192 - Does the Church Contradict Science? | Church History Matters I Science Religion Series

Maybe the mid-century conflicts over evolution were really about how doctrine is defined. Mormon doctrine is a great resource. The problem with it is that it's called Mormon doctrine. You know what else is interesting? When President Smith passes away, guess who is called as an apostle to fill the vacancy? Bruce R. McConkie. Elder McConkie was strongly against evolution. It is with a little fear and trepidation that we enter into documenting this era of church history. One of the questions he asked was, do you subscribe to the damnable doctrine of evolution? One survey back in 1973, 81% rejected the idea that creation involved evolution at all. The author suggested that political conservatism rather than education alone plays a major role in the shaping of LDS views. And I think a person can study evolution and even be in favor of evolution and be a fully involved, engaged, and active Latter-day Saint. Wow. Wow. Well, hello, Scott. Hello, Casey. It's good to see you once again. And I've got to say, this has been a fascinating walk through some lesser-known history. A lot of interesting stuff that's come up, especially the last couple episodes. Yeah, I was going to say, in our last couple episodes, is we've really gotten into the weeds that are so interesting. These weeds are so fun. It's not often that we talk about out in the open clear disagreements that have happened between church leaders on issues and lessons we can learn from that. But, boy, this is one of those that is very well documented, and we get to, again, I think learn some really important stuff from this. And we started drawing some of those lessons last time, And hopefully we can see a couple more of those insights today. Yeah. And I've got to say, the other thing that's unique is we usually don't get this close to our own time. So this led to at least one kitchen table conversation where I sat down with my wife and said, what do you remember being taught about evolution when we were growing up? And we both kind of went back and forth. And I'll mention some of that conversation a little bit later on. But we're close to our time. And that raises the sensitivity level. And so we just want to make it clear again, we're not criticizing anybody. We're telling a story here. But if your relative pops up here, if you're the grandson or granddaughter of one of the people that we're discussing, we love everybody involved in this story. But like you mentioned, this is a story of some disagreement over a doctrine, a teaching that there is no official teaching from the church about. But some people still have very strong feelings about. So standard disclaimer before we dive into the controversies. Right. Yeah. Today, yeah, we plan on going from, what, 1970s to today. Like we want to make it all the way to the present essentially today. In our previous seven episodes, we've talked about a lot of things surrounding this topic. And we're going to do a really quick high-level summary. We talked about how those who seem to easily harmonize science and religion and see the least amount of conflict between the two hold a few important assumptions. So first one is that they hold science and religion to represent two different epistemologies or ways of knowing. They recognize that each way of knowing uses distinctive tools to get it answers to two different kinds of questions. The science track is amazing at getting questions about how things work, how long they've been working, and how things got to work the way that they do today. But science has almost no tools to talk about bigger picture questions about meaning, like why anything bothers to exist at all or what our purpose is here on Earth or is there life after death, etc. Big questions. And these questions are best answered by the tools of religion and to some extent philosophy. The second important assumption held by those who seem to easily harmonize science and religion has to do with how they view the nature of Scripture. Yeah, because so much of the perceived conflict between science and religion deals with those moments when science seems to clearly contradict what is said in Scripture, right? Exactly. And especially about the material in the early chapters of Genesis, which the church has been studying for Come Follow Me, like the creation of the earth, the fall of man, the flood of Noah, and so on. So, if you assume scripture was written to answer scientific questions, you're going to see a lot of problems between science and religion. But here's a better assumption that basically eliminates the scripture science problem altogether. This is our thesis sentence for the whole series. Scripture texts are the result of a human-divine collaboration written by ancient authors embedded in their own cultures and crafted primarily for the purpose of doing theology, not science. Yeah, because when we know that the early Genesis chapters were written as God worked with and through ancient humans who held radically different cultural views than we do, who believed very different assumptions about the world and the cosmos than we do, and who were therefore we're not even remotely asking the kinds of scientific questions that we want to ask about the origins of things. We won't expect early Genesis to have answers to those types of questions. We won't even approach the text with those questions. We won't be surprised to see when God accommodates the unscientifically accurate worldviews that ancient people held in order to teach them more eternally significant truths, like truths about His nature, truths about the purpose of the earth's creation, right? The big whys, right? The purpose of our creation, the meaning questions of life. Like, that's really what he's getting at. He's happy to accommodate the understanding of the people of that time in order to get to those bigger picture truths, right? Yeah, yeah. And we've been talking in the last few episodes about the debates surrounding evolution within Christianity and within our own Latter-day Saint faith tradition that began boiling over in the United States in the 1900s. And it's safe to say that people's differing assumptions about Scripture and what Scripture says are at the heart of the controversy. And we talked about how there were two camps within Christianity which emerged, fundamentalists and modernists. So, fundamentalists are called fundamentalists because they believed that they were defending what they believed were the fundamental pillars of Christianity. And the chief pillar centered primarily on biblical inerrancy, the belief that the Bible is the literal word of God and contains no errors in history, science, or theology. Now, the other group are called modernists. And the central tenet of modernism was that religious truth is evolutionary and progressive. So, modernists argued that God reveals himself not just through an ancient book, but through ongoing discoveries of science and human reason. So, there were tenets like a new harmony. Modernists embraced higher criticism, which was a method of studying the Bible as a historical document written by humans in specific cultural contexts rather than divinely dictated, error-free text. And modernists also sought to harmonize science and religion. They didn't see science and religion as enemies. To a modernist, if science proved evolution, then evolution was simply the method God used to create the world. And we can clearly see that these differing scriptural assumptions also existed within our church among Latter-day Saints. Yes, which created conflict, not just among church members, but among church leaders as well. In 1925, during the national frenzy surrounding the Scopes trial, the First Presidency tried to put out a—they didn't try. They did put out a statement about the Mormon view of evolution, that's what they called it, which was essentially a summary of the 1909 origin of man first presidency statement, which affirms that man was created by God, but does not weigh in on the mechanism God used to create man, right? Kind of leaving the door open to evolution. That's kind of the official position of the church at that time, but that does not keep church members and we can say it, not even church leaders from continuing to argue about this issue, right, Casey? Yeah, yeah. Probably the most prominent example of this happens in 1931 when B.H. Roberts and Joseph Fielding Smith sort of pushed the issue back to the forefront. And the first presidency responded by reaffirming their neutrality and urging that sciences like geology and biology be left to scientific research. Yeah, I was reading the actual minutes of that meeting, because one of the major issues they were arguing about, Roberts and Joseph Filling Smith, was, were there pre-Adamites? Can you prove pre-Adamites or not? And they both brought scriptures to bear, and they both brought quotes from past church leaders to bear. They marshaled their resources to try to make their point. And at the end of all that, I think it was Heber J. Grant who said, well, I think what you have shown is that it is not a doctrine of the church that there was death before the fall. Good job. But you've also shown that it is not a doctrine of the church that there was not death before the fall. He said, you've both brought scriptures, you've both brought quotes from past church leaders to bear on your point, and what you've shown is that there really has no doctrine about this. And then that famous statement that we've read a couple times, which is, I'll summarize, let's leave science to the scientists and let us church leaders get busy preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. How about that? And so just fun the way that he kind of gives them both a nod, but then says, you have just proven the point that we don't actually have a doctrine about this, brethren. So thank you. It diffuses the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. And then to put a cherry on top, they ask Elder James E. Talmadge to publicly reinforce that message. In a public address he gave that was later published as The Earth and Man, he framed Scripture and nature as two complementary books, both written by God, through which God reveals truth. So the book of nature and the book of Scripture. And we should take them both seriously and be careful not to misinterpret either. He leaves the door open for death before the fall, but again, does not come down on any one specific church position on that issue. So, a really significant pamphlet. And you can see in that kind of those dual epistemologies, right? That idea that Talmadge would say there's the book of Scripture and there's the book of nature. There's religion and there's science, and they both are given to us to do certain things. But the overall pattern is clear. Individual church members and leaders held a wide range of views on evolution, but the first presidency consistently acted as a moderating force. They affirmed the essential doctrines while leaving scientific questions open. Yeah, yeah, that's especially true in the 1930s, right? In other words, unity on the essentials, preaching the gospel, room to explore on the rest, right? And plenty of thoughtful conversations along the way. No problem there. And I think it's safe to say, Casey, tell me what you think about this, but I think it's safe to say that because of the first presidency's efforts in 1909 in the origin of man statement, 1925 with the Mormon view of evolution statement, and in the early 30s here with the first presidency saying, all right, let's leave science to the scientists, let's get busy, as well as Elder Talmadge's earth and man pamphlet. But with that kind of combination, we essentially achieved a stance of neutrality on evolution, right? Like, church leaders are going to focus on preaching the gospel. We're going to let scientists do further scientific research into the scientific questions. And that was basically that in the 1930s, right? So, I mean, do you see it the same way? Like, it seems like the issue is settled for the church in the 1930s. Is that fair? Yeah, but then in our last episode, we traced how the church's early 20th century neutrality on evolution gradually gave way to a comeback for fundamentalism in the 1950s. And this was less because of new science, but more because of changing leadership, authority, and publishing practices. Yeah, in broader Christianity, this happens too, right? Like we started with the aftermath of the Scopes trial and the rise of fundamentalism that shoots out after that. especially after the death of William Jennings Bryan, who kind of becomes a symbolic martyr, right? That helps keep this anti-evolutionary sentiment alive. But then inside the church, the deaths of scientifically trained apostles like Elder Talmadge, Elder John A. Widso, and Joseph F. Merrill, who I know you love, Casey, he wrote his biography. They removed kind of an important moderating influence in the Quorum of the Twelve. And their deaths happened just as Joseph Fielding Smith is rising in seniority and influence in the Twelfth. And fundamentalism really began making its comeback in the church in the 1950s when Joseph Fielding Smith published his book, Man, His Origin and Destiny. And he enlists scientists like Melvin C. Cook to support his views that there was no death before the fall and that therefore evolution was false. And President Smith, we talked about, isn't really anti-science, but he did grant the Scripture supremacy when it came to all questions, which is an attitude that a lot of Latter-day Saints would probably support. Yeah, and his assumptions about Scripture were at issue here, weren't they? And the conflict that he saw between evolutionary theory and Scripture had everything to do with how he read the Scriptures. He saw this fundamental conflict between the fall of Adam and evolution, of death before the fall and evolution. And he makes that really clear in his writings. Because of how he read Scripture, he came to these conclusions. But what's interesting is not everyone among church leadership agreed with his reading of scripture because they didn't share his fundamentalist assumptions about scripture. I'm thinking of several different members of the first presidency like Heber J. Grant, David O. McKay, Stephen L. Richards, and then the prominent scientists we've talked about, Elder Talmadge, Elder Widtsoe, and Joseph Merrill. But when most of those scientists passed away, the views of Joseph Fielding Smith and his reading of Scripture begin to hold greater sway, not just in the church generally, but even among church leaders. Yeah, and this began to play out in church education, specifically during the 1954 BYU summer school, where some teachers were told that they didn't belong in the church school system if they disagreed with Joseph Fielding Smith's views. And in response, the first presidency reaffirmed again that evolution was not essential to the church's cardinal doctrines and that the book, specifically Man, His Origin, and Destiny, should not be used as a textbook for those courses. So, the First Presidency worked behind the scenes to build harmony, and J. Reuben Clark publicly gave a talk that planted seeds of recognizing that not every statement from a church leader represented the official teachings of the church. The First Presidency also sent Adam S. Bennion, another apostle, to meet with the geology department and assure them it was okay for them to teach evolution. But the religion department, again, with a few exceptions, the religion teachers began to follow the lead of Joseph Fielding Smith and began teaching that evolution contradicted the scriptures. Yeah, and we mentioned last time the remarkable timing of J. Reuben Clark being sent to BYU to that group of religious educators who had been taught by Harold B. Lee and Joseph Fielding Smith and Markie Peterson some of this more fundamentalism reading of Scripture. In the wake of that, J. Reuben Clark comes and gives that talk with a landmark address, which is called, When Are Church Leaders' Words Entitled to the Claim of Scripture. And we noted that J. Reuben Clark was a clerk to James E. Talmadge before Elder Talmadge passed away, and he leaned more modernist in his views of interpretation of Scripture and openness to evolution. And so it seems like his voice was a tempering voice that was sent down to address this question, because some of these religious educators and other church members are asking, like, how official is the doctrine or the teachings of Joseph Fielding Smith as contained in his book and now as being taught to us in these summer seminars, right? And although J. Rue McClark does not address Joseph Fielding Smith directly, nor does he mention his book, he does give a very careful explanation that leaders speak authoritatively only when they're moved upon by the Spirit, and that only the president of the church, which at that time was David O. McKay, can define the doctrine for the whole church. Members of the church individually need to have the Spirit of God with them so they can discern when something is being taught by the Spirit. It's a masterful address. It's very careful, but he's not directly addressing Joseph Fielding Smith and his teachings. I think he was hoping that they would understand what he was saying, and they would recognize why he was saying it at that time. And I think some did. He was trying to reframe the debate away from evolution itself, I think, and more toward discernment, toward authority, toward personal responsibility and personal inspiration. And so maybe, and this is kind of where we ended last episode, but maybe the mid-century conflicts over evolution. We're really about how doctrine is defined, you know, like who can define it and how members should weigh individual leaders' opinions when the church itself has chosen not to settle the question, right? Yeah, yeah. And J. Reuben Clark's address, like you said, is a classic, but it doesn't seem like it has the immediate impact that maybe he hoped it would on this particular issue, meaning evolution. As the years progressed, a number of publications began to turn a lot of church members towards a more fundamentalist stance on the scriptures. Latter-day saint scientists like Melvin C. Cook published books that favored a younger earth and no death before the fall. And Bruce R. McConkie's writings were also strongly against evolution and widely circulated. Latter-day saint scientists like Henry Eyring didn't speak out because they didn't hold expertise in fields linked to these areas. So, by the 1970s or so, anti-evolution claims had become a sort of quasi-orthodoxy within the church. And it was pretty common in religion classes, for instance, to hear that evolution was incompatible with the scriptures. And that doesn't mean Latter-day Saints were anti-science. For instance, a number of Latter-day Saints still worked in scientific fields. Just to cite a few examples, a guy named Dwayne Jeffrey was a world class biologist who worked at BYU during the 1970s, and he also put together a lot of the sources, published an article in 1974 tracing the history of statements made by the church on evolution. He later said he was only trying to, these are his words, he was only trying to open up the matter for discussion, to try to demonstrate to church members that the usual idea that the church had taken an official stand against evolution, et cetera, et cetera, was not a defensible statement, that indeed there are some rather official statements of openness and some possible ground for synthesis that had too long been buried. So, it seems like in all the hubbub of the 50s and 60s, these earlier discussions where the first presidency had a firm neutrality on the question of evolution had kind of just been forgotten about. And most people weren't aware that those issues or statements, if anything, they quoted the 1909 statement, but they quoted it in an anti-evolution sort of way. Even the 1909 statement is against the idea that we're not children of God, which some people use evolution to point to, but was pretty neutral when it came to, well, where did our bodies come from? What are the natural processes that created them? So I think it's safe to say that fundamentalism was very much strengthened in the church because of the efforts of Joseph Fielding Smith and in large part Bruce R. McConkie. You even showed me before we started recording, Casey, you've got an original Mormon doctrine there, don't you? Right here, yeah. Yeah, there's an edition one. How many pages on evolution in there? Ten pages on evolution. Which, again, just a quick skim through the book showed that everything else, there was not more than one or two pages. And Elder McConkie is very clear here that he doesn't believe evolution is compatible with the Scripture. So, this is sort of, you know, a revolutionary work in that it's like encyclopedic. And it makes it so easy. This is pre-Google search to find topics. And it influences people for just years and years to come. And it's very good, by the way, too. I've had some very, very wise people say, you know, Mormon doctrine is a great resource. The problem with it is that it's called Mormon doctrine. It sounds like it's just an official church resource. When it a guide written by Elder McConkie who was a 70 when he wrote it later on becomes an apostle But it maybe was written with too much of an authoritative tone That actually the critique that Mark E Peterson and Marion G Romney gave it, was that the authoritative tone could mislead some people into thinking this is an official document from the church when it's not. Think of the confusion that that could cause when you've got 10 pages adamantly against evolution in a book called Mormon Doctrine by a member of the who later becomes a very influential apostle. And at the same time, on the other hand, you've got in the 1930s, these statements of neutrality, 1925 statement of neutrality, 1909 statement of neutrality. What should I believe? What is our doctrine? You can see why him injecting that into church discourse in the 1970s, I think he felt totally comfortable doing so because of Joseph Fielding Smith's own teachings on this topic. And so I think those two, if we have to highlight two, and there was others, of course, we mentioned Harold B. Lee last time and Marky Peterson, Marion G. Romney, who were tutored by Joseph Fielding Smith, talked about how they felt very similar to Joseph Fielding Smith. So it's not just him alone, but he seems to be the number one person. And Bruce R. McConkie, because of his prolific writing, seems to be the number two person that really got fundamentalism more strengthened in the church during this time period, if you want to say it like that. But there's still a lot of back and forth on the matter. Fundamentalists, they're influenced by this book called The Genesis Flood, which was not an LDS book, but it posited that most of earth's geological history, all the different layers of the earth, could be explained by the flood of Noah. This was an approach to reconciling scripture and science using what they call catastrophism. Catastrophism is an approach to reconciling science and scripture that explains major geological features of the earth by appealing to sudden, really large-scale catastrophic events rather than the billions and billions of years old earth that explains this stuff through slow, gradual processes. So catastrophism emerges in the late 18th and 19th centuries as an alternative to early evolutionary and geological theories that emphasize deep time and uniform change over time. So in its classic form, catastrophism held basically that the Earth's strata, fossils, landforms, they're all shaped by a series of really dramatic events, often identified with biblical events like Noah's flood. Fossils were interpreted as like the remains of organisms rapidly buried during these disasters, not as evidence of a long evolutionary history. In fact, Casey, I remember I was sitting there with a group of seminary teachers, and a man was invited to come and explain his interesting views on the flood to us. It was kind of an informal after-school meeting, like we didn't have to be there, but we thought it was curious. So he explained to us that the fossils seem to be really old because under the weight of the water of the flood, the pressure of all that water actually caused them to age a lot more quickly in terms of carbon dating and stuff. And so that's why there's these discrepancies. So he was totally, I didn't have the word catastrophism in my mind. Yeah, I didn't know that word, but it's coming from this time period, this way of thinking. Now, what's nice about it, as you can see, is this allows proponents of, you know, like kind of the fundamentalist proponents to affirm observable geological features, right? They don't close their eye to it. They recognize the fossils. They recognize the strata in the earth, but they also get to hold to their very literal reading of scripture, right? So this is a good way of speeding up Earth's timeline to fit better for Christians who take the book of Genesis to be really literal and to be explaining scientific things. Yeah, and the fact that you just shared your own experience is where we— Yeah, I've heard this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We should probably pause and note that we're getting close to the time where we become a part of the history that we're discussing. And I should mention, a lot of religion teachers were involved in working to reconcile science and scripture in this manner. In fact, I was part of a team a few years ago that wrote the history of seminaries and institutes. And a lot of my research is in this history. So, I want to just mention, I worked with and interviewed and admire a lot of teachers from this era. And I'm really grateful for all they did to build faith in the people that they taught. And you and I, Scott, both worked as curriculum writers, and we can attest that there are some really fun, lively discussions that go into creating church curriculum. It's a fun job, and we worked with some really wonderful people, and we hope we don't come across here as opposing what they taught or believed. And on the essentials, I think it's safe to say all the curriculum writers agreed. But there was stuff like this where how old is the earth or was there death before the fall, where we'd have some big discussions. Yeah, I think even you and I had some lively arguments during that time, Casey, if I remember right. But that's part of why we love religious education. You get to have serious discussions about your faith with people who really care about this stuff, who are sincere believers and are trying to make their way forward and understand the scriptures in light of also modern discoveries and science and all that. We're trying to make it all make sense and find out the best ways of thinking about this stuff. When we're asked to put people into boxes like fundamentalist or modernist, sometimes this can become complicated because it's more of a spectrum than it is like clean boxes. But most of the people we worked with, maybe it's fair to say, lean toward a more literal interpretation of Scripture. Would you say that's a fair thing to say, Casey? Yeah? I think we lean towards a more literal interpretation of Scripture, right? Yeah. I guess it's going to depend on which... Yeah. Are we talking... Do we believe in miracles? Miracles? Yes. Literal resurrection of Jesus? Yes. Earth was created in six days? No. Right, so it would have to be, you know, there may be some nuance there. But these are astute students of scriptures. These aren't slouches. We talked about last time how debates about this stuff is not about intelligence usually. It's more fundamental than that. It's like, what are your assumptions about scripture, right? But all of these good people that we've worked with for the last couple decades are, I think, working hard to bring together reason and faith in a way that's edifying to our students, right? That's what we're really trying to do, be helpful. So, we just mentioned that because it is with a little fear and trepidation that we enter into documenting this era of church history, specifically science and religion in the church, because we're now critiquing some of our mentors and our teachers, and we don't have any ill will towards any of them. We're just walking through the sources. So, with that in mind, it seems like by the 1970s, most of the religious educators in the church were pro-science but anti-evolution. And along the way, there were checks and balances in the system that kept things from becoming too extreme either way. For instance, a head of curriculum in seminaries and institutes wrote an 11-page document influenced by the Genesis flood that you mentioned earlier. The first, it took its title from Psalms 8 and was titled, Thou hast created him a little lower than the angels. But then it was given a more direct title, Organic Evolution, Satan's Time Bomb. Now that is a much grabbier title anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd pick up the second title. It's a little bit more, you know, fantastic than the first. Yeah, and that paper had supporters and detractors at church headquarters, enough so that a junior apostle at the time named Thomas S. Monson sent the paper to Henry Eyring, the scientist, for a review, seeking, quote, the benefit of his personal observations. Eyring, meaning Henry Eyring, the scientist, and so we always got to be really clear there, Henry Eyring, the scientist, father of Henry B. Eyring, he provided a short little review that was very gracious, but also very direct. He pointed out that the author was not a scientist, and he commented that, quote, Brother Talmadge and Brother Widso presented the case for science and religion much better than this author did, close quote. So that's interesting. Now, that paper was also rejected by the Insign, the official magazine for adults published by the church. That went away, what, just a couple years ago. Now it's just all the Liahona, isn't it? But I think all of our listeners will remember the N-Zen. Some pronounced it N-Zen, which was always fun. But it was rejected because some of the editors of the magazine felt like it overreached in a few areas, such as the scientific interpretation and application of thermodynamics that was in there. But the paper was picked up by a few religion professors at BYU, and it began to be worked into their courses. Yeah, so that one was influenced by the Genesis flood, but there were other evangelical publications that influenced religious educators in the church as well. So one of the more interesting ones was written by an evangelical creationist named Donald W. Patton, and he wrote a book entitled, and this is maybe an even better title, Cataclysm from Space, 2800 BC, The Cause of the Biblical Flood, which is, again, an amazing title. So, this book, which was published in 1973, proposed that the biblical flood was caused not by ordinary geology, but by a near pass of a large celestial body that disrupted Earth's gravity. And Patton in the book argues that this event produced massive tides, crustal upheaval, and global flooding, which he dates to around 2800 BC to line it up with biblical chronology. So, the book combines biblical interpretations, ancient flood traditions, astronomy, speculative physics, and it rejects the evolutionary timescale to defend a young earth. Patton presents his model as a more sophisticated alternative to traditional flood geology. And while appealing to readers seeking a cosmic explanation for the flood, The theory was not accepted by mainstream science because such a close planetary encounter would probably be catastrophic for the Earth just in general. Yeah, Cataclysm from Space. What a title. But notwithstanding most scientists rejecting it, this was Cataclysm from Space was picked up on by a few Latter-day Saints who thought it was a good way to reconcile a literal reading of Genesis with science. Neil A. Maxwell, who at the time was Church Commissioner of Education, was asked to evaluate if cataclysm from space could be integrated into teaching materials, actually. He discussed the matter with Dallin H. Oaks, who at the time was president of BYU, and they sent the book to Jay Bailiff, who was serving as the Dean of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at BYU. Now, Bailiff, who had a PhD in physics and was serving as a stake president at that time as well, he sent back a blistering review saying that Cataclysm from Space was an incredibly superficial book and not a good example of careful thought. And it used innuendo, I'm quoting from him, and loaded statements and emotional appeal to carry a speculative argument that frequently contradicts observations, close quote. He also warned of, quote, the disastrous effect among students and thousands of dedicated, intelligent members of the church that would follow if the church were to sanction such a hypothesis as this, close quote. So Neal A. Maxwell then takes Bailiff's review back to church leaders, writing to them that while he himself was, quote, personally inclined to the view of catastrophism we talked about, he said, I am not a scientist. I am therefore reluctant to substitute my judgment as a non-scientist for theirs, even though my personal preference is as stated. So while the book was never fully embraced by the church educational system, a few professors at BYU did integrate it into their curriculum, and they began sharing it in their classes. One professor even compiled a 48-page handout titled The Fall of Adam, The Atonement of Christ, and Organic Evolution. It contained quotes from church leaders like Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie, but also Melvin Cook and Donald Patton and other creationists just showing the incompatibility of evolution with the fall and the atonement. Yeah, these are relatively small examples, a couple of religion classes at BYU. Books like Cataclysm from Space were never officially integrated into church materials and only seems to have impacted a small group of students at places like BYU. In fact, while we were putting this together, I looked for a copy of Cataclysm from Space in the BYU library, and I couldn't find one, even though I did find a number of science fiction titles that were really close to this. So, if we're looking at, like, larger impact, how did this impact the whole church, especially on the topic of religion, we should probably look at the teachings of general authorities during this time. For instance, Joseph Fielding Smith became president of the church in 1970 after David O. McKay passed away. And when he became church president in his first address as church president, he affirmed everything he taught during his ecclesiastical service saying this. He said, I am struck forcibly by the uniform manner in which I have taught the principles of the gospel over the years. The truths of the gospel are everlastingly the same. Like God himself, they are the same yesterday, today, and forever. What I have taught and written in the past, I would teach and write again under the same circumstances. So it doesn't seem like he's doing any sharp turns, no major changes when he becomes president of the church. In fact, he affirms, I'll teach now exactly what I've taught throughout my life. And what's interesting is after he becomes president of the church, I don't think he makes any anti-evolutionary statements. Yeah. But that quote that you just quoted, I remember somebody way early in my religious education career, maybe almost 20 years ago now, somebody said when I was questioning some Joseph Fielding Smith quotes about age of the earth and that because he was not president of the church when he said it, right, or wrote it. I remember somebody using that quote that you just shared. It's like, well, basically, he retroactively put his stamp on everything that he said as a junior apostle when he became the president. So basically, everything he wrote is doctrine. I was like, I don't think that's how it works. But anyway, so I've even seen that quote sort of weaponized to carte blanche, like validate everything he ever wrote. But if you look at his own writings, he says, do not believe anything that Joseph Fielding Smith writes, speaking of himself in first person, do not believe anything that I write unless it squares solidly with the scriptures. You know, so anyway, I do want to say on the other hand, though, about Joseph Fielding Smith, like he was a little more flexible than people sometimes paint him to be. Like sometimes he's painted to be the super rigid, dogmatic teacher, right? But just to cite one example that we've discussed in past episodes of this podcast. During the 1950s, after the launch of Sputnik that heralded the beginning of the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, President Smith, he once said that God, quote, has not authorized humans to get to the moon or to fly out in space. And he predicted that when they attempt to do so, they will fail. He compared the space race to a modern tower of Babel. When he was asked about his view, he wrote to an inquirer. He said, so much attention has been given to a simple statement made by me about men landing on the moon. He said, I base it simply on the grounds that the Lord has given. Please read what is written in the Pearl Great Price in relation to the earth and the moon. So here's an interesting moment in time where he's pretty adamant that man's never going to make it to the moon. But... And interestingly, during this exact time, one of the head administrators of NASA, James Fletcher, was an active Latter-day Saint. And he actually remembered Joseph Fielding Smith coming to California and preaching against landing on the moon, saying it was against God's laws, while many people in the congregation were actually working for the space program. But James Fletcher also said that he visited Joseph Fielding Smith later with several astronauts from the Apollo 15 mission. This is the fourth group to walk on the moon. And he said Smith was – these are Jim Fletcher's words. He was just tickled to death. He'd forgotten all about those earlier speeches. So once it happens, it seems like he's okay with it. In fact, this is a quote we've shared several times, but one person recalled Smith being asked about his statement that man would never walk on the moon after the moon landings had happened. And he looked at them and he said, well, I was wrong, wasn't I? So he was a little bit more flexible than sometimes we give him credit for. And we should point out that he served as church president for around two and a half years. He's in his 90s when he's called as president of the church. And during this time as church president and as head of the first presidency, he didn't issue any strong statements against evolution. At the same time, he was called as church president when he was in his 90s, and he was in declining health. So he's not church president for a long time, but you'd think if it was a huge deal to him, he might have reissued the 1909 statement or done something that was even more clearly anti-evolution in his position as church president, head of the first presidency, which he doesn't. Yeah, that is interesting. You know what else is interesting? When President Smith passes away, guess who is called as an apostle to fill the vacancy? I think I know. Bruce R. McConkie, his son-in-law. As we've already noted, Elder McConkie was strongly against evolution. He even gave a talk where he listed it as one of the Seven Deadly Heresies, an infamous talk now that he gave at BYU. But it's also important to remember that Elder McConkie also acknowledged institutional limits. He did not claim that the church had canonized a scientific position on evolution. He recognized that only the president of the church could declare binding doctrine for the church as a whole. Over time, especially after becoming an apostle in 1972, He spoke less frequently and less aggressively about evolution, not more. He focused instead on, guess what? Christ, Scripture, salvation. This becomes the legacy of Elder McConkie as an apostle, although there are a couple exceptions where he does venture into that realm a little bit. Like the seven deadly heresies, yeah. For instance, yes. But in his later years, Elder McConkie emphasized that salvation does not depend on scientific theories, and he avoided turning evolution into a test of fellowship, even though he personally regarded it as false. He never embraced evolutionary science, but he also didn't try to sort of reopen the institutional battles the church had repeatedly declined to fight over and over again. And we talked about this earlier. he did show some flexibility with regards to things like the age of the earth. Like, he changed his opinion on the age of the earth if you look at his addresses over time. Elder McConkie passes away in 1985, and after him, the apostle who probably spoke most forcibly against evolution was Boyd K. Packer. President Packer was consistently skeptical of evolution, especially when it was presented as a complete explanation of human origins. But if you look at his talks, his objections are primarily theological rather than scientific. He believed evolutionary accounts conflicted with doctrines such as the fall of Adam and the atonement and the divine nature and destiny of humanity, particularly the idea that death exists before the fall. So that's pretty consistent. Yeah, I remember there's a talk that he gave. I still remember it's called The Light and the Law. Do you remember this talk? Yeah, I remember this. That is where he lays down his hardest anti-evolutionary stuff. But it's important to note, and he was very self-aware of this, at the beginning of the talk he says, I want to give my own views on this. I'm not speaking for the church. I'm not speaking. He said, I just want you to know where I stand, but this is not. I'm not speaking for the church. And so I really appreciated that. I think he recognized the context into which he was speaking. But if you want to know his views on it, it's called The Law and the Light. You won have any questions about where he stands on it by the time he done But just remember his disclaimer at the beginning because he thought that was important as well And if I remembering correctly from that talk it seems like one of his arguments against evolution was this idea of a sealing chain that goes all the way back to Adam and then to God And he said if evolution was true, then Adam would have had to have been sealed to an animal at some point. And there was no sealing between humans and animals, which is a novel. I don't think I've heard anybody else make that argument, which was kind of interesting. I remember hearing that and thinking, that is, huh, okay. So anyway, put that where it is. What do you think, Casey? Is that a good argument against evolution? Well, I mean, we don't seal people to animals. And even that official statement from 2016 we read affirms that Adam and Eve were the first son and daughter of God. on earth. And so, yeah, I mean, I guess it holds up because we're saying Adam and Eve are effectively the first humans is what we're teaching, basically. And then at the end of Moses chapter six, God adopts Adam to be his son. It says there, he says he became the son of God. Adam was the son of God. Yeah. And I don't know if we should even go there, but a major thing I wondered about is that a lot of 19th century church leaders just taught that Adam was literally the son of God, that he was created through procreative processes. We haven't brought that up because it doesn't seem like it's relevant. I think it might be relevant though, because I, okay, here you go. We're to our day. We are to our day now. So I had a stake president who who was very clear that Adam and Eve were not created through evolutionary processes because, do you know why? And then he shared a couple of quotes from early church leaders saying, because Adam was literally the son of God. He was, in other words, Adam had a belly button, you know. And so how could he have come through evolutionary means, right? So I remember I was an impressionable young guy. And the stake president was saying he was using that logic to teach against evolution. So anyway, I'm just saying it was out there. It's probably still out there to some degree, and I think it is relevant to this discussion. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. So, all right. All right. Well, okay. So Packer, just to complete talking about him, he warned educators against treating scientific theories as final or allowing them to overshadow revealed doctrine, but he didn't advocate making evolution a test of faith. In practice, he emphasized that spiritual knowledge and testimony take precedence while science remains legitimate within its own domain. So, he's not quite as anti-evolution as Bruce R. McConkie and Boyd K. Packer, and maybe for different reasons too, which that's an interesting rabbit hole. Maybe we should go down one of these days. And all the teachings of these church leaders were important, but probably the most influential event, if we could call it an event, on Latter-day Saint understanding of the scriptures in the, I'd say the latter half of the 20th century, was the publication of the Latter-day Saint edition of the scriptures. Just go with me on this, right? An official Latter-day Saint edition of the King James Bible was published in 1979. It included study helps, like a topical guide, a Bible dictionary, that were, I'd say, taken pretty seriously by Latter-day Saints, and they still are. This is the version of the Bible that we grew up with, Casey, right? And it's the version that we're still using in our teaching today. It's the version that most members of the church grew up on. that we're talking about today. So if the Latter-day Saint edition of scriptures came out when fundamentalism was influential in the church, does it, here's my question for you, does it contain material in these study helps that speaks out on evolution or other topics? Is it overtly anti-evolutionary, like in the Bible dictionary or footnotes? And the answer there is not really. However, however. However, there are a few examples that we could consider. Just to provide some background, most of the Bible dictionary was written by Robert J. Matthews, who was the Dean of Religion at BYU, and we've talked before about him. He was a major figure in getting the church permission to use the Joseph Smith translation, which was a big factor in creating a Latter-day Saint edition of the Bible. And Matthews later said he started with a Cambridge Bible dictionary from the early 1900s and then describing his process, this is what he said. He said, I crossed out everything that according to Latter-day Saint revelation was incorrect. And he also said, I use Mormon doctrine considerably and the writings of President Joseph Fielding Smith, the standard works and teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith, which was also compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith. Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith is still so important in the church. Most of the time when you're quoting Joseph Smith, you're quoting something from Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. So, some of the entries in the Bible dictionary are pretty close to Mormon doctrine. For instance, the entry in Mormon doctrine on the firmament, which we talked about earlier, reads, as used in the scriptures, firmament means expanse. The firmament of heaven is the expanse of heaven. It refers, depending upon the context, to either the atmospheric or the sidereal heavens. So, yeah, the firmament is the atmosphere, which is a more literal reading of Scripture. The entry in the Bible dictionary reads that the firmament is the expanse of heaven, meaning, depending on the context, the atmosphere or sidereal heavens. Same exact language. It is the King James Version English translation of a Hebrew word meaning expanse. So while these might be in disagreement with how most scholars see the way ancient Hebrews used the word firmament, which had to do with more of a dome over the earth. It also doesn't... Physical ceiling almost. Yeah, physical ceiling over the earth. They're saying, no, the word means expanse. It's the atmosphere, which is a more literal reading of scripture. But it doesn't really take a big stance on science or religion. Though it does show that it's leaning towards a more literal reading of Scripture. And Elder McConkie was one of the apostles heavily involved in the creation of the Scripture helps, right? He approved everything in the Bible dictionary. I think the committee was Elder McConkie, Boyd K. Packer, and Thomas S. Monson, right? In the 12. Yeah. And then other scholars like Robert Matthews were tapped to help with their special expertise. Ellis Rasmussen, a bunch of good folks here, people we really like. Yeah, you know those headings in front of every chapter, those little italicized headings for every chapter in all of Scripture? Elder McConkie authored those. In fact, when Robert J. Matthews was asked why the church didn't produce much commentary along with the Scriptures, he said, well, the commentary's in the chapter headings. That's Elder McConkie's commentary on the chapter you're about to read. So maybe as we're kind of looking for, did any of this creep in? If Elder McConkie, Joseph Fielding Smith, their works were relied heavily on to write Bible dictionary and study helps, and Elder McConkie was personally involved in writing the chapter headings, do we find in those headings or study helps, Casey, any anti-evolution or fundamentalist views? Does it come through? And the answer is a little bit. A little bit, it does. Yeah. Can I give you an example? Yeah, sure. So chapter heading to Genesis chapter 2, okay? This was written by Elder McConkie. It says this, the creation is completed. God rests on the seventh day. The prior spirit creation is explained. Adam and Eve are placed in the Garden of Eden. They are forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam names every living creature. Adam and Eve are married by the Lord. This follows actually a teaching of Joseph Fielding Smith that the two creation accounts found in Genesis 1 and 2 can be reconciled by viewing Genesis 1 as the spirit creation, which is wildly controversial if you look at broad biblical scholarship. I don't think any biblical scholar would say that. But so he's drawing his own conclusion there. Another chapter heading, this was in Moses chapter 4, suggests that there was no death before the fall. Okay, this is a little closer to our point here. It reads this. It says, this is Elder McConkie writing the little italicized. He said, how Satan became the devil. He tempts Eve. Adam and Eve fall. And death enters the world. So what happened first? The fall. Then what? Death. Was there any death before the fall? You could, if you wanted to make the case, no, you could cite Elder McConkie right there, right? Yeah. Yeah, and that's probably the most direct intervention that's anti-evolution that's made in the chapter headings, which, again, doesn't seem like it's very direct. Though places in the topical guide and the Bible dictionary do seem to favor also a view of catastrophism, which we talked about earlier, and that there was no death before the fall. For example, the topical guide has an entry titled Earth Dividing Of that references the waters being gathered under one place, the earth being divided. This is in Genesis 10, kind of in the days of Peleg. It also mentions some passages from the Book of Mormon, too. like it says in Ether that when the waters of the flood had receded, the Western Hemisphere became a choice land. They cite the Doctrine and Covenants, which says the earth was divided. Many lands, each one was called earth. That's Moses 129. These all seem to favor the young earth view that the earth was divided in the days of Peleg, this ancient biblical figure, and that the continental arrangement of the Earth is a relatively recent development. But the topical guide has that. I would also point out I looked for evolution. It doesn't have an entry in the topical guide on evolution. It doesn't have anything on geology. It doesn't have an entry on dinosaurs, which is kind of the big question I get asked when students want to talk about evolution is, well, what's the deal with dinosaurs? dinosaurs. And there's nothing in the topical guide that points you for or against dinosaurs existing billions and millions of years ago. Yeah. Okay. So a lot of that does seem to support a more catastrophism view is what you're saying there, the earth being divided kind of recently, that kind of thing. Okay. Yeah. And I would say that the Bible dictionary is a little bit more direct in its language. For instance, if you look under the fall of man, you bet there's going to be an entry there, right? The fall of man reads like this. So this, who's this from? Is this Robert Matthews summarizing Alder McConkie and Joseph Fielding Smith, et cetera? Maybe. But here's what it says, quote, before the fall, there were no sin, no death, no death, no children. After Adam fell, the whole creation fell and became mortal. Adam's fall brought both physical and spiritual death into the world upon all mankind. Latter-day Revelation supports the biblical account of the fall, showing that it was a historical event that literally occurred in the history of man. So that is overtly weighing in on the pre-Adamites question, right? Was there death before the fall? No, according to the Bible dictionary, right? uh elder talmage would argue against that uh he did in his his article earth and man john a widzo uh absolutely b.h roberts would uh as we saw him overtly do in front of the first presidency but uh that's not none of that's being taken into account here the bible dictionary also contains a chronology which is interesting and this chronology dates the fall of adam really clearly at 4000 bc However, in a note that was added to the chronology, it reads this, quote, from secular history, such as inscriptions on monuments and other state records. Much work has still to be done in this direction. The dates found at the top of many printed English Bibles are due to Archbishop Usher, who lived in 1581 to 1656, it says. Some of them have been shown to be incorrect. So they say Adam fell about 4,000 BC, but then there's that kind of little caveat there, Yeah, some of the dates are incorrect. Yeah. And one Latter-day Saint scholar who's not a scientist did raise concerns about the Bible dictionary, noting, quote, so far as scriptural understanding goes and despite the diversity that exists at every level of its membership, the Mormon church has unofficially but effectively chosen to present a certain kind of fundamentalism as normative. Ah, shoot. Yeah, I think that criticism may be well-earned based on that entry. Yeah, but I mean, at the same time, this is pretty mild stuff. I mean, the Bible Dictionary has 1,285 entries, and only a handful come close to declaring fundamentalist readings of Scripture. In fact, the Bible Dictionary also contained a lot of modernist insights into the Scriptures, and overall it seems pretty balanced. But probably the biggest anti-evolution statement in an official church publication, as of this date, is the Old Testament Student Manual, which we quoted a couple episodes ago, which contains a quotation from Joseph Fielding Smith that condemns evolution. And we read that, we reviewed it, we talked about it, but there is more recent official correlated material from the church that says we have no official position on evolution. So, when we went through those sources a couple episodes ago, we also neglected another important source, which was, what did we hear growing up? Like in my classes, a lot of times we'll go through that model of what's an official teaching of the church, and then I'll pause and say, have any of you ever heard this? And if nobody had ever heard it, it might not be an official teaching of the church. And you and I, Scott, maybe we're not typical. We both grew up on the Wasatch Front. We both grew up in the Intermountain West. We both grew up in Utah. We went through, however, seminary and institute, and then we became seminary and institute teachers, and now we're religion teachers on the college level. This is where I got into that kitchen table conversation with my wife. Like, do you remember being taught against evolution when you were growing up, or pro-evolution, or do you remember anything about it? Yeah, good question. Like I said a couple times, right? Like my stake president, I mentioned. I've had a lot of stake presidents, so you can't pin down which one it was. But there was a stake president that used quotes about Adam and Eve having their bodies be born rather than created from the dust of the earth. And he taught us very clearly that means that evolutionary theory, so far as it has to do with the creation of human bodies, is false. He taught a small group of us that. He was not proclaiming that throughout his stake, but his personal views weighed heavily. I learned later that he was heavily influenced because I got to see his library, and he shared several quotes that were some of his favorites. He was influenced by, guess who? Joseph Fielding Smith, Joseph McConkie, Mary G. Romney, on his views on that topic. I remember being an impressionable institute student, and one of my teachers told about when he was being interviewed to be hired to teach seminary. he was interviewed by all seminary teachers and religion teachers are going to be interviewed by a general authority before they get hired and so he he told about his interview with the general authority uh his hiring interview was uh a general authority by the name of bruce r mcconkey he said he said he did not ask very many questions but one of them he said i was sitting there with my wife and one of the questions he asked was do you subscribe to the damnable doctrine of evolution. And he's like, and his wife was like, he doesn't, he doesn't. He's like, yeah, I don't even know like as much. Yeah. He's like, yeah, no, I don't. But he said that was one of his few questions was, all right. What kind of people do we want in the seminary and institute program? At least Elder McConkie, when it was on his watch, he did not want people in seminary and institute who believed in evolution. And my teacher shared that with his class. I was in that class, and I thought, okay, so I know where Elder McConkie stands. It kind of seems like I know where my teacher stands based on him sharing that story. Where do I stand? When I became a seminary teacher, Casey, I wanted to read everything that had been ever written by any prophet or apostle ever. I wanted to know all of everything, you know, and so I read all of Joseph Fielding Smith's stuff. Was I influenced by it? I think a little early on I was like, oh, I guess that's how it is. He's so clear. Elder McConkie is so clear. It wasn't until I started reading the counter voices of James E. Talmadge and his earthen man and learning the first presidency statements that I started pulling back. So, I mean, my experience was I'm just trying to be a good teacher. I want to teach what's true and right and helpful for our students. And here are some apostles who've weighed in on it. And so I think early on, I was influenced by that too. I don't know. What's your experience been? You know, when I thought about it, I could think of two clear moments. One was a fast and testimony meeting when I was growing up. And we just had a baby blessing. And the baby's grandfather got up to bear his testimony. And he started his testimony by saying, I want to bear my testimony that I know that my granddaughter did not come from a monkey. And that was all I remembered. That caught my attention, and I don't know how old I was. I was probably a teenager. I remember perking up and going, oh, that's an interesting thing to say in Zachary. And the other one that stands out in my mind was that I had a class from Joseph Fielding McConkie. I've mentioned him many times on here. This was Bruce R. McConkie's son. Bruce R. McConkie's son named Joseph Fielding McConkie. Right. I love it. I love it. Okay, yeah. That's a lot. And I remember him saying, we can twist it and sell our birthright, but there's no way we can make the theory of evolution work with the scriptures. And, I mean, that was interesting because there were several times in that class for the first time where I sort of walked out going, I don't know if I agree with that. because it's difficult to construct a map of your mind. But I think what I was teaching in seminary at that time was that I was okay with evolution for plants and animals, but that Adam and Eve were a special creation, that they were created directly by God. And I still lean in that direction, to be honest with you. But when I asked my wife, she didn't remember any instances where she was taught that evolution was wrong. but she did say, but I'm pretty sure that if you asked my grandma, and her grandma was this well-known author, Shirley Seeley, she would say it was wrong. And then my wife specifically said, because she had all of Melvin Cook's books. So, my wife, who isn't a church historian, was able to, by name, say who Melvin Cook was just from conversations she'd had with her grandma. So, it seems like institutionally, she hadn't got a lot of anti-evolution rhetoric, but from her family as she had. So, it does kind of match the outline that we're following here, which, by the way, we credit a lot to Ben Spackman and his research, that it was kind of peak in the 60s and 70s. This evolution is incompatible with the gospel, but it doesn't seem like it was ever one of those things, other than that story, that teacher you mentioned told saying, this is something that, you know, you can't cross this line. You can't be a member of the church. I guess in that case it was you can't be a seminary and institute teacher. Do you subscribe to the damnable doctrine, or heresy maybe he called it, of evolution? Yeah. Yeah. I was not asked that as a seminary institute teacher or as a religion teacher. I've never been asked that. That's never been a test of my employment, but I guess when Elder McConkie was in that chair, which was a rotating assignment, but when he was in that chair, at least once he asked that question. It seems like it wasn as big a deal when you and I were growing up as the sources are making it sound like it was So where did we change Where did we get to where in 2016? Yeah, how does it sort of shift back the other direction? And it's sometimes difficult to trace history when it's this close to our time. But I think there are a few benchmarks we could probably note there. Yeah, yeah. I maybe cite as a tempering influence maybe the work called the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Many of our listeners will remember that. Maybe some of you have it on your bookshelves or you've seen it in libraries. But the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, published in 1992, is released as a four-volume reference work by Macmillan Publishing, not published by the church. But the project was produced under the direction of BYU with the cooperation, but not official endorsement or authorship of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The purpose of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism was to present scholarly, accessible explanations of LDS history and doctrine and culture and practice to a more broad audience. And here's what the article on evolution says. This might be interesting. It's relatively short, but it does emphasize in 1992 a neutral position of the church. Listen to this. The position of the church on the origin of man was published by the first presidency in 1909 and stated again by a different first presidency in 1925. Quote, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, basing its belief on divine revelation, ancient and modern, declares man to be the direct and lineal offspring of deity. Man is the child of God, formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes. And then they continue. The scriptures tell why man was created, but they do not tell how, though the Lord has promised that he will tell that detail when he comes again. And then they cite D&C 101, verse 32 and 33, where the Lord says, when I come again, I'm going to tell you lots of stuff, especially about stuff under the earth and things that have caused lots of questions. Okay, continuing the entry, quote, in 1931, when there was intense discussion on the issue of organic evolution, the first presidency of the church, then consisting of Presidents Heber J. Grant, Anthony W. Ivins, and Charles W. Nibley addressed all of the general authorities of the church on the matter and concluded that upon the fundamental doctrines of the church, they're now quoting the first presidency, we are all agreed. Our mission is to bear the message of the restored gospel to the world. Leave geology, biology, archaeology, and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research, while we magnify our calling in the realm of the church. Upon one thing, we should all be able to agree, continuing the quote from Hebert J. Grant presidency, that presidents Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, and Anton H. Lund were right when they said, Adam is the primal parent of our race, close quote. Now that article was written by a man named William E. Evanson, who was associate dean and professor of physics at UVSC, now it's called UVU in Orem, and he'd been a professor emeritus also of BYU. He was a fellow of the American Physics Society. He earned a PhD in theoretical physics at Iowa State University and a bachelor's of physics at BYU. And so it's a pretty good scholar who's synthesizing the core of official teachings on this topic. And in 1992, no affirmation of Joseph Fielding Smith's ideas or Bruce R. McConkie's teachings on that, or anyone else who had really favored a strong anti-evolutionary stance. He just kind of cuts right down the middle there. Yeah, and it's interesting that it seems like what influenced him the most was the 1931 statement, though he does quote, he mentions 1909 and 1925. Interestingly, it was that same year that the Encyclopedia of Mormonism was published, 1992, that BYU began sharing a short packet for students. And I've seen this packet. I mean, you can still go pick one up in the Teacher Resource Center. Yeah, the famous packet. It includes excerpts from the 1909 First Presidency Statement on the Origin of Man, 1925 Mormon View of Evolution, and the 1931 Statement that we read made by the First Presidency. and this was done with the approval of the BYU Board of Trustees, which includes the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and the leaders of the general board. So like the General Relief Society president, General Young Women's president, so on and so forth. Again, you can go and I could walk down the hall right now and pick one up if I wanted to. So that seems to be a swing back towards these earlier, more neutral statements. And the general leaders of the church since about the 1990s have been more neutral on it. For instance, in 1997, Gordon B. Hinckley gave a talk at the Institute of Religion in Ogden, Utah, and he addressed questions when he was asked about evolution. He said this, quote, People ask me every now and again if I believe in evolution. I tell them I am not concerned with organic evolution. I do not worry about it. I passed through the argument long ago. Nice dodge. Nice dodge. Yeah. Nice job. He was good with the press, President Higley. And in that setting, he contrasted the idea of organic evolution with the idea of personal growth and improvement. And again, that idea that we're not anti-evolution because we believe we're evolving into higher beings, right? And then in another instance in the late 1990s, President Hinckley reflected on his own university studies in anthropology and geology when he was speaking with a reporter, Larry Wortham. And he said, I studied all about it. It didn't worry me then. It doesn't worry me now. And he emphasized that the church's doctrinal requirement is limited, insisting only on belief that Adam was the first man of what we would call the human race. That's his wording, what we would call the human race. And the same general attitude appeared in 2004 when an official church magazine reprinted a quotation from a 1983 Gordon B. Hinckley speech in which he expressed a similar perspective on evolution. And this is where I get to insert myself a little bit and say, who was President Hinckley's mentor? Or his mission president was a guy named Joseph F. Merrill, who was one of those three scientists. So that might be his connection, too, is President Hinckley was a very bright and gifted college student. He decided to go on a mission. He went a little bit later than most people his age. And he served in one area in Preston and then was brought into the mission office and was AP for almost his entire mission. And his president the entire time was Joseph F. Merrill. Joseph F. Merrill was one of those three scientists that we've been talking about that worked among the Quorum of the Twelve. And that probably played a role in President Hinckley's views and his spiritual development and his view about this stuff. He kind of comes from that 1930s era when the church was saying, we're neutral when it comes to evolution. Interesting. Love President Hinckley. Yeah. And before President Nelson became president of the church, we do have a couple statements from him where he shared his views on evolution publicly. In a 2007 interview with the Pew Research Center, he said to them, quote, to think that man evolved from one species to another is to me incomprehensible. Man has always been man. Dogs have always been dogs. Monkeys have always been monkeys. it's just the way genetics works. He had expressed a similar view years earlier as well in a 1987 article published in a church magazine. Elder Nelson stated then that he found the theory of evolution unbelievable. But as president of the church, he never stated anything about evolution, though he has frequently expressed his belief in the divine hand of God in creation, for sure. So it seems like he personally doesn't believe in evolution, but institutionally he hasn't condemned it either. He hasn't issued a new origin of man statement or anything like that. Yeah, right. That would contradict the 1909 statement or something like that. Yeah, no, he stated his belief there and there you go. And that we promised we would come right up to the present. So we've got to talk about Dallin H. Oaks. And I went back and reviewed this. Dallin H. Oaks hasn't been known for issuing direct statements specifically about the theory of evolution in the way some other church leaders did. Instead, his comments and writings emphasize a broader approach to science and religion that avoids treating scientific theories as doctrinal questions. He's taught that when believers encounter tension between scientific findings and religious beliefs, they should seek understanding through both reason and revelation without, his words, compartmentalizing science and religion into separate unrelated spheres. His view basically is that people of faith should not separate scientific inquiry from spiritual insight, but should use both to enrich their understanding of truth. So kind of those dual epistemologies we've talked about with a little… a little more overlap between the two. And he's also affirmed repeatedly in talks and writings through decades of leadership that the church's teachings focus on salvation, divine purpose, and revelation rather than on settling scientific questions, like how life developed. And this seems to line up with that institutional neutrality, the longstanding church position that science is legitimate in its own field, and scientific theories are not official doctrine for members to believe as true or false as matters of faith. Again, this just seems to be from his general statements on science and religion. So, rather than opposing scientific inquiry, President Oaks seems to have this more balanced perspective where science and religion can both contribute to helping us find the truth, and when conflicts arise, believers should just be patient, seek deeper understanding, rather than treating doctrinal faith and scientific hypotheses as things that are in competition. So, just to summarize, he's never really said anything publicly about evolution, but kind of has talked about his methodology, his stance that we can be thoughtfully engaged with both science and scripture under the conviction that truth ultimately will harmonize itself when approached with both reason and revelation. So, Casey, it's taken a century of lively and sometimes passionate discussion on this subject, but it seems like, here we are, 2026, it seems like we've kind of landed back where we were in the early 20th century with the church expressing neutrality on the scientific aspects of evolution, but also clearly stating that on the theological aspects of the question, we are very firm that All human beings are the creations of God, the children of God, et cetera, right? Yeah, and that's pretty close to the positions taken in the earliest statements on evolution made by the first presidency. But now we've got to ask the bigger question. Okay, doctrinally, we know where the church stands, but what about Latter-day Saints in general? How do they see evolution with regards to the scriptures? So, this is a little bit dicier, but we took a stab at it and found some research. Over the years, a number of different researchers have tried to figure out what Latter-day Saints actually believe about evolution. I'm talking like the general population of Latter-day Saints. And the answers have shifted quite a bit depending on the time period. And also, we've got to take into account what group are we talking to. So, for instance, one survey back in 1973, this was a survey of more than 1,000 students at Brigham Young University, found that 81% rejected the idea that creation involved evolution at all. And that fits really well with what we know about Latter-day Saint culture in the mid-20th century when skepticism towards evolution was especially common. So, that's kind of the peak of the fundamentalist tendencies within the church. But if we flash forward to more recent times, say the 2010s, so the last full decade, things are more mixed. For instance, in 2014, the U.S. Religious Landscape Study conducted by the Pew Research Center had about 52% of Latter-day Saints saying humans have always existed in their present form, while about 42% said that humans evolved over time. And then when they went a little bit deeper, they found that about 29% believed evolution was guided by a supreme being, while 11% thought evolution occurred through purely natural processes, which is sort of surprising. In other words, belief in evolution among Latter-day Saints really doesn't fall neatly into pro- or anti-evolution camps. Now, the next data set that we looked at came from the Next Mormon survey in 2017 led by a political scientist named Benjamin Knoll. And that study found that 74% of respondents were confident or had faith that God created Adam and Eve within the last 10,000 years and that they did not evolve from other life forms. That's kind of an interesting finding. I'd like to know what population he was surveying into. When asked about whether evolution was the best explanation for how God created life on earth, 33% said they were confident or had faith that it was not. So, when they're saying, well, was evolution involved at not at all, only 33% were willing to say that. And then his analysis suggested that about 37% of Latter-day Saints completely reject God-guided evolution, while another 37% accept evolution for life in general but believe that Adam and Eve were a special direct creation. And the remaining 26% were split across other views. And one surprising finding was that education level didn't really seem to affect beliefs about evolution among Latter-day Saints. Because that's an assumption that we also bring to it is that if you're more educated, you're more likely to believe in evolution. If you're less educated, you aren't. But they were saying it didn't really seem like it was that big a deal, the level of education when it came to their views. Yeah, but that result didn't hold up everywhere though, right? Like a 2018 study that was published in the Journal of Contemporary Religion found that education does matter, but only when political ideology is taken into account. This is interesting. Okay, boy, here we go. So among modern and liberal Latter-day Saints, acceptance of evolution increased sharply with higher education. For example, only 9% of very liberal Latter-day Saints with an eighth grade education or less accepted evolution compared to 82% of very liberal Latter-day Saints with postgraduate degrees. Among very conservative Latter-day Saints, the pattern flipped. Acceptance of evolution actually declines as education increases. The author suggested that political conservatism, rather than education alone, plays a major role in the shaping of LDS views on evolution. That's fascinating. Finally, let me give you one more. In 2018, there was a study in the Public Library of Science that focused specifically on Latter-day Saint undergraduates and found evidence of a real shift in attitude, actually. Compared to earlier generations, LDS students were less antagonistic and more accepting of evolution, including greater acceptance of fossil evidence, geological records, and the idea of an old earth. The researchers link this change to earlier exposure to evolution in school and to the decline in strongly anti-evolution statements and rhetoric from top church leadership in recent decades. It seems like these studies are suggestive that Latter-day Saint views on evolution are anything but static. Is that fair? that while skepticism remains pretty common among many, especially among conservatives, younger generations and politically moderate or liberal members are showing an increasing, growing openness. And so it kind of seems like it's shaped as much by culture and politics as it is by theology, Casey. So interesting. And I'm sorry to keep injecting myself into this, because I don't know if I'm typical or not. This is your time. You are a historical artifact, Casey. We need to hear from you. I guess. I grew up in like a small town in central Utah. And I don't remember anybody ever, ever insinuating that the earth was really young or that creation took place in six days. I just don't remember anybody ever arguing for that. It seems like the biggest argument against evolution that I heard was death before the fall, that there was no death before the fall of Adam and Eve. But in creating this series, you should know, listeners, we were really nervous about offending people, and we want to make it clear that if you don't believe in evolution, you are welcome. It might depend on how you define evolution. Like, if you defined evolution as we came to be with no intervention from God, I don't believe in that. I believe God was involved in the process. If you do believe in evolution, you're welcome to. Part of the reason why we tackled this so much was first, we had all this great research from Ben Spackman. But second, for some people that come to college, when they learn biology and learn about evolution, it does become a major stumbling block for them. They lose their faith sometimes. And I feel it's partially because they've been presented with this either or, like either this is true or this is true. When there's so many unanswered questions when it comes to the origin of our bodies, that it's okay to keep an open mind. And I think a person can study evolution and even be in favor of evolution and be a fully involved, engaged, and active Latter-day Saint. We have many of that type of Latter-day Saint in the church and in our church schools. We interviewed one of them, Dr. Jamie Jensen, on our podcast in this very series a couple episodes ago. If you missed that one, go watch that. She firmly believes in evolution and firmly believes in the doctrines of the gospel as taught in the scriptures, and she holds those together as twin truths and does not see any conflict whatsoever. And so she is just emblematic of many Latter-day Saints who find no contradiction whatsoever in holding those together. Okay. Okay. So all are welcome is basically what we're saying. And you mentioned Ben Spackman in case we just got to give one more plug for Ben. His dissertation has done a great job pulling this history together. And we have quoted extensively from it. We've pulled from it extensively. And so rather than just walking through his material, we thought we'd do you one better in our next episode. We're actually going to bring the man onto the show. So next week, look forward to having Ben Spackman here. We're going to ask him our hardest questions. We'll hear from him and his good research that he's done recently in pulling all these threads together. So that'll be exciting, Casey. Yeah, yeah. You can ask him yourself. And like I said, this is his research tracing the story of how this has happened in the church. But Ben's also done a lot of study, and he's a thoughtful person when it comes to the Bible. He's a faithful, active Latter-day Saint. So we hope that you'll come with your questions in mind as well. In our next episode, when we get the chance to talk with Ben Spackman about this background of science and religion within the church. So, Scott, this has been fun, and we got to talk about ourselves, which you and I always love to do. Wow. Wow. Yeah, we saw ourselves in this history today. It's awkward. It's awkward to be part of the story, but I just couldn't resist that angle saying, what did I hear when I grew up in the church? Because we made it up to the present day. And I think what's so good about that is I think all of our listeners can have that thought, probably did have that thought while we were talking about our own experience. Like, what was your experience? And I'm sure there's a wide spectrum of experience, and we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments on YouTube here. But yeah, we are historical artifacts, Casey. We've arrived officially. We're part of the history of the church now. So that's cool. We belong in a museum, Scott. That's the way I'd say it. Wow. Hey, brother, thank you. Appreciate it. That was fun. So we'll see you next week along with Ben Spackman. Okay. We'll see you then. Thank you.