I'm a Gospel Doctrine teacher in our ward. Today, we were discussing Alma 30, reading about Korihor. While we were discussing the false doctrines he taught, one of the members of the bishopric brought up verse 17, and proceeded to go off on how Charles Darwin must have been inspired by the same spirit that inspired Korihor (the devil), and that every facet of the theory of evolution is false. Because arguing that point would have been useless, I made no comment and moved on, but I was very, very pissed.
Why is evolution such a hard pill for Christians to swallow? If your religion tells you that one part of it inaccurate, fine, but don't throw out the baby with the bath water! Evolution is the principle upon which all of modern biology rests. I sure wish the uninformed would stop attacking it.
There. I changed it.
Contributors
Web Pages I Regularly Visit
Recent Music Purchases by Jake and Lauren
- Crystal Silence- Chick Corea and Gary Burton
- Greatest Hits- Heart
- Armchair Apocrypha- Andrew Bird
A Random Picture
From our honeymoon, in Ensenada, Mexico. You can't see it very well here, but that little blue man on the sign behind me is supposed to be a viagra pill.
Quote of the...week?
On Barack Obama's being elected President: "A stunning accomplishment. I figured, if anyone would be elected our first black President, it would have been an Asian guy. Their parents push them so hard."
- Stephen Colbert
- Stephen Colbert
6 comments:
Wow! I can't believe you restrained yourself! But I'm proud of you for doing so!!! Time and place for everything, you know.
I would suggest that you gently hand them a copy of "Evolution and Mormonism," written by two BYU or Ricks (I can't remember) professors about how the two concepts coincide harmoniously.
I don't think that I would have been able to restrain myself as well as you did. I can't stand it when ignorant people try to influence others when they don't even know what they are talking about.
It also bothers me when people go off on "science is so unreliable, and it's always changing it's opinion, and they thought the world was flat in Columbus' day, but it's not, so evolution is obviously false, imagine what it will be like when we can use more than 10% of our brain... etc etc etc"
It bothers me partly because it is the same "I heard/read it somewhere" gullibility that makes people blindly accept what some born-again pastor said about "the Mormons." Truth-seeking and finding out for yourself is NOT just limited to a basic testimony; learning truth it's an essential part of our existence.
It also bothers me because I'm a convert, and I cringe to think of the people who may be in the audience, weighing the church carefully by what they hear. Perhaps they are newly baptized, taking the discussions, or just struggling with their testimony. No one really ever challenges some crazy assertions, because we don't want to hurt Sister Crazy's testimony -- but false information can hurt the testimony of people new to the gospel, too. The spirit testifies of truth, and cliched email-chain anti-science is NOT truth.
I remember being in a gospel principles class where the instructor bragged about how BoM prophecies had been fulfilled by how well "we" civilized the savage, primitive Native Americans. There was only one investigator, a person who lived in Utah and just wanted to see what the church was about. He commented, "hmmm, civilized them? There were some pretty advanced civilizations before they were wiped out by disease." My wife and I tried to interject what we could in the lesson, and talked with the investigator afterward, but the instructor's continued adamant assertions that pre-european American civ was in dire need of White Man's influence made me very sad.
Wow, James. That is so sad.
I had a Gospel Principles teacher on my mission who would consistently find some part of the lesson to use an excuse to talk about how evil the Democrats are, and how righteous and wise the Republicans are. Just as I left the area, it drove one of our investigators away. I was PISSED.
Post a Comment