Ben contemplates his words, at Petra.
Regardless of what you think about evolution, it poses a problem. In the past, the issue might have been framed as “since we know scripture is true, the science behind evolution must be false. How do we make sense of this?”
Today, the hypothetical teenager might wrestle with this question from the other side. “Since we know human evolution is true, and God knows all truth, why don’t God’s earthly proxies like scripture and prophets seem to know it?”
This is actually a much larger problem than just evolution; what do prophets know and how do they know it? What can we reasonably expect prophets to know through their prophetic office? And why am I not bothered that prophets don’t know X, or have preached Y which is “obviously” “wrong”?
Mormons put heavy emphasis on revelation, prophets, and scripture… but we’ve never elaborated on what those things mean, hammered out how they work, their limits and mechanics. We don’t have a user’s manual. To our collective detriment, I think, LDS tend to fill in those gaps from cultural osmosis, conservative Protestantism, and inherited assumptions.
See, people want prophets to serve as an immediate shortcut to eternal absolute Truth; this rhetorically elevates revelation completely over human reason, wisdom, and science. And there’s an aspect to that which is accurate enough; God does speak to prophets through revelation. But it does not follow that what prophets speak under inspiration is God’s pure unmediated and eternal knowledge, or that prophetic knowledge constitutes a revealed subset of God’s omniscience.
That isn’t how it works. In fact, I argue it’s impossible for it to work that way. Why?
1. A prophet is a human, reliant upon human culture, worldview, and knowledge like everyone else (link).
This shouldn’t be terribly controversial, but I feel it needs to be established first.
Among others, President McKay taught numerous times that
When God makes the prophet, he does not unmake the man.
Which implies that the prophetic mantle doesn’t automatically undo or override the humanity of the prophet and all that humanity entails: his personality, language, knowledge, cultural assumptions, etc.
That notorious liberal softy Elder Bruce R. McConkie said that
With all their inspiration and greatness, prophets are yet mortal men with imperfections common to mankind in general. They have their opinions and prejudices and are left to work out their problems without inspiration in many instances. Mormon Doctrine, 547.
So, according to Elder McConkie, prophets are just people like everyone else, with the exception of revelation. Prophets are not somehow divinely cleansed and cleaved from their own minds, culture, knowledge, “their own opinions and prejudices” in his terms. (See here.) Indeed, McConkie once gave a humorous fireside at Utah State entitled “Are General Authorities Human?” where he humorously (!) and affirmatively said “YES.” McConkie actually had quite a sense of humor, but it rarely came out in public, and his humor was edited from the published version and reprint.
More recently, Elder Ballard talked about how his life, experience, and training allowed him to answer some kinds of questions, but “other types of questions… require an expert in a specific subject matter.” He singles out human expertise in ancient history and Biblical studies as something he lacks, but which can be very useful in answering certain questions. He consults those experts when he has those questions.
Stepping back a little, Elder Ballard is acknowledging that his prophetic calling is not an automatic shortcut to human knowledge.
To take another example, although Joseph Smith was The Prophet of the Restoration, when he wanted to learn Biblical Hebrew, he had to hire a teacher and buy a grammar and lexicon, and buckle down and study, just like any first-year Hebrew student at BYU.
Elder Widtsoe wrote that
When inspired writers deal with historical incidents they relate that which they have seen or that which may have been told them, unless indeed the past is opened to them by revelation.- Evidences and Reconciliations, (1960): 127.
Where God does not send revelation, inspired writers and prophets must rely on their inherited cultural assumptions, worldview, and human knowledge (“that which they have seen or … been told them”) just like everyone else. They have to gain knowledge the same way everybody else does.
And what is the nature of knowledge?
In every society, whether ancient or modern, “primitive” or “advanced,” most of what passes as knowledge comes from tradition. Individuals tend to receive their view of the world passively, as they grow up in and are acculturated to their native family and society. Knowledge in such cases is not something that one discovers so much as something that happens to us in culture and experience. As Michael Polanyi has expressed it, most of our knowledge is “tacit” knowledge—knowledge that we have unconsciously inherited from experience and tradition.- Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words
So. Human prophets are dependent on their human cognitive inheritance except where God speaks to them, i.e. revelation. Which brings us to points 2 and 3.
2. Revelation is always accommodated
Revelation, even so-called “direct revelation” (whatever people intend by that) is always mediated to and through human knowledge, culture, and language. God accommodates his revelation to our state. It’s impossible for it to be otherwise, as its necessity is built-in to the system. I’ve made this argument about accommodated revelation at length using LDS scripture, the Bible, teachings of General authorities, and major figures from Jewish and Christian history, like Jesus, Paul, Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas. You can watch me speak about it in terms of 1 Corinthians and Paul here, or in more depth, about Genesis here. (The latter provides the most references.)
Because of accommodation, we shouldn’t expect inspired statements by prophets to reflect that absolute perfection of knowledge that we attribute to God. Revelation is not a purely-divine information dump.
Usually we think of revelation as information. Just open the books to us, Lord, like: What was the political significance of the Louisiana Purchase or the essence of the second law of thermodynamics?…aside from the fact that you probably aren’t going to get that kind of revelation…this is too narrow a concept of revelation.- Elder Holland
More recently, the LDS Newsroom summarized by saying,
Latter-day Saints do not expect God to simply hand down information. He expects us to wrestle with the complications of life through prayerful searching and sound thinking.
(Funny enough, this is also what the Bible does, as I tried to illustrate in Gospel Doctrine, here.)
3. Divine revelation is progressive, iterative, and line-upon-line
If God’s intent is to help humans progress, but must temper his revelation to the human condition, then it follows that God’s revelations will build on each other. He will start with a, and move on to a’, then a”, then a”’, and eventually b. Perhaps revelation can’t represent the absolute divine ideal now, but successive revelations will grow closer to and approximate it. (I like the mathematical idea of approximation here, that as x goes to infinity, you draw infinitely closer to a particular point that, for all practical purposes, means you are at that point.)
This doesn’t always mean revelation will give us a straight line of continuous progress, or that new revelation will seem like logical progression or mere expansion; sometimes new revelation can seem very discontinuous or even contradictory to the status quo. Many early LDS really struggled with the Three Degrees of Glory in D&C 76. One branch actually went apostate over it, because it seemed so contradictory. And of course, there’s the example of the New Testament decision that becoming Christian and accepting the Jewish messiah did not require accepting the requirements of the Jewish law (i.e. circumcision or avoiding pork and shellfish), even though it too was divinely given and had hundreds of years of tradition and devotion behind it. In retrospect, these make fine sense to us, but that’s the comfort of hindsight. To believers at the time, they are ground-shaking and challenging. And sooner or later, new revelation will challenge us.
In other words, as Peter Enns says in a favorite book, “The spirit leads to truth; he does not simply drop us down in the middle of it.”
This means that something can be “inspired” and yet inaccurate, not quite there, not quite correct. God leads us, but it is sometimes a winding path, as Elder Holland’s story of the “wrong road” indicates. The New Testament progresses beyond the Old in some ways, but not others, as Philemon makes painfully clear regarding slavery.
President Eyring’s father saw the progressive nature of revelation as similar to the refining and iterative process of science.
In the long run, the truth is its own most powerful advocate. The Lord uses imperfect people. He often allows their errors to stand uncorrected. He may have a purpose in doing so, such as to teach us that religious truth comes forth ‘line upon line, precept upon precept’ in a process of sifting and winnowing similar to the one I know so well in science.- Reflections of a Scientist, 47.
Revelation will thus always be a collaborative human-divine process, and this is what we find both from ancient AND modern scripture. (On the latter, see e.g. here, here, here, here…) As time goes on and humans progress, divine revelation will more closely approximate divine ideals. But measured at any given moment, it can seem far from it.
Now, what makes a prophet a prophet is that God chooses to speak to them. That’s the way the prophetic causality flows. The nature of prophethood, then, is not an ability or super-power that works at the whim of the prophet. Prophethood is not an all-access backstage pass to God’s knowledge, or on-demand access to the mind of God. That door swings open from the other direction, when God chooses to speak and insert himself. Similarly, the label of “inspired” or “revelation” on certain content doesn’t guarantee the exclusion of all human aspects from that content; rather, it guarantees the inclusion of some divine aspect among those other, human aspects.
There may be times where God does not speak and human knowledge is insufficient or conflicted. For example, at the turn of the 20th century, Gregor Mendel’s experiments with plant breeding were just being rediscovered. William Bateson coined the term “genetics” in 1905, decades before the discovery of DNA’s double-helix shape and the experiment that proved it was the mechanism of inheritance. Many scientists at the turn of the century were coming to accept evolution, but thought Darwin was wrong about how it worked, hence the nickname of the period “the eclipse of Darwinism.”
This is the scientific context in which the First Presidency said with regards to evolution, “that which is demonstrated, we accept with joy.” They made no claim to revelation and stated, rightly, that the science at that time was unsettled. At such times, we do the best we can. Today, the science about human evolution is far more “demonstrated,” which is why my hypothetical teenager is asking why scripture doesn’t seem to know this truth.
Does all this mean revelation, prophets, and scripture are not “trustworthy” or “reliable”?
Many conservative Christians equate “trustworthy” and “reliable” with “unchanging,” “eternally consistent,” and “straight from the mouth of God, with no human aspects.” My experience leads me to believe that many LDS make the same assumptions.
I would argue these things are reliable, provided we understand their natural built-in limits. You can trust things within their limits, but you have to know what those limits are or you get in trouble.
You know not to take a 90-degree corner at 75 miles an hour in your car, whether a rusty 1992 Toyata beater or a McLaren P1. (Sidenote, if you’ve got a P1, let’s talk.) Is that because your car isn’t trustworthy or reliable? Or because you understand the natural limits of your car? Should you sell your car because it can’t do that crazy thing?
With prophets and revelation, sometimes we are trying to take a 90-degree turn at 75 mph, and then struggling to understand why the car flipped. Is it due to the fact that the expectations you brought to the car weren’t realistic expectations to begin with?
What I’m asking is, what can we reasonably expect from divine revelation and scripture, and on what basis should we form those expectations? What are the natural, built-in limits to revelation and prophetic knowledge? That’s the key question. Enns calls it “calibrating our expectations.”
Stick with me, two more points to wrap up.
Faith built on ideas of absolutist revelation is faith that is easily undermined and broken. Evangelicals are certainly having problems with it. And Mormons are too, I think. Fortunately, as I hope is obvious from above, absolutist revelation is not native to Mormonism. And so the question, how did we get to thinking that way?
Why has popular thought elevated divine revelation in such an absolute way?
There are probably a number of reasons, but I’ve been working on some historical/cultural factors. (My UVU talk addressed this a bit, which you can watch and follow at that link.)
I think this is a big one. The perception that prophetic authority is threatened by or in competition with “secular” knowledge lead to reconceptualizing and elevating revelation beyond its natural limits; there’s a sense that the authority of religion is under siege (which perhaps it is, somewhat) and so people respond by making it far more absolute than it really is. For example, one book on creationism argues that
creationism is ultimately about the status of the Bible in the modern world. Creationism as a modern ideology exists in order to defend the authority of the Bible as a repository of transhistorical truth from the challenges of any and all historical sciences.
If “truth” means “scientific facts,” then for scripture to be “truthful,” it must be scientifically factual, in an absolute manner. Creationists make the validity of scripture dependent upon the authority of science; scripture is true because it is scientific. Scripture is thus “sanctified” by science, modernity’s highest and most authoritative form of knowledge, thanks to the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment.
You can see this clearly in the writings of Joseph Fielding Smith, who felt the authority of human knowledge was competing with the authority of scripture, and defended it in very Protestant ways. “These theories [of evolution, old earth, etc.] are man-made deductions but the testimony of the prophets are actual facts.” About the same time, Charles Hodge at Princeton, an influential shaper of Protestant understandings of inerrancy and fundamentalism, wrote that the Bible was “a God-given storehouse of facts.”
So there were cultural pressures and competition that led to a conception of revelation and prophets as being absolute and entirely of a factual nature. The desire to preserve the authority of revelation lead to the counter-productive strategy of making it absolutist. But, again, as humans, even prophets inherit worldviews and make assumptions, and the inspired revelation they receive is not absolute, but accommodated and mediated.
Lastly, I’d like to point out that I have the luxury of reading and thinking about history and scripture full-time. Since I’m a PhD student focused on the history of religion and science, it is literally my job to know this stuff. (I hope it will be my job, anyway.) By contrast, none of the Apostles are historians or Bible scholars by training. Is the expectation reasonable that they know virtually everything in Church history or archives, or know what I know through my studies, solely through the inspiration of their Apostolic calling?
I suspect Elder Ballard was expressing some frustration when he said “I worry sometimes that members expect too much from Church leaders and teachers—expecting them to be experts in subjects well beyond their duties and responsibilities.”
In contrast to me and my academic profession, let’s think about the natural limitations of Church leadership in terms of their human, non-revelatory knowledge. First, from President Packer.
Some time ago I interviewed a young bishop in Brazil. He was twenty-seven years old. I was impressed that he possessed every attribute of a successful Church leader—humility, testimony, appearance, intelligence, spirituality….
I asked myself, as I looked at him, “What will his future be? What will we do for him? What will we do to him?” In my mind I outlined the years ahead. He will be a bishop for perhaps six years, then he will be thirty-three years old. He will then serve eight years on a stake high council and five years as a counselor in the stake presidency. At forty-six he will be called as a stake president. We will release him after six years to become a regional representative, and he will serve for five years. That means he will have spent thirty years as an ideal, the example to follow, the image, the leader.
However, in all that time, he will not have attended three Gospel Doctrine classes in a row, nor will he have attended three priesthood quorum lessons in a row….
Unless he knew the fundamental principles of the gospel before his call, he will scarcely have time to learn them along the way. Agendas, meetings, and budgets and buildings will take up his time. These things are not usually overlooked. But the principles are overlooked—the gospel is overlooked, the doctrine is overlooked. When that happens, we are in great danger! We see the evidence of it in the Church today….
It is so important that every member, particularly every leader, understand and know the gospel.
It is not easy to find time to study the gospel. It is harder for the stake president to do it and infinitely harder for the bishop to do it, but it is necessary and it is possible. Brethren must attend the classes as often as they can; bishops and stake presidents should find some way to attend at least a good share of the Gospel Doctrine classes and the appropriate priesthood quorum lessons.
One of the things I take away from this story is that most of what a Church leader knows about Church history, doctrine, and scripture, he learned before he got called as a Bishop. Because after, “he will scarcely have time” to engage in that kind of study. President Packer doesn’t even think he’ll be able to make it to Gospel Doctrine class on Sundays! That realization led me to write this post and this post.
Second, Elder McConkie wrote,
Though general authorities are authorities in the sense of having power to administer church affairs, they may or may not be authorities in the sense of doctrinal knowledge, the intricacies of church procedures, or the receipt of the promptings of the Spirit. A call to an administrative position of itself adds little knowledge or power of discernment to an individual, although every person called to a position in the Church does grow in grace, knowledge and power by magnifying the calling given him.- Mormon Doctrine, “General Authority.”
The kind of knowledge gained through Church leadership callings is largely of an administrative and interpersonal nature, not doctrinal/historical/scriptural knowledge.
For all of these reasons, which have shaped my expectations of what inspired prophets know and do, I do not find my faith severely challenged when inspired pronouncements of Church leaders (whether today or in the past) do not match up to my view of divinely absolute knowledge, ethics, ideals, or science; as I wrote elsewhere, it’s perhaps ironic that my personal relationship to the institutional church and my faith are much more resilient because I regularly expect that most of Church administration, hierarchy, and teaching is largely human. I believe God can and does speak to prophets, and I don’t think that belief is incompatible with the idea that the vast majority of day-to-day things that come from Church HQ consists of humans doing the best they can. In that sense, I’m greatful that Church leaders have much practical knowledge and expertise in things like law, finance, and organization. (Imagine a 15-million member church with leadership trained solely in Greek grammar, ancient history, and exegesis.)
I expect that revelation guides the Church in the right direction in the long run, but that even “direct revelation” will inevitably have human aspects to it. I find that to be both realistic and believing, and I suspect teaching our youth tempered notions of revelation instead of absolutist ones will help people stay active and believing. That, at least, is my hope and my goal.
See my follow-up post here.
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March 20, 2018 at 4:24 pm
“Imagine a 15-million member church with leadership trainied [sic] solely in Greek grammar, ancient history, and exegesis.”
Had a good chuckle over this line. While I’ve often wished that some leaders had just a little more of these skills, it makes sense that these aren’t necessarily the skills the Lord would need leaders to have to keep a world-wide church operating smoothly. It reminds me of how Brigham Young was the one who dropped out of the Kirtland Hebrew School because he couldn’t handle it, but could anyone else have colonized the west?
March 20, 2018 at 5:51 pm
Yes, as much as one might gripe about the perceived uniformity of the governing council of the Church, one must also admit that those skills are quite practical and applicable to Church administration. I can only imagine the mismanagement and inefficencies we would have to wrestle with if everyone had arcane PhDs like ours 🙂
But it’s also not an all-or-nothing. I certainly wouldn’t mind if a historian or Bible scholar were there to offer a different perspective.
And thanks for the typo, fixed!
March 21, 2018 at 8:46 am
Regarding that perceived uniformity, in Arrington’s memoir, Adventures of a Church Historian, he recounted that in his dealings with the Brethren, in order to preserve unanimity, the most conservative voice(s) usually win out when there is an ongoing difference of opinion.
May 11, 2018 at 10:48 am
It’s like what you learn about backpacking safely “the group only moves as fast as its slowest hiker”.
May 3, 2018 at 9:49 pm
Can we also have a discussion that patriarchs, along with prophets, are human and make mistakes sometimes? They receive revelation too, and use their own words to express much, or even most of a patriarchal blessing, which may not be quite a perfect expression of the inspiration received. Can we also allow that not every word choice was the best or even correct? Can patriarchs be guilty of “riffing” on an piece of inspiration that would have been more accurate if it was expressed simply, for example? Can they possibly make some assumptions based on their own judgments and biases which result in skewed advice? Well, be careful to whom you voice that opinion!
May 11, 2018 at 10:51 am
Do you spend any time over at Connor Wood’s blog? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scienceonreligion/
It might have some ideas for you on employers.
April 4, 2019 at 2:49 pm
A year late… but this is even more topical today given the training notes we have from President Oaks via a Church official communications channel.
Love the transparency.
Love the humility of the people doing the best they can to govern as the Lord would have them govern.
July 16, 2019 at 3:47 pm
I came back to this post a year later and it’s still just as good as the first time. Thanks for sharing.
July 19, 2019 at 5:32 pm
Thanks!
July 19, 2019 at 11:26 am
First, thanks for a cogent conversation without indirectly or directly thumping (a gentler firm of bashing) on our prophetic leaders and Church administration. As one who had studied seven different Churches and read up on a few world religions and is now an adult convert to the Latter Day Saint Church, intellectually there is no Church (despite their good intentions and my deep respect for them) whose doctrine makes more sense and is more Biblically supported than this one.
Second, you mentioned, “Since we know human evolution is true, and God knows all truth, why don’t God’s earthly proxies like scripture and prophets seem to know it?”
Would you clarify the following:
1) Which version of evolution are you referencing?
2) Which version of creation are you alluding to?
3) To say something is TRUE is to use a SUPERLATIVE. What superlative proof do you have to quantify that evolution is true? Is there room for doubt in your thesis that evolution is true?
4) How do you know that God’s proxies don’t know X, Y, and Z. My observation is that lack of SPEAKING on a topic is not the same as lack of KNOWING on a specific topic.
Third, remember faith . . . is NOT to have a perfect knowledge…. That said, we are also encouraged to seek out of the best books, etc. The caution in the latter is to NOT swallow a lie cleverly or accidentally hidden amongst “truth” or among today’s best guesses or best information. And, as an researcher and author, you, too, bring your biases, filters, past footings to the table of conversation. So, ultimately, we seek out, balance sources against each other, and pray that the Spirit will tweak our hearts and minds sufficiently to ascertain what is potentially “most correct” at that moment in time.
Finally, let’s not forget WHO we REALLY are, WHOSE we REALLY are, and our ultimate, potential destiny. (Romans 8:16-18). Let’s make sure our priorities, actions, and focused time are fully ALIGNED to the vision.
Thanks for thinking, researching, and sharing!!
July 19, 2019 at 5:31 pm
Thanks for your comment.
1) I’m referring to biological evolution of animals and humans as taught in universities, including BYU, since the early 1920s.
2) Not sure what you’re getting at here. We have multiple creation accounts in the Bible (2.5 of them), plus the parallels in Moses and Abraham, and the liturgical version in the temple. I have written/spoken on all of these, and scheduled to do so again.
3) I am not a scientist (and I gather you’re not either) but there’s a >98% acceptance rate of biological evolution among scientists.
4) They have spoken on it plenty, in private and in public. Google for Joseph Fielding Smith and evolution, for example. It’s extremely common knowledge, so much so that many LDS in Utah assume there is a formal doctrine against evolution.
My doctoral dissertation in History of Religion covers LDS creation/evolution conflict after 1970, so I’m somewhat well-versed in the historical data.
You may find these posts relevant- https://www.patheos.com/blogs/benjaminthescribe/category/evolution/
https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2017/12/16/commentary-many-mormons-have-forgotten-that-evolution-isnt-a-satanic-heresy/
https://www.fairmormon.org/conference/august-2017/truth-scripture-and-interpretation?fbclid=IwAR3xgT2sbO1xY9e3IhXhU83HvqJE7hYEyyB_7ABT3teYp6bfNbHJH5hRmB8
Cheers
Ben
February 12, 2021 at 7:27 am
Could you share the source of your statement that 98% of scientist accept biological evolution. My Dad is a scientist and I wonder if he participated in the poll.
Here is my concern with the assumption that most scientists except evolution. I was a sociology and a biology major at one point in college.
I was not encouraged in either of those majors to look at data and draw my own conclusions. I was forced to accept the conclusions of others and set aside reason in order to get a good grade.
Therefore through my own experience liberal world views are required in order to get a good grade in any many disciplines today.
The student must become liberal or pretend to be to survive or must change majors to a more practical major and less academic.
Views like traditional creationism and revelation are not tolerated at most schools in the more academic disciplines. That is why things like George Washington’s “appeal to heaven” flags are not taught as part of history for example.
I am an example of someone who left the majors for those reasons and done my own studies on these things as a free thinker.
Many of the most prominent scientists that have spoke on there accepting evolution as faith not so different then religious faith.
Why not then give room for decent in the college classroom? The devil is the god of this world and that is why free thinking is discouraged, in my opinion. He wants us to accept things that downplay God.
Some like you have been able reconcile acceptance of evolution with your belief in God but most can’t and turn to secular humanism for answers.
February 12, 2021 at 11:35 am
The percentage of scientists who accept evolution is exceptionally high regardless of source, and there are plenty of sources, such as Pew Research. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/11/darwin-day/
The idea that evolution is scientifically controversial is a false narrative promulgated by creationists, i.e. “Teach the Controversy.” This is not to say that there are no gaps in the science; there are. But creationists wrongly take those gaps to be fatal. Evolution holds because it makes the most sense of the most data.
“Views like traditional creationism and revelation are not tolerated at most schools in the more academic disciplines.” That is because they are not *academic* nor scientific. And “traditional creationism,” depending on how one defines it, is quite young, and not terribly well supported by the history and context of scripture.
July 7, 2020 at 4:39 am
Thank you so much for sharing this. I have really been struggling on this issue and I realise now that I have been raised and taught the idea of absolutist revelation and my expectations had been unreasonably high. I grew up in a multi-cultural city and am a scientist by background. I have therefore struggled with the priesthood restrictions and comments about evolution. Your article has helped me reconcile many of my concerns and paved a new way for me to approach revelation and the church leaders. I love your explanation about approaching truth more and more along the way.
This article has genuinely been an answer to my prayers and I look forward to reading more of your work. Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge with me.
July 11, 2020 at 9:21 am
So glad it’s helpful! You can see my other related posts with this link. https://benspackman.com/category/evolution/
December 9, 2020 at 10:12 pm
Do you sustain the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the prophet, seer, and revelator and as the only person on the earth authorized to exercise all priesthood keys?
Do you sustain the members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophets, seers, and revelators?
Thank you for this past post… as I have been focused the past several years on why I have been unable to answer these questions in the affirmative due to my personal definition of prophet, seer and revelator. I nearly left my mission in 1978 following discussions with General Authorities about 40+ investigators I was teaching by phone in Copenhagen Mission Office. Elder Theodore M. Burton pleaded with me to stay, told me change was coming, and promised me that I would want to be involved with that change. The revelation was announced three weeks later. Polygamy, women in the church and LGBTQ issues have always been foremost in my heart. I turned down being a Bishop eight years ago because I could not see myself supporting LGBTQ doctrine and policy. I truly question how leadership can harm so many people through their doctrine and policies under the mantle of prophets, seers and revelators (and be so slow to change… ) .Your expressed limitations and their human fallibility is worth putting into the equation of my definition.
February 13, 2021 at 12:06 pm
Evolution is not science. It is theology.
February 13, 2021 at 12:21 pm
Punctuated equilibrium is an evolutionist theory to explain the lack of fossil evidence for evolution from species to species (no missing links). It is unproven and takes an extreme amount of blind faith.
Dawkins criticism of this theory (punctuated equilibrium) is that he believes the evolution occurred gradually “elsewhere”. This also takes blind faith.
Thus evolution as accepted by supposedly the overwhelming majority of scientists is actually theological in nature.
February 13, 2021 at 12:24 pm
As I said, there are gaps in the science, but those gaps don’t mean it’s not the best explanation for the most data across dozens of fields. You’re welcome to your creationist and non-scientific views, but you’re on thin ice posting them here.
February 13, 2021 at 12:57 pm
Could you explain what you mean when you say that I am “on thin ice” posting my creationist views here?
I enjoy debate and intelligent conversation as a free thinker. Even if I lose the debate I don’t look at it as slipping because more views are openly shared and explained.
I expect that you are more formally educated than I am and more crafty in debate. If so, I welcome it. I am not afraid of losing a debate.
That said,
Please share a link to an article you or another has written on the interdisciplinary agreement and reliance on evolutionary “fact”
February 13, 2021 at 1:32 pm
This blog is not a place for “debate,” and particularly not for amateur debate about the science, since I’m not a scientist and you’re not either. So, you are welcome to your self-congratulatory “free thinking” creationist views. Since, with my historical perspective, I see your views as populist, uninformed, and baseless rejection of expertise along the same lines as vaccine denial and conspiracy theories, I do not welcome them here and I warn you against posting about them again.
February 13, 2021 at 1:44 pm
I did not know that you didn’t want debates on your blog. All you would have needed to do was ask me to stop debating and I would have.
No need to “warn me”. What ever that means.
I will find another blog to post my thoughts on that welcomes freethinking and learning together.
For what it’s worth I have been telling people that I shared your article with that I am glad you have kept your faith. I just disagree with you on evolution and also a few other points in your article.
I will definitely leave it at that.