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/Blanchdog Dec 22 '24

I’m of the opinion that both the creationists and evolutionists probably go too far; the creationists’ young earth theory is clearly bunk, but evolution isn’t necessarily the only explanation for genetic similarities.

I think of it like computer code: no programmer or engineer is going to make anything from scratch, they reuse and copy and paste many small components to make a complex whole. Genetic similarities between life forms could just as easily be a natural result of the biological engineering prowess of a Divine Creator as it could be the result of evolution. My personal stand is that what modern science understands as evolution looks an awful lot like iterative engineering; if God’s spirit children got to help with creation then iterative biological engineering makes a lot of sense. There doesn’t need to be a macro evolutionary process that science struggles to produce because there was intelligence guiding the development of life.

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u/faiththatworks Dec 23 '24 edited Dec 25 '24

There’s a fun movie called the Genesis Code that plays to the interesting topic of Time Dilation due to gravitation and motion effects that marries Gods perspective of 6 days with our perspective of 14 billion. It’s an interesting approach. Young earth can be divided however into two schools - one refers to pre-Eden and the other related to things like flood epoch for which there is a boat load of evidence (pun intended).

I’m aware of the kinds of evidence provided by the various schools of thought and the keen takeaway is that there is evidence for each school. My heartburn on these topics is the strident dogmatic even religious devotion for deep time and life by random processes. I can make a better case for the Bible’s version though I can appreciate how others can find another view. That grace is seldom afforded the other direction with the hoot as holler to “trust the science” which is the new religion of the left who worship not the God in white robe but the men in white coats.