My last post talked about Cleon Skousen’s book, The First 2000 Years. Today I came across an interview with BYU professor Bertrand Harrison, a biology and botany professor. If you’ve ever been to the garden or duck pond on the south end of BYU campus, on 800 North, that’s the Bertrand F. Harrison Arboretum, pictured above

Harrison had written one of the most pro-evolution articles ever published in a Church magazine, and it was specifically read and approved by President McKay to appear in the magazine. That article was part of a controversial  pro-science series in Church magazines in 1965, which I detailed here.

I came across this interview with Harrison, wherein he relates an anecdote about George Hansen and Cleon Skousen. Hansen( b.1896-d.1981) formed BYU’s Geology department; he was it, by himself, in the days before Wilkinson became BYU President (1951) and changed BYU from a small college into the large University it is today. Similarly, Vasco Tanner was the Biology department, and Carl Eyring the Physics department.

Hansen recounts that “one of [his] first jobs when I got [to BYU] was to move all the museum specimens from the Church museum in Salt Lake” to a room functioning as BYU’s natural history museum. Hansen also taught courses in religion

all the time I was at BYU. I brought a lot of geology in it— some thought maybe it was too much geology. I gave a number of talks at the Tabernacle on geology and religion, and I think they were enjoyed by many.

Some thought geology didn’t belong in religion, but I was of the impression that every science belongs in religion…. Science and religion has to go hand in hand— that’s part of the greatness of BYU. Secular learning can be just as important as knowing how to read and interpret scriptures. The rocks tell their story, and it represents a record that dates back way beyond any other record that we know anything about.

Hansen accepted the strong scientific evidences for an old earth and evolution. (So did Vasco Tanner, in Biology.) Given his early connection with BYU, a number of influential 20th century LDS educators and academics studied under Hansen, and were influenced by him. One such was William Lee Stokes, who authored another one of those scientific magazine articles in the 1965 series.

William Lee Stokes, LDS professor of Geology at the U of Utah

Stokes recounted in an interview,

To [George Hansen] geology was an exuberant, joyful, wonderful subject and that was what dominated his entire presentation of the subject–the fun that it was, and being out in the field, and meeting the personalities, and solving the problems, and so forth. And he taught it the way it was, I mean, there was no quibbling over the fact of evolution. In his classes–and they were always overflowing because he was such a popular teacher–I don’t think bitterness, doubt, antagonism, or anything ever crept in.

Another of Hansen’s students, Harold Bissell, became a BYU geology professor. In an obituary he wrote for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Bissell characterized Hansen as having “deep religious commitments which were not pretentious and churchy.”

All of this background on George Hansen serves as lengthy setup for the joke told by Bertrand Harrison, which we have (“finally!” I can hear you saying) arrived at.

We used to have faculty parties that were a real joy. There was a tendency to speak quite frankly about things and not be hesitant about voicing the things that were bugging us. They had a little skit in which supposedly somebody died and went to heaven, a member of the faculty, and he was met by some of the other members of the faculty that had gone before, and they were questioning him about what was going on down on the campus. Well, I’m sure you’re aware of this fact that Clean Skousen had written a book on the first one thousand years and the first two thousand years, and one of the angels supposedly said to this newcomer, “Now what is George Hanson doing?” And he said, “Oh, he’s writing a book on the first two billion years before the first two thousand.”
[laughter]

In October of 1976, BYU awarded Hansen  (age 80) the James E. Talmage Scientific Achievement award; Hansen used to walk to school with Sterling Talmage, and knew the family.

Today, BYU’s Geology department offers a scholarship in Hansen’s name.

 

As always, you can help me pay my tuition here via GoFundMe. *I am an Amazon Affiliate, and may receive a small percentage of purchases made through Amazon links on this page. You can get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box below) and can also follow Benjamin the Scribe on Facebook.