On 18 October 2024, Daniel Peterson interviewed Ben Spackman, a Latter-day Saint historian of religion, science, and biblical interpretation, on the topic of Latter-day Saint views of evolution, and Dr. Samuel T. Wilkinson, an active Latter-day Saint who currently serves as an associate professor of psychiatry in Yale University’s School of Medicine. The conversation with Dr. Wilkinson focused on Professor Wilkinson’s recent book, Purpose: What Evolution and Human Nature Imply About the Meaning of Our Existence (New York and London: Pegasus Books, 2024).
Dr. Spackman’s background and formal training are exceptionally broad, including advanced work in Semitic languages, Biblical studies, the history of science, and the history of Christianity, with a primary focus on the Reformation and on modern American religious thought. He completed all of the coursework for a PhD in Comparative Semitics (effectively, in Old Testament Languages and Literature, as well as Arabic) at the University of Chicago, but ultimately received his PhD in American Religious History from Claremont Graduate University, where his dissertation explored twentieth-century Latter-day Saint attitudes toward evolution and creationism.
In Purpose, Dr. Wilkinson argues for a religious dimension—indeed, a religious purpose—in evolution. “Our coming into existence was not random,” he contends, “allowing for the possibility of an overarching purpose to our lives. But evolution seems to have shaped us in such a way that we are pulled in different directions: the dual potential of human nature. We also find ourselves in possession of free will. . . . [W]hen we bring it all together, it seems clear . . . that life is a test. A principal purpose of our existence is to choose between the good and evil inherent within us.”
Purpose was not written for a primarily Latter-day Saint audience, but elements of its argument will surely resonate with students of the Book of Mormon.
Both conversations were recorded, and are now available for viewing below and on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGtODuGEATc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qOXI48Ns40, respectively.
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Hi Allen, perhaps I could have phrased that better 🙂
However, all one needs to do is read posts on Spackman’s blog and his writings on the BYU Biology Department’s “Reconciling Evolution” website, not to mention his FAIR presentations, to learn he is a long-time defender and vigorous proponent of so-called theistic (or Christian) evolution.
The other interviewee/author’s (Wilkinson) introductory paragraph has this sentence: “evolution seems to have shaped us…” That sounds pretty definitive to me and is what I am going off of in my comments.
It is plain from the above descriptions that these people believe evolution to be the method in which all mankind came to be. This despite the fact that the Church takes no position on evolution, but does take a strong position on the origin of man.
I presume I am correct in noting that the various theories of so-called theistic or “Christian” evolution developed by Christian/LDS biologists are in the extreme minority; most evolutionists come from atheistic-humanistic perspectives. So we have private personal theories supporting/revising a scientific theory presented to us by unbelieving scientists.
In 1954, when Elder Harold B. Lee taught the religious educators of the Church in a formal summer school setting at BYU, he observed that:
The other theory, . . . is what has been styled the evolutionary theory—that all existing species are but developments of preexistent lower forms of life, and so on back through spontaneous generation.
There is still one other kind of, shall I say, “theorist.” They are called by some of our writers “Christian evolutionists.” These are the ones who try to harmonize science with religion, and we possibly have had some in the Church whom we might call Christian evolutionists. Of course, Elder Roberts says this: “I am aware that there is a class of men who profess to be ‘Christian evolutionists,’ and who maintain that Christianity can be made to harmonize with the philosophy of evolution. But how are they made to harmonize? We are told that Jesus is still a Redeemer, but in this sense only: he gave out faultless moral precepts, and practiced them in his life, and inasmuch as people accept his doctrines and follow his example they will be redeemed from evil. But as to the fall of man and the atonement made for him by the Son of God—both ideas are of necessity rejected [by the Christian evolutionist]; which means, of course, denying the great fundamental truths of revelation; it is by destroying the basis on which the Christian religion rests, that the two theories are harmonized—if such a process can be called harmonization. It is on the same principle that the lion and the lamb harmonize, or lie down together—the lion eats the lamb.”
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.
It seems such eating is the case here.
Elder Bruce R. McConkie phrased the predicament this way:
We are now ready, item by item, from a theological and not a scientific standpoint, to consider the creation, the fall, and the redemption of man and of all forms of life. As we do so it will be necessary to make choices. A great chorus of voices—crying out in thunderous unity, as though their united harmony established the verity of their views—will say that life and all created things evolved from some single-celled amoeba that lived an astronomically long time ago in some primordial swamp.
Another chorus will chant the contents of whole libraries of textbooks, and books that quote each other and vie for prominence by adding this or that new discovery, or by setting forth some hitherto unknown theoretical postulate. These are the voices of the world. Almost everywhere their theories and guesses are enthroned in temples of learning as though the riddle and problems of the ages had been solved.
Up to this point in time only an occasional voice has been raised in question and in opposition. God grant that more gospel voices will be raised in the future and that the deafening din of speculation may be put to rest by the sweet strains of revealed truth. And as these new voices are raised, the wise among men will know that all things must be judged by gospel standards.
Some few people have made a choice and concluded that what the prophet Lehi taught in 2 Nephi 2 was that prophet’s own personal opinion, and is not revealed scripture. No prophet has ever agreed with this unorthodox view.
Elder McConkie again:
Those who desire to study the theories of men and the “doctrines” of evolution—for such in reality they are—may do so without restraint. A Church which seeks truth from every source; a Church which believes that all truth, whether religious or scientific, as we categorize things, is part and portion of the everlasting gospel; a Church that enthrones truth as the summum bonum of all things—such a Church will and does counsel its members to seek diligently, to rightly divide fact from fiction, and to judge all claims by the true gospel standards. These standards have been given to us as the eternal absolutes round which all else must revolve.
I ask then: should evolution and the gospel be a matter of alleged abstract historical inquiry?–or of careful spiritual discernment.
I know what choice I have made and those whose…
Dennis, you say “It is plain from the above descriptions that these people believe evolution to be the method in which all mankind came to be.”
I’ve read over “the above description” several times, and there is no such plain reading. And, having actually watched both interviews, I can tell you that those being interviewed don’t believe “evolution to be the method in which all mankind came to be.”
You have created a straw man which is relatively easy to knock down. (Congratulations on doing so.) May I suggest, however, that you actually watch and hear what is said in the interviews?