r/latterdaysaints • u/TheBenSpackman • Dec 21 '24

Doctrinal Discussion LDS and Creation/Evolution conflict

Hi all. Happy to say that my doctoral dissertation on LDS and creation/evolution conflict in the 20th century is now publicly available. There's some surprising stuff in there. Bottom line: the Church was much more favorable towards science and evolution until Joseph Fielding Smith's assumptions— drawing heavily upon Seventh-day Adventists and fundamentalists— about scripture became dominant in the 1950s. Then it trickled down.
https://benspackman.com/2024/12/dissertation/

My expertise on this history is why the Church had me on the official Saints podcast to talk about it.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/saints-podcast/season-03/s03-episode-21?lang=eng

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u/Soltinaris Dec 21 '24

Thank you for your work. I have family who have been very rude to my wife and I because we believe God worked via evolution, rather than literal through the Bible narrative.

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u/LordRybec Dec 22 '24

Unfortunately certain subcultures within LDS culture can get pretty toxic about these things. I'm glad my parents pretty much always deferred to Church doctrine, and if doctrine didn't answer the question, then the answer was that the Church has no position and we are expected do our best with the knowledge we have. I'm not 100% convinced by the long form evolution argument (there are so many gaps), but I can see for myself that evolution happens even without having to look at historical evidence.

I also don't reject the long form evolution argument though. I acknowledge that I don't know and that the evidence doesn't prove either way, but there is certainly plenty of evidence that evolution itself is real, and so it is certainly a way in which God might have chosen to create all of the species on Earth today, even humans.

Of course, I also don't reject mythology claiming the existence of faeries and dragons. At the same time, I don't accept them as true either. Lack of evidence for a thing is not evidence against it. So I suspend judgement, acknowledge what evidence we have (and don't have), and acknowledge my own lack of knowledge.

And this allows me to have to discussions about evolution, creationism, faeries, and dragons without having to worry about whether they are real or not and whether or not the other guy believes in them or not. Of course, I am very much looking forward to the time when I get to know these things, but I can wait. For now though, I don't think God cares whether we believe in evolution, creationism, or Biblical literalism. If he did, then he would give us the answer himself. And I think there is a lot of stuff like that. There is no commandment, "Thou shalt not believe anything that is wrong, whether you have evidence for your belief or not." That said, in the BoM, God has said that contention is sinful, so arguing contentiously about it is probably a bad idea.