Two more! These also will be added to my media page, when I have time.
First, the second half of my interview with Mormonism with the Murph.
Second, discussion on Saints Unscripted about Dinosaurs and prehistory.
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January 11, 2024 at 1:45 pm
I appreciate you taking an inordinate amount of time and expending an enormous amount of energy addressing these topics. After listening and giving them considerable thought, I’m convinced the problems are far worse than even you’d admit.
While it is interesting to see what the likes of Widtsoe, Talmadge, and Merrill thought about these issues many years ago one need not go beyond the current prophet to see why there’s no clean resolution to these disparities or room to maintain private and seemingly contradictory beliefs. From President Nelson in 1987:
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/russell-m-nelson/magnificence-man/
“Still others have concluded that man came as a consequence of a “big bang” that resulted in the creation of our planet and life upon it.
To me, such theories are unbelievable! Could an explosion in a printing shop produce a dictionary? It’s unthinkable! But it could be argued to be within a remote realm of possibility. Even if that could happen, such a dictionary could certainly not heal its own torn pages, or renew its own worn corners, or reproduce its own subsequent editions.”
The years from 1987 to 2012 did like to dissuade him from such an opinion and curiously these words are repeated near verbatim.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2012/04/thanks-be-to-god?lang=eng
“Still others have concluded that man came as a consequence of a “big bang” that resulted in the creation of our planet and life upon it.
To me, such theories are unbelievable! Could an explosion in a printing shop produce a dictionary? It’s unthinkable! But it could be argued to be within a remote realm of possibility. Even if that could happen, such a dictionary could certainly not heal its own torn pages, or renew its own worn corners, or reproduce its own subsequent editions!”
So after you’re done winning over the biologists, the chemists, and the geologists, you’re still have to deal with all of physics and cosmology – an issue I’m not sure anyone is yet prepared to address in a coherent way.
There is a subtle clarification that needs to be made about why some people leave over these issues. While organic evolution, geology, or cosmology might be *an* issue, sometimes the overriding factor is the breath taking combination of arrogance and ignorance with which some authorities have asserted their falsehoods. The above videos are examples of such and the Seven Deadly Heresies by McConkie is another.
In rereading Widtsoe, Talmadge, Merrill, and even Erying one can see the tragedy of their optimistic approach – that somehow, someway over long periods of time both reason and being reasonable would win out. As you’ve remarked, those voices were extinguished by the 1960’s. There’s really no meaningful way in which the church can recover from that damage – damage that it did to itself and to its own members.
January 12, 2024 at 11:34 am
I was reminded of how stark this problem is for science by of all things an article about Martin Scorsese entitled “For Martin Scorsese, it’s all about forgiveness”. From the article:
“After “Killers of the Flower Moon” premiered at Cannes in May, Scorsese traveled to Italy with his wife, Helen Morris, to attend a conference titled The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination. Afterward, he met briefly with Pope Francis and later announced, “I have responded to the pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus.” Scorsese has completed the screenplay for that film, collaborating with critic and filmmaker Kent Jones, and plans to shoot it later this year. They’re still “swimming in inspiration,” he tells me, still figuring it out”
This should be contrasted with where we are now compared to President Kimball’s 1977 gospel vision for the arts. Historians of the future will unearth from 2023 the Tim Ballard inspired film The Sound of Freedom, a Book of Mormon inspired film The Oath, and whatever they can stomach from the Interpreter Foundation. Suffice it to say we’re a bit behind The Church of the Devil.
It’s abundantly clear you’ve done an enormous amount of work and fortunately that effort has been widely appreciated. However, the problem is far worse than even you’re willing to admit. Some of the most egregious statements aren’t from fifty or a hundred years ago. In a 1987 talk entitled “Body and Spirit: The Magnificence of Man” President Nelson states:
“Others have deduced that, because of certain similarities between different forms of life, there has been a natural selection of the species, or organic evolution from one form to another. Still others have concluded that man came as a consequence of a “big bang” that resulted in the creation of our planet and life upon it.
To me, such theories are unbelievable! Could an explosion in a printing shop produce a dictionary? It’s unthinkable! But it could be argued to be within a remote realm of possibility. Even if that could happen, such a dictionary could certainly not heal its own torn pages, or renew its own worn corners, or reproduce its own subsequent editions!”
Inexplicably, the same message is repeated nearly verbatim in a 2012 talk “Thanks Be to God”. After you’re done pacifying the biologists, the chemists, and the geologists you’re now in the awkward position of having to smooth over the physicists and the cosmologists. It’s an egregious unforced error on the part of President Nelson and if the arts are any guide it’s an error that will take many many decades for the church to recover from if at all. While your work gives the individual member permission to privately believe some scientific theories, it does not at all address the fact that these continued and current statements broadly affect the entire culture of the church in unambiguous ways.
As an illustration one need not look further than the quality of our current presentation of the creation in what is supposed to be the pinnacle spiritual experience of the temple. Without having seen the current slideshow presentation I’m guessing it’s nowhere near as good as Jennifer Connelly in Noah. Leadership should know that there are plenty of people more spiritually uplifted sitting at home watching the first twenty minutes of Terrance Mallick’s Tree of Life than they ever would be if they set foot in a temple.
There are deep rooted structural problems that cause our art and portrayal of science to be so abysmal. I commend you for attempting to address them despite my skepticism of any long term institutional change.