Russel M. Nelson comments on big bang theory and evolution

[_Morley]

I see the order and harmony to be the very image of God which smiles upon us each morning as we awake.

[_Tarski]

Which doesn't apply to evolution as evolution does not preclude God in any way.

Only in the same sense that the theory of combustion engines does not preclude the notion that fairies are responsible for the motion of an automobile.

With respect to natural selection, the intervention of a god or gods is a wholly gratuitious hypothesis and deprives the theory of its central explanitory achievment.

[_Yoda]

Did you guys really expect anything but Creationism to be taught in a religious forum? I don't care if you were listening to a Catholic, Protestant, or Mormon sermon, the Creation would be taught as truth.

I, for one, do not think that anything but creationism would be taught in a religious forum, if the issue comes up of how did the universe, world and us come to be.

On the other hand, it seems silly for those engaged in a religious forum to bring up such a sore topic for religions. It would have been much better to have skirted the issue. It seems evidence of rather poor judgment by a man with a Doctor of Medicine degree and a pretty basic understanding of the scientific method, to make a facile wise-crack like that and get the assembled Mormons giggling on national TV about the most rational explanation yet (Big Bang and evolution).

Imagine how that comes across to those alert non-Mormons who might have been tuning in because Mitt Romney is a Mormon? It probably looks as hokey to such onlookers as the women and young teenage girls in those solid, pastel color dresses scuttling outside of Warren Jeff's Texas temple.

The audience being played to for General Conference is the body of members.

[_MCB]

I see the order and harmony to be the very image of God which smiles upon us each morning as we awake.

I did you one better, Morley.

[_EAllusion]

by his careless folksy wisdom (merely copied over from protestant creationist literature).

I guess it might not be obvious to people that this is the classic "tornado in a junkyard" canard popular in creationist circles. It isn't hard to find this specific analogy among protestant creationists all over the place. More broadly, they love "some implausible random chance action producing work of literature" analogies.

e.g.

http://www.christiancourier.com/article ... -about-god

"Life itself is a mystery that cannot be explained naturally. The late Dr. Edwin Conklin, a former professor at Princeton University, compared the so-called “accidental” creation of life to the equivalent of an explosion in a printing shop producing an unabridged dictionary!"

You can see another example here:

http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/what ... ution.html

(The alleged quote attribution to Conklin, incidentally, is highly likely to be a fabrication.)

[_why me]

I see the order and harmony to be the very image of God which smiles upon us each morning as we awake.

His hand guided it, and maintains it. We know that the first chapters of Genesis are not literal history, but they mean a great deal. So sad that LDS do not understand it.

The writings of the Fathers, who were much closer than we are in time and culture to the original audience of Genesis, show that this was not the case. There was wide variation of opinion on how long creation took. Some said only a few days; others argued for a much longer, indefinite period. Those who took the latter view appealed to the fact "that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Pet. 3:8; cf. Ps. 90:4), that light was created on the first day, but the sun was not created till the fourth day (Gen. 1:3, 16), and that Adam was told he would die the same "day" as he ate of the tree, yet he lived to be 930 years old (Gen. 2:17, 5:5).

Catholics are at liberty to believe that creation took a few days or a much longer period, according to how they see the evidence, and subject to any future judgment of the Church (Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical Humani Generis 36–37). They need not be hostile to modern cosmology. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "[M]any scientific studies . . . have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life forms, and the appearance of man. These studies invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator" (CCC 283). Still, science has its limits (CCC 284, 2293–4).

I don't think that catholics support the big bang or evolution.

[_Fence Sitter]

Bazinga!

[_Morley]

I don't think that catholics support the big bang or evolution.

Georges Lemaître.

[_Bond James Bond]

Me too. I'm also glad to know that an explosion at a printing shop is analogous to 3.5 billion years of gradual change.

Isn't it marvelous?!?!?!?!

I certainly felt a stirring in my bosom.

[_bcspace]

His hand guided it, and maintains it. We know that the first chapters of Genesis are not literal history, but they mean a great deal. So sad that LDS do not understand it.

Some LDS perhaps. But there are aspects of Genesis that must be historical else it doesn't work at all.