So yeah...I had a riveting conversation about Mormon orthodoxy's (I use the term orthodoxy in the popular sense; see this post for my thoughts on what orthodoxy really means) old reliable chestnut--evolution...let the fire and brimstone come down.
OK...so I know all the good ole' mantras about how science and Mormonism is intertwined, about how God wants us to learn about the world around us, about how we should seek for truth in all places, about divine evolution, and about how the Church has taken no stance on evolution etc. etc. You go to BYU for a few years and you hear about this ad infinitum...I get it.
Now I have nothing fundamentally against evolution...but for you scientist-theologians out there, I have some questions.
Question 1):
As I understand it, evolutionary biology DOES NOT maintain we descended from primates, but that we share a common ancestor. Fair enough. At what point, then, did man's spirit enter the body? Were these spirits those of God's offspring or of some other species? At what point did these spirits become human spirits? Were there even individual spirits in these beings or were they animated by the general spirit of life (which might explain Adam being "asleep")
Question 2):
In light of evolution, what does it mean to be a child of God?
Again, those who know me know that I am no doctrinaire old timer when it comes to matters of theology. And I know that you biology buffs tend to have conniptions when Latter Day Saints ask such questions. Just humor me for a second and ignore the temptation to believe that a Latter Day Saint who questions evolution is just knuckle-dragging evidence that evolution is still in process...
Saturday, March 15, 2008
An Old Reliable
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3 comments:
As a Mormon who sometimes entertains the idea that humans evolved from a common ancestor with primates, let me say that your question #1 kind of misses the point a bit. The fact of the matter is, all we know is A) what is in the fossil record, B) what is in the scriptural record. Modern-day prophets and church leaders (B. H. Roberts, Talmage, Widstoe, McConkie, Joseph Fielding Smith) have shown us that there is disagreement even in the upper Church echelons, but this is beside the point as well.
The point is, conjecture about what spirits went where and how God did His work simply cannot be answered. There is a double standard at work here. When a "true" Creationist claims that God organized the world, set it in the Heavens, and organized the solar system, etc., no one expects the burden of explaining how he did that to fall upon the Creationist's shoulders.
The scientist-theologians merely present evidence, in this case, in the fossil record, and present it as a possible explanation of how God did it, and suddenly the burden falls on his/her shoulders to explain how God did everything else? And asking them for their "best guess" will be just that. Either it's in the fossil record or the scriptural record, and both are fuzzy at best.
Your question #2 I answer with similar ambiguity (don't you love that?). I contend that if the idea that God created us through the process of organic evolution somehow diminishes our "humanity" or even the perception of our relationship with God as His children, how can you find "relief" in the more conservative doctrine that God created us literally from the "dust of the Earth"? Which is more like a "Child of God", monkeys or dust? Which makes a traditionalist, Creationist Mormon feel more like a Child of God?
Ah, it appears then that we share a commonality of goal even if our epistemology is different (the latter of which, of necessity, must necessarily lead to a difference of goal...alas)...
And as to the first question, well, wouldn't you say that this is the main beef scientists have w/creationism? That it isn't actually science b/c it offers no modus operandi?
In any case, it is utterly unrealistic for me to give deep and meaningful answers to the first question (though I have some interesting thoughts about what it means when Adam was "asleep"...hmmm....is it possible that our common ancestor was animated by "spirit" but not by its individual spirit...thus making it "asleep" as far as salvation was concerned?)
The second question is open...especially if one is willing to acknowledge that we are not physically begotten of the father. In that case, it becomes quite easy to see how either the traditional cretionist theory or evolutionary theory could function...
Fascinating stuff...
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