Creation: Prophecy As the Forerunner of Science
In the recent bloggernacle discussions on evolution, I have noticed several individual’s attempts to rationalize the belief in a young earth (~6,000 years) with the ubiquitous and universal evidence for an earth that is billions of years old. In 1904, James E. Talmage, later of the twelve, wrote an article entitled Prophecy As the Forerunner of Science for the official publication of the Church (Improvement Era, vol. 7 pg. 481-488). In this article, Talmage compares the revelations of Joseph Smith to the latest scientific theories of the day and quells some of the more irrational ideas still advanced in creation debates today.
Talmage opens the article with a quote from Joseph Smith:
This earth was organized or formed out of other planets which were broken up and remodeled, and made into the on which we live.
This quote is often taken by young earth creationists to account for fossils, ancient geology, etc.; however, Talmage is quick to explain:
[This] statement by Joseph Smith…has been amplified and applied by some of our people in a way unwarranted by the Prophet’s utterance. This is no unusual incident in connection with the announcement of a great truth bearing the stamp of newness. Thus, the words of the prophet have been construed as meaning that great masses of material have come together in space to form this planet, and that the broken and disturbed state of the earth’s crust is an immediate result of these masses falling together…But [this] assumption…is completely disproved by existing facts…[B]y applying the most reliable tests known to the geologies…we may read on the stony pages, with fair assurance of correctness, the account of the formation of stratified and other deposits…in all their varied modes of occurrence.
A clear distinction must be made between theory and fact. The observations last referred to are in no sense representative of theory, but, on the contrary, stand as demonstrated facts.
Talmage explains that neither theory nor fact warrant belief in the assembly of the earth from large pieces of former worlds. Rather, he states that the formation of the earth from “world dust” is the theory most worthy of belief. He concludes with a prescient warning that is equally applicable today:
In light of past events, it is apparent that this dissatisfaction with [the antecedent theory], and its provisional renunciation in favor of a theory that accounts in a better way for observed phenomena, will be emphasized as another instance of the fallibility of science and the utter unreliability of theories propounded by man. It will not be strange if the loudest criticism comes from those who are the least acquainted with either of the theories named, and still less conversant with the facts they were intended to explain.
Nice pulls, J.
The facts seem so obvious to me that it is a shame that Elder Talmage had to spell it out so clearly. I remain flabbergasted by the number of Mormons that insist on believing in magic in one form or another. They seem to refuse to believe that mankind could possibly discover scientific explanations of some of the laws by which God works. Yet at the same time they believe that mankind is the offspring of God.
For instance, I am shocked that any thinking person (especially a Mormon person with our religion’s historically friendly attitude toward science) would still believe that there was no death on this planet prior to the fall of Adam. (I understand how those of generations long past might believe it, but not those of today) While we certainly have not discovered all of the natural laws to explain the things of God, is it so awful that we, God’s children, have discovered some of them? (Even if we still don’t know how he manages those laws.)
Comment by Geoff J — 9/1/2005 @ 4:12 pm
I’m not sure that we should be so hard on those determined young earthers. I just finished Pascal Boyer’s “Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought” (A sensational book) and your comments, Geoff, reminded me of a few parts I read in it:
Boyer was once describing some of the religious beliefs of some of the more “primitive” religions “when one of our guests, a prominent Catholic theologian, turned to me and said: ‘This is what makes anthropology so fascinating and so difficult too. You have to explain how people can believe in such nonsense.’ Which left me dumbfounded. The conversation had moved on before I could find a pertinent repartee – to do with kettles and pots.”
He continues, “the Fang (the primitives) too were quite amazed when first told that three persons really were one person while being three persons, or that all misfortune in this vale of tears stemmed from two ancestors eating exotic fruit in a garden.”
He continues: Most people “have assumed that there are some bits of information represented in the mind, which people then believe or reject.” Such, however, is not the case according to modern cognitive science. “What is contained in the explicit thought (I believe so and so) – what we usually call a ‘belief’ – is very often an attempt to justify or explain the intuitions we have as a result of implicit processes in the (subconscious) mental basement. It is an interpretation or (or a report on) these intuitions.”
Thus he concludes: “So what does it mean to say that someone ‘has’ a belief? Superficially, it means that they can assent to a particular interpretation of how their minds work… All inferences delivered by specific (subconscious cognitive) systems are compatible with an explicit interpretation… but none of these systmes actually handled the general, explicit question (‘Is this belief true?’). (The belief) is a statment that people would agree with although it has not been treated in that general format anywhere in their minds.”
For a good shortened version of this book see his article here.
This is why so many people aren’t totally in agreement with science. Religion is universal because it is based in our cognitive inferential systems. Science is not universal because it is far from being “natural”. Thus science is every bit as unnatura to the human mind as religion is natural. The only reason why science is so obvious and persuasive to some is because they have consciously forced upon themselves certain heuristics which are actually quite contrary to many of the inferential systems which are “naturally” in our minds.
Comment by Jeffrey Giliam — 9/1/2005 @ 5:01 pm
There’s a funny story in the most recent Bible Review. Ronald Hendel tries to do an Archbishop Ussher and calculate the date of Creation using the internal dating of the Bible. It gets messy, because a lot depends on what OT manuscript you you use, but his date is…..
….3630 BC.
Of course, he doesn’t take that date seriously, but the point is that even a close reading of the Bible in these matters rarely brings consensus.
I wonder how many people realise that the 6000 year-old history of the earth idea is based on 17th century Irish Catholic scholarship. Nothing wrong with Irish Catholics, of course…
Comment by Ronan — 9/1/2005 @ 8:34 pm
I did a post on this topic a little while back here. Joseph didn’t say anything about fossils. The context of his statement was about the eternal nature of element. It was not an earth-history lesson.
Comment by Jared — 9/1/2005 @ 9:46 pm
Ha! Now that you guys are up at the MA, I’ll follow the conversation better.
Comment by J. Stapley — 9/1/2005 @ 9:55 pm
You mean M&E or our solo blogs? M&E posts are usually cross-posted to our solo blogs.
Comment by Jared — 9/1/2005 @ 11:33 pm
Since you guys were not crossposting lately we added the M&E feed.
Comment by J. Stapley — 9/1/2005 @ 11:39 pm
Geoff, your comments fit very closely with what McConkie calls “Heresy #4” in “A New Witness for the Articles of Faith”.
He says: “,,,They pledge a superficial allegiance to religious truth and allow for a form of divine worship without forsaking the theories of men. They, of necessity, assume that death has always existed on earth, that it did not have its beginning with the fall of Adam, and that there must be some other explanation for all the revelations which say that the atonement ransoms man from the effects of the fall. When those who espouse this veiw talk of a fall and an atonement, they falsely assume such applies only to man rather than to the earth and all forms of life, as the scriptures attest.”
I’m a thinking person, and I think I would rather believe McConkie.
Comment by don — 9/2/2005 @ 1:50 am
Last weekend, inspired by an earlier Splendid Sun post, I picked Joseph Fielding Smith’s Signs of the Times off the shelf and thumbed through it. I was hoping to find something applicable to the Sunday School lesson to the youth about Joseph Fielding Smith’s love of the scriptures. I didn’t end up using anything from that book, but one thing comes to mind now.
There was one part in the lecture where Elder Smith discussed the creation of dry land as one body that split apart. He then gave support for the concept by noting, as people had for centuries, that the continents fit together roughly. He spoke of cutting up a map and fitting the pieces together in one land mass.
Geologists had been working through the early 20th Century on explanations for how the coasts of South America and Africa had previously been connected and come apart as many evidences suggested. In 1942, though, a plausible mechanism wasn’t in sight, and there was perhaps a touch of flakiness in Elder Smith’s map cutting exercise. (I am not sure how these things were perceived by established geologists of the time, but just think of the objections that any of us could raise that the church leader “wasn’t doing science properly.”) A quarter century before plate tectonics, Elder Smith was just telling what he saw the scriptures to be saying.
Comment by John Mansfield — 9/2/2005 @ 8:33 am
John Mansfield, you make a very good point. Genesis describes the creation per the ancient Hebrew world view where, there is a dome above the earth that holds back the water of the firmiment. No one is saying that Moses was an imbacile for believing such crap. He was simply operating from a limited world view…and Genesis, a revelation, reflects that.
Reading the Signs of the Times one is left with the distinct impression that Joseph F. Smith was operating with a similarly limited world view.
Don, I don’t particularly want to turn this into a re-hash of all the other conversations on the topic, but I do contest the assertion that “No Death Before the Fall” is scriptural. There is simply no such evidence.
Comment by J. Stapley — 9/2/2005 @ 10:42 am
Given how little we actually know about the inner-workings of the atonement, I’m suprised how dogmatically some claim that X cannot be true because it would limit the scope of the atonement.
Joseph McConkie’s argument against a paradise limited to Eden is that it limits the effects of the atonement to the square milage of the Garden.
You’re telling me that the infinate atonement, which reaches forward and backward in time, and apparently covers many other worlds–the infinate atonement is severely compromised in such senario? Give me a break.
Comment by Jared — 9/2/2005 @ 11:53 am
Sorry, “infinite”
Comment by Jared — 9/2/2005 @ 11:55 am
The great thing about this topic is that any of us on this board can be wrong about it with no harm done.
I wonder though, if every researcher in biology-related fields were a staunch creationist, what societal effect would that have?
Comment by will — 9/2/2005 @ 11:58 am
Geoff,
I simply hate it when anyone sticks out there the thing about “any thinking person,” which usually means any person that doesn’t think like me isn’t really thinking.
I think the reason some people do believe that there was no death before the fall is that they are honestly persuaded that this is the message of the scriptures (this would be another issue to debate in another post, and it probably has been). They are then able, firmly convinced of this that they are more willing to believe what they see as scriptural evidence than they are to believe scientific evidence that appears to contradict this point of view.
I often allow science or philosophy to send me back to the scriptures to rethink my positions on what I find there, but I never let either determine my position on what I find there. This means I often have to bracket my beliefs, and admit that I can’t reconcile two ideas, though I sometimes spend quite some time trying. I would call that thinking of the best sort, and I only accomplish it occasionally.
Often I do find that I have to alter my beliefs about what is scriptural. Once in a great while, I find the reasons why what I thought was convincing philosophically is not. In the mean time, when I can’t decide what to do, I stick with my understanding of scripture.
Comment by Steve H — 9/2/2005 @ 3:22 pm
Ha! I was wondering where the strong rebuttals to my inflammatory comments were. It seems they finally showed up. Nice.
Of you are all right — we are all free to believe whatever we want.
(And of course Elder McConkie was as free to be wrong occasionally as anyone else.)
Comment by Geoff J — 9/2/2005 @ 10:07 pm
I wonder whether the rest of you treat scripture as inherently superior to science, or whether you allow science to contradict scripture. The “waters above the firmament” idea leads us directly to contradicting scripture on the basis of science, of course: science tells us there’s no firmament and the Earth isn’t surrounded by water. What if we invent reverse-time cinematography and scientifically discover that there was no such person as Moses? Would we stick with scriptural ideas or revise?
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — 9/5/2005 @ 10:57 am
Again we run into the difficulties created by our limited perceptions and the limitations created by cultural worldviews. It is my understanding that there is quite a bit of water vapor in the atmosphere and at some point in the world’s history there might have been much more. The fact that we put scrpitures into our own contexts does not necessarily make that context true or the scriptures false. I am not so mired in hubris to think my perceptions of what I think the authors of scripture intended are necessarily so.
Comment by Craig S — 9/5/2005 @ 12:13 pm
Here, here, Craig S!
We will never discover there was no such person as Moses. If we begin to believe we might, then there is literally nothing holding us to the truth of the gospel. And if we imply that there might not have been, does that not imply God is lying? I don’t think God would make false truth claims.
The idea that perhaps the people who wrote the scriptures operated under a particular, limited world-view is an entirely different issue, of course. If Someone really believed in a particular scientific idea, and that made it into their writings? I don’t know, but I think that we can trust that what is in the scriptures is true, though we may not completely understand the truth we are presented with, and I don’t feel that they would be out and out wrong on any position. If we accept that they come from God, then we have to accept that God wouldn’t let us believe falsehood on his authority. When Nephi speaks of the earth moving around the sun, is he correcting a common error that was under debate, or is God stopping him from recording error. Either way, the fact was revealed, since any other information would have been patently false.
Comment by Steve H — 9/7/2005 @ 11:05 am
I agree, Steve H.
Comment by J. Stapley — 9/7/2005 @ 2:02 pm
2 ne 2 : 22 And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.
Comment by Brian — 7/23/2009 @ 12:52 pm
2 Nephi 9 : 6 For as death hath passed upon all men, to fulfil the merciful plan of the great Creator, there must needs be a power of resurrection, and the resurrection must needs come unto man by reason of the fall; and the fall came by reason of transgression; and because man became fallen they were cut off from the presence of the Lord.
Comment by Brian — 7/23/2009 @ 12:54 pm
Moses 6 : 59 That by reason of transgression cometh the fall, which fall bringeth death
Comment by Brian — 7/23/2009 @ 1:00 pm
What
is
your
point?
Comment by J. Stapley — 7/23/2009 @ 10:11 pm
Any understanding of God and His works should never be adulterated with the philosophies of men. The adversary exists to deceive us. How often does science change its mind? Continuously, for scientists know they are not perfect. But God is perfect. He has not changed his mind on how he created the earth. How did He do it? “And God said…” Seems pretty clear. His words did it. That’s why He’s called, “The Word…all things were made by Him.”
Apparently, an LDS scientist cannot believe the simple word of God. Well, the Book of Mormon agrees with the Bible. Nephi remonstrates with his brothers, who believe everything must make sense, “If [God] should command me that I should say unto this water, be thou earth, it should be earth; and if I should say it, it would be done. And now, if the Lord has such great power, and has wrought so many miracles among the children of men, how is it that he cannot instruct me,…” (1 Nephi 17:50-51).
Do we believe in miracles? The creation was one.
Comment by Steve — 7/27/2009 @ 10:32 am
I’ll take your philosophies of men and raise you. Moses’ creation narrative describes a dome above the earth that holds back the water of the firmament. I’m guessing that was something from man. Young Earth creationism? Borrowed from a Seventh Day Adventist. This thread is specifically about Talmage’s interaction with the the mashed-up world theory. If you have anything cogent to say, you are welcome. Otherwise, save your unrighteous indignation.
Comment by J. Stapley — 7/27/2009 @ 10:43 am
J. Stapley wrote:
Sorry, when I read the whole thread, it seemed like much more. Thus the comments below.
He then said:
Cogent: 1.convincing or believable by virtue of forcible, clear, or incisive presentation; telling.
2. to the point; relevant; pertinent.
I’m sorry. I never dreamt that quoting scripture would be irrelevant or impertinent. I hope that you do find the comments below to be convincing or believable.
J. Stapley opens with:
Dr. Talmage admits that his understanding is based only on what was known at his time.
i.e., seems pretty likely…
I didn’t notice that the formation of stratas in rock prove that it took billions of years. He merely says that the earth wasn’t made of giants blocks of alien worlds all glued together.
Geoff G. said:
Hmmm. “Even before the fall of Adam, which ushered death into this world,…”
–President Ezra Taft Benson, The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, p. 37.
Is the prophet a thinking person?
A BYU professor wrote:
One would hope that the teachers at BYU could at least be called “thinking person[s].”
J. Stapley said:
Roasted Tomatoes adds:
And most recently, J. Stapley said:
It is interesting to note that one common and scientific explanation of the firmament was given above, that is, that it is the dividing line between the liquid water upon the earth, and the water vapor in the air. When I think of it, I see a picture of earth from space, showing a beautiful line between our atmosphere and outer space.
Regardless of how you see it, one must also consider that the way the facts of the organization of the heavens are described probably also carry a spiritual meaning. In Hebrew lore, “waters” often refer to revelations, or raw materials used in creation.
In fact, the word for “waters” is actually mayim and is singular, “water.” Using a hebrew technique, we find that the numerical value of the word is 90, which is the value of the hebrew letter tzadhi which means “the history of Israel, and silence, among other things. Also, the word mayim is made up of a “y” with two “m’s” on either side. The “y” traditionally refers to Jehovah, while the “m’s” refer to waters. So, the very spelling of “waters” in hebrew describes a time when Christ will be between the waters, or in the meridian of the history of Israel. (Both preceded and followed by a period of silence.)
So, we need not think that every word about the creation is speaking, in a stale and detached manner of science alone.
Stapley said:
Above, Ronan says that Creationism in 6,000 years came from Irish Catholics.
Wikipedia agrees.
So, the 6,000 year creation certainly was postulated in 1650, whereas the Seventh Day Adventists began in 1844.
P.S. I hope these comments may be taken as interested and spirited discussion as exhibited by others above, rather than as “UNrighteous indignation.”
Comment by Steve — 8/1/2009 @ 2:26 am
Steve, it is true that many general authorities are on record as believing “no death before the fall.” In fact, if you would like to learn from the master, I would check out NDBF Gary, who has perfected the quest.
I have no problem with them being wrong. If you have ever taken the time to read the beliefs of previous generations, you will find that it was not uncommon. There is a wide and lasting debate on evolution within the Church. The Church is currently very supportive of evolution eduction and very careful not to issue statement against it.
Rodney Turner is a nuttar. As far as authoritative discourse goes, BYU has professors that teach no death, and professors that teach evolution. As a proud BYU graduate myself, I’m happy to choose the latter as being closer to the truth.
RE: firmament. If you want to invent a reading that helps you reconcile the text to your belief, you are welcome.
RE: Young earth creationism. Elements of it have been floating around for some time. The modern version that is held by some Latter-day Saints was popularized by SDA, George McCready Price, with whom JFSII corresponded.
Comment by J. Stapley — 8/1/2009 @ 9:59 am
J, when you say,
do you mean they are actually neutral, or do you have a statement from the church encouraging the teaching of evolution?
Comment by Steve — 8/2/2009 @ 12:14 am
Steve, check out the BYU evolution packet and high quality researchers and instructors of evolution at BYU.
Comment by J. Stapley — 8/2/2009 @ 5:35 pm