Mormonism and evolution are fundamentally incompatible

Joseph Fielding Smith said it the best.

"I say most emphatically, you cannot believe in this theory [of evolution] of the origin of man, and at the same time accept the plan of salvation as set forth by the Lord our God.

You must choose the one and reject the other, for they are in direct conflict and there is a gulf separating them which is so great that it cannot be bridged, no matter how much one may try to do so.... Then Adam, and by that I mean the first man, was not capable of sin. He could not transgress, and by doing so bring death into the world; for, according to this theory [of evolution], death had always been in the world.

If, therefore, there was no fall, there was no need of an atonement, hence the coming into the world of the Son of God as the Savior of the world is a contradiction, a thing impossible. Are you prepared to believe such a thing as that?"
--Joseph Fielding Smith Doctrines of Salvation, v. 1, pp. 141‑42

He makes it pretty clear where the church stands on Evolution. According to him, they "are in direct conflict" with each other.

On the other hand, maybe he was merely "speaking as a man" when he made that statement. And maybe that's how faithful, evolution acknowledging, members of the church can reconcile their faith with verifiable fossils and hard science.

But then that means those same faithful saints must acknowledge it is ok to "cherry pick" which sermons and teachings from the Lords anointed servants they choose to accept and which ones they are free to discard.

Who knows, maybe someday science will determine precisely what causes one individual to be gay and another individual straight. And when that happens, I'm sure there will be many faithful members who will acknowledge the scientific facts and discard the past words of Boyd K Packer who currently speaks so eloquently and clearly on the origins and evils of homosexuality.

There's nothing quite like having the true and living prophets sitting around waiting for science to discover the real facts. It really is too bad God doesn't just give us the insight and explanation now through his appointed mouthpiece.

Why is it we have to wait for the guys in white lab coats to figure things out before we can finally get the answers?

What kind of converts are we getting?

Every year the Brethren announce how many convert baptisms occurred during the last year. The number consistently falls around 250,000. Approximately 50,000 missionaries (soon to temporarily dramatically increase) translates to about 5 converts per year per missionary.

These numbers are surprisingly consistent with numbers from my mission more than a decade ago. We always thought we were a low baptizing mission but it turns out we were just average.

Recently I have been pondering on these convert baptisms. Who are these people? What kind of lives have they led? What circumstances in their lives caused them to actually listen and follow the teachings of the missionaries as opposed to just slamming the door?

Based on my own experiences from my mission, many convert baptisms are over-age 8 children of less-active members. The white handbook listed in descending order the most effective methods for finding new converts. Part member and less active families were near the top of the list.

Also on the list was funerals. I can only assume people going through a tremendous loss in their life may be more open to a message of seeing their loved one again.

But that brings up an interesting question. Is it ethical or even moral to capitalize on someone's distressed state of mind to get them to convert?

For example, early on in my mission the bishop of the ward complained to us that we "were only baptizing crazy people." He admonished us to "go find some normal people to convert." At the time I accepted his counsel and resolved to seek out people of sound mind and who could be contributors to the local ward. Unfortunately, my efforts went unrewarded. We just couldn't find any fully functioning, financially sufficient individual who would listen to us. At the time I attributed it to the fact it was a wealthy area and they were all too proud to need God.

Another story relevant to this question is from a person close to me who served a mission in the United States. This individual related an instance where the missionaries baptized an individual but discovered a problem when they submitted the paperwork. This person had already been baptized about 6 years earlier! The individual relating the story was overwhelmed at what an amazing church we have that someone could be baptized, leave the church, and then be re baptized and the church could immediately see their previous baptism. What a marvel of technology and how organized and good record keepers the church is!!!

I looked at the situation and thought, "Is this the best convert the church can convince to join? Someone who was already baptized but either forgot or saw it as being of such little consequence as to not even mention it to the missionaries?"

Either this convert is not all there or he is extremely uncommitted. Either way, there's not much the church can do with such an individual. He will inevitably be yet another "high maintenance, low yield" member.

I must say at this point I am not knocking converts. One of my parents was an adult convert to the church. Many good members of the church come from converts. But more and more in recent years, "normal" people are not too interested in the Mormon church. Either they do a little research online and discover the church is not what it claims to be or else they are solid, functioning individuals with no need for the rigid structure and dogma of Mormonism.

I firmly believe this is going to become an ever increasing problem for the Mormon church. Life-long members of the church will be the major resource for the stabilizing, contributing members necessary for running the organization.

The global missionary effort is not to gain converts ( if that really is the singular objective, the church is failing in dramatic fashion ) but rather to further retain existing members who would otherwise leave the church. A two year stint dedicating your life to the church is a powerful tool for conditioning ones mind to maintain that same allegiance over the course of the rest of your life.

The brethren know this and so they lowered the missionary age to get boys on missions before they have a chance to drift away from the church. So really, one could look at this dramatic uptick in the number of missionaries to be a dramatic increase in lifelong, tithe paying members. At least, I'm sure that's what the brethren are hoping.

Is it God or is it just random events?

In the Mormon church we are explicitly warned of the negative consequences that will surely come from disobedience.

If you drink alcohol, you will become an alcoholic and damage your family relationships. Your marriage will suffer and you may beat your wife and/or kids.

If you don't pay your tithing, The Lord will not bless you. You will have no protection against financial struggles. Your job may be put at risk and your overall financial health will dangle on the edge of ruin without an all powerful being there to watch over you.

If you masturbate, it will inevitably lead to sex play with your buddies and then you will be hopelessly gay.

If you have sex outside of marriage, you will suffer the most excruciating emotional sorrow. That act alone will lay waste to the most precious thing you possess, your virtue. Nothing but pain and anguish will come from violating that most sacred commandment.

And most serious of all, if you leave the church you will lose all protection from God. You will not only be completely on your own, but you will also be in the power of the most diabolical and evil being to ever exist. Lucifer will have you in his clutches and you will most definitely suffer.

So that is what we are told. And for my entire life I absolutely accepted these warnings and threats at face value. But then a funny thing happened. I started to look around and observe people. I looked at faithful members of the church. I looked at people who had never been members. And then I looked at those who had left the church.

After a few years of watching all these groups of people, I came to a startling conclusion! I could see no correlation or pattern to suggest any of what I had been taught is actually true!

Faithful members of the church have money trouble at about the same rate as everyone else, even apostates. And ex Mormons get promoted or laid off from work at pretty much the same rate as full tithe paying members. In fact, I personally observed, from collecting the tithing donations, quite a few members who consistently paid their tithing every month and also had to collect welfare and church assistance just to make ends meet. I guess one could say their welfare and church assistance were blessings from God because of their tithing. But I say that if they kept that 10% to pay their rent, that is just that much less they would need to collect from the church and the govt. also, doesn't this scenario kind of fly in the face of the teaching that The Lord will "open the windows of heaven" for tithe payers?

My point is that I see no evidence at all to suggest that being a faithful member of the church offers any added financial or employment or health benefits than your average citizen. Now wait, you may say, what about the Word of Wisdom?? Mormons are healthier. It is true not smoking dramatically increases your chances of being healthy. However, studies have shown occasional coffee and red wine consumption to be beneficial. So, Mormons have part of it right, but certainly not everything.

Another interesting phenomenon I have witnessed goes like this. If a faithful member of the church has something wonderful happen in their life, it is immediately attributed to "the tender mercies" of a loving Heavenly Father. If something difficult or tragic happens to a faithful member, it's "God testing us" for our own benefit and growth. How many times have we heard, "Well, God has a plan and we don't always know what that plan is. We just have to trust him and he will help us through this trial."

And if an apostate has something difficult or tragic happen to them, then it's always a result of their disobedience and lack of faith. Either God is punishing them directly or God is merely standing back and allowing them to be on their own and he is not protecting them. But if something good happens to the apostate, then it's a case of God still loving them even though they have turned their back on him. And he's most likely showing them the blessings they could always have if they would just return to the fold.

Do you see the problem, or the reality, here? It doesn't matter WHAT happens to WHOM, it can always be twisted around so it can be seen as being from the hand of God. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing. We as humans constantly look for and focus on any evidence that confirms our pre-existing biases and beliefs. And we throw out or disregard anything that contradicts what we already believe.

So in the cases outlined above, people just engage in mental gymnastics to further confirm their firmly held belief that if you're faithful and obey the brethren, good things will happen to you. And if you're not completely faithful, bad things will happen to you.

Based on my own objective observations, there seems to be no correlation between following the brethren vs leaving the church when it comes to the random and unpredictable events that come to every human being. Life is just life, whether you're in the church or out of it.

An open letter to LDS church leaders

In December of last year, members of the Mormon church submitted an open letter to the leaders of the church. The link is here

They asked for the church to respond to the many issues and concerns members of the church are learning about the church. One line from the letter really stood out to me.

"It is not as you may suppose a crisis of faith, but is in a very real sense a crisis of authority; your authority, and the authority of those above you in the LDS hierarchy."

The issues surrounding the church are real and they are valid. A member's testimony cannot help but be shaken upon learning this information, no matter how fully they believe.

And the issues cast legitimate doubt on the fundamental claims of the church.

Faith vs knowledge

- I borrowed this because I like it -

If faith is believing in something that you can't see or something that you don't have 100% knowledge of, then if you know something, or are presented with verifiable facts, your faith in the matter disappears. Most members acknowledge that it works this way, but only acknowledge it in the positive sense. "The brother of Jared didn't have faith in god anymore because he saw god. He now KNOWS".

If it is proven that something isn't true, your faith also goes away in the matter, regardless of which side (true/false) your faith rested on. In the Church, this negative aspect is completely ignored and dismissed.

For example, you present the fact that Joseph Smith was a liar. FACT: Joseph Smith lied about polygamy (and cite your sources, especially the church-sponsored ones, b/c everyone knows that everything about the church that doesn't come from official sources are anti-mormon lies from the devil intended to drag you down to the gulf of endless misery and wo). Believing members would say "I still have faith that he was a prophet of God." They won't even accept the FACTS that you presented to them.

I think if they did accept verifiable FACTS, and if they still chose to have faith in something that would still make Joseph Smith a prophet in their minds, their testimony would have to go something like this:

"I have FAITH that Joseph Smith was somehow a prophet of God, even though I KNOW he was a liar, a bigamist, an adulterer, etc"

It'd be nice if everybody on fast Sundays was completely honest about what they KNOW and what they only have FAITH in. It's sickening hearing people say that they KNOW things in testimony meeting when they merely HOPE and have FAITH. It'd be much more entertaining if they didn't lie.

I gave up on the church because I accepted verifiable FACTS that made my FAITH in the church evaporate. I tried to keep going, to read the apologist's rebuttals, to somehow make it work in my mind so we could all stay on the same page, but it was sickening because I KNEW.

I KNEW the facts. What really pushed me over the edge were the facts that I hadn't heard of before, like polyandry, and JS translating by putting a stone in his hat and putting his head in it, and some of the major changes in the BoM and D&C, the Book of Abraham, and the Kinderhook plates. It wasn't the fact that I hadn't heard of a lot of them before that bothered me. The first time I read them I dismissed them because they seemed so outrageous and different from what I had been taught and everything I had heard. The clincher for me was when I saw church friendly sources confirm the FACTS, that they actually occurred.

From that point on, it didn't matter to me what the conclusions were that people from both sides drew from the FACTS, even though I did side almost entirely with LDS-critical conclusions.

My FAITH in the LDS church is gone, and won't ever come back, because now I KNOW.

What is necessary for our salvation?

- I borrowed this because I like it -

Mormons get to have it both ways.

They malign others for cherry-picking the doctrines they're willing to believe/follow, while doing it themselves. They ignore big swaths of their own scriptures/doctrine by using excuses like "it's not necessary for our salvation", but it's utterly arbitrary what they "pick and choose" as necessary or not.

What standard do they sort by? What determines what's "necessary" and what's not?

The scriptures are supposed to BE the standard, yet they apply some other standard to the scriptures that allows them to deselect parts of them. What is the standard then? The prophets? OK, so you have a prophet who can, and does, supercede scripture...why have scripture then? If there are parts of scriptures that aren't necessary for salvation, but EVERYTHING the prophet says IS necessary...then heck, ditch the scriptures in favor of the prophet.

Oh but the prophet is bound by the scriptures? Oh, only the ones that are necessary for our salvation? But he himself decides that? And what about the words of prophets that are now embarrassing or controversial? The church wants to have the option of distancing itself from those teachings so a living prophet trumps a dead prophet.

....Uhhhm, I'm sensing a circular feedback loop here.

What would cause you to leave the church?

Ask a true believer if they can think of a hypothetical valid reason for leaving the church. In other words, can they think of something that would be grounds for leaving, if that reason can be reasonably demonstrated to have a basis in fact.

Due to the emotional connection most members have to the church, I find it unlikely they will be able to imagine any scenario or information that would cause them to leave the church.

Where do we find God's will?

If we are to align our will with the will of God, how are we to know Gods will? So far, we only have the word of other men who claim to speak for God. But these men are fallible and therefore we can't assume everything they ever say is straight from God's mind.

So where is the line where Gods word ends and man's word begins? Is it really up to each individual to determine which conference talks and what lessons are the Word of God, and which ones are merely the words and opinions of men? If I pray about a talk or principle, and I receive an answer that it is just the opinion of a man, is that an acceptable conclusion?

Do I really have the option to determine, through prayer and spiritual confirmation, what applies to me and what I can disregard? Is this approach really compatible with church doctrine? If not, then that means members are required to follow every directive handed down from the Brethren, regardless of how the individual feels about the matter. If you take the church at its word, then the one-size-fits-all directions from the Brethren really must be applied to every individual, regardless of personal circumstances or tastes.

And you are then also required to follow every directive from the Brethren, even if they happen to be speaking as men.

Why so sensitive?

When those outside of Mormonism write articles about the church or articles are written on the subject, Mormons usually bristle at the descriptions and characterizations and claim the author is biased or "has an axe to grind."

I think it's more a simple fact that from the outside, Mormonism looks kinda wacky. But if you're in the church, you filter everything through your "believing" eyes and twist everything around so it appears normal.

So when an outsider calls it as they see it, the church member is offended and cries persecution. This emotional reaction is only exacerbated by the clear and explicit direction from the Brethren to avoid exposure to anything critical of the church or even anything that may portray the church in a critical manner. And objective critiques of the church certainly fall under this description.

Young Women's object lesson

An hilarious, and also very disturbing, account of an object lesson from a Young Women's activity. Is this something you would be comfortable exposing your children to?

- I borrowed this because I like it -

When I was in Young Women's, I went to a stake activity with my sister and my mom. They had set up the primary room with tables lining the perimeter. At each table, there were examples of choices a person could make during their lifetime.

For example, one could get married in the temple, get a tattoo, obey or disobey the WOW, or go on a mission (to name a few). Each girl was supposed to mark off on a paper which decisions she wanted to make in life. It was pretty obvious from the beginning where this activity was headed.

So, just to be smart-asses, my sister and I rebelled. So did my mom, lol. We all got temporary tattoos and none of us went on imaginary missions. I wouldn't say we did anything too horrible, but we definately weren't making all the obvious decisions for brownie-points, either.

At the end of the "game", our points were tallied up and we were sent to one of three different rooms, depending on our scores. Now, this was a pretty large activity, keep in mind. Most of the young women went to the Relief Society room, where they seemed to be throwing a party. They had cake, music, and punch. This was supposed to represent the celestial kingdom. I don't remember much about what the second room looked like, but I wanna say it was a small room with a few chairs and some bread and water. A couple girls went to that room. It was, of course, supposed to represent the Terrestrial kingdom.

And which room do you suppose me, my mom and sister ended up in? The Telestial Kingdom room. This was a small, empty room with no chairs and nothing but a sleeve of saltine crackers to eat. We stood there, waiting for someone to come and tell us the game was over and we could go join the rest of the group.

Finally, people started showing up. But it was only to visit and gloat about the wonderful cake they were eating. We were never allowed to enter the Celestial or Terrestrial room, and we were told so, outright. We really did assume there would be some sort of message at the end and we'd all be included to eat cake. But, if there was a message, we didn't hear it. All of the other YW's leaders were in the Celestial room (except for my mom). My mom, on the other hand, was pissed. She thought they'd made their point. After waiting a substantial amoint of time, we left without saying goodbye to anyone.

Elder Uchtdorf explains the reality of questioning the Church

According to President Dieter F Uchtdorf, those who take a closer look at the claims of the church are to be compared to those who believe the earth is flat and those who believe the moon is a hologram.

"For those who already embrace the truth, his primary strategy is to spread the seeds of doubt. For example, he has caused many members of the Church to stumble when they discover information about the Church that seems to contradict what they had learned previously. 

 If you experience such a moment, remember that in this age of information there are many who create doubt about anything and everything, at any time and every place. You will find even those who still claim that they have evidence that the earth is flat, that the moon is a hologram, and that certain movie stars are really aliens from another planet. 

And it is always good to keep in mind, just because something is printed on paper, appears on the Internet, is frequently repeated, or has a powerful group of followers doesn’t make it true. Sometimes untrue claims or information are presented in such a way that they appear quite credible. However, when you are confronted with information that is in conflict with the revealed word of God, remember that the blind men in the parable of the elephant would never be able to accurately describe the full truth." CES Jan 2013

Apparently anything critical of the Church can reasonably be compared to the ludicrous claims of those believing the earth is flat or claim the moon is a hologram. That's a very interesting, and condescending, position to take Brother Uchtdorf. Maybe you would care to address some of these silly and easily dismissed claims against the Church? I'm more than willing to discuss specifics with you.