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There is a lot of discussion on this board about what the position of the Church is on evolution. Some TBMs attempt to reconcile science and statements made from some Church leaders as well as LDS manuals that seem to oppose science on things like evolution, pre-Adamites and an old earth. Reliance on other statements by Church leaders seem to help their position. Critics argue that TBMs who reject a young earth, accept evolution, accept an old earth and hold to the possibility that pre-Adamites existed. The confusing part is both sides can find things that back them up. Part of the problem is strong willed Church leaders have taken opposing positions and done so in a public way. Roberts and Talmadge more pro science and Joseph Fielding and McConkie more biblical literalistic.

Statements made by the FP were in the early 1900s more anti science yet those seem to be carefully modified over about a 20 year period to take a relatively neutral stance.

Anyway, I found this podcast that discusses this interesting. Maybe you will as well.

http://mormonmatters.org/2011/08/23/48- ... evolution/

Hi Jason,

Sorry I can’t listen to the Podcast, but Dan Wotherspoon to be a terrible interviewer, I can’t stand the way he won’t shut up and let guests answer the questions or how he talks over them. That aside, I did read the description, followed some of the links, and read the comments.

I’m convinced there is some serious tension between Evolution as it is understood in the scientific community and the Theology of the Abrahamic faiths here in the Western world, but I’ve never encountered a seriously good synthesis, even from from such serious Christian Philosophers as Alvin Plantinga.

I’m writing a paper on this very topic for a Philosophy conference coming up early next year and with the submission due date fast approaching, I’m hesitant to share my entire argument or explain any of the details publicly on the net (this also explains my absence in chat lately!).

What I can share is this. There is some serious issues between stochastic randomness in cosmological evolution and in biological evolution processes that the classical conception of God in Western Theism. The issue that arises is that, can God intentionally create humans and make it all look random from start to finish, from where and when stars explode to the complex weather systems on earth being shaped just right, to control genetic drift and what have you.

The issue gets even more compounded when you start factoring in Free Will for creatures like Humans. When Philosophers try to accommodate the determinism that Omnipotence creates, with such ideas as Middle Knowledge or Open Theism, it gets even harder for God to create the kind of world he wants.

And the picture gets even worse for Mormons, so I don’t understand all this talk about how Mormon Theology has some kind of unique tools or ideas available to them to help solve this conundrum. If God has a material body and resides within the universe, he is essentially a thing among things, he may be THE thing among things, but he’s still a thing and this limits him to even a greater extent.

If you have questions, I can try to go into better detail with what I mean without leaking too much.

Jason Bourne wrote:There is a lot of discussion on this board about what the position of the Church is on evolution. Some TBMs attempt to reconcile science and statements made from some Church leaders as well as LDS manuals that seem to oppose science on things like evolution, pre-Adamites and an old earth. Reliance on other statements by Church leaders seem to help their position. Critics argue that TBMs who reject a young earth, accept evolution, accept an old earth and hold to the possibility that pre-Adamites existed. The confusing part is both sides can find things that back them up. Part of the problem is strong willed Church leaders have taken opposing positions and done so in a public way. Roberts and Talmadge more pro science and Joseph Fielding and McConkie more biblical literalistic.

Statements made by the FP were in the early 1900s more anti science yet those seem to be carefully modified over about a 20 year period to take a relatively neutral stance.

Anyway, I found this podcast that discusses this interesting. Maybe you will as well.

http://mormonmatters.org/2011/08/23/48- ... evolution/

Evolution is not the only matter on which Mormon 19th Century dogma has had to give way and make room for scientific, social and moral advancements. They did get around to changing the ban on the priesthood for blacks in 1978, for example.

I don't think the church has ever really made a good-faith effort to confront the conflict between evolution and church doctrine. Ever. At best they try to wiggle out of it by making vague statements about the nature of man, or by claiming neutrality on the question of evolution. But church doctrine is in conflict with aspects of the theory of evolution which can only be resolved by ditching those doctrines, or rejecting the science.

Prime example of this is the doctrine of the Mormon church that nothing on Earth either died, or procreated, until Adam and Eve fell in the Garden of Eden.

Science and evolution have things dying for the last two to three billion years on Earth, and differential reproductive success based on natural selection is a central and crucial mechanism in the theory of evolution.

In my view, if you accept the evidence that the scientists have this more or less on target, the church doctrines get blown out of the water, the water evaporated, and the splinters and water vapor encased in the same coffin under mount doom, under the continental plates, that the apologists wrongly suspect contains the critical attacks on the KEP. :-)

Sethbag

Try to listen to the podcast and tell me what you think.

I've never ever bought that evolution and western abrahamic religions (including Mormonism) are not in conflict. When Biologists say this, they either don't understand evolution, or are trying to be nice. When theologians say it, it is probably a lot more of the former. Ditto for laypeople (like BcSpace).

As Stak mentioned, the theory has NO direction. If you are saying that god "used" evolution to create X, you are missing the point. The theory says that X exists primarily because of external pressures. If you were to rewind the tape and start it over, you wouldn't get the same solution. Nobody needs to wonder why god "guided" evolution to create HIV. Furthermore, by "guiding" evolution in the first place, how is it not just another way to say design?

Not to mention just how little explanatory power the "god did it" actually has to the problem evolution solves. This is the argument Dawkins makes that I actually really like, and I think it's good.

Problem: Biological systems (like humans) are really complex. How did they come into existence?

The ONLY answer proven by science says: Evolution, which presupposes a replicator at the beginning.
A western religion's answer: God guided it, perhaps using evolution as a tool.

But what has the religious answer really explained? It presupposes something unfathomably MORE complex than the thing we are trying to explain in the first place (biological complexity). Whatever the first replicator was, it certainly was exponentially LESS complex than what we have billions of years down the line.

I have seen no good explanation for this, that doesn't reduce god to pantheistic status.

P.S. If general authorities really accepted evolution, why is the temple dialogue still the way it is?

Jhall118 wrote:I've never ever bought that evolution and western abrahamic religions (including Mormonism) are not in conflict. When Biologists say this, they either don't understand evolution, or are trying to be nice. When theologians say it, it is probably a lot more of the former. Ditto for laypeople (like BcSpace).

As Stak mentioned, the theory has NO direction. If you are saying that god "used" evolution to create X, you are missing the point. The theory says that X exists primarily because of external pressures. If you were to rewind the tape and start it over, you wouldn't get the same solution. Nobody needs to wonder why god "guided" evolution to create HIV. Furthermore, by "guiding" evolution in the first place, how is it not just another way to say design?

Not to mention just how little explanatory power the "god did it" actually has to the problem evolution solves. This is the argument Dawkins makes that I actually really like, and I think it's good.

Problem: Biological systems (like humans) are really complex. How did they come into existence?

The ONLY answer proven by science says: Evolution, which presupposes a replicator at the beginning.
A western religion's answer: God guided it, perhaps using evolution as a tool.

But what has the religious answer really explained? It presupposes something unfathomably MORE complex than the thing we are trying to explain in the first place (biological complexity). Whatever the first replicator was, it certainly was exponentially LESS complex than what we have billions of years down the line.

I have seen no good explanation for this, that doesn't reduce god to pantheistic status.

P.S. If general authorities really accepted evolution, why is the temple dialogue still the way it is?

I quite agree, jhall118. In this same vein, it is why god-created-the-cosmos is an unsatisfying answer that just leads to the next question in the line of inquiry how this all came to be: who created god, then? There is no terminal answer to this line of inquiry if that's the only kind of answers that are proffered and accepted. (I don't even think JSJr accepted it, and is why, by the end of his run, he imagined that god was created in a similar way that he thinks we have been: by a god to him.)

That matter/energy have always existed, but that are ever changing in form, and that 'all this' is the current form of that matter, that provides us a terminal explanation. The expansiveness of the universe of matter/energy, and thus all the different permutations possible in its vastness makes our "complex" world seem all the more likely as a chance occurrence.

Mormons can never, ever reconcile LDS doctrine with evolution until they jettison the core belief that God has a human form, and that we have a human form because of God.

We have a human form, with all our specific quirks and flaws, because of evolution - because we evolved to survive on THIS planet and ONLY this planet. We have co-evolved with the plants and animals around us. We continue to evolve.

To take a small but illustrative example, most people of Western European descent have a mutation that lets us keep digesting lactose as adults when the ancestral condition was to lose that ability. This mutation has spread among Europeans because we started keeping cows and using dairy as an important food source, so early Europeans with the mutation out-competed tribes and individuals who didn't have it. In early Africa an independent dairy culture developed and Africans have a different mutation (at the DNA level) that lets them digest lactose into adulthood. So I ask the Mormon prophet: can God's human body digest milk, and does he have the African or the European mutation? Where did he get it? Or does God have more Asian-like (or Lamanite-like) DNA - the ancestral kind that "Adam and Eve" had - so God gets cramps and diarrhea when he eats a pizza with extra cheese?

It works the same for every part of our body. Our anus is right next to our sex organs because we evolved that way, not because it is and always has been a celestial configuration (or useful for exotic sex acts in the eternities). We have boogers and ear wax and body odor because they are advantageous or a byproduct of something that was advantageous or used to be advantageous. None of this makes any sense from a celestial perspective. (The big things don't make sense either - don't get dismissive because I am using examples that sound trivial.)

Or to put it the way Tarski once said it, it's like Mormons believe lawnmowers existed before there were lawns that needed mowing.

Other Christians who believe God is a spirit - not of physical human form but a mysterious holy Trinity - can get away with saying God used evolution to create humans. But Mormons are stuck with some crazy ass idea that Joseph Smith cooked up about God being an exalted primate, and now they are stuck with it.

The Dude:
You just rocked my world. I knew the facts regarding what you said, but I never "connected the dots" as it where. Whoever you are, wherever you are, if you come to Seattle I owe you a beer.

Jhall118 wrote:The Dude:
You just rocked my world. I knew the facts regarding what you said, but I never "connected the dots" as it where. Whoever you are, wherever you are, if you come to Seattle I owe you a beer.

Hey Jahll, I'm happy to rock your world. I used to live in Seattle when I was a young scientist at Fred Hutchinson, but I haven't been back there for a while.