(by Dennis B. Horne)
The below
text quotes a letter written by Nibley to an editor of the Improvement Era
that rejected an article he wrote for publication therein:
Actually there is an enormous accumulation of factual information refuting the claims of the evolutionists, or at lease casting serious doubts upon them. Maybe the stuff is no good, but we will never find out by forbidding all mention of it. We may put the age-old controversy (by no means the child of our Modern Scientific Age, as most people are led to believe) in the form of a dialogue:
A. Why do
you undermine the faith of these young people?
B. To make
them think! To get them out of the grooves!
A. But
there are millions of things to think about. Why do you always emphasize the
same half-dozen shop-worn commonplaces?
B. Because
they are true! Truth at any price! All things must yield to the facts.
A. Bully
for you! I could not agree more. And here are some facts to which I would like
to call to your attention. Let us tell them to the students, and then they will
think harder than ever.
B. No, No!
You can’t do that! That will merely make trouble.
A. But you
said truth at any price—that includes the price of much trouble.
B. I see no
point to undermining scientific reputations; these things are agreed on by many
important scientists—it would be foolish to question them.
A. But
isn’t that exactly how science has made progress in the past? Who is in a
groove now?
And so on.
. . .
THERE ARE
THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE OUTSIDE OF THE CHURCH TODAY BECAUSE OF SCIENTIFIC TEACHINGS
WHICH HAVE BEEN EXPLODED, ARE NOW BEING EXPLODED, AND ARE YET TO BE EXPLODED,
while the gospel remains unscathed.
With the
Christian world in general the scientists have always had their way (not the
other way around, as we have been taught), the whole history of doctrine being,
as Whitehead points out, one “long undignified retreat” as year by year the
churchmen since the third century have diligently accommodated their teachings
to the science of the day. . . .
During the
Darwin Centennial Year a great outpouring of articles took stock of 100 years
of Evolution. I have a whole shoe-box full of notes taken from them. The
dominant theme in these is that what Darwin really gave the world was not so
much a particular explanation of how things came about as the fundamental
awareness that however it happened it was entirely through natural and material
means; whether this or that process produced the world around us is not the
important thing, we are told over and over again, the important thing being to
recognize that whatever the process, it was purely a mechanical one, the
working of natural forces alone and unaided. The corollary of this, expressed
with great heat and passion by scientists today as well as a hundred years ago,
is that it is both unnecessary and pernicious to clutter up the picture with
“supernaturalism.” G. G. Simpson, the patron saint of our local geologists,
never ceases to harp on this theme; he equated God to Santa Claus in his
dialectic, and then berates those immature souls who still believe in Santa. It
is no accident that Marx wanted to dedicate his monument of dialectical materialism
to Darwin—the key to both systems is their uncompromising materialism. But it
was hardly an original discovery; where is the thesis better expressed than in
the Book of Mormon? Korihor not only taught that “every man fared in this life
according to the management of the creature,” but urged the people to give up
their absurd belief in Simpson’s Santa Claus, “the effect of a frenzied mind.”
Again it is Brigham Young who states the issue with characteristic clarity and
brevity: “Instead of considering that there is nothing known and understood,
only as we know and understand things naturally, I take the other side of the
question, and believe positively that there is nothing known except by the
revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, whether in theology, science, or art.” You
cannot reconcile those two views because they look in opposite directions. . .
. .
A common
pitfall in reconstructions of the past is the illusion that if one had
explained by a proper scientific method how a thing COULD have happened, one
has explained how it actually DID happen. The best scientists are guilty of
this very unscientific thinking. We are allowed to say, “This is how it MAY
have happened,” but never, “This is how it DID happen.” There are always
unknown factors. “Fifty-seven years ago,” wrote Whitehead, “I was a young man
in the University of Cambridge. I was taught science and mathematics by
brilliant men and I did well in them; since the turn of the century I have
lived to see every one of the basic assumptions of both set aside. . . . And
yet, in the face of that, the discoverers of the new hypotheses in science are
declaring, ‘Now at last, we have certitude’—when some of the assumptions which
we have seen upset had endured for more than twenty centuries.” It is easy and
pleasant to show off by talking about the subject one is presently working on,
but to put it in the category of eternal truth is inexcusable. . . . The
evolutionary hypothesis from the beginning had this merit; its proponents
boldly set forth certain propositions, confidently predicting the outcome of
certain experiments. Many of these experiments were carried out, with results
diametrically opposed to those predicted. What did the experts do? Did they
apologize for their presumption? Did they admit that there might be a flaw in
the hypothesis? Not a bit of it! With the greatest of ease they contrived new
interpretations of the data that proved that the outcome of the experiments,
though it was the reverse of what was predicted, proved the validity of the
original hypothesis instead of refuting it. Such men can’t lose. . . .
I begrudge
no man his model or the corner of the floor he is playing on. But when anyone
insists that he knows from his model alone exactly how the entire jigsaw cosmos
will look when it is completed, it is time to protest. That can be known only
by revelation. The Lord has given us the Big Picture, but no amount of juggling
the pieces in any one or any dozen disciplines can begin to give us the
remotest inkling of what the whole picture is like. The best we can hope for
from that direction are man’s own hypothetical tentative constructions, and to
present them as part of the Gospel is entirely out of order.
(Correspondence, Hugh Nibley to L.F. [Lorin F.] Wheelright,
September 16, 1965.)
***
The words
of the prophets cannot be held to the tentative and defective tests that men
have devised for them. Science, philosophy, and common sense all have a right
to their day in court. But the last word does not lie with them. Every time men
in their wisdom have come forth with the last word, other words have promptly
followed. The last word is a testimony of the gospel that comes only by direct
revelation. Our Father in heaven speaks it, and if it were in perfect agreement
with the science of today, it would surely be out of line with the science of
tomorrow. Let us not, therefore, seek to hold God to the learned opinions of
the moment when he speaks the language of eternity. (Nibley, The World and
the Prophets, p. 134.)
***
The university has dictated doctrine
and policy to every church that has sponsored it, and the churches of the world
have listened to its voices only for a lack of a better guide. The true Church
needs no such crutch to lean on. (Hugh Nibley Correspondence, July 29, 1960)
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