Evolution and Genesis

[SoonerCoug]

I have a few things to say about evolution and Genesis.

First of all, if you're going to be a literalist like Tex, then let's be genuine literalists. God created the world in 6 days. He made Eve from Adam's rib. Thankfully, we have had modern prophets who taught us that it was actually 6 creative periods, and the whole rib things was completely figurative (Kimball). If it weren't for these guys, we'd be Evangelicals. If Joseph Smith had lived through the post-Darwin Era, my guess is that we wouldn't even be discussing this issue.

Now let's be even more literal. In Hebrew, there are several versions of the word "Adam." One of those versions is "Adamah" which is plural and refers to mankind in general. Guess which version of the word "Adam" is used in the Hebrew Bible? That's right--Adamah--the plural, mankind. So even if you take everything else literally, there's already a bit of a wrench in the works. God created "Man and Woman."

We know that the Church initially embraced the concept of evolution, with the first presidency actually publishing missionary tracts about how we embrace Darwin's theories and that all of these truths are consistent with the Gospel. It wasn't until Joseph Fielding Smith and McConkie that we completely reverted to literalism. There has since been a a bit of a reversal of that literalism, although most Mormons are still in denial.

So now I ask you to make an assumption. I ask you literalists (or partial literalists..."macro vs. micro evolution"...half-way acknowledgers of the scientific evidence") to assume that God does not lie or attempt to deceive his children by planting misleading evidence in the earth's layers.

What do we know beyond any reasonable doubt?

We know that the earth is ~4.5 billion years old.

We know that life first appeared as very simple lifeforms which were replaced and/or joined over many millions of years by more complex lifeforms.

We know that snakes have vestigial hip bones and legs that have no function and don't even protrude from their bodies.

We know that whales have bony legs and hips in their bodies.

We know that birds have pairs of organs just like we do, including pairs of kidneys and ovaries, etc. This is a form of insurance, whereby you can lose one organ, but the second acts as a back-up. However, in the case of birds it was such an advantage to be lighter that one of the paired organs is very small and has no function. We also know that flightless birds still have "flight feathers," which is sort of funny when you think about it.

We know that the fossil record is full of innumerable organisms which have lived and died on this earth, which are obvious evolutionary intermediates.

There are ~20,000 genes in a single human being. We know that basically all of the genes in humans are very similar to the genes of other mammals, including mice. There are many very small genetic differences which yield a very different-looking organism. Many human genes can replace mouse genes without any change in function or development. And we know that small genetic differences and mutations occur frequently within any given species.

We humans all look different because we all have different versions of the same genes, and these differences result from random mutations. Some of us are actually "missing" genes which other humans have, or some of us have versions of genes which are completely "nonfunctional."

We know that there were many humanoid organisms that lived on earth before us, and these organisms could not be called humans.

We know that humans tend to get sinus problems because our sinuses are actually designed to drain well from a position of "all fours," but when our ancestors began walking upright, the drainage problem wasn't exactly something that was life-threatening, and so this problem remains.

We know that the human jaw has progressively become smaller over the last few thousand years, leading to pesky "wisdom teeth" problems.

We know that our own chromosomes are absolutely full of "nonfunctional genes" and junk DNA which are mere vestiges of genes which were once functional (or are still functional) in other species. I guess God inserted "junk genes" into our DNA for recreational purposes? It's especially fun to look at homologues of our junk genes which are fully functional in other species, and vice versa.

For example, we know that humans actually have functional genes which encode rows of nipples, just like a dog. However, most of these genes are "turned off." Occasionally you might have seen someone in gym class with "extra nipples" which resulted from a random mutation. (Most mutations are bad, but rarely you get a good mutation which makes survival and reproduction more likely.) We also know that males have nipples, which is sort of silly when you think about it.

Why do vestiges exist? It's not advantageous to get rid of them once a feature becomes vestigial, because they are not energetically expensive nor do they harm one's ability to survive and reproduce. It's the same reason that human embryos transiently display nonfunctional gills and tails during their development.

We know that we humans have a "plantaris" muscle in our calves which has no function, but is very important in apes for clenching their "feet."

We don't know everything about the evolution of species, but we know more than you or I or anyone could possibly remember or comprehend. And the evidence for human evolution is overwhelming.

The fundamental problem with evolution doubters is that they can't comprehend very large numbers and time periods, nor do they understand how biology and science operate. I'm completely sympathetic, because I can't picture the duration of "100 million years" either.

Can someone else come up with an alternative theory that unifies all of biology and is completely consistent with the incomprehensibly large mountains of evidence? I simply cannot understand why someone would doubt human evolution, given the evidence.