Faith and the Scientist - a talk given by Dr John S Lewis on April 25, 2010

The Testimony of a Scientist


John S. Lewis

Salt Lake Second Branch, 25 April 2010



The Church has a long tradition of freedom of inquiry and expression on matters with no settled doctrine. Many members and General Authorities have stated a vast range of opinions and supporting arguments on numerous topics. It should come as no surprise that in many cases there have been serious disagreements, some extensively and energetically argued in official Church publications by respected General Authorities. When General Authorities differ profoundly with each other in the pages of the Ensign or other Church publications, what is the average Church member to conclude? Such conflicts afford openings for dissention and divisiveness. What then is doctrine; indeed, how can we know what is truth?

The most durable—and heated--of these public disagreements have been those concerning scientific issues: the creation of Earth, the origin of Adam, the age of the Earth, evolution, and so on. Some Church leaders have received a scientific education: Elders John Widtsoe, James Talmage, Frederick Pack, and Henry J. Eyring serve as examples. But in matters of doctrine it is the President of the Church who alone holds all the keys of revelation for the entire body of the Church. First Presidency messages take precedence over the opinions of individual General Authorities, no matter how strongly expressed.

Suppose we desire knowledge—how do we acquire it? The answer is clear: we study it out using every available relevant and reliable source of information and then form a conclusion. We then can test that conclusion by seeking the guidance of the Holy Ghost. Those who “take no thought except to ask” are like the student who wants a good grade without doing the coursework.

Suppose, specifically, you want to know what time it is. Do you pray for the answer to be given to you? No, you look at a clock. Suppose you want your laundry washed, dried, folded and put away. Do you ask the Lord to do it for you? Suppose you want to learn integral calculus. Do you pray for instant enlightenment? No, you read the textbook, attend class, and do the homework. After all that you can do, you are entitled to assistance in the learning process. Suppose you want to know the age of the Earth. You look at the clocks built into Nature: you collect the available evidence, study the dating methods and their results, and form a conclusion. After all that you can do, you are entitled to consult the Holy Ghost for confirmation.

Most of the supposed conflict between science and religion is caused by a failure to avail ourselves of both study and revelation. I am convinced that there is no meaningful conflict—the apparent disagreements are due to people failing to use one or both of these methods. Primitive misconceptions of non-scientists about what science is, does, and says are as destructive as the interpretation of scriptures by religionists using the intellect alone, without guidance by personal or ecclesiastical revelation.

Two false concepts bedevil this debate. Some hold that the material world was made by God with abundant false evidence of great antiquity to test our faith. But God does not lie and falsify: indeed, he cannot. This idea is heretical. Another argument holds that fossils and other evidence of Earth’s great age were created by Satan to confuse us. This attribution of the creative powers of the priesthood to Satan is the essence of the Gnostic heresy, which has been rejected by all Christian faiths.

Let us consider a few of the most frequently debated points. First, let us consider the duration of the creation of Earth. Genesis talks of six days of creation, but the Hebrew word for “day” is freely used in a figurative sense in the Bible. In the highest and purest version of the creation story revealed to us, we are told of “creative periods” Elder McConkie, who I believe represents the most conservative viewpoint, has also commented that the “days” of creation are figurative, and not to be taken literally. In the June 1982 Ensign he wrote: “What is a day? It is a specified time period; it is an age, an eon, a division of eternity.” We commend this statement to the many Church members who falsely believe that Elder McConkie advocated a one-week duration for the creation.

Secondly, let us inquire into the age of the Earth. Considering that D&C 77:6 refers to “…this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance, or its temporal existence”, what led Joseph Smith, who wrote that verse, to speak of Earth as 2,555 million years old in the King Follett discourse? The answer appears to be straightforward. Seven thousand Earth years is in conflict with all physical, chemical, genetic, archaeological, and linguistic evidence. But seven thousand years of God is not ruled out. The arithmetic is easy: 7000 years of God, calculated on the basis of one day of God being as a thousand years of man (one year of God therefore being 365,257 years of man) is just 7000x365,257 Earth years. That is 2,556,799,000 Earth years. Clearly Joseph Smith did not intend the “7000 years” to refer to Earth years. But why did Joseph Smith and his amanuensis W. W. Phelps quote 2,555 million years instead of 2,556.8 million? Their calculation simply ignored leap years, and took the average duration of the year as exactly 365 days: thus 7000x365,000 = 2,555 million years.

The same number surfaces again in Elder McConkie’s polemical address, “The Seven Deadly Heresies”, delivered at BYU in 1980. He says that God “has presided in our universe for almost 2,555,000,000 years”, but without any indication of the source or significance of that number, or where the phrase “presided in our universe” comes from. Let us recall that, at a time when scientists scarcely dared speak of tens of millions of years, Joseph Smith firmly spoke of billions.

Thirdly, there is the belief that Church doctrine holds that there was no death on Earth before Adam’s fall. We shall return to this topic later.

Fourthly, there is the question of “pre-Adamites”, man-like beings who lived on Earth before Adam. The first LDS speculations on life before Adam were by Orson Hyde in an 1856 talk published in the Journal of Discourses. Elder Hyde wrote that manlike beings, which he called Pre-Adamites, long predated Adam on Earth. This theme can be traced back at least to the 16th century in European writings, and was treated from a Christian perspective as early as the writings of St. Augustine.

Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection first appeared in 1859, three years after Elder Hyde’s suggestion.

Fifthly, we come to evolution. John A. Widtsoe, in his book Joseph Smith as Scientist, (General Board of the YMMIA, Salt Lake City, 1908), was strongly supportive of a geologically ancient Earth and anti-evolutionary only in the sense that the origin of man was left out of the general evolutionary progression of nature and life. Elder Widtsoe wrote (page 105):

…it has been found that under normal conditions all things undergo a process of evolution; that is, become more complex, or advance. This, in essence, is the law of evolution, about which so much has been said in the last fifty years. Undoubtedly, this law is correct, and in harmony with the known facts of the universe. It certainly throws a flood of light upon the phenomena of nature; though of itself, it tells little of the force behind it, in obedience to which it operates.

Several other articles around that time advocated conflicting points of view. Evidently the doctrine needed clarification.

In response to this flurry of interest, a First Presidency message, mild and conciliatory in tone, entitled The Origin of Man, appeared in Improvement Era 13, 75-81 (Nov., 1909). The President at the time was Joseph F. Smith: Whether the mortal bodies of man evolved in natural processes to present perfection, through the direction and power of God; whether the first parents of our generations, Adam and Eve, were transplanted from another sphere, with immortal tabernacles, which became corrupted through sin and the partaking of natural foods, in the process of time; whether they were born here in mortality, as other mortals have been, are questions not fully answered in the revealed word of God.

Elder Frederick Pack wrote a series of three articles entitled The Creation of the Earth, Improvement Era 13, 1023-1027 (Sept., 1910); 1121-1127 (Oct., 1910); 14, 220-230 (Jan., 1911). Elder Pack, like Elders Widtsoe and Talmage, was a trained geologist who accepted the antiquity of Earth. He discussed the geological record in detail and was frankly positively disposed toward evolution. He also later served as Chairman of the Church’s Gospel Doctrine Committee. Clearly the Brethren did not suspect him of doctrinal error. He speculated, indeed, but did so wholly within the range explicitly allowed by the First Presidency.

In 1927, two General Authorities, Brigham H. Roberts and Joseph Fielding Smith, took diametrically opposite views, Roberts defending the fossil evidence and Smith denying it as a Satanic fraud. Both Elder Roberts and Elder Smith argued their cases before the Quorum and its President, Elder Rudger Clawson. The Quorum, hung, sent the matter back to the First Presidency. They wrote, and announced in an assembly on April 7, 1931, that "The statement made by Elder Smith that the existence of pre-Adamites is not a doctrine of the Church is true. It is just as true that the statement 'there were not pre-Adamites upon the Earth' is not a doctrine of the church. Neither side of the controversy has been accepted as doctrine at all."

As of 2010, the most recent First Presidency message regarding the origin of man is still that 1931 address. It concluded:

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… Upon one thing we should all be able to agree, namely, that Presidents Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, and Anthon H. Lund were right when they said: "Adam is the primal parent of our race." Presidents Heber J. Grant, Anthony W. Ivins, & Charles W. Nibley, the First Presidency

The First Presidency next expressed a desire to see a moderate, authoritative treatment of the main issues: that General Authorities not invent "new doctrine"; that evolution be treated as an open question; that the idea of no death before Adam be abandoned; that the antiquity of the Earth and the authenticity of geological evidence be defended; that both sides of the issue of pre-Adamites be set aside as "no doctrine".

The logical Apostle to author this overview, Elder Widtsoe, was in Europe. That left Elder Talmage as the mediator. The First Presidency gave him this assignment, and on the same day Elder Talmage wrote in his journal:

Involved in this question (Roberts) is that of the beginning of life upon the Earth and as to whether there was death either of animal or plant before the fall of Adam, on which proposition Elder Smith was very pronounced in denial and Elder Roberts equally forceful in the affirmative. As to whether pre-Adamite races existed upon the Earth there has been much discussion among some of our people of late. The decision reached by the First Presidency and announced to this morning's assembly was in answer to a specific question that obviously the doctrine of the existence of races of human beings upon the Earth prior to the fall of Adam was not a doctrine of the Church; and further, that the conception embodied in the belief of many to the effect that there were no pre-Adamite races and that there was no death upon the Earth prior to Adam's fall is likewise no doctrine of the Church. I think the decision of the First Presidency is a wise one on the premises. This is one of the many things on which we cannot speak with assurance, and dogmatic assertions on either side are likely to do harm rather than good.

Elder Talmage presented his talk on this subject in the Tabernacle on August 9, 1931, in which he was very cautious about the descent of Adam, supportive of the geologically sanctioned great age of Earth, generally negative on human evolutionary change, but also positive on the presence of death on Earth before Adam's fall. It was a conciliatory, statesmanlike position, doctrinally secure, and consistent with his knowledge as a professional geologist. He explicitly upheld the authenticity of the geological record, and he left the pre-Adamites a completely open issue. Realizing that he had contradicted Elder Smith in several important ways, Talmage sent the manuscript of his talk to Elder Widtsoe for approval, knowing that Elder Widtsoe did not accept Pre-Adamites. He then met privately with the First Presidency on November 17, 1931 to review every detail of the manuscript of his talk. They approved it, and it was published in the Church News of November 21, and later as a pamphlet authorized by the First Presidency.

Interestingly, Elder Widtsoe later adopted and advocated the existence of pre-Adamites in his article Were there Pre-Adamites?, Improvement Era 51, 205 (May, 1948). Gary J. Begera and Ronald Priddis, in their 1985 book Brigham Young University: A House of Faith quote Elder Widtsoe as saying, in a letter to Albert R. Lyman on 14 June 1948, “If (the Lord) chose to place manlike beings upon the earth before the days of Adam, I really have no right to find fault with that”.

From a doctrinal point of view, the two most important facts are the Who and Why of creation. They both have clear relevance to the principals of salvation. The When, Where, and How of creation are matters for scientists to clarify. As President Grant and his Counselors said, 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…

The relationship between evolution and the principle of eternal progression is also deserving of careful discussion, but we have too little time to attempt it. Just reflect that “eternal” encompasses all time.

We are told to beware the wisdom of men. Science is non-dogmatic and non-authoritarian. It places observation of nature supreme over hypotheses and theories. The sociology of science rewards most generously those who overturn orthodoxy and improve our ability to explain and predict nature. Science is not perfect; it is self-correcting. It is personal and idiosyncratic interpretations of scripture, uninformed by revelation, and in conflict with established facts, that most clearly represent the wisdom of men. Brigham Young warned us of the destructive influence of such uninspired and intellectually dishonest ideas, which lead to faithlessness (“infidelity”):

I am not astonished that infidelity prevails to a great extent among the inhabitants of the earth, for the religious teachers of the people advance many ideas and notions for truth which are in opposition to and contradict facts demonstrated by science, and which are generally understood.



I bear testimony that

1. The greatest strength of the Church is that it is governed by revelation through prophets chosen by God. Their word is superior to all written scripture in matters of both doctrine and practice. This is a Church of both order and revelation. If we hearken to the words of the First Presidency we are following the proper order of God. If we shun doctrines rejected by the First Presidency, we will never be led astray and will not fall into contention, schism, and apostasy

2. Respect for truth demands that we study out these issued diligently, formulate our conclusions, and seek confirmation from the Holy Ghost. It is through the testimony of two independent witnesses that the truth can be known. Those witnesses are revelation and science. The two witnesses of truth, science and revelation (intellect and spirit) do not conflict in any way. The supposed conflict of science and religion is a myth that is dear to Satan and serves his purposes.



It is my hope and prayer that when, in the due course of eternal evolutionary progression, we are called upon to assist in the building of new worlds, we will be both spiritually and intellectually prepared to go and do the things which we are commanded.