South Jordan Mom Wrote:
But anyhow, have you heard these stories going around at all? What about the human evolution element? When I was at BYU in the early 80s I remember being taught in an Old Testament class there by an LDS Professor that man has not evolved at all. Man was created and put on the earth the same as he is today. There was a quote in the manual from Ezra T. Benson saying that and the Professor said to us the teaching came directly from the prophet and so was unquestionable. Is that what is still taught now? I'm not asking to criticize or make fun, I'm simply curious.
My brother-in-law recently (a couple semesters ago) took a Zoology class at BYU and I remember him talking to me about an evolution discussion they had in class. I did a search on the web and found the statement they used for their discussion. You can read the official statement by the First Presidency of the church in 1909 here http://biology100.byu.edu/assignments/files/Readings/OriginOfMan.pdf. Note that this statement is for reading material for the Biology 100 course at BYU, so I think we can safely assume that it is currently taught. To sum it up, the official LDS church policy about human evolution is this: humans did not evolve. They are the spiritual offspring of God, created in His image. The article itself does not directly address the overall evolution issue so the official policy there seems to be that there is none currently. You might also be interested or surprised to know that I also found out that the National Geographic article I referenced in my first post on this subject is part of the course's required reading (http://biology100.byu.edu/assignments/files/Readings/WasDarwinWrong.pdf ). The third reading that goes along with those two seems to be a discussion about the relationship between science and religion (http://biology100.byu.edu/assignments/files/Readings/IHaveAQuestion.pdf ). So it seems that the students are presented both sides and encouraged to come to their own conclusions. Regarding the dinosaur theories, I have heard that one before but not for about 15-20 years. The other theory I have heard is that they were killed in the Flood (this is mentioned as a possibility in the book "Mormon Doctrine" by Bruce R. McConkie). So as far as I know there is basically no official policy there, either. Some of these "guesses" by people seem to take on a life of their own and start to get thrown around as "official doctrine". Hope this was informational. Aaron