (orchestrator of the Great Purge or Soviet Holocaust which resulted in the deaths of millions of soviet citizens).