Category: science and religion

Henry Eyring, Sr.

Henry Eyring Sr., Church Magazines, and the Wrong Meeting: “Everyone was Very Nice to Me”

June 1, 2020 /

I’ve written a bit about Henry Eyring before (here in connection with General Conference and creationism, and here on Church authority and argument.) He’s a central figure for talking about 20th century science-and-religion arguments in the Church, which you can read about in his Faith of a Scientist, his biography Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring, and this article from The Search for Harmony called “Agreeing to Disagree: Henry Eyring and Joseph Fielding Smith.” Continue reading

Interpreting Scripture, History, Science, and Creation: A Free Course by Me!

May 4, 2020 /

Red brick store in Nauvoo, where the first endowments were done on May 4, 1842.

Edit: I’ve added this syllabus to the main menu at left, and simplified the url for easy access, to http://BenSpackman.com/syllabus

May 4th holds significance in LDS history: it’s the day Joseph Smith introduced temple ordinances in the upper room of the red brick store in 1842. The temple ties together a number of questions, like: Continue reading

Teaching Genesis at Institute

May 4, 2020 /

I’ve taught a class just on the book of Genesis a few times, in a few places. We spend a lot of time on the first 10 chapters or so. The second time (from whence these notes), few students had a science background, and only 1-2 had previous experience with me. Most of the points below I have developed further in the course. Continue reading

Science and History as Myth and Fiction: Exploring Some Common Labels

April 20, 2020 /

(Originally published in 2010 elsewhere) Most people know the genre of “parable” because they’re in the Gospels, but “myth” is poorly understood and the term carries a lot of negative baggage. Like “literal” you have to be very careful throwing around the term without defining it. One simple definition of myth is that myth is worldview in narrative form. That is, it’s a way of explaining one’s conception of how the world works in everyday language or story form. Continue reading

How to Build Resilient Faith: An Almost Ensign Article

February 6, 2020 /

In late 2014, I heard the story of a friend of a friend who had lost faith and left the Church. I wished there was something semi-authoritative I could have pointed to which would have shifted this person’s paradigm in healthier and more robust directions. Yes, there’s lots of material like that… but not directly published by the Church. Frustrated I couldn’t find something, I decided to write it myself, for catharsis. I did a little research, wrote up an article in Ensign style, and passed it around to some academic and Church-employed friends, who encouraged me to submit it. To my surprise, the article received enthusiastic acceptance, was given a contract number, and set to run some time in 2016…

Continue reading

I don't know the origin of this image, but I like it

BYU Studies, Evolution, and Faith: Some Clarification (Updated!)

January 30, 2020 /

We recently put forth an open call for abstracts for a special issue of BYU Studies dedicated to biological evolution, LDS faith, and practice. I am the guest editor overseeing the non-scientific submissions and as such, would like to emphasize a few things from the call that seem to be getting overlooked. Update: Please note, we have extended the abstract submission deadline from February 1 to March 1.  Continue reading

Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

January 22, 2020 /

I had a conversation1which was eventually deleted by an administrator in a public Facebook group about the “printing error” in the 2020 Book of Mormon manual. I raised some substantial concerns, filled out with a number of links to my own research and posts about cursing in scripture (e.g. here and in my posts on 2 Nephi 1-5, here and here). Two S&I/COB2Seminaries & Institutes; Church Office Building employees responded to me by bearing fervent testimony of the Curriculum and Correlation processes and berating anyone who dared hold any other opinion.

These testimonies constituted de facto witnessing of inerrancy (not the first I’ve seen) and also violated Elder Ballard’s directive specifically to S&I teachers;

“Gone are the days when a student raised a sincere concern and a teacher bore his or her testimony as a response intended to avoid the issue.”

I even called them out on avoiding the central issues, which received no response.  Continue reading

I don't know the origin of this image, but I like it

The 1950s: A Fundamentalist Shift

January 7, 2020 /

Several scholars have identified a LDS shift in the mid-20th-century towards a kind of fundamentalism. In 1980, for example, Leonard Arrington reflected in his journal on the emergence

 at BYU in the 1950s…. particularly in the College of Religion [of] A sort of Mormon Fundamentalism like Protestant Fundamentalism [which] Emphasizes Biblical literalism, rejects the Higher Criticism [in biblical studies, and] the law of evolution… Continue reading