Evolutionary biology and the gospel

Last updated on: May 11, 2019 at 2:08 pm by Dan Peterson

Evolutionary biology and the gospel 2019-05-11T14:08:38-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Darwin’s finches, from “The Voyage of the Beagle” (Wikimedia Commons public domain)

Some of you may have missed an article by Dr. Gregory L. Smith that was published early on in the history of the Interpreter Foundation and of Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture. In case you’re interested, though, I recall it to your attention:

““Endless Forms Most Beautiful”: The uses and abuses of evolutionary biology in six works”

To give you a flavor of it, here is the article’s opening paragraph:

For many, evolutionary biology ranks with politics and religion as a subject best not debated in polite company. This sentiment is not without some justification, since in all except the absolute basics and fundamentals of the faith (about which there can be no compromise), it is vitally important that our convictions or intellectual life not alienate us from others—or alienate others from us. Our reticence to discuss a matter on which opinions have differed widely has had some occasional side effects. For example, Mormon scholarship can be affected as some Latter-day Saints invoke biological concepts in a muddled way, bringing confusion, not clarity. And of greater concern is the worldly and secular philosophy, polemic, and propaganda that invoke evo-bio while going far beyond what science can tell us. Prominent examples include the militant atheism and philosophical materialism of people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Such philosophical claims often intersect with vital gospel truths and invoke evo-bio, such as whether free will/moral agency is an illusion. I think these conceptual extensions of and parasitism upon evo-bio are of far more significance and a far greater intellectual and spiritual threat to me and mine than biological Darwinism.

I follow that up with an item from Larry A. Witham, Where Darwin Meets the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, pg. 176-177]:

Few American theologies are more complex than that of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but its flagship Brigham Young University teaches off-the-shelf, industry-standard evolution. That has been the case since 1931, when the church officially said: “Leave biology, archaeology, and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research.” . . . What the church requires is only belief “that Adam was the first man of what we would call the human race,” says Gordon Hinckley, the church’s living prophet. Scientists can speculate on the rest, he says, recalling his own study of anthropology and geology: “Studied all about it. Didn’t worry me then. Doesn’t worry me now.”

Posted from Cairo, Egypt

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