The descent of man

Evolution.

So now that you’re ready for a comment-hungry post, we’ll begin. :P

Yesterday in our C.S. Lewis Society meeting, we briefly touched on evolution (along with a handful of other aspects to science). It’s been a while since I’ve done much with science, and this was all it took to rekindle the sparks of interest. So, when I got home, I picked up my copy of The Origin of Species off the shelf and began to read.

I’m only some 40 pages into it, but I’m liking it a lot. I’d forgotten how much I love reading science. (I used to read lots of astronomy books when I was younger, but it’s been years.) More on all that in my next post.

So, back to evolution itself. It’s clearly a contentious subject, with both sides quite passionate in their beliefs. Here’s my stance.

First and above all, I believe in God. While I may not understand the mechanics of all God does, I know He’s there. My conclusion is thus biased. :) (And so are the conclusions of all the atheists who are just as convinced that God isn’t there.)

Now that we’ve established where I’m coming from, I’m of the opinion that evolution neither proves nor disproves God. Coming from my belief in God, whether or not evolution is how it happened has no bearing on whether God did it. Granting that God is omnipotent, we simply cannot constrain Him into using whatever method we happen to like. He could have created the earth the way we’ve thought for thousands of years, or through evolution, or by some other means entirely. To me, then, the question of evolution is completely separate from the question of whether there is a God.

Having said that, I don’t really think that most evolutionary scientists are trying to kill God. Rather, I contend that they’re just drawing an erroneous conclusion when they assume that evolution presupposes a lack of intelligence behind the universe. It’s impossible to prove or disprove God through science.

So did God use evolution? Judging by the evidence available to us, there’s a fairly good case for it. The theory isn’t perfect and there are certainly holes in it, but it can’t be too far from the truth. Things do change over time. It’s mainly just a question of how much they change, and what the limits are.

Perhaps we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. We do the best with what we’ve got, and if it doesn’t all make sense just yet, that’s fine by me. We’ll learn the truth someday, and in the meantime we’ll just keep working away at it, using the minds God gave us to try to figure out His handiwork. (Even if we don’t believe in Him. :))

Now, I still have only read 40 pages of Darwin, so I don’t know if he makes a case for human evolution in The Origin of Species. But the title of his next book was The Descent of Man, which leads me to assume that that’s what he talks about. I do believe that there is some variation between generations — hereditary diseases, hair color passed down, etc. — but I firmly believe that man is not descended from the ape. From the “The Origin of Man,” a 1909 statement by the First Presidency:

It is held by some that Adam was not the first man upon this earth, and that the original human being was a development from lower orders of the animal creation. These, however, are the theories of men. The word of the Lord declares that Adam was “the first man of all men” (Moses 1: 34), and we are therefore in duty bound to regard him as the primal parent of our race.

(Quoted from the evolution packet endorsed by the BYU Board of Trustees back in 1992)

On the last page of the packet there’s an interesting quote from the First Presidency in 1931:

Upon the fundamental doctrines of the Church we are all agreed. Our mission is to bear the message of the restored gospel to the world. Leave geology, biology, archaeology, and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research, while we magnify our calling in the realm of the Church….

Agreed. :)

Evolution is a tricky thing. Most people, when referring to it today, speak of Darwinian evolution. That, I believe, is a load of crap.

Instead, I believe in Intelligent Design. It sounds highly reasonable to me that God used evolutionary principles to bring about the creation, rather than snapping his fingers, clicking his heels a few times, and having it all magically appear in “a day”.

So, evolution: yes. Darwinian evolution: no. Creationism: sort of, depending on how you semantically define it. Intelligent design: you betcha!

Until about two weeks ago, Ben, my grand theory on how the earth came to be was very similar to yours: I don’t know exactly how it all came about, but evolution seems like a good mechanism. The problem that I found with this, though, (and this is the wrench that got thrown in the works 2 weeks ago) is that it’s easy to suppose that there was no death until after the Fall. No death kind of makes natural selection hard. I’m still working on it. Any thoughts?

Well, natural selection does make sense, and I think it’s been proven (as much as anything can be proven :)), so the question is more of to what degree it applies. Do species evolve into other species? I don’t know. I can see how survival of the fittest would lead to specialization; whether that’s how the Lord did it or if He handcrafted everything, again I don’t know.

Wait, I didn’t answer your question. :) No death. Hmm… One possibility is that the evolutionary stuff happened somewhere else (Brigham Young said the plants and animals were brought here from another planet, though this could have just been a theory of his as a man and not a statement as a prophet, like the Adam-God theory), in which case it was all brought here (tectonic plates included ;)) just as the fall took place. Somehow I doubt that, but it’s one way, I suppose.

Or perhaps there was some kind of time distortion involved. Or, and this is kind of what I currently think, the “no death” only applies to a certain part of the earth’s history. In other words, it’s kind of like when we get born — somewhere in the scriptures it talks about how we were forgiven of our sins when we were born, and then again when we get baptized. So by saying “no sin” when we were born, it doesn’t mean we hadn’t sinned before, but rather that it was in a past sphere of existence and doesn’t apply in the current one. I don’t know. :)

can’t understand what the confusion is about.. how can one believe in being intelligently designed by a creator when we have no answer for ‘who created the creator??’… Evolution seeems like the most sensible and believable explanation to follow… I mean it has been proved… There is genetic homology between apes and men… and even if we go back to the oldest bacteria… we can see that many important genes have just changed a littke bit over the many many years…

Actually, Jasmine, the “missing link” between man and ape has never been found. Obviously, men do not look the same all over the world. I really don’t look like an Australian Aboriginee or a Chinese peasant, or a Peruvian farmer, etc . . .

But the idea that man evolved from ape is a theory based on the phenomena we can witness now. LDS doctrine does not contend that man’s body has not changed based on his enviroment; simply that he did not evolve from a lower life form(meaning a life form without reasoning capabilities).

Science has not proved this to be otherwise.

Personally, as I accept the statements of Church leaders, I do not believe Man evolved from a lower life form. I believe Adam had no father other than God(and I believe Church leaders have said as much. I will look for the quote.)

We do know, however, that man is different from all of God’s other creations. Written records have existed long enough for us to confirm Intra-species evolution. An example of this is equestrians becoming donkeys, horses, wild mustangs, zebras, mules, etc . . .

We do not have concrete proof of Inter-species evolution. This would be a bovine becoming a whale, as many scientists believe happened. Science suggests that this has occured, however.

Whether Inter-species evolution happened on this planet or not is immaterial. On one hand, there was no death in the Garden before the fall. On the other, there appears to evidence of evolution which is hard to place within a 6000 year time-frame.

I am currently unable to determine exactly how the animal-life of this world came to be. But that does not bother me. I will continue to look for the answer to that question throughout my life . . . and if I don’t find it, I know I will learn it in the next life. The only thing that I know about evolution for sure, and the only thing that eternally matters to me, is that I, as a man, did not evolve from a lower life form.

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