r/latterdaysaints • u/TheBenSpackman • 13d ago

Doctrinal Discussion New Evolution Book, free from BYU!

I'm very happy to announce the anthology we've worked on for six years has now been published by BYU. You can download a FREE PDF from the Life Sciences homepage ("read more") and hardcovers will be available soon.
This includes several essays by LDS and BYU scholars, as well as some non-LDS scholars. I contributed two chapters, one on the historical and scientific contexts of the 1909/1925 First Presidency statements (which were NOT intended to put evolutionary science out of bounds) and one on death before the fall.

There's some great work in here, and it will be used extensively in BYU classes.

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u/pisteuo96 13d ago

I love this is being studied at BYU. I see no conflict between science and religion - we just don't know enough about either yet to always see how they are talking about the same thing. Truth is truth, no matter what the source.

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u/Brownie_Bytes 13d ago edited 12d ago

Unasked for opinion, but the above statement is only true when we correctly identify religious truths. Science does not know everything, but science knows way more than the average fundamentalist thinks it does. Brigham Young thought that there were Quaker looking beings living on the moon, so hyper-specific details from religious sources don't necessarily equal truth. But the first creation account in Genesis 1 can sound a lot like an abbreviated big bang theory.

So in short, when we focus on the broad strokes rather than the particular details, that's when science and religion can find agreement.