Evolution and the Creation

I love dinosaurs. I always have. I found out last night that they just recently discovered a T-rex bigger than any previous, and putting T-rex once again as probably the largest land predator ever (though we still haven’t found an adult Spinosaurus).

The Lord is so awesome to create such creatures. Definitely a God I want to worship.

I have a very smart friend who recently told me a qualm he has with the theory of evolution. He said “it is based on [a] logical fallacy” Of course, what he meant to say was, ‘since we cannot be empirically 100% sure that evolution results in speciation (i.e macroevolution), it is illogical to believe unequivocally with 100% accuracy in the theory.’ He was essentially saying that in order to believe completely in evolution we’d need complete proof.

Sure, I guess according to the (non-universal) laws of logic, that’s one way of looking at it. But to me that is hardly a reason to not believe in evolution or even macroevolution. In fact, that is hardly a reason to not believe in anything. Humans don’t believe in something because we have empirical data with 100% uneqivocal proof telling us to believe in it. For example, I believe in a great many social and political ideas with much less evidence to support them than the evidence supporting evolution. I think humans believe in most things based on their merit and power of convincing (not on 100% empirical confirmation). In a previous blog I identified several ways humans know truth other than empiricism.

But recently, I have come to a startling conclusion. It came to me as inspiration that kind of knocked my socks off, so to speak. It was the kind that once you realize it, it is so profoundly obvious you can’t go back. The first part of it is something that I had known and had hit me before, but never quite in conjunction with the second part.

The first part is this: Humans tend to believe that their own ideas are what God thinks.

The second part is this: The way humans organize, identify and understand the complexities of lifeforms is not necessarily the way that God organizes, identifies and understands the complexities of the lifeforms he created.

Now let me say that all the ideas that follow are my own. I did not get them from any literature, article or another human being. I looked in the scriptures myself to find this information out. And I used my own brain to come to these conclusions. Now, let me explain these two “parts.”

Why would Heavenly Father use our definition of “species” ? Certainly the being who knows everything doesn’t follow our very limited definitions of things. This question is especially appropriate right now because the very definition of the term “species” varies depending upon who you ask. It kind of boils down to the idea that a species is defined by whatever the experts of that particular lifeform or group of lifeforms says is a species. When God uses the words “after its kind” in the Pearl of Great Price referring to different animals, whose definition of species is God referring to? Or is he even referring to “species” ? How could we know?

It is likely he isn’t even trying to explain his definition of “species” (or whatever he defines as the most distinct level of animal identification), he is merely saying that he created them all. Whatever sets of classifications humans come up with to try to identify and understand the living things of the earth, it probably doesn’t matter to God. He created it all and He understands it all.

In other words, humans don’t define “species” according to God; and it seems absurd that God would define “species” according to what humans say.

In fact, God seems to use the word “kind” referring to kinds of animals in two different ways. In Moses 2:25 it says “And I, God, made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and cattle after their kind…” This suggests that God made the beasts, each after its own kind of beast. But in the same verse it immediately goes on to say “and everything which creepeth upon the earth after his kind.” Going with the use of the word “kind” in the first half of the verse, is God saying in the second half that there is a species of baby-earth-creatures walking around? Of course not. Grammatically he is saying he made everything upon the earth after the “kind of the earth.” This is very different than saying “kind of beast.” It is saying that there are creatures on the earth that are of the “earth variety” of creature. This implies to me that there are kinds of creatures not related to this earth (but that’s a totally different discussion). The important thing is that God is clearly using the term “kind” in two different ways in the same verse.

So, why should we believe that when God is using the term “kind” he is specifically referring to what we call “species” ? He uses it in two different ways in the same verse, after all.

Additionally, we know that God numbers all of his creations and knows them each individually. He presumably has a name for each individual living thing that has ever existed, and can identify each individual one. So then, why would he even need some kind of classification system such as taxonomy which includes the concept of "species" ? To him, each spawn of its parents is an individual, idiosyncratic in some way no matter how minutely different to human perception. So if he invented evolution, why would that matter to him? In this sense he is not looking at the level of "species" in any case - he is looking at a far more refined level - that of the individual.

In the King James Version of Genesis the Lord tells the moving creatures to “be fruitful, and multiply.” Since we don’t know what the Lord considers a distinct level of life, when he uses the term “multiply” could he have been saying to the creatures: “multiply into a greater variety of creatures” ? I’m not saying I believe that this is what the term “multiply” means in this particular passage (Genesis 1: 22), but there is no reason that I know that says it cannot mean “multiply into more varieties.”

To believe in evolution, even speciation and macroevolution, is not contradictory to any scriptures in the LDS canon (and I believe in that canon).

The LDS church, which I fully believe in, does not have an official position on the matter.

Ok, now I'm going to use sources other than my own brain and the scriptures.

In a letter dated February 3, 1959, President David O. McKay said this: “...The Church has issued no official statement on the subject of the theory of evolution.”

What is stated in LDS doctrine is that man was created in the image of God. This doctrine, however, does not somehow contradict evolution, even macroevolution.

Henry Eyring, prominent scientist and father of Henry B. Eyring the first counselor to President Monson has this to say:
“Animals seem pretty wonderful to me. I'd be content to discover that I share a common heritage with them, so long as God is at the controls.
I have always felt comfortable with the views of our trained scientists among the General Authorities. For example, James E. Talmage delivered a sermon entitled "The Earth and Man" from the Salt Lake Tabernacle on August 9, 1931, and John A. Widtsoe published "Science and the Gospel" in the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association manual of 1908-9. Each of these brethren regarded the earth as having a very great age and were open to the testimony of science to uncover the truth on those questions.”
And

“The only important thing is that God did it. I might say in that regard that in my mind the theory of evolution has to include a notion that the dice have been loaded from the beginning in favor of more complex life forms. That is, without intelligent design of the natural laws in such a way as to favor evolution from lower forms to higher forms of life, I don't think the theory holds water. I can't see randomly generated natural laws producing these remarkable results. So, in my mind, God is behind it all whether we evolved or not.”

If God invented speciation, I have no qualms with that. It seems to be the kind of thing that God does – invent truly amazing and creative processes such as the creation of diamonds, the incredible formations of crystals, the formation of galaxies (if you’ve ever seen a computer model of one it is incredible to behold) and, why not, the intuitive and inventive process of evolution? None of these amazing processes is in the scriptures, but we can watch a crystal grow in our science labs.

There have been people in the church decades ago who did not believe in the theory of Relativity. I think it’s safe to assume they were wrong. Who in the church doesn’t believe in the theory of relativity today based upon church doctrine? There may be some who don’t believe in it or parts of it because modern physics is shedding more light on the matter, but that is a separate issue. I believe that in 50 years or so members of the LDS church will believe in macroevolution.

About interpretation of scriptures:

There is a tendency among people who read Genesis to believe that God is explaining how he created the world. I think his message and purpose may have been that he created the world. Given that the world is more complex than we now understand, shouldn’t we suppose that it’s creation may have been an extremely complex process? Perhaps more complex than we can even understand in this lifetime? God wasn’t interested in telling us the methods of creation in Genesis. He was trying to give us a spiritually pertinent revelation about the fall of Adam and Eve and other matters, including the important of the Sabbath, etc.

I very much disagree with those guys who say “the scriptures are just spiritual fables that should not be taken at face value."

I believe in all the miracles of Christ and of every prophet. I have no problems believing that God can do all things. But I also believe that God wasn’t trying to teach science to Moses. Why would he have done so? Didn’t Moses have better things to do than to become a zoologist or taxonomist? And when does God ever try to teach science in the scriptures? Nowhere.

When the scriptures say “the four corners of the earth” (such as it does in the King James Version of the Book of Revelation), I’m pretty sure that that is not scientifically accurate. A globe has no corners. But this doesn’t mean I disbelieve in the book of Revelation and it doesn’t mean I believe the scriptures are merely fables meant to increase my spirituality. It means this particular statement is meant to be understood in some symbolic way and it especially means that it has some purpose other than to teach the geography of the world.

Likewise, the creation as described in Genesis has a purpose other than to teach the method God used to create the world. There is no method described. There is just statements that God created such and such things.

In Genesis, man is clearly created as the final and last being or even thing on the earth. But, as I was just reading at Institute in the Pearl of Great Price, in Moses 3: 7 it says that “man became a living soul, the first flesh upon the earth, the first man also.”

Does this mean that either Genesis or the Pearl of Great Price is wrong? They seem to be in direct contradiction. Maybe the words “first flesh” means “most important flesh” ? I don’t know how to reconcile these verses. I am not a scriptorian. It does not shake my faith that both the books of Genesis and Moses are holy scripture. But it does suggest to me that what is being said is not meant to be scientific or empirical, but spiritual or symbolic in nature. It suggests that there is some importance to these words other than to explain the actual sequence of things created by God.

I have heard a great deal of adulation for Obama since he's become president (and for that matter since he's become president-elect, and for that matter since he's become a candidate for president). Much of this from people (neighbors, people at my school, people on the radio, etc.) who give as a primary reason for their joy of and praise of Obama because he is African American.

I can partially understand the joy of a black person happy that another black person is elected president. However, I think it goes beyond this. Many of these people seem to me by their words that they are judging Obama in a way that Martin Luther King jr. said we must never do in America.

It seems that they are judging him by the color of his skin and not by the content of his character.