Refuting and Correcting BYU’s False Doctrine on the Origin of Man #6 - Examining The 1910 Improvement Era editorial

(by Dennis B. Horne)

 

            An April 1910 Improvement Era editorial is often used by theistic evolutionists to give support to their evolution-gospel harmonization attempts. The editorial, after referencing the three main scriptural accounts found in the standard works (the books of Genesis, Moses, and Abraham), reads: “These are the authentic statements of the scriptures, ancient and modern, and it is best to rest with these, until the Lord shall see fit to give more light on the subject. 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.” The author of this editorial didn’t seem to know his scriptures very well.

            Only the year before (as this Improvement Era source notes) the First Presidency had already specifically given more light on the subject and indicated what “the revealed word” taught, in their declaration on “The Origin of Man,” (partially quoted below). Since then, other prophets and apostles have also shed more light on these scriptures—meaning we have access to more knowledge than just the figurative scriptural expressions describing the creation of Adam. That is, unless someone needs to use the first mentioned Improvement Era option for support of theistic evolution. These may be “questions not fully answered in the revealed word of God” but they are doctrines better answered in the revealed word than the first two options account for, and they are better clarified by many authoritative scripture expounders. None of the three options account for the doctrine of the Fall of Adam and Eve, and therefore do not harmonize with many scriptures.

Bonus Blog for this series on Refuting and Correcting BYU’s False Doctrine on the Origin of Man - Responses from Readers So Far

          Friends, contacts, and associates have sent me emails with their reactions to this blog series, still in its beginning stages. I have removed names. Also, three comments were made at the end of blog #1, the Introduction, that readers may also want to see:

 

Nice! I think the Church could save itself a lot of grief if they would simply promote/encourage teaching the doctrine in the scriptures. Yet they don’t seem to want to do this.  Why?????????   Apparently this is one of those deep doctrines that no one is supposed to really know about? Yet, there it is, stated plainly in the scriptures. When I pointed this out in a gospel doctrine class a few years ago, few if any were aware of it and it created quite a stir. Everyone seems to acknowledge the fact we are spiritually BEGOTTEN sons and daughter of God, but no seems to want to understand or acknowledge what it means to be BEGAT spiritually or in mortality. It would sure be nice if one of our modern-day prophets, seers. and revelators would address this. If they did, I think it would put to rest some of the credence people give to evolution. 

Refuting and Correcting BYU’s False Doctrine on the Origin of Man #5 - Theistic Evolution—the false teaching that God used evolution to create mankind / Adam & Eve

(by Dennis B. Horne)

I heard one of our own eminent scientists say something to the effect

 that he believed more professors have taken themselves out of the Church

 by their trying to philosophize or intellectualize the fall of Adam

and the subsequent atonement of the Savior.

—President Harold B. Lee

 

When you find some of our Latter-day Saint teachers who

struggle to try to explain how the Creation and the Fall of man

 took place and can be harmonized with the evolutionary theory of science,

 the net result is that the teachings of the gospel are destroyed

and the theory of evolution prevails.

—President Harold B. Lee

 

            Because most evolutionists of the wider scientific world are also atheists, and because the theory of evolution doesn’t need God, BYU evolutionists have been obliged to imagine up an alternate theory of evolution that allows for God’s existence and involvement. So some of them have come up with various iterations of evolution that have God somehow directing it from beginning (whatever that is supposed to be) to end, hundreds of millions of years later. The prophets and apostles have rejected such nonsense the same as the rest of it, as the below quotations make abundantly clear:

Refuting and Correcting BYU’s False Doctrine on the Origin of Man #4 - Teaching Evolution as the Origin of Man to Latter-day Saints (Part B)

 (by Dennis B. Horne)

 

Brigham Young had the proper words for those intellectual Mormons

who generously offered to place their great minds at the disposal

of the Church and make the Gospel intellectually respectable:

“O puss, what a long tail you have got!”

—Hugh Nibley

 

            The below quotations are generally speaking on a broad level about the problems of teachings vain speculations and theories, and mixing them with the gospel. The quotations from the prophets are filled with warnings about accepting scientific teachings without due caution and wariness, and to avoid accepting unproven theories (defined as hypotheses, not as facts):

 

President Joseph F. Smith:

            It is to be feared…that in some places there is a growing disposition to involve our religious ideas and instructions in all sorts of speculations.  In religious technicalities there is always a distinct danger—a danger in which men undertake to solve the relation which we bear to God through the medium of human reasoning.  There are some who love to argue for argument’s sake—as willing to argue on the side of error as of truth—and it is very easy for such people to fall into the spirit of contention.  There are others who are prone to mysticism, and become easy victims of all sorts of sophistries.  There are people who are always in search of hidden meaning they imagine they see in the Scriptures, and they waste their lives on trivial and unimportant matters.

            There are facts enough in the history of God’s dispensation to man to occupy thoughtful minds, and there are always peculiar conditions to be found in the history of religion that can be made applicable to our social needs and individual wants; and the great fundamental truths of Holy Writ are the simplest and most easily understood.  If they have become difficult to human understanding, it is because religious speculators of the day have involved them in systems of philosophy that are not necessary to their appreciation or understanding. (Editorial Thoughts, “Simplicity in Religion,” The Juvenile Instructor, vol. XLVI [May 1911], no. 5, 268.)

Refuting and Correcting BYU’s False Doctrine on the Origin of Man #3 - Teaching Evolution as the Origin of Man to Latter-day Saints (Part A)

 (by Dennis B. Horne)

 Reluctantly I alert you to the possibility that among your teachers

are one or two who deliberately inject students with diseased ideas.

The test depends on whether they are teaching about false standards

or theories or philosophies or whether they are advocates of them.

You must discern whether you are being taught about an

 ideology or proselyted to it.

— President Boyd K. Packer

 

            Church leaders have had much to say, by way of caution and warning and rebuke, to those Latter-day Saints who defiantly teach evolution as fact and truth instead of as an hypothesis or scientific postulate. The reason is because by teaching evolution as something it isn’t—truth—a professor or instructor can damage the faith of a student who believes in the teachings of the scriptures and the apostles and prophets. Below are statements of counsel these prophets and apostles have given to help students and others navigate the problems that occur when evolution is wrongly taught as fact/truth to faithful, believing Saints. This apostolic counsel applies to students being taught by both atheistic/agnostic professors/teachers, and also by those partially believing professors who foolishly teach macro-evolution as truth at BYU or elsewhere:

Refuting and Correcting BYU’s False Doctrine on the Origin of Man #2 - Sampling of Apostolic Quotations Refuting Evolution

(by Dennis B. Horne)

           I have thought it prudent, in this lengthy blog series, to place upfront a selection of representative quotations from prophets, seers, and revelators that refute evolution providing for the origin of man. By doing this, readers can perceive (in summary) the overwhelming power and unity of the views of these apostles, without having to read every word of every blog thereafter, although there will be great benefit for those who do. Some readers may not be familiar with the names of some of these apostles because they served in former generations, but they were great leaders and teachers for their time nonetheless. Today, some misled members agitate for ridding the church of the teachings (that they don’t like) of past apostles and prophets (by labeling it human tradition instead of revealed doctrine), but what was truth in their day remains true in ours, and always will be. These quotations will probably not cause any evolutionists to forsake their delusions and repent, but they may be of help to those the evolutionists seek to influence with their false theories:

 

Elder James E. Talmage:

            When I see how often the theories and conceptions of men have gone astray, have fallen short of the truth, yea, have even contradicted the truth directly, I am thankful in my heart that we have an iron rod to which we can cling—the rod of certainty, the rod of revealed truth. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints welcomes all truth, but it distinguishes most carefully between fact and fancy, between truth and theory, between premises and deductions; and it is willing to leave some questions in abeyance until the Lord in his wisdom shall see fit to speak more plainly. As the result of the combined labors of wise men I learn that man is but the developed offspring of the beast; and yet I read that God created man in his own image, after his likeness; and again, I stand on the word of God, though it be in contradiction to the theories of men. (Conference Report, October 1916, 75)

Introduction to this 55-Part Series on Refuting and Correcting BYU’s False Doctrine on the Origin of Man

 (by Dennis B. Horne)

 

“To one who has high spirituality,

faith in the gospel and in the doctrines of the Church

supersedes scientific theories and the philosophies of men.”

—Elder Harold B. Lee[1]

 

I have realized for a long time the need of spiritual protection,

protection in the teachings that we give to our young people in our

organizations, to save them from the false doctrines and teachings of the world.

—President Joseph Fielding Smith

 

There has developed in recent years what almost amounts to a cult

 in certain fields. This is a cult which also points the finger of scorn at believers

and would seek to make us ashamed of our faith.

It is one which would have us reject the doctrine of a special creation

and accept the unproven but time-worn theory

that all life evolved from lower forms, that worms and microbes

were our ancestors, and not God.

—Elder Mark E. Petersen