From a blog post of October 2, 2013. USU used to have a "Common Hour" where no classes were scheduled and events or speakers were hosted on campus. During the weeks when there were no events or speakers, the LDS institute decided to do its own and call it "Uncommon Hour". I brought a friend to see the first one and was mortified. I wrote this review, which got a few Facebook likes and the praise of an LDS biologist friend who said "Bravo, Christopher. Thanks for speaking up." I went so far as to post it on the institute's Facebook page, where I guess one of the students running it probably thought "Oh crap" and notified the speaker himself. He called it "thoughtful" and invited me to come to his office and discuss the issues. I really should have taken him up on that, but I didn't because of my anxiety and because I didn't know that there was much to discuss (the facts of science and the Church's doctrine are non-negotiable) so I was afraid he'd just pull rank on me. In hindsight, he was a nice man and hopefully wouldn't have done that, but a student did that for him, suggesting that "you might think long and hard about removing this review" because "I thought you were way off base with some of your conclusions drawn" and "[he] teaches a class on what is and can be considered doctrine." Good for him, but he was still wrong.
I also called church headquarters in Salt Lake and spoke with the global director of seminaries and institutes, because this wasn't the first time such things had been taught and even though the local institute director agreed with me whenever I complained to him it still kept happening and this was the last straw. The man I spoke with was very kind and generous with his time, listened carefully and took notes, and praised me for being deferential and respectful about the whole thing. The institute did a few more "Uncommon Hours" that were better than this one, but none after that semester. I hope that wasn't because of me.
I also called church headquarters in Salt Lake and spoke with the global director of seminaries and institutes, because this wasn't the first time such things had been taught and even though the local institute director agreed with me whenever I complained to him it still kept happening and this was the last straw. The man I spoke with was very kind and generous with his time, listened carefully and took notes, and praised me for being deferential and respectful about the whole thing. The institute did a few more "Uncommon Hours" that were better than this one, but none after that semester. I hope that wasn't because of me.
Review of the LDS Institute's "Uncommon Hour"
By C. Randall Nicholson
So I know I said I was going to write next about the dating class and the Latin dance, and that you've all been waiting with baited breath to read that, but it's going to have to wait. Something else has come up.
Today at the institute someone came to speak about "The Origin of Our Species: Science and the Restoration". The poster advertising this event said that he "loves Science and the Scriptures and is intrigued by their interplay". Naturally, I imagined we would be hearing from one of those unsung heroes, those seemingly rare types who take seriously the admonition to "seek learning by study and also by faith" and accept the discoveries of biology in addition to their religious convictions - people like LDS scientists Steven E. Jones, Steven Peck, and Henry Eyring. (The fact that two of them are named Steve is just a coincidence, as these are the people who come to my mind right now, but it does also bring to mind the oddly appropriate "Project Steve".)
I say "seemingly rare" because it seems much more common for Mormons, and other Christians as well, to pay lip service to science and then make hypocrites of themselves. They go on about how there's no conflict between science and religion, and how they respect secular learning, and then they beat science over the head with religion. "Well, you see, most science is great stuff. But this universally accepted and valid theory appears to contradict my preconceived dogma, so it's garbage." This, unfortunately, turned out to be one of these latter cases. I was somewhat uncomfortable through the whole thing because I couldn't figure out where he was going with it, and the discomfort reached a climax at the end when... well, I'll get to that.
It started out well. In his slideshow presentation he showed us that demotivational poster that says, "Creationism: Because desert goat herders living in tents 3000 years ago knew more about the cosmos and biology than modern day scientists." It drew some nervous, tentative laughter from the crowd, and he urged us to laugh harder because "it's funny!" It is - funny because its sarcastic point is true. But I quickly realized he hadn't shown that poster because he agreed with it. He went on to say that some of these "goat herders" had been chosen as prophets and given a glimpse of all kinds of stuff, and that they did know more than modern day scientists.
Something I've wrestled with, along with many other Mormons, is the interplay between being prophets and being human. I don't doubt that God has shown His prophets many things that no one else knows about, things that are too sacred to share at this point in history. I know that was the case with scriptural prophets and with Joseph Smith and probably, though in my opinion to a much lesser extent, with his successors. But that doesn't mean they're experts in every field of human knowledge or that they're more advanced in secular fields than their contemporaries. The obvious example - probably because I've studied everything I could find about it - is racism. Critics of the Church show us statements by General Authorities in the nineteenth or early twentieth century which are very demeaning to black people, and rhetorically ask how true prophets could be so racist. We roll our eyes and retort that obviously they were imperfect mortal men, and products of their time and culture, and couldn't possibly be expected to recognize that their attitudes were wrong. So how can we then turn around and claim with a straight face that they knew more about science three thousand years ago than scientists do today?
And indeed, if God has shown them so much about science, why aren't they the ones leading the advancement of medicine and technology that makes so much of our humanitarian aid and worldwide expansion even possible? From a doctrinal standpoint we accept these things as stemming from the Restoration and being a part of God's plan, but no one has ever seriously suggested that the Church itself is making these things happen. (Although Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television, was a Mormon and probably wouldn't have been inspired by staring at rows of potatoes in Idaho if he hadn't been.) The role of the General Authorities is theological, not scientific. I think the conflation of the two by both sides of the debate is where a lot of our problems come from. But if we accept that Genesis is in any way a literal account with more credibility than the scientifically accepted one, then I think we should also accept that bats are birds (Leviticus 11:19) and the sun revolves around the earth (Joshua 10:12-13), to name just a couple examples.
Then he quoted a few paragraphs from the First Presidency statement "The Origin of Man". It was issued in 1909, in the midst of controversy and turmoil surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of Charles Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species" (which, by the way, I am reading for the first time in one of my classes. Most of what it says so far is a no-brainer by today's standards.) It reaffirmed the Church's doctrine that human beings are spirit children of God who were raised in a premortal existence, with the obvious corollary that they are distinct from other animal species - but it never says that evolution is false. In my creationist days I eagerly searched it for such a sentence or paragraph to show my evolution-believing Sunday School teacher, and came away disappointed. The closest thing it had (which was among the parts quoted today) was this: "It is held by some that Adam was not the first man upon this earth and that the original human being was a development from lower orders of the animal creation. These, however, are the theories of men... Man began life as a human being, in the likeness of our Heavenly Father."
This part does seem anti-evolution in tone, but it's just plain confusing because it compares apples to oranges - as far as I know, the last time any scientist proposed that individual humans began life as anything other than human beings was in the mid-1800s. (I'm not being sarcastic - the "law of parallelism" or "recapitulation theory" held that human embryos started as invertebrates before becoming fish, reptiles, mammals, and finally humans.) That's probably why, when a significantly more concise version of the statement was issued by a different First Presidency during the Scopes Trial in 1925, that sentence was removed. But I don't blame the speaker for not mentioning that - the earlier version is the one that found its way into the February 2002 Ensign and the Joseph F. Smith Gospel Doctrine manual. Of course it isn't "wrong" per se, but the ambiguous wording perpetuates unnecessary confusion.
The speaker then went on to criticize the textbook treatments of the "primordial soup", pointing out the shortcomings of experimental results thus far. Here I have no disagreement. I don't claim to know enough about that stuff to know for myself what the odds of life arising actually are, and I suspect he doesn't either, so I won't take one side or the other. And I know that textbooks can be very biased - my ecology textbook, in talking about long-term climate change, described a hypothetic future scenario in which governments had eliminated fiscal inequality. (Say what? Couldn't you at least try to be subtle with your liberal brainwashing? I'm insulted.) So again, no disagreement here, though I would issue a word of caution - boasting that "science hasn't been able to accomplish x" has the potential to make you look silly years or decades later if it ever does. How many of today's scientific advances would have even been fathomable a hundred years ago?
I'd need a copy of the presentation to remember everything he said or the specific people he quoted from, so I'll just give a general overview for the most part. Most of what I have to say will be critical because I don't have much to add to the parts I liked/agreed with, but this should not be interpreted as distaste for the speaker himself even if a trace of sarcasm or other rudeness creeps into my writing.
To continue: he quoted several scientists talking about the aforementioned experimental shortcomings and the unlikelihood of certain processes occurring. Still no disagreement. He might have been committing a fallacious appeal to authority, but I don't know and don't particularly care. He also showed the statistical bias of the National Academy of Sciences toward atheistic membership, and provided some quotes adamantly rejecting even the consideration of a Divine Being's role in this stuff. Still no disagreement. There are scientists like that, who, "when they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves". Science, by its very nature, can say nothing about the existence of nonexistence of a deity, because that can't be empirically tested. The most it can suggest is that natural processes in and of themselves are sufficient and that a deity is unnecessary - and I'm not qualified to form my own opinion on that - but if and when scientists go further and assert God's nonexistence as a certainty, they go beyond the bounds of their own discipline and make science into a religion.
But it goes both ways. The speaker seemed to ridicule them a bit for not accepting God as a source of knowledge. While that may be a valid critique for their personal life philosophies, explicitly incorporating God into their theories and papers would be equally unscientific. Science and religion occupy two different spheres, and though there is some overlap and they coexist nicely in many people's brains, there is a time and a place for each one. So if gaps remain in current scientific explanations, gaps where God fits in, science isn't going to put Him there because that isn't its role. That conclusion is left to the individual to draw for himself - it's called faith.
Many of the scientists quoted would mention that they still believed the "no-God primordial soup" thing even as they criticized its shortcomings. The speaker found that somewhat amusing, but doesn't that go both ways too? What about the Christians (and I say "Christians" because Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews don't seem to have this problem) who, as soon as Darwin published his book, attacked him for undermining faith and morality and what have you? Despite the clear logic and constantly increasing evidence for his theory, for generations and still to this day they rejected it and kept to their traditional beliefs despite their obvious shortcomings. Yes, it is true that evolution is often used to promote materialism (as touched on a couple paragraphs ago), and that, in the words of Richard Dawkins, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." But these conclusions are not unassailable. The smart thing to do would have been to accept the science, or at least the possibility of its being correct, and postulate other implications that are compatible with Christianity.
Not a new concept anymore, obviously. More and more Christians are doing it now.
A few other nitpicks I had about the presentation:
The logical fallacy of personal incredulity. The speaker gently mocked the idea that similarities among the Great Apes indicated common ancestry, that the Australopithecus "Lucy" was a close relative of modern humans, or that the shape of a skeleton can be determined from a couple bones. Each time he drew laughter from the audience. In other words, because he didn't understand how scientists reached these conclusions, he dismissed them as silly.
Irreducible complexity, which is just another version of personal incredulity. It's the (false) idea that certain organs and processes are too complex to have evolved through natural selection, because they only work if every single one of their parts is fully functional. In fairness, the speaker only hinted at this when he mentioned how incredibly complex living cells are, and I can't be sure that's what he was actually getting at. But from the rest of his presentation I'd say it's a safe bet.
"Missing links" - the tired old idea that evolution can't account for the "jumps" between species in the fossil record. This, by the way, provides an example of what I said earlier, that claiming "science hasn't been able to accomplish x" can leave you with your foot in your mouth. I've read old creationist books that demanded to know why scientists haven't found dinosaurs with feathers or fish with fingers. Well, guess what? By the way - and I apologize that I have neither the memory nor the scientific literacy to explain this very well at all, but you can read about it in Finding Darwin's God - scientists have figured out that modern animals are actually evolving a few hundred times faster than the rate required to explain the jumps in the fossil record.
He said that none of the extinct humanoid species (e.g. Neanderthals and Homo habilis) are actually human ancestors, but that all of them are related linearly. I knew that about Neanderthals but not the others. Still, while he showed a chart from the Internet and cited a recent book written by two scientists, and therefore wasn't just making it up, I'm not sure if it represents the scientific consensus because it appears that Wikipedia,Berkeley, and the Smithsonian beg to differ. In any case, if one wants to believe that the current human form was made by God from scratch, they're faced with the question of why it has so many blatant design flaws (which I've already written a bit about here).
All in all, despite my misgivings, I still wasn't sure where the speaker was going with this. So far I hadn't seen any "interplay" between science and the scriptures - just a bunch of reasons why science was wrong and/or silly. He did mention that science doesn't pose as many problems for Mormonism as the rest of Christianity, and to demonstrate he shared a quote from Brigham Young and mentioned that, say, snakes weren't just created from modeling clay like in the Gary Larson cartoon. But what, then? Did they evolve? He didn't pursue that angle and I was left wondering what he meant.
And then came the real kicker, the climax of my discomfort.
"So," he asked as his time was winding up, "do we Mormons believe in evolution?"
There was a lot of uncomfortable murmuring - I don't think anyone else knew what answer he was looking for, either. I could only speak for myself. "I do," I said, but not very loudly.
"Let's see what a prophet has to say about it," he continued.
For the first time in several minutes I relaxed. For the first time I could see where he was going with this. Since it's a matter of public record that the Church has no official position on evolution, that was obviously what he was going to say. Right? Right?
Wrong. I couldn't believe what he did next.
He gave a quote from a compilation of the writings and sermons of George Q. Cannon. The compilation was made in 1974, but the quote couldn't have been made after 1901. And with this, the speaker gave false doctrine to a couple hundred impressionable young men and women. (Actually, the quote itself, though I haven't been able to find it since, didn't outright say that evolution is false. Still, that seemed to be the implication after the speaker's criticisms of it.)
Let's review, shall we? From the Mormon Newsroom's "Approaching Mormon Doctrine" (which was paraphrased in General Conference by Elder D. Todd Christofferson just last year): "Not every statement made by a Church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine. A single statement made by a single leader on a single occasion often represents a personal, though well-considered, opinion, but is not meant to be officially binding for the whole Church. With divine inspiration, the First Presidency (the prophet and his two counselors) and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (the second-highest governing body of the Church) counsel together to establish doctrine that is consistently proclaimed in official Church publications." On top of this, I think it's commonly understood that any unofficial LDS publication - whether written by a Sunday School teacher or an Apostle - is the sole responsibility of the author and can't be assumed to represent the Church's views in every particular.
Furthermore, since it has been taught that "The living prophet is more important than a dead prophet", these quotes would seem to take precedence over that one (though I should stress that they, too, are opinions):
"I would like to know just what it is that a man must be required to believe to be a member of this Church. Or, what it is that he is not permitted to believe, and remain a member of this Church. I would like to know just what that is. Is it evolution? I hope not, because I believe in evolution." - President David O. McKay, 1954 [This replaces the 1946 quote I originally used from then-Elder McKay, albeit correctly noted as such.]
"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 that argument long ago." - President Gordon B. Hinckley, 1997
Later today, in the LDSSA meeting, someone asked for feedback on the presentation and my heart started pounding. I'd already planned on contacting the Institute Director with my concern, but here was an unexpected chance to get to the people with influence. Trembling slightly, terrified, I politely and succinctly pointed out that the presentation's conclusion had been contrary to church doctrine and was therefore misleading. She nodded and said "okay". Everyone else's feedback was about the logistics of setting it up and the unexpected size of the crowd. Not a word was said about my feedback and I wondered if there'd been any point in speaking at all. Obviously no one else cared that a couple hundred members of the Church's rising generation were being taught false anti-science doctrine and not bothering to question it. Well, why should they care? It's not like that kind of thing has contributed to driving thousands of educated people out of Christianity - oh wait.
Still, as the adrenaline subsided and my face burned red, as I wondered whether I had just lost the respect of the faculty and fellow students in the room who knew me, I felt something else burning too - my chest. I felt that God was pleased with me for having the courage to do the right thing, challenge an apathetic and anti-intellectual culture, and assert the Church's true doctrinal position, i.e. none. And whether it has any long-term impact or not - though I certainly hope it will - that pleasure was enough.
Sometimes, like today, the strain of anti-evolutionism running through Mormon culture seems like a multi-headed beast that refuses to die. But I take greater confidence from hanging out in LDS Facebook groups and seeing that both the older and rising generations accept evolution to some extent or another and haven't even considered that this would be in conflict with their religious convictions. Very few people have been willing to defend the traditional creationist position, and most of them - I say this as a true observation, not an insult - were mentally ill. It gives me hope for the future of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Maybe someday, when a majority of Mormons say to "seek learning by study and also by faith", they'll actually mean it.
Today at the institute someone came to speak about "The Origin of Our Species: Science and the Restoration". The poster advertising this event said that he "loves Science and the Scriptures and is intrigued by their interplay". Naturally, I imagined we would be hearing from one of those unsung heroes, those seemingly rare types who take seriously the admonition to "seek learning by study and also by faith" and accept the discoveries of biology in addition to their religious convictions - people like LDS scientists Steven E. Jones, Steven Peck, and Henry Eyring. (The fact that two of them are named Steve is just a coincidence, as these are the people who come to my mind right now, but it does also bring to mind the oddly appropriate "Project Steve".)
I say "seemingly rare" because it seems much more common for Mormons, and other Christians as well, to pay lip service to science and then make hypocrites of themselves. They go on about how there's no conflict between science and religion, and how they respect secular learning, and then they beat science over the head with religion. "Well, you see, most science is great stuff. But this universally accepted and valid theory appears to contradict my preconceived dogma, so it's garbage." This, unfortunately, turned out to be one of these latter cases. I was somewhat uncomfortable through the whole thing because I couldn't figure out where he was going with it, and the discomfort reached a climax at the end when... well, I'll get to that.
It started out well. In his slideshow presentation he showed us that demotivational poster that says, "Creationism: Because desert goat herders living in tents 3000 years ago knew more about the cosmos and biology than modern day scientists." It drew some nervous, tentative laughter from the crowd, and he urged us to laugh harder because "it's funny!" It is - funny because its sarcastic point is true. But I quickly realized he hadn't shown that poster because he agreed with it. He went on to say that some of these "goat herders" had been chosen as prophets and given a glimpse of all kinds of stuff, and that they did know more than modern day scientists.
Something I've wrestled with, along with many other Mormons, is the interplay between being prophets and being human. I don't doubt that God has shown His prophets many things that no one else knows about, things that are too sacred to share at this point in history. I know that was the case with scriptural prophets and with Joseph Smith and probably, though in my opinion to a much lesser extent, with his successors. But that doesn't mean they're experts in every field of human knowledge or that they're more advanced in secular fields than their contemporaries. The obvious example - probably because I've studied everything I could find about it - is racism. Critics of the Church show us statements by General Authorities in the nineteenth or early twentieth century which are very demeaning to black people, and rhetorically ask how true prophets could be so racist. We roll our eyes and retort that obviously they were imperfect mortal men, and products of their time and culture, and couldn't possibly be expected to recognize that their attitudes were wrong. So how can we then turn around and claim with a straight face that they knew more about science three thousand years ago than scientists do today?
And indeed, if God has shown them so much about science, why aren't they the ones leading the advancement of medicine and technology that makes so much of our humanitarian aid and worldwide expansion even possible? From a doctrinal standpoint we accept these things as stemming from the Restoration and being a part of God's plan, but no one has ever seriously suggested that the Church itself is making these things happen. (Although Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television, was a Mormon and probably wouldn't have been inspired by staring at rows of potatoes in Idaho if he hadn't been.) The role of the General Authorities is theological, not scientific. I think the conflation of the two by both sides of the debate is where a lot of our problems come from. But if we accept that Genesis is in any way a literal account with more credibility than the scientifically accepted one, then I think we should also accept that bats are birds (Leviticus 11:19) and the sun revolves around the earth (Joshua 10:12-13), to name just a couple examples.
Then he quoted a few paragraphs from the First Presidency statement "The Origin of Man". It was issued in 1909, in the midst of controversy and turmoil surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of Charles Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species" (which, by the way, I am reading for the first time in one of my classes. Most of what it says so far is a no-brainer by today's standards.) It reaffirmed the Church's doctrine that human beings are spirit children of God who were raised in a premortal existence, with the obvious corollary that they are distinct from other animal species - but it never says that evolution is false. In my creationist days I eagerly searched it for such a sentence or paragraph to show my evolution-believing Sunday School teacher, and came away disappointed. The closest thing it had (which was among the parts quoted today) was this: "It is held by some that Adam was not the first man upon this earth and that the original human being was a development from lower orders of the animal creation. These, however, are the theories of men... Man began life as a human being, in the likeness of our Heavenly Father."
This part does seem anti-evolution in tone, but it's just plain confusing because it compares apples to oranges - as far as I know, the last time any scientist proposed that individual humans began life as anything other than human beings was in the mid-1800s. (I'm not being sarcastic - the "law of parallelism" or "recapitulation theory" held that human embryos started as invertebrates before becoming fish, reptiles, mammals, and finally humans.) That's probably why, when a significantly more concise version of the statement was issued by a different First Presidency during the Scopes Trial in 1925, that sentence was removed. But I don't blame the speaker for not mentioning that - the earlier version is the one that found its way into the February 2002 Ensign and the Joseph F. Smith Gospel Doctrine manual. Of course it isn't "wrong" per se, but the ambiguous wording perpetuates unnecessary confusion.
The speaker then went on to criticize the textbook treatments of the "primordial soup", pointing out the shortcomings of experimental results thus far. Here I have no disagreement. I don't claim to know enough about that stuff to know for myself what the odds of life arising actually are, and I suspect he doesn't either, so I won't take one side or the other. And I know that textbooks can be very biased - my ecology textbook, in talking about long-term climate change, described a hypothetic future scenario in which governments had eliminated fiscal inequality. (Say what? Couldn't you at least try to be subtle with your liberal brainwashing? I'm insulted.) So again, no disagreement here, though I would issue a word of caution - boasting that "science hasn't been able to accomplish x" has the potential to make you look silly years or decades later if it ever does. How many of today's scientific advances would have even been fathomable a hundred years ago?
I'd need a copy of the presentation to remember everything he said or the specific people he quoted from, so I'll just give a general overview for the most part. Most of what I have to say will be critical because I don't have much to add to the parts I liked/agreed with, but this should not be interpreted as distaste for the speaker himself even if a trace of sarcasm or other rudeness creeps into my writing.
To continue: he quoted several scientists talking about the aforementioned experimental shortcomings and the unlikelihood of certain processes occurring. Still no disagreement. He might have been committing a fallacious appeal to authority, but I don't know and don't particularly care. He also showed the statistical bias of the National Academy of Sciences toward atheistic membership, and provided some quotes adamantly rejecting even the consideration of a Divine Being's role in this stuff. Still no disagreement. There are scientists like that, who, "when they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves". Science, by its very nature, can say nothing about the existence of nonexistence of a deity, because that can't be empirically tested. The most it can suggest is that natural processes in and of themselves are sufficient and that a deity is unnecessary - and I'm not qualified to form my own opinion on that - but if and when scientists go further and assert God's nonexistence as a certainty, they go beyond the bounds of their own discipline and make science into a religion.
But it goes both ways. The speaker seemed to ridicule them a bit for not accepting God as a source of knowledge. While that may be a valid critique for their personal life philosophies, explicitly incorporating God into their theories and papers would be equally unscientific. Science and religion occupy two different spheres, and though there is some overlap and they coexist nicely in many people's brains, there is a time and a place for each one. So if gaps remain in current scientific explanations, gaps where God fits in, science isn't going to put Him there because that isn't its role. That conclusion is left to the individual to draw for himself - it's called faith.
Many of the scientists quoted would mention that they still believed the "no-God primordial soup" thing even as they criticized its shortcomings. The speaker found that somewhat amusing, but doesn't that go both ways too? What about the Christians (and I say "Christians" because Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews don't seem to have this problem) who, as soon as Darwin published his book, attacked him for undermining faith and morality and what have you? Despite the clear logic and constantly increasing evidence for his theory, for generations and still to this day they rejected it and kept to their traditional beliefs despite their obvious shortcomings. Yes, it is true that evolution is often used to promote materialism (as touched on a couple paragraphs ago), and that, in the words of Richard Dawkins, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." But these conclusions are not unassailable. The smart thing to do would have been to accept the science, or at least the possibility of its being correct, and postulate other implications that are compatible with Christianity.
Not a new concept anymore, obviously. More and more Christians are doing it now.
A few other nitpicks I had about the presentation:
The logical fallacy of personal incredulity. The speaker gently mocked the idea that similarities among the Great Apes indicated common ancestry, that the Australopithecus "Lucy" was a close relative of modern humans, or that the shape of a skeleton can be determined from a couple bones. Each time he drew laughter from the audience. In other words, because he didn't understand how scientists reached these conclusions, he dismissed them as silly.
Irreducible complexity, which is just another version of personal incredulity. It's the (false) idea that certain organs and processes are too complex to have evolved through natural selection, because they only work if every single one of their parts is fully functional. In fairness, the speaker only hinted at this when he mentioned how incredibly complex living cells are, and I can't be sure that's what he was actually getting at. But from the rest of his presentation I'd say it's a safe bet.
"Missing links" - the tired old idea that evolution can't account for the "jumps" between species in the fossil record. This, by the way, provides an example of what I said earlier, that claiming "science hasn't been able to accomplish x" can leave you with your foot in your mouth. I've read old creationist books that demanded to know why scientists haven't found dinosaurs with feathers or fish with fingers. Well, guess what? By the way - and I apologize that I have neither the memory nor the scientific literacy to explain this very well at all, but you can read about it in Finding Darwin's God - scientists have figured out that modern animals are actually evolving a few hundred times faster than the rate required to explain the jumps in the fossil record.
He said that none of the extinct humanoid species (e.g. Neanderthals and Homo habilis) are actually human ancestors, but that all of them are related linearly. I knew that about Neanderthals but not the others. Still, while he showed a chart from the Internet and cited a recent book written by two scientists, and therefore wasn't just making it up, I'm not sure if it represents the scientific consensus because it appears that Wikipedia,Berkeley, and the Smithsonian beg to differ. In any case, if one wants to believe that the current human form was made by God from scratch, they're faced with the question of why it has so many blatant design flaws (which I've already written a bit about here).
All in all, despite my misgivings, I still wasn't sure where the speaker was going with this. So far I hadn't seen any "interplay" between science and the scriptures - just a bunch of reasons why science was wrong and/or silly. He did mention that science doesn't pose as many problems for Mormonism as the rest of Christianity, and to demonstrate he shared a quote from Brigham Young and mentioned that, say, snakes weren't just created from modeling clay like in the Gary Larson cartoon. But what, then? Did they evolve? He didn't pursue that angle and I was left wondering what he meant.
And then came the real kicker, the climax of my discomfort.
"So," he asked as his time was winding up, "do we Mormons believe in evolution?"
There was a lot of uncomfortable murmuring - I don't think anyone else knew what answer he was looking for, either. I could only speak for myself. "I do," I said, but not very loudly.
"Let's see what a prophet has to say about it," he continued.
For the first time in several minutes I relaxed. For the first time I could see where he was going with this. Since it's a matter of public record that the Church has no official position on evolution, that was obviously what he was going to say. Right? Right?
Wrong. I couldn't believe what he did next.
He gave a quote from a compilation of the writings and sermons of George Q. Cannon. The compilation was made in 1974, but the quote couldn't have been made after 1901. And with this, the speaker gave false doctrine to a couple hundred impressionable young men and women. (Actually, the quote itself, though I haven't been able to find it since, didn't outright say that evolution is false. Still, that seemed to be the implication after the speaker's criticisms of it.)
Let's review, shall we? From the Mormon Newsroom's "Approaching Mormon Doctrine" (which was paraphrased in General Conference by Elder D. Todd Christofferson just last year): "Not every statement made by a Church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine. A single statement made by a single leader on a single occasion often represents a personal, though well-considered, opinion, but is not meant to be officially binding for the whole Church. With divine inspiration, the First Presidency (the prophet and his two counselors) and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (the second-highest governing body of the Church) counsel together to establish doctrine that is consistently proclaimed in official Church publications." On top of this, I think it's commonly understood that any unofficial LDS publication - whether written by a Sunday School teacher or an Apostle - is the sole responsibility of the author and can't be assumed to represent the Church's views in every particular.
Furthermore, since it has been taught that "The living prophet is more important than a dead prophet", these quotes would seem to take precedence over that one (though I should stress that they, too, are opinions):
"I would like to know just what it is that a man must be required to believe to be a member of this Church. Or, what it is that he is not permitted to believe, and remain a member of this Church. I would like to know just what that is. Is it evolution? I hope not, because I believe in evolution." - President David O. McKay, 1954 [This replaces the 1946 quote I originally used from then-Elder McKay, albeit correctly noted as such.]
"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 that argument long ago." - President Gordon B. Hinckley, 1997
Later today, in the LDSSA meeting, someone asked for feedback on the presentation and my heart started pounding. I'd already planned on contacting the Institute Director with my concern, but here was an unexpected chance to get to the people with influence. Trembling slightly, terrified, I politely and succinctly pointed out that the presentation's conclusion had been contrary to church doctrine and was therefore misleading. She nodded and said "okay". Everyone else's feedback was about the logistics of setting it up and the unexpected size of the crowd. Not a word was said about my feedback and I wondered if there'd been any point in speaking at all. Obviously no one else cared that a couple hundred members of the Church's rising generation were being taught false anti-science doctrine and not bothering to question it. Well, why should they care? It's not like that kind of thing has contributed to driving thousands of educated people out of Christianity - oh wait.
Still, as the adrenaline subsided and my face burned red, as I wondered whether I had just lost the respect of the faculty and fellow students in the room who knew me, I felt something else burning too - my chest. I felt that God was pleased with me for having the courage to do the right thing, challenge an apathetic and anti-intellectual culture, and assert the Church's true doctrinal position, i.e. none. And whether it has any long-term impact or not - though I certainly hope it will - that pleasure was enough.
Sometimes, like today, the strain of anti-evolutionism running through Mormon culture seems like a multi-headed beast that refuses to die. But I take greater confidence from hanging out in LDS Facebook groups and seeing that both the older and rising generations accept evolution to some extent or another and haven't even considered that this would be in conflict with their religious convictions. Very few people have been willing to defend the traditional creationist position, and most of them - I say this as a true observation, not an insult - were mentally ill. It gives me hope for the future of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Maybe someday, when a majority of Mormons say to "seek learning by study and also by faith", they'll actually mean it.
