In one of my favorite quotes, the Prophet Joseph Smith wrote the following to Isaac Galland:
Mormonism is truth, in other words the doctrine of the Latter Day Saints, is truth; for the name Mormon, and Mormonism, was given to us by our enemies, but Latter Day Saints was the real name by which the church was organized. Now sir, you may think that it is a broad assertion that it is truth; but sir, the first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men, or by the dominations of one another, when that truth is clearly demonstrated to our minds, and we have the highest degree of evidence of the same.
Evolution is true therefore it belongs in our religion. Many Mormons still reject organic evolution while ironically embracing the benefits of modern biology, a science who's fundamentals are ultimately based on Darwin's discoveries. I suspect this is because Mormons have, regrettably, been culturally influenced by Evangelical Protestants and their hyper-literal reading of Genesis. This is not a new phenomena, taking cues from the surrounding culture, for we also adopted outsider racist arguments for black slavery in our justifications for denying blacks the priesthood.
Fortunately, we have the Book of Abraham, a sacred revelation that more than makes room for evolution, through the enigmatic creation account in Chapter 4:
And the Gods said: Let us prepare the earth to bring forth grass; the herb yielding seed; the fruit tree yielding fruit, after his kind, whose seed in itself yieldeth its own likeness upon the earth; and it was so, even as they ordered.
And the Gods organized the earth to bring forth grass from its own seed, and the herb to bring forth herb from its own seed, yielding seed after his kind; and the earth to bring forth the tree from its own seed, yielding fruit, whose seed could only bring forth the same in itself, after his kind; and the Gods saw that they were obeyed.
And the Gods said: Let us prepare the waters to bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that have life; and the fowl, that they may fly above the earth in the open expanse of heaven.
And the Gods prepared the waters that they might bring forth great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters were to bring forth abundantly after their kind; and every winged fowl after their kind. And the Gods saw that they would be obeyed, and that their plan was good.
And the Gods prepared the earth to bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind; and it was so, as they had said.
And the Gods organized the earth to bring forth the beasts after their kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after its kind; and the Gods saw they would obey.
Notice that the Gods don't make animals or plants; they prepare the earth to do Their work for Them. I was reminded of these verses when I read the following article on Science Alert. I have posted it here verbatim:
The extent to which evolution incorporates randomness has been debated by scientists throughout history, but a new paper claims the phenomenon may be more 'intelligent' than classical theory acknowledges – and not due to a theological perspective. According to Richard Watson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Southampton in the UK, evolution can 'learn' from previous experience, which could help explain how a process of random, natural selection can seem to produce such intelligent designs.
In an opinion piece in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Watson and co-author Eörs Szathmáry from the Parmenides Foundation in Germany suggest that we can still improve our understanding of how evolution works. We can do this, they say, by encompassing the way learning systems like neural networks develop intelligent behaviours based on previous experience. "Darwin's theory of evolution describes the driving process, but learning theory is not just a different way of describing what Darwin already told us," said Watson. "It expands what we think evolution is capable of. It shows that natural selection is sufficient to produce significant features of intelligent problem-solving." Conventional evolutionary theory describes how random variation and selection is sufficient to provide incremental adaptation as organisms evolve over time.
But according to Watson and Szathmáry, this system isn't incompatible with learning theories that demonstrate how incremental adaptation (such as in a neural network) is sufficient for a system to exhibit what we would call 'intelligent' behaviour. "When we look at the amazing, apparently intelligent designs that evolution produces, it takes some imagination to understand how random variation and selection produced them," said Watson. "But can natural selection explain the suitability of its own processes? That self-referential notion is troubling to conventional evolutionary theory – but easy in learning theory."
The authors say new kinds of research are already demonstrating this kind of learning evolution, including selection in asexual and sexual populations with Bayesian learning and the evolution of ecological relationships with distributed memory models. "Learning theory enables us to formalise how evolution changes its own processes over evolutionary time," said Watson. "For example, by evolving the organisation of development that controls variation, the organisation of ecological interactions that control selection or the structure of reproductive relationships that control inheritance – natural selection can change its own ability to evolve.
"If scientists can encompass this kind of learning theory into how they study evolution, the authors say we'll be able to solve evolutionary puzzles in new ways and enjoy greater insight into how evolution produces its amazing results. "If evolution can learn from experience, and thus improve its own ability to evolve over time, this can demystify the awesomeness of the designs that evolution produces," said Watson. "Natural selection can accumulate knowledge that enables it to evolve smarter. That's exciting because it explains why biological design appears to be so intelligent."
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