I really shouldn't be up at 2 am posting blogs, but I'm just about done with a paper I'm writing and I found out that only 22% of Mormons believe in evolution, fewer even than evangelical christians. I'll probably talk about my feelings another day, but I'm curious:
*Someone asked what I meant by evolution. I just copied my facebook response,
What I really mean is what most scientists mean when referring to evolution: the idea that primarily through random mutation and natural selection (into which I'm grouping sexual selection and some other things) all the diversity of life seen on earth gradually came to be from common ancestry. Hopefully that doesn't change too many answers.
For more on what I mean by evolution, check out the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
(if you've already voted, you can see the results here. But vote first!)
Obviously my readership isn't even sort of representative of the church body, since lots of my friends who aren't Mormon's read my blog, and I suspect those people I know who are LDS are not exactly a representative sample. I'm mostly just curious about the people I know, so lets see your 2 cents, and then I'll tell you later how I feel, as a budding mormon biologist, about evolution.
Don't you mean "as a sexually reproductive mormon biologist"? :)
ReplyDeleteDo I understand enough about evolution to know if I believe it outright? No.
ReplyDeleteDo I believe things on earth evolved? Yes.
Do I believe evolution happened and is happening independent of God's understanding, direction, and/or influence? No.
With those questions and answers as a foundation, then I can answer yes, I "believe in" evolution.
God set all things in order. This denotes that there was something there to start with, not that a magic handkerchief was pulled away, and there existed something where there had been nothing. That's not creation, so much as chemical/biological engineering. Says me.
ReplyDeleteI heard a cool story on the radio about this population of rattlesnakes that you might find interesting, Ammon. Humans were starting to invade their territory, and so the loudest ones would get noticed and get killed (whereas before this characteristic was advantageous to survival). Rattlesnakes with quieter or dysfunctional rattles were selected for, and the population shifted to "silent" rattlers.
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