Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Co-hosts: Carah Burrell, Gerardo Sumano · Guest: Simon Southerton
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introducing the Mormon Doctrine vs. Science Series
Simon Southerton [00:00:00] Foreign.
John Dehlin [00:00:12] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am one of your co hosts today. I am John Dehlin, and I am joined by the thoughtful, the insightful, the funny, the witty, the Carah Burrell. Carah.
Carah Burrell [00:00:28] Hey, John. Welcome, everyone.
John Dehlin [00:00:30] It's good to have you co hosting today.
Carah Burrell [00:00:31] Yeah, I squeezed myself in here when I heard that Simon was doing another great analysis. So I'm really excited for this one and hope everyone else is too.
John Dehlin [00:00:41] Everyone, absolutely. And we are also super excited to have with us the Gerardo Sumano as a second co host. Wait, are you a second co host or a third co host? Which is that Gerardo?
Gerardo Sumano [00:00:57] I think it would be second co host.
John Dehlin [00:00:58] Second co host. All right.
Carah Burrell [00:01:00] Were you like your first presidency?
Simon Southerton [00:01:02] Right.
John Dehlin [00:01:03] And Gerardo, this, this, this project was actually kind of your idea. You're. You're producer on this one, right?
Gerardo Sumano [00:01:09] Yeah, yeah. Simon's been working really hard on this project that we all, you know, discussed a few months ago. So we're really excited about it.
John Dehlin [00:01:21] Yeah. And so without any further ado, let's add our special guest of honor. It's the Dr. Simon Southerton. Hey, Simon. Welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast.
Carah Burrell [00:01:31] Hey, Simon.
Simon Southerton [00:01:33] Hi, Carah. Hi, Gerardo. It's nice to catch up again.
John Dehlin [00:01:37] And you're joining us from Australia, is that right?
Simon Southerton [00:01:40] That's right, from Canberra. And it's just after 10 o' clock in the morning.
John Dehlin [00:01:45] I love it. Well, we. To kick off this episode, we have to begin by. Well, let me introduce Simon really quick. Those of you who know Simon will know that he influenced me. So way back when I had my faith crisis back in the early 2000s, and I was trying to make sense of Mormonism without the Internet. I stumbled on a book called Losing a Lost Tribe, written by Simon Southerton, this former Mormon bishop geneticist from Australia who had served as a Mormon bishop who knew genetics, who studied Native American DNA and started talking about it. And Simon, you were rewarded with what? By talking openly about the genetics. How were you rewarded?
Simon Southerton [00:02:33] Eventually? Excommunication. It took about seven years and they use other excuses to. To excommunicate me. But yeah, yeah.
John Dehlin [00:02:42] And so, Simon, Simon, you've influenced a lot of people. You've been at this game a long time, longer than me, which says something. And, and of course, you've been on Mormon Stories podcast several times. So we'll include in the show notes past interviews with you, Simon as well.
John Dehlin [00:02:59] But we want to begin today's episode by announcing a project that we are super excited about. And so, yeah, if you go Back to the first slide. Gerardo. Please, a slide. The project that we're announcing is called Mormon Doctrine versus Science with Simon Southerton. And basically, you guys know that recently we, you know, we've had John Larsen on. We're paying John Larsen to come on Mormon Stories once a month and he's doing great content that so many of you value. We just announced the Thrive Story project where Margi Dehlin is going to be coming on to share stories about healing and growth from, from you.
John Dehlin [00:03:48] And, and we're looking forward to Margi doing that as well. We are excited to announce a third partner, a content partner for 2022, and that's Dr. Simon Southerton. The series is called Mormon Doctrine versus Science. And yeah, next slide. Thanks, Gerardo.
John Dehlin [00:04:05] Just to give you a sense for this project, Simon's going to come on monthly. He'll cover various topics regarding the interface between science and Mormon doctrine. We do, you know, so much of Simon's work is worth mentioning that he really hasn't gotten paid for.
John Dehlin [00:04:24] Whether it's his book with signature book that he doesn't even receive royalties from anymore or, or this amazing new book that he's written called the Sacred Curse, or just all the blogging that he's done and all the research.
John Dehlin [00:04:37] We really are frustrated on Simon's part, but even more so motivated on Simon's part to help make sure that just like many of us, he's getting some financial remuneration for his efforts. And so we plan on paying Simon for his work.
John Dehlin [00:04:53] And what we've done is we've set up a page on Mormon Stories. You can go to MormonStories.org podcast Simon and you'll see that we've announced this episode and there's a little donate button. And if you want to see Simon, if you want to contribute so that Simon can get paid for his work, you click on that little donate button, you can select how much a month that you want to donate, become a monthly donor, and with that, we'll be able to make Simon feel like we really value and appreciate his work. And the special deal that we have now going on is Simon's got this new book called the Sacred Curse, which is an important book with his updated science around genetics, DNA and Native Americans.
John Dehlin [00:05:44] And what will happen is when you donate clicking on this link, you will be sent a link to download that PDF and that will be a gift that we offer you for supporting this series with Simon. And so that is kind of what, what we're talking about.
John Dehlin [00:06:06] And we really need your Support to make this happen. 100% of your donations for this project will go to Simon. Mormon Stories covers overhead. Me and Carah Gerardo, you know, all the people that support this stuff. So you can know that if you donate to Simon's project, 100 of that money is going to go to him. We're not going to skim anything off of that. And again, of course, you can get that amazing book from Simon. Simon, anything you want to say about this project before we kind of jump on to the next thing?
Simon Southerton [00:06:38] Not really. I think you've done a pretty generous introduction to it. There's it. I think the sort of motivation for me is my own private experience of going through a faith crisis, having been a very devout member of the church and having very strongly held beliefs, stumbling on science that causes a problem, and then going to leaders of the church and saying, how do I deal with this problem?
Simon Southerton [00:07:13] They refer me to the scientists of Brigham Young University and the Brigham Young University scientists don't believe the same things that the leaders of the church believe. So if I can help people to, I guess to expose what's going on in sort of this processes occurring in the church where the leaders don't have the answers, they direct them to scholars and the scholars don't believe the same things as the leaders. I think that's a.
Simon Southerton [00:07:42] Something that I'm really keen to illustrate during the podcast series because that was a critical thing for me, finding that the science that the scholars at Brigham Young University are dealing with, the way they handle it, is very different to the way the senior leaders of the church interpret the science.
Simon Southerton [00:08:10] But, you know, I really appreciate the opportunity to do this podcast series because I think there's a lot of really fascinating science that's come up even, I mean, the 21st century since the publication of the human genome. There's just a, just an enormous wealth of scientific information out there.
Simon Southerton [00:08:30] And it, it, there are many areas where LDS doctrine strays into the scientific realm and science is perfectly entitled to push back and say, no, this is, these are the facts in this, in this area that you're talking about. And that's, that's what we're going to be talking about today and in future episodes, which I'm really looking forward to.
John Dehlin [00:08:56] Well, we are too. So, yeah, super excited about that. Gerardo, did you want to add something?
Gerardo Sumano [00:09:04] Yeah. So on YouTube also, we created a fundraiser that's going to be attached to all Simon's episodes and if people donate through there, 100 of that. Also, since it's, since it's going through the Open Stories foundation, non profit. 100 of those donations will go to the Simon Fund.
John Dehlin [00:09:27] Look at that. We've already raised $78.
Simon Southerton [00:09:30] Cool. Yep.
John Dehlin [00:09:31] In the, in the Facebook, in, in the, in the YouTube donor campaign. So we're on our way.
Preview of Upcoming Science and Doctrine Topics
Simon Southerton [00:09:37] Simon and I just thought, I thought I might just give a little bit of a teaser for some of the things that we might talk about, please. Not all of them. And I'm actually very happy to have feedback from, from listeners if there's any particular area of science that they'd really like to, to hear about or to be raised in an episode.
Simon Southerton [00:09:59] I'm very happy to have criticism if I've got something wrong. And I do occasionally get things wrong. I think I got something wrong in the last episode and we can correct things like that in the, in a future episode.
Simon Southerton [00:10:11] But today we're going to talk about the creation and I think in that episode we're basically going to open a whole can of worms. And in future episodes we'll dissect and look at some of those worms. Like the next one we're going to be talking about will be human evolution and that'll flow very nicely out of this episode. Then we'll talk about the flood and all the scientific evidence that does not support a global flood.
Simon Southerton [00:10:39] I also want to talk about the most recent, very up to date, the latest genomics research on Native Americans, which is really fascinating, very compelling, but also just really interesting stories. I want to focus on just really interesting little tidbits of science that people may not have, may not be aware of.
Simon Southerton [00:11:01] We'll talk about the genomes of the Polynesians. Genomes. Genomic DNA is just really a very, very rich resource. It can tell you where a person's ancestry is, but it also can tell you the timing of previous migrations of your ancestors. Has been very useful for looking deeply into the genomes of Native Americans and Polynesians. And in the case of Polynesians, it's revealed that Polynesians actually beat Columbus to the New World.
Simon Southerton [00:11:30] It's very, very compelling evidence and it's a fascinating story. But I also want to do an episode focusing entirely on the Maya. The Maya are very fascinating, an amazing culture in the Americas. So talk about the, the DNA, but also just some of the really fascinating stuff that the Mayan civilization has brought to us and a bunch of other things. And if I'm brave enough, I might do an episode on the science of same sex attraction.
Simon Southerton [00:12:03] That's something that's, I've been very, very interested in for many years and we're learning more and more about not just the, the genetics and the biology but the, the psychology of this same sex attraction. And so and I also hope to invite, I will be inviting a number of scientists to join us. So fingers crossed we'll get some really fascinating scientists who work in the particular field to hop in and, and contribute.
John Dehlin [00:12:34] That's great. Already gotten some comments. Mark Blanchard basically says we're specific. I'm specifically interested in your thoughts on James Talmadge, anti Darwinist geology professor and Mormon apostle. So that whole era of like Talmadge, wood, Stowe, Eyring, B.H. roberts, just that history of that whole battle between them and Joseph Fielding Smith could be really interesting just to recount that history because that story hasn't really been told in a, in a more thoughtful way on Mormon stories.
Carah Burrell [00:13:06] Yeah, yeah.
John Dehlin [00:13:08] And then somebody else, you know, Jules writes I would love to learn more about the Mayans. So yeah, people are excited, Simon.
Simon Southerton [00:13:15] Yeah, well I think the. Yeah, I mean obviously the minds are where the limited geography has really been focused and yeah, it's just focus on the science, just talk a little about the science. We don't want to get too into to bagging the apologists and I mean they're obviously dealing with something that they believe very strongly in but science is science and it's just. They just really want to find truth and this is what it's all about. It's getting to the truth of things. Yeah. We're going to touch on Talmuds today briefly but I don't, I suspect for that listener is probably not going to be as deeply as they would like. Sort of a little bit before my time. Probably a bit before your time too, John.
John Dehlin [00:14:08] I think absolutely before your time.
Carah Burrell [00:14:11] A little bit before John's time.
John Dehlin [00:14:12] Gerardo's the baby here, 27, is that right?
Gerardo Sumano [00:14:16] No.
Simon Southerton [00:14:17] Well I certainly had Jesus. A copy of Jesus the Christ on my mission. One of those little, little leather bound pocket ones. It was a. Yeah. Very price position.
John Dehlin [00:14:31] All right, any. And again for all those who are interested you can go to MormonStories.org or in the description here on Facebook or YouTube. Click on the link. Become a monthly supporter to Simon and let's just make sure he gets paid for his work because he deserves to.
Carah Burrell [00:14:49] Yeah. And I'm pasting it in the chat so anyone in the chat. It's right there for you.
John Dehlin [00:14:54] Thanks Carah.
Carah Burrell [00:14:55] Yeah, thanks everyone for donating already. So I'm excited for this project.
Starting with Adam, Eve, and the Creation
John Dehlin [00:14:59] All right. So Gerardo, do You want to tell us anything about why you wanted to kick off here or. Or anything else you want to say, Gerardo, before we jump in?
Gerardo Sumano [00:15:08] Sure. I mean, I guess Simon's gonna do the introduction of the. Of the episode, but we. Me with Simon, we had been talking a lot about what should be the first episode that we do on this series. And we decided that probably the most appropriate thing is to start with the creation and with what the Church teaches about the creation. Evolution, getting just a little bit on Adam and Eve, but actually do a whole episode on. On Adam, Eve. And why that's. That doctrine is really important for Mormonism and for the historicity of the Book of Mormon and the scriptures that Joseph Smith produced.
Gerardo Sumano [00:15:53] And also, coincidentally, this year, the church is studying on Sunday school. Everyone, you know, young men, young women, adults, and even seminary, I believe they're studying the Old Testament this year. So it's going to be kind of interesting to do some of the parallels of the things that the church is teaching right now and
Simon Southerton [00:16:20] with.
Gerardo Sumano [00:16:21] With the series. So it's going to be really interesting.
John Dehlin [00:16:25] All right. And we've got a really, really great comment that you're gonna love. Simon. Somebody asks, yeah, Christian. Christian writes, how come British people always sound smarter? Must be the accent.
Simon Southerton [00:16:38] Anything.
John Dehlin [00:16:39] Anything you want to say about that, Simon? You Brits sound so intelligent.
Simon Southerton [00:16:44] I'm going to be pretty careful what I say there.
John Dehlin [00:16:48] Is that an insult to call it an Aussie, a Brit? Is that an insult?
Simon Southerton [00:16:52] No. Well, I'm. I'm actually born here, but my parents are British. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:16:57] Okay.
Simon Southerton [00:16:58] Although my father was born in Shanghai. Shanghai, China. And my mum was born in. In Scotland, I think. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:17:07] Christian apologizes. Christian says, my bad. He likes. He says, Australians have wicked accents, too. So, yeah, you still get the prize.
Simon Southerton [00:17:18] Mine's sort of a bit of a mixture, I think. Not a. Not a terribly broad Australian accent, but people here understand me. That's the main thing.
What the LDS Church Actually Teaches About Creation
John Dehlin [00:17:28] Well, let's jump in. And we've got, you know, for those of you who are joining us, just through audio, we're going to do our best to be as descriptive in our language as possible. But if you really want to get the full benefit of this podcast, we've got visuals, and you can go to YouTube or Facebook to check out the visuals.
Simon Southerton [00:17:49] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:17:50] But let's go ahead and start. Simon, you take it away, and Gerardo, you can drive the slides.
Simon Southerton [00:17:54] Yeah, I think Gerardo may create a. Put these links onto the website.
Gerardo Sumano [00:18:01] Yeah.
Simon Southerton [00:18:02] These ones that are embedded in slides, if they go onto the website. That might be good. Yeah. So yeah, this, this. I was actually quite a little bit taken aback when I saw this institute lesson on the creation.
Simon Southerton [00:18:18] I think it's because, I mean, I've been out of the church for 20 years and I've probably read more apologetic stuff than anything that's written by the church. And the apologists are always putting, you know, oh, the church doesn't have any opinion on evolution and you know, all that sort of stuff.
Simon Southerton [00:18:38] And then I was just very surprised to see that this, this lesson has just promote. Heavily promotes young earth creationism. This is fundamentalist pseudoscience. Well, it's well well known that young earth creationism is, has basically no basis in science at all.
Simon Southerton [00:19:03] It's. It's heavily reliant on the Bible. The Bible is just used as the evidence for this. And it's only through distorting science that you heavily distorting science that you can support young earth creationism. So I had formed the opinion that the church had sort of moved away from this, but I was really quite taken aback to see it in this lesson and hear.
Simon Southerton [00:19:29] I felt the same way. I think this lesson was probably. Hasn't been touched for close to 45 years. I think it was probably written in the 80s.
Gerardo Sumano [00:19:41] Yes. Yeah, there was a, there was a reprint or new edition. I believe it's 2006. So nothing has changed. On the.
Simon Southerton [00:19:52] Yeah. So what we're talking about here is the institute lesson on the creation. So this is a lesson that's given to basically adults between the age of sort of 18 to 30. Would that be right? Would that be the young single adult age group? That would. Yes, lessons, Yep. Okay. These are the next generation of leaders of the church or the, Some of them would be leaders of the church and this is what they're being taught.
John Dehlin [00:20:25] For those who don't know the term young earth creation, it's. It's just that the, that the earth is what, six, seven thousand years?
Simon Southerton [00:20:31] Is that the idea created that life and man was created within the last 10,000 years.
John Dehlin [00:20:41] Okay.
Simon Southerton [00:20:42] In the, in the case of the LDS Church, it's sort of 7,000 years. Yeah. So this slide here summarizes pretty much the main sort of doctrinal points. It talks a little bit about the pre earth life, but essentially the Mormon view. This summarizes the Mormon view of creation which sort of comes out of the lesson.
Simon Southerton [00:21:09] So after the pre earth life, the. So the world was created, but the earliest church does not believe that it's a. Everything came into existence 7,000 years ago, the belief is basically that the creation was an organizational process, so there was older stuff lying around and that was used to create the Earth.
Simon Southerton [00:21:31] And I have heard some, you know, some members believe that dinosaurs are on other planets and they were move to this planet to create this planet. But, but generally there's no real issue with LDS doctrine in terms of the age of the Earth. It's, it's, you know, they recognize it as very old, the material used to make the Earth.
Simon Southerton [00:21:54] But what's very clear in LDS doctrine is that Adam and Eve are real people. So Adam was the first creature on the earth. There was no other mortal creature before him. Okay. So he was the first physical mortal being.
Simon Southerton [00:22:09] And then through his fall, he brought death to the world. And then other. Other life came to being. Other mortal beings came into existence.
John Dehlin [00:22:23] That's a term I remember reading in, in doctrines of Salvation, I believe no death before the fall. And that's just, that's animals and human life.
Simon Southerton [00:22:33] Right?
John Dehlin [00:22:34] That's. That's Mormon prophets and revelators teaching that there was no death before the fall of Adam and Eve.
Simon Southerton [00:22:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:22:41] I was taught that when I was 18, and I remember my first Relief Society talking about the importance of no death before the fall and Adam and Eve. So that was definitely part of my upbringing.
Simon Southerton [00:22:50] Yeah. So they. A term that we'll see later on that's used is the term pre Adamites when we're talking about humans that may have existed before Adam. But to add even further weight to that belief that we're all descended from Adam six or seven thousand years ago and he was our father, is that the Garden of Eden was a real place. So it's very clear in LDS scripture, and we're going to read some of these scriptures just in a moment.
Simon Southerton [00:23:23] Might take turns in reading these, but the Garden of Eden is located in a place called Adam on Diamond, which is in Davies Counties, Missouri. So LDS doctrine very neatly brings the United States into the, into the picture.
Simon Southerton [00:23:43] And another point that's raised in the, in the lesson is that the earth is 7,000 years old. Okay. So that. And that before the flood, so when the earth was created, there was just one land mass, and then the flood and the cat, you know, the cataclysms after the flood changed the earth and the geography of the earth. So we're not going to talk much more about the global flood, but that's something we'll talk about in the future.
Simon Southerton [00:24:15] And we'll talk a lot about Adam and Eve in a little bit more about Adam Eve now. But we will have an episode where we delve a little bit deeper into
John Dehlin [00:24:23] Adam and Eve and really quickly, you know. Well, I guess you're going to show some scriptures. Let's, let's go ahead and go to the scriptures and then I'll come back to the point.
Young Earth Timeline in LDS Scripture and Teaching
Simon Southerton [00:24:33] Yeah. So here's a scripture from the Doctrine Covenants which tells us how old the earth is. So this is a four. It's doctrine Covenant 77 is written as sort of question and answer session with Joseph Smith and, and God answering.
Simon Southerton [00:24:55] And the question is what are we to understand by the book which John saw, which was sealed on the back with seven seals. This is John. The. This is from Revelations. That's the John from the. That it's referring to. And the answer is from God. We are to understand that it contains the revealed will, mysteries and the works of God, the hidden things of his economy concerning this earth during the 7,000 years of his continuance or its temporal existence.
Simon Southerton [00:25:25] So that's where you get this. We know the, the age of the earth in terms of the physical beings that on the earth are seven. It's 7,000 years since that time. Harada, you might, you added this slide so you might let you talk to that one.
John Dehlin [00:25:45] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:25:46] So this was just an interesting find that. Because I, I was trying to compare, you know what the. Because I know the institute manual hasn't been really redone since. Since the 80s, but the church has made new seminary manuals. So I was curious what it said. And the last Doctrine Covenants Seminary Manual for. For students that was published in 2017 has this quote about Doctrine Covenants 77. It says it may be helpful to understand that In Doctrine Covenants 77, verse 6, the 7,000 years is in reference to the earth's temporal existence, meaning since the fall of Adam. It is not commenting on the age of the earth. So basically they're say. Admitting to what Simon was saying that yeah, the materials that were used to build the earth were old, But Adam lived 7,000 years ago. And they are reiterating that idea.
Simon Southerton [00:26:55] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:26:55] And go to the previous. Go to the previous scripture, Gerardo. But it says it's temporal existence. That's how that verse ends. Right?
Gerardo Sumano [00:27:06] Yeah. The church in. Well, my Conkey and Joseph feelings, myth interpretation is that when Adam fell, you know, the whole earth started its temporal existence because before Adam's fall, the. The earth was eternal.
John Dehlin [00:27:25] Okay, all right. Okay.
Simon Southerton [00:27:30] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:27:30] I think McConkey even went as far as to say that the fruit, when they partake, partook of the fruit, blood started because before their bodies didn't have blood. So then the fruit made blood start kind of like flowing in their bodies and that's what made them mortal. And it happened to all creatures on earth as well. Why are you laughing, John?
John Dehlin [00:27:56] It sounds like a sci fi movie. Everybody's immortal and then they eat this fruit and then all of a sudden their blood transforms and the earth like changes its spiritual nature and all of a sudden becomes mortal or temporal. But, but it's in the scriptures. I mean, that's the point you're making is that. Yeah, this is God. God chose to reveal this to Joseph Smith, right?
Carah Burrell [00:28:21] Yeah, yeah. God had a lot of important things to get out. Joseph Smith only had a few revelations and he. The temporal nature of the earth was one of the most important ones for us to understand, apparently. So this is some good stuff.
Simon Southerton [00:28:35] All right. But we will try and stick to the scriptures as much as we can here. So the doctrine. But the. I couldn't resist putting in a quote from Bricky man. Later on we'll talk about where they get a little bit. It's very sci fi ish. You got the world spinning around the universe and ending up in this galaxy in this solar system.
Simon Southerton [00:28:56] Yeah. So the other thing that's quite clear in, in LDS scripture is the centrality of Adam and Eve. So we won't talk a great deal about this, but you know, Adam and Eve, Adam was a, a, a major, I guess he was a very valiant spirit in the pre existence and I think that there's a, a belief that he was involved in the creation of the earth and that there were many of these spirits that were involved in guiding the direction and the creation of the earth.
Simon Southerton [00:29:41] But yeah, no, the. It's quite clear from LDS scripture that we are all descended from Adam and Eve. He's our father. So I might read the verse. We've got two verses of scripture here. One is from the Book of Mormon, second Nephi, two.
Simon Southerton [00:29:58] And one of these is a well known scripture to anybody that's studied in seminary. And now behold, if Adam had not transgressed, he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the Garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created. And they must have remained forever and had no end.
Simon Southerton [00:30:22] So all these animals and living things on the planet are there forever. But here is the scripture verse every young Mormon memorizes when they're in Seminary. Verse 24. Adam Fell Men might be and Men are, that they might have joy.
Simon Southerton [00:30:41] And then another verse here in Moses, chapter 6, verse 48. And he said unto them, because that Adam fell, we are. And by his fall came death. And we have made partakers of misery and woe. So that's what we're in here, folks. We're in misery and woe.
John Dehlin [00:31:02] And so it's spanning doctrine like these, these very literal scientific claims are God. God made the effort to reveal them, not just in the Book of Mormon, but in the Book of Moses and in the Doctrine and Covenants.
Simon Southerton [00:31:17] Yeah. And Abraham. Yeah. So it's all. All through all of the additional scriptures that probably have their origin in the 19th century.
John Dehlin [00:31:31] But wait, there's more.
Simon Southerton [00:31:33] There's more. Who would like to read these out? These are some scriptures that clearly identify where the Garden of Eden is.
Carah Burrell [00:31:45] So we got DNC section 116. Spring Hill is named by the Lord, Adam on Diamond. Because he said. Said he. Sorry. Because said he, it is the place where Adam shall come to visit his people, or the ancient of days shall sit, as spoken of by Daniel the prophet. And section 107, verse 53 states, three years previous to the death of Adam, he called Seth, Enos, Canaan, Malchuso. Not that Mormon. I don't know how to pronounce all these names. Jared, Enoch and Methuselah into the valley of Adam on Diamond and there bestowed upon them his last blessing.
John Dehlin [00:32:29] What are these saying, Simon?
Simon Southerton [00:32:32] Well, it's saying that Adam was physically there in the. At Adam on Diamond, giving a blessing to all of these patriarchs. And that's from 107. And from 116, it identifies where Adam on Diamond are. So joining the dots between those two things, then the Garden of Eden and Adam walked. So Adam walked in the Garden of Eden, and it's located in Missouri at Adam on Diamond. So that's a. That is a physical location in America.
Carah Burrell [00:33:11] And that's a belief that's still upheld today. Right. There's never been any kind of like recanting. That's where the LDS Church still believes the Garden of Eden.
Simon Southerton [00:33:19] Yes.
Carah Burrell [00:33:19] Located.
Simon Southerton [00:33:19] Yes.
Carah Burrell [00:33:20] That hasn't changed since Joseph Smith said it. Okay. Put it in. God said it. I'm sorry.
Simon Southerton [00:33:25] It really locks them in. It locks them into Adam being a real person because he's. He's got land that he walked on.
John Dehlin [00:33:35] I think he's going to go back. Gerardo, Go back one second. Yeah, I really. One of our viewers. Listeners makes A fun comment. Jules 2.0 writes, I love that one of the names is Jared. It's like Methuselah, Enoch, Mahalelo, Canaan, Enos, Seth and Jared and Justin and Beverly. No, it's, it's a, it's a fun point. No, but, but doesn't the Bible have a lineage that goes from Adam and Eve to his children down to Noah and then from Noah.
Simon Southerton [00:34:09] Right.
John Dehlin [00:34:09] All the way down to like, you know, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and then David? Like the Old Testament itself gives a pretty clear literal interpretation of its history that all humans come from Adam and Eve around 6,000 years ago. Is that true, Simon?
Simon Southerton [00:34:29] Yep. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:34:30] There's really. It's not just Mormonism. This is Old Testament stuff. Right.
Simon Southerton [00:34:35] Well, in. We'll talk about this a bit later on. But you know, there are many Christian religions that don't subscribe to this to Adam and Eve being real people. Okay. They. It's basically a creation myth. Yeah. Quite a few Christian churches don't have any problem with it.
Gerardo Sumano [00:34:55] Right.
John Dehlin [00:34:56] That's okay. Except for the fact that by, by looking at these Mormon scriptures you can see and Joseph's own prophecies and declaring, you know, you know, the New Jerusalem and, and Missouri being the site of the Garden of Eden and Adam on Amen. And Yeah, I mean the scripture and doctrine is locked into this theory type.
Simon Southerton [00:35:19] It is sort of part of the bedrock. It just, just makes it much more. I mean the church does proudly talk about these being a second Witness. You know, the Book of Mormon is a second Witness and you know, the Doctrine of Covenants Pearl of Great Price are additional witnesses and they're. It all is fairly consistent. And so that it does make it challenging for the church to work around this.
John Dehlin [00:35:48] What we can add, we can add something hurt.
Gerardo Sumano [00:35:49] Yeah, that's what I was going to say. We are probably one of the only churches out there who claims that have a prophet that speaks to God directly. You know, even other religions like Jehovah Witnesses do not make those kind of claims. So the fact that we produce new scripture which is revealed directly by God, you know, like that locks Mormonism in, into this thinking and it, like Simon said, there's very little wiggle room for, for LDS doctrine.
Simon Southerton [00:36:24] Yeah. I mean obviously there are very many, particularly the evangelicals that hold this very similar views to the LDS Church based on the Bible. And, and you know, the Bible is inerrant, so there's no mistakes in there and they just, just follow it. But there are many, many religions that don't, don't get hung up on it.
John Dehlin [00:36:51] I know. And it's probably worth Mentioning we're all taught to refer to the Book of Mormon as what? Which book?
Carah Burrell [00:36:58] Keystone of our religion.
John Dehlin [00:36:59] But also the most correct book. The most correct book, right?
Simon Southerton [00:37:03] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:37:04] Of all books, I assume. Right. The most correct book of all books.
Carah Burrell [00:37:08] I believe that's in the same Joseph Smith quote.
Simon Southerton [00:37:09] Right.
Carah Burrell [00:37:10] Not only is it the keystone of our religion, it is the most corre. Book that people will get closer to God by adhering to it than by any other book. And may I just add, it is really hard to read a lot of books instead of just one. It's really hard to listen to a lot of experts instead of just one. And so Mormonism kind of funnels people into. Read one book and you'll get the correct answers. It's harder to read a lot of books and, you know, decipher fact from fiction from them. So anyway, continue.
Brigham Young and Early Leaders on Earth's Origins
Simon Southerton [00:37:37] So to spice it up, I thought I'd throw in a Brigham Young speculation. So this is from the discourses of the Journal of Discourses. I don't know which year he said this, but I'll read the quote. When the earth was framed and brought into existence and man was placed upon it, it was near the throne of our Father in heaven. And when men fell, the earth fell into space and took up its abode in this planetary system and the sun became our light.
John Dehlin [00:38:04] Okay, that's Brigham Young. Physicist, geophysicist.
Gerardo Sumano [00:38:09] Yeah, I was taught this by. By my dad. As factual.
Simon Southerton [00:38:18] Yeah, yeah, like that.
Gerardo Sumano [00:38:20] That's what happened when Adam fell. Like my whole life, I believe this. And that's when the dinosaurs died. When, when the, when the Earth fell into. Into our current solar system.
John Dehlin [00:38:36] Yeah, like the Earth is like hanging around Kolob.
Gerardo Sumano [00:38:39] Yeah.
Simon Southerton [00:38:40] And then that's what he was thinking there.
Gerardo Sumano [00:38:42] Yeah. Justin feeling Smith talked about it. McConkey talked about it too. It was not just bring him young and you know, just like I think it was Bedner who said that. Multiple general authorities talking about the subject. You should pay attention, you know, Simon,
John Dehlin [00:38:59] is that the way. Is that the word planets work? Do they fall into space? Is that the way it works? Are they like hanging out and then they fall into place? Is that how space works?
Simon Southerton [00:39:12] Things seem to take an awful long time in space. And I think the Earth's been pretty much in this orbit for an awful long time. Look, you know, look, to be fair to the church, this is. They'll just sort of blow this away, blow this off, because it's just.
Simon Southerton [00:39:32] He's speaking as a man and he's speculating and that's Fair enough. And there are lots of other things that have been said by church leaders at times that are pretty crazy, but I won't dwell on those. But that's, that's quite different. Him speculating is quite different to the doctrine that we were talking about earlier.
Simon Southerton [00:39:51] That's really. There's very little wiggle room with that sort of when you've got scriptures that are fairly explicit like that. So this looks familiar. The lesson we're talking about today is, is the institute manual. Okay. So it's. And, and we're going to talk a little bit now about the young Earth Creationism. That's within the institute manual, but it's not. A lot of that material is not in the seminary manuals. So there are other manuals where that's. That's been either pulled out or they're not teaching that to the youth.
Simon Southerton [00:40:26] And it's probably a good thing because the less young Earth creationism you teach to young kids, the better, because doesn't prepare them very well for, for an educated life if they go to university or anything like that. So, yeah, I, I was the one
Gerardo Sumano [00:40:45] that added this slide because I remembered.
John Dehlin [00:40:49] Tell our. Tell our listeners. Tell our listeners what the slide is, Gerardo.
Gerardo Sumano [00:40:53] So this is a timeline that the church still has on their website, is still part of the seminary curriculum on their website. And it's what you were saying, John. Like, the, the Bible provides kind of like a timeline of how many years each prophet lived and when they died and when the next one, you know, like, was born.
Gerardo Sumano [00:41:16] So this is not just the church's timeline. Like, I know several other, like, orthodox Christians would believe this as to be the Old Testament timeline. So the church used to print the. These. I. I don't know if they still do. And they hand them out to seminary or institution students.
Gerardo Sumano [00:41:39] And he basically has just a timeline of all the prophets of the Old Testament. Adam, Seth, Jared, Noah, Enoch, Methuselah. It even has Lehi in there at 600 B.C. leaving, leaving Jerusalem or. Yeah, to go to the Americas. It says Lehigh goes to the Americas and 600 BC and he has Adam as being born or created around 3,900 BC so that puts him around 7,000 years ago.
John Dehlin [00:42:16] No, it starts at 4,000. It starts at 4,000. It just. 4,000's off the chart.
Gerardo Sumano [00:42:22] Yeah, right, right.
John Dehlin [00:42:24] So it's got, it's got Adam being born 4000 BC living 930 years.
Gerardo Sumano [00:42:29] Yeah, that's what Bible says.
Simon Southerton [00:42:31] Yeah, that's what. Yeah, you can't blame the Mormons for that.
John Dehlin [00:42:37] And Jared. Jared lived 962. And then Methuselah is 969. So Methuselah almost lived a thousand years. That's pretty impressive, Simon.
Simon Southerton [00:42:46] Yeah, I think those names that Carah read out that she struggled with, I think they were taken directly from the Bible.
Carah Burrell [00:42:55] I took the syllables I said directly from the Bible too. That's exactly expressly how they're supposed to be said.
Simon Southerton [00:43:02] Yeah,
John Dehlin [00:43:05] but that. I mean, again, even if the church is moving away from this graphic, this is what we were taught for 100, 150 years, right? Like, and we were taught it by prophets. There's a revelators that claim to have direct lines to God. I think that's. Even if the church is kind of distancing themselves, there still should probably be some type of accountability for what so many of us were taught forever. There's even a comment in the comments section that this graphic is triggering for some people because it's so interwoven with their high school years and seminary and Scripture chase and all that stuff.
Gerardo Sumano [00:43:43] But it's still on the website. It's still. It's, you know, it. It hasn't been. It's part of the curriculum still.
John Dehlin [00:43:51] Yeah. All right, Simon, what else?
Carah Burrell [00:43:55] Also that. That chart is very LGBTQ friendly, if I just might add.
John Dehlin [00:43:59] Yeah, it's super LGBTQ friendly.
Carah Burrell [00:44:01] It's very sassy.
John Dehlin [00:44:03] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:44:04] Sorry. Just wanted to say church, good job on your graphics.
Simon Southerton [00:44:11] Yeah. So this next slide, I've put this in just to. To illustrate that, you know, this hasn't been, you know, we're. We're challenging, we're questioning the things that are the claims of the. The church here. But it's. There's been a lot of argument and debate, particularly mostly between educated sort of scientists, general authorities that have had some scientific training, and other more black and white general authorities in the past.
Joseph Fielding Smith and Death Before the Fall
Simon Southerton [00:44:47] But there was a very notable event in the 1930s when Brigham B.H. roberts, who was in the Quorum of the Seventy at the time, was a fight. He was assigned by the First Presidency to create a student manual for the Melchizedek priesthood holders.
Simon Southerton [00:45:06] And in that draft, he stated that death had been occurring on earth for millions of years prior to the fall of Adam, and that human, like pre Adamites, had lived on the earth. Now, that manual, the draft manual, then went to the.
Simon Southerton [00:45:22] The apostles. And Joseph Smith, feeling Smith, who was an apostle at the time, later became a president of the Church. I think in the very early 70s, he was vehemently opposed to that wording in the Draft. And there's a wonderful quote there from Joseph F. Smith that's quoted. I could dig up where it's from. But no Adam, no fall. No fall, no attainment. No attainment, no Savior.
Simon Southerton [00:45:51] So he, he's a very, very black and white apostle and he was not mincing words. He just was not going to have any admission that there was death before the fall or the existence of pre Adamites.
John Dehlin [00:46:09] So he, and he outranked. He outranked Beatriver Roberts. He was an apostle and eventually prophet, you know.
Gerardo Sumano [00:46:16] Yes, the problem, I mean, Joseph Feeling Smith is right. If you're believing LDS doctrine, having death before Adam really represents a problem. Because then, especially for Mormons who believe that, you know, before, like Adam and Eve could not have kids in the Garden of Eden and that's why they had to fall, because they had and they had to experience death. And that was all part of the plan. So having death before Adam presents a real problem to why. Why was there a need for, you know, like Adam and Eve being tempted on the first place? And then just like Joseph Feeling Smith is saying here, if Adam didn't fall, then why do we need an atonement and what do we need a Savior for? So like, having death before Adam really, really presents a, a big, big problem for.
Carah Burrell [00:47:14] Yeah, huge kink in the structure for sure. No Adam, no fall. No fall, no atonement. No atonement, no Savior. And the leaders that we're supposed to be getting this information from, you could say if there was all of these things, if there was fall, you could posit maybe no profit.
Simon Southerton [00:47:33] Yeah, but so the, it was actually quite a. It was a very, very difficult time for the church because they had this. So Joseph Fielding Smith was really opposed. He actually went into one of the. Publish something in a church magazine at the time, which was where he expressed his opposition to that sort of view.
Simon Southerton [00:47:58] James E. Talmage came into the picture. He was an apostle at the time. He was concerned because the church wanted to sort of publicly take a neutral position. But Joseph Fielding Smith had publicized his views so much, James E. Talmage became con. Concerned that the alternative view wasn't being given enough airing. And he was actually given permission by the First Presidency to, I think he gave a talk in Salt Lake or something, maybe BYU or whatever.
Simon Southerton [00:48:32] And during that talk he expressed some support for B.H. roberts views in terms of the possibility of pre, pre Adamites. But, but he never, he. He didn't really believe evolution. So he wasn't an evolutionist. But you know, he got hardly Any exposure for the things that he wrote. And I think this is a trend that's been repeated over and over and over again. The church pretends to have no position or does, says it's neutral, all these controversial things.
Simon Southerton [00:49:10] But the people that are given the most oxygen, people that are fund the fundamentalists. And a good example there is Bruce. I'm a Conkey and this is what he was an apostle at the time in 1980s. I suspect this was just around about the time this, this lesson was written.
Simon Southerton [00:49:30] He said there were no pre Adamites. Adam was not the end product of evolution. Sorry, you've just taken. There we go. Yeah. Adam was not the end product of evolution. There was no death in the world either for man or for any form of life until after the fall of Adam.
Simon Southerton [00:49:47] So that was in Bruce. Some of those quotes are from Bruce Arma Conkey's book Mormon Doctrine, which of course the church now doesn't. Do they still publish that? I don't know. They still publish it.
Gerardo Sumano [00:49:59] No, they don't endorse it.
Simon Southerton [00:50:02] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:50:02] Definitely distancing themselves from it. Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:50:04] But it's still being quoted in current curriculum, you know for, for Sunday school and even the, the, the newest ones while they, well, well they now try to quote modern prophets a lot more living ones. They, they're still quoting Bruss R. McConi and Joseph H. Smith. And if we go back just a few years earlier, like it's just like Simon saying the manuals and what the church was teaching in Sunday school, Institute seminary was not about pre Adamites and what James Talmons taught about These Things or BH Roberts. Everything was based on Joseph Feeling Smith and McConkey's ideas. So it's, it's really a problem when the church tries to say that they have, they're neutral on these issues when like, like we're like Simon's making the point. The exposure that the church gives, decides to give it is to this fundamentalist ideas. And that's why we all grew up with that.
Simon Southerton [00:51:04] Yeah. And the lesson, and the lesson this, that we're talking about, this institute lesson is heavily leaning on the fundamentalist side. Perhaps Harada, you could read out the next quote. And this is, this is a quote taken from this given the lesson. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:51:25] Yes. This is from the institute manual. It's, it's Joseph Finley Smith. It says, I say most emphatically, you cannot believe in this theory of the origin of man. And at the same time except the plan of salvation is 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.
Simon Southerton [00:51:59] Yep. And he made many, many other comments like that that are continuously quoted because he became the prophet. He was the Prophet for two years. In fact, we joined the church in 1970. He died not long after we joined.
John Dehlin [00:52:14] And I. I tend to have wanted to demonize folks like Joseph Fielding Smith because of their fundamentalism, but on the other hand, you kind of have to respect their consistency, because what he's doing is he's taking Mormon scripture seriously and he's taking Joseph Smith seriously. He's taking the temple ceremony seriously, and he's just saying, if I have to choose between scripture and Joseph Smith's divine calling and, you know, revealed science, I'm going with scripture and Joseph Smith's divine calling every single time. And so even though he tends to be demonized today as really misguiding generations of people into faulty thinking and bad science, I mean, he. At least he's consistent and has integrity in the sense of. Of upholding Mormon doctrine and theology in Scripture.
Simon Southerton [00:53:09] Yeah, I think. Yeah, no, I agree. I think that's a fair assessment.
John Dehlin [00:53:16] It's intellectually consistent. It may not be intellectually sophisticated, but at least it's. It's. It's consistent.
Carah Burrell [00:53:25] Yeah, yeah, it was so consistent that it did 80 of my faith crisis. So thanks for that quote, JFS.
Simon Southerton [00:53:33] Yeah, but it's. Yeah, it's. It's consistent, but unfortunately, he's. He's straying very heavily into the. To this, you know, the scientific realm, as does the scripture.
Carah Burrell [00:53:51] Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, people are looking up to these people as prophets, and there's quotes in. In Mormonism that say that a prophet can speak to anything at any time. Right. And so a lot of people, they don't even need to look into the science of the evolution if that's what their prophet and their leaders are saying is true about the age of the earth and things. But what more. What more books do you need to read? You know, that's definitely the way that I was raised. So.
Simon Southerton [00:54:11] Yeah. So what we've talked about up until now is pretty much the. The lesson. Now. I think many teachers probably wouldn't even talk to these points to ponder parts. But at the end of the lesson, this is where we get into the young earth creationism. So
Carah Burrell [00:54:31] do you want me to read it?
Simon Southerton [00:54:33] Sorry, go ahead.
Carah Burrell [00:54:34] Do you want me to read it.
Simon Southerton [00:54:35] Yeah, go ahead.
Carah Burrell [00:54:38] But what of the scientific evidence that supposedly contradicts these statements? Isn't the evidence that all life evolved from a common source overwhelming? Harold G. Coffin, professor of Paleontology and research at the Geoscience Research Institute, Andrews University in Michigan, presented why one scientist's view of how life began. The following excerpts are from a pamphlet on the creation written by Dr. Coffin.
Simon Southerton [00:55:03] Yeah, Dr. Coffin, there's some interesting background here. He's a Seventh Day Adventist and Andrew's University is a Seventh Day Adventist University and he's a professor, he was a professor of paleontology there. So the, the lesson then goes on to put very large quotes straight out of a 16 page pamphlet which is an individual scientist's opinions and none of it's peer reviewed. It's a 16 page pamphlet.
Simon Southerton [00:55:38] Okay. Zero, virtually zero credibility. And these are the views that he, Coffin expresses. And also I'll just make a few comments of them in a, in a moment. But basically the first one is that life is unique. Basically it's complicated and it could never, it's, it's, to summarize, this is basically anti evolution. This young Earth creationism is just anti evolutionism.
Simon Southerton [00:56:11] So life is unique, complex animals appear suddenly. And he gives some evidence for this. Basic kinds of animals have not changed, so there's no shifting from one to the other. So those two arguments there, basically arguments from ignorance.
Simon Southerton [00:56:28] So you know, because we don't have any particular evidence right now, there's a gap. And so this is where God hides in these gaps between pieces of evidence. So the, the missing links that you hear about sort of comes from these sorts of ideas in young Earth creationism.
Simon Southerton [00:56:49] And it was interesting readings, the words of a scientist who had debated many young Earth creationists. And he said as soon as you provide evidence to fill a gap, they just come back and say you've just created two new gaps on either side of piece, either side of the piece of evidence you've just given.
Simon Southerton [00:57:10] And the final claim is the, the claim that change in the President is limited. But there's a wonderful quote here that I like from a man named Herbert Spencer. He says those who cavalierly reject the theory of evolution as not adequately supported by facts seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all.
Creationist Claims in Official LDS Institute Manuals
Simon Southerton [00:57:33] So I just wanted to give you some, a taste for some of the things that Harold Coffin mentions that are quoted in this institute manual. I'll just comment briefly on some of those. If you move to the next slide,
John Dehlin [00:57:50] You're muted, you Want to unmute yourself? If you're talking.
Gerardo Sumano [00:57:54] Yeah. Sorry. I just want to say something really quick. I can. As I was reading this, four points that the lesson manual quotes from Coffin. I can remember at least two or three references from Russell M. Nelson promoting these ideas. I think a couple of them in General Conference. Russell M. Nelson is famous for that quote where he pretty much says that. That an explosion of a printing press would not produce a dictionary. And life is so complex, so evolution cannot produce. Pretty much what he's saying is evolution cannot produce the human species. He also has promoted the idea of dogs have always been dogs, which is the quote that we're going to present later. But Russell Manilson, current prophet of the Church, believes all or most, if not all of these ideas.
Simon Southerton [00:58:51] Yes. Yeah. So.
John Dehlin [00:58:55] And he's a medical doctor, which some find.
Simon Southerton [00:58:57] Right.
John Dehlin [00:58:58] Fascinating.
Simon Southerton [00:58:59] Yeah, Yeah. A cardiologist.
Carah Burrell [00:59:04] Maybe he went to med school when all of these ideas were really not that out of whack with the other med students he was with.
John Dehlin [00:59:12] Didn't Charles Darwin live in the 1800s, though?
Carah Burrell [00:59:16] Well, maybe he went by. You give the guy a break. He just hasn't updated his textbooks. He's still flipping through the ones from the 50s.
John Dehlin [00:59:23] Brother Russell, the break. I got it.
Simon Southerton [00:59:25] Well, the most. The most compelling evidence for evolution that we have now is DNA, without question, because it's completely independent from the fossil evidence and DNA. The molecule wasn't discovered until years after President Nelson would have got his. His degree. The human genome wasn't sequenced until, you know, turn of the century, so he'd be completely unaware of that sort of science.
Carah Burrell [00:59:56] Yeah, there's people who got their scientific education before the genome was sequenced, and then there's the after.
Simon Southerton [01:00:03] Well, I think, you know, he would have been an outstanding cardiologist. And I think I'd make the observation later on that I don't. If I had a heart attack and I wanted a cardiologist to operate on me, I wouldn't care what he believed about evolution. He could be completely ignorant about it. All I would want him to be knowledgeable about would be hearts and how to fix my heart. So, yeah, the fact that he. Yeah, it just has no bearing on his knowledge of evolution. So. But this claim. This is. I'll read out a quote from the lesson from Coffin if you could expand that a little. Sorry.
Gerardo Sumano [01:00:43] I love when Carah reads the quotes.
Simon Southerton [01:00:45] Okay, go. Figara.
Carah Burrell [01:00:47] With my clear addiction and proper pronunciation of all of the words. Yes. Yeah.
Simon Southerton [01:00:53] Have I got any nasty words in there? No. Yeah. I think you're okay.
Carah Burrell [01:00:56] Okay, we're good. So it says some responses to Coffin's claims. Life is unique. Quote, Scientist Homer Jacobson reports in American Scientists, January 1955. From the probability standpoint, the ordering of the present environment into a single amino acid molecule would be utterly improbable in all the time and space available for the origin of terrestrial life.
John Dehlin [01:01:23] All right, so Simon, tell us what that's saying.
Simon Southerton [01:01:26] Well, I've highlighted a section there for those who can see the slide. He says the ordering of the present environment. Okay. He just couldn't imagine that it would create an amino acid molecule. The current environment is the current environment. Scientists know what are getting a much greater understanding of what the world's atmosphere was like, you know, 3 to 4 billion years ago when the earliest signs of life started appearing.
Simon Southerton [01:01:56] So, and they're starting, they've been doing experiments where they're starting to, you know, mixing the ingredients and, and they are finding that some of these molecules will spontaneously come, create themselves and start assembling. So there was never a time that all of these things were happening in a very, very different world three or four billion years ago.
Simon Southerton [01:02:22] For example, the oxygen that we have in the air only came into existence about 2.2 billion years ago, and that was cyanobacteria were starting to create the oxygen. So it was living things that were starting to create the oxygen which then created the environment for life to, to really kick off an evolution to start occurring. So.
Simon Southerton [01:02:45] So there's a clear error in his thinking. Man. It's perfectly understandable for something that was written back in 1975. The next statement that he makes complex animals appear suddenly. And what he's referring to is the Cambrian explosion now.
Simon Southerton [01:03:05] And he quotes a man named Charles Walcott, who was an early. The president of this. What do you ever call the person in charge of the Smithsonian, probably the director of the Smithsonian. In 1910, Charles Walcott, while riding horseback across the Canadian Rockies, stumbled onto a most interesting find of sea fossils. This site has provided the most complete collection of Cambrian fossils known.
Simon Southerton [01:03:33] They are found in the oldest rocks that contain any significant number of fossils. Where are their ancestors? That's the question. There's no explanation. Well, the Cambrian explosion took place at a time when animals started to create hard shells around them and make much better fossils.
Simon Southerton [01:03:54] That's the main thing that was going on there. But there wasn't a lot of. There wasn't an explosive period. If we go to the next slide, you can actually see this slide puts it into sort of context. You can See the, the red bar in the middle there? 500, it's about 520 to 570 million years ago is when the Cambrian explosion took place. And that's when the, the body,
Gerardo Sumano [01:04:24] the
Simon Southerton [01:04:24] basic body assemblage of most living animals on the earth, that's when it was sort of established. So jellyfish, worms, mollusks, arthropods and crustaceans all start appearing in that very explosive period. But there were, scientists have found many fossils before that period. So there are fungi and sponges that are in 600, 700 million years before, then corals 700 to 800 million years ago and then bacterial fossils around about a billion years ago.
Simon Southerton [01:05:00] So, and, and he's focusing on the Cambrian explosion. Sort of takes, is, is distorting the picture of evolution which has occurred since the Cambrian. So you've got a whole range of organisms. Fish, flying insects appearing 500, 400 to 500 million years ago, dinosaurs around about 300 million years ago, mammals not long after, birds, flowers and bees only 100 million years ago.
Simon Southerton [01:05:31] I mean primates about 10 million years ago. So yeah, the Cambrian explosion there was a rapid evolution over about a 70 million year period. But the young earth creationists have made, have exploited this rapid explosion to claim that that's when everything happened all rapidly and jammed it all together.
John Dehlin [01:06:02] I wouldn't exactly call 50 or 60 million years rapid though.
Simon Southerton [01:06:06] No, it's just like you can sort of understand why it's occurring. It's probably the environment had changed to a point. There's tons of oxygen in the atmosphere. And when something works, and this is how evolution works, evolution works. It's not a random process.
Simon Southerton [01:06:27] There are random changes that occur. But evolution, whatever works, gets reproduced and carried on to another next generations. So there are just a whole pile of things that's changes that occurred that were selected on and then passed on. And you, you get these very rapid explosions that occur and they, these, there are explosions in evolution that I can that happening all the time throughout that period. For example, I'll give you a good example from euclips. I've got a couple of tree groups there that I've highlighted as well. Conifers emerged about 300 million years ago, whereas eucalypts and other flowering plants, so conifers are cone bearing.
Simon Southerton [01:07:16] There's a big difference between cone bearing plants and the eucalypts which are flowering and all of the other flowers, the flowering plants that we have on the earth, they emerged about 100 million years ago. But eucalypts in Australia have now evolved into about 800 different species. If you come to Australia and you drive anywhere and you go anywhere in Australia, all you see are eucalypts, one genus and it's evolved extremely rapidly over about a period where most of them have evolved within the last 2 to 3 million years.
Simon Southerton [01:07:55] About 800, definitely in the last 5 million years, 800 different species of eucalypts. Because Australia has become a very dry continent and eucalypts are extremely well adapted. They found a way to survive in a very dry continent with lots of bushfires. So if you go out into a Euclid forest after a bushfire, they bounce back, they sprout back after a bushfire. Should have stuck in a photo of them, but.
Simon Southerton [01:08:26] So there are many explosions that occur during evolution. There are periods when not a lot of change occurs because there's no. The. The organism hasn't picked up a. An advantage that can. That can make them dominate other organisms in the environment.
Simon Southerton [01:08:42] So while the eucalypts were exploding, there might have been many other species that went extinct because the eucalypts out competed them. So. So I just wanted to put the Cambrian explosion into context there. So he makes a lot of other points. He, he makes some comments about derogatory. This is coffin we're talking about now. He makes some fairly derogatory comments about Neanderthals and casts data whether they were any different to human beings.
Simon Southerton [01:09:15] And of course, we now have the genome of Neanderthals and we now know that most of US have about 3 to 4% of Neanderthal DNA in our own genome. Which we'll talk a lot more in my. The next episode when we talk about human evolution.
Simon Southerton [01:09:30] So that's. Those are my responses to the Coffin. But what is most really quite interesting is that the Young Earth creationism that I've been talking about that's in this institute manual is. Is completely rejected by scientists at Brigham Young University.
Simon Southerton [01:09:51] So the lesson manual makes no citations of Mormon scientists it refers to. It cites a Seventh Adventist scientist from 45 to 50 years ago, but makes no reference to BYU. And it's not surprising that we've got. The Young Earth creationism ideas are now starting to crop up in the LDS community precisely because the church doesn't take a position.
Simon Southerton [01:10:23] And as we can see, the doctrine from that we've been talking about is very powerful. And we've now got the firm foundation with Rodney Meldrum spreading young Earth creationist ideas. And back in 2017, the firm foundation advertised one of their conferences in the BYU Daily Universe magazine.
Simon Southerton [01:10:50] And featuring at this firm foundation conference was Dean Sessions who has published these enormous books where he proves that the entire scientific community of the world is in the dark ages and that he has discovered a new scientific paradigm.
Simon Southerton [01:11:11] And that is that the earth, the center of the earth is filled with water. And that water came out and flooded the earth during the flood. It's just absolutely crazy stuff.
Carah Burrell [01:11:22] And I have been up, I have had a front row seat to that speech of Dean Sessions at the Book of Mormon Evidence Conference.
Simon Southerton [01:11:28] Yeah, I did see that. That was great. I'd love to be there. I mean, it's very entertaining stuff, but can you imagine how scientists who work their butts off for their career and our academics of respected academics at Brigham Young University and here the BYU magazine is publishing, publicizing an event spouting Young Earth creation. They're. These people are cranky, so they write in and this, let's read this out. Who's John here?
John Dehlin [01:11:59] Okay, so this is, this is,
Simon Southerton [01:12:03] this is signed by a bunch of the academics and PhDs and a whole.
Carah Burrell [01:12:08] They're just not having any of it.
John Dehlin [01:12:10] They're like, yeah, okay, so this is. Yeah, this is in The Daily Universe. April 4, 2017. In Defense of peer reviewed science. This is at a Division 1 university in the 21st century. In defense of peer reviewed Science. Let us just clarify. Okay. Quote, we members of the BYU's Department of Geological Sciences cannot accept Mr. Sessions universal model as it runs contrary to multiple lines of empirical evidence and generations of scientific query. It would not pass expert peer review. I would say, to put it mildly. That's my commentary.
Evolution and Academic Freedom at BYU
Simon Southerton [01:12:52] Yes.
John Dehlin [01:12:52] Next paragraph. Students and the BYU community are reminded that organic evolution, anthropogenic climate change, radiometric dating and a 4.56 billion year old age of the Earth are all seriously taught on campus by professors who are in good standing with the church in fields directly relating to these subjects. Students may learn more about these subjects through a variety of courses offered by the Department of Geological Sciences as well as from other departments. They kind of threw down the gauntlet.
Simon Southerton [01:13:27] Yes. Yeah. And they all, a whole bunch of them signed it and there would be, yeah, there would be many other scientists in the Life sciences department that would have been equally angry with the, with that advertisement because. Yes, it's not. Dean Sessions doesn't have a, a strong scientific background and he's. Nothing that he's writing has been peer reviewed and. Yeah, rightly so. They're very, very annoyed. Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:14:07] Mikey Mike writes. Wow. I'm surprised that they affirm Evolution.
Carah Burrell [01:14:10] They want to stay accredited, so they kind of have to.
Simon Southerton [01:14:13] Well, let's flick to the next slide because
John Dehlin [01:14:18] Simon, really quickly, there's a few super chats that have come in. H. Benzula donated $50 to Simon's project and Gary J. Donated 20. We really appreciate those of you who are either through the Stars feature on Facebook or through the super chat feature on YouTube. And, and, and Simon, the. The fundraising campaign for your initiative is up to $158 here on YouTube, so people are stepping up. I just wanted to take a minute to thank those who were donating. And of course, again, there's a link in the description where any of you who want to become monthly supporters to Simon's new Mormon Doctrine versus Science series, you can support this episode and you'll get a free copy of Simon's new book on Book of Mormon genetics. Okay, sorry. Keep. Keep going, Simon. I just had to make that shout out and thank our donors.
Simon Southerton [01:15:15] Yeah. So it gets even. It's not only teaching organic organic evolution, they're teaching human evolution at bringing Young University. And they're equally frustrated by, by the statements of earlier general authorities in the church, like the one of Joseph Feeling Smith that we read out. And you can see this comment from Dr. Michael Whiting, who's teaching a human evolution at BYU. This is a quote from him on Twitter. Nothing has been more destructive to our students than giving them an ultimatum that they must either believe the gospel or believe in evolution. You can see who you know. You can just tell who he's responding to. He's responding to the problems that Joseph Fielding Smith is creating right for them.
Gerardo Sumano [01:16:11] And he calls it destructive. Not. Nothing has been more destructive. So not even John Delane has been more destructive.
Carah Burrell [01:16:22] Can I just speak from experience accepting that my church did not accept evolution did 80% of my faith crisis. I didn't even care. Well, anything to do with this guy. I'm sorry, Gerardo. I'm sorry. LGBT rights were not on my, like, purview. Nothing else. I just couldn't accept that. I know for a fact evolution and we, you know, evolved and had this common ancestor. I couldn't worship. I couldn't. I just couldn't do it anymore.
John Dehlin [01:16:47] But, but, but for our non Mormons, I just want to take a second to talk about how delicate this is because, yes, yes, BYU professors in the science department are pro evolution, but religion professors at the same BYU are anti evolution. And all of the students, most of the students who attend Brigham Young University were raised by parents and attended seminary and institute classes and Sunday school classes where evolution was taught not only to be wrong, but to be like one of Satan's teachings. And then you add to that all the prophetic utterances of people like Bruce McConkie and Joseph Felix Smith denouncing, you know, evolution as one of the seven deadly heresies.
John Dehlin [01:17:34] And I'm not making that up. Then you've got this environment where the, the church has officially chose to not take an official stance because they can't throw past prophet seers and revelators under the bus. So they're silent on the matter. All the students are coming armed for bear to kill all the BYU science professors that are pro evolution.
John Dehlin [01:17:56] And it makes it a real. And the professors don't want to lose their jobs, they don't want to lose tenure, and they don't want to denounce past profit seers and revelators. So they have to. And even when I was there, like, students were turning in biology professors and complaining to school administration that their professors were teaching evolution. And I know this happens in 2022. So it's just this weird, bizarre kabuki dance that our culture is doing.
Carah Burrell [01:18:26] Yeah, yeah, that's wild. You can get a diploma from Brigham Young University and you could have all of your classes. You're taking religion classes that teach anti evolution in the same day that you're getting a biology degree or you're learning evolution and nobody has a problem. I have a problem.
Simon Southerton [01:18:44] I like the term kabuki dance. What's a kabuki dance?
John Dehlin [01:18:47] Maybe I used a bad term. It's, it's just.
Simon Southerton [01:18:49] No, it could, could be a f. I don't, I don't know really what the term is. But you've, you've got this.
John Dehlin [01:18:55] I'm guessing it doesn't exist.
Simon Southerton [01:18:57] I, well, I, I, I think what's going on is sort of like an outsourced gaslighting. Okay, people, when you, you see a problem, you talk to a leader. They say, go and talk to the experts. The experts give a solution that doesn't align with what the, the leaders believe.
Simon Southerton [01:19:18] So, you know, if you go and talk to the church leader, I've got a problem. Because, you know, evolution. They'll say, go and talk to the scientists of byu and then they'll tell you something completely different to what the church believes.
Simon Southerton [01:19:35] So it's, it's just, it's quite dishonest because the pro, the problems are real. They're just not being addressed. So the, the leaders are outsourcing their problem solving to, to Sort of semi independent people who are paid salaries by the church.
Simon Southerton [01:19:56] So I don't know, it's, it's hard to sort of, I don't know what the name for that sort of thing is, but it's plausible. Deniability is one way of referring to it because if the, you know, if they go and talk to an academic at byu, they don't like what they hear and they come back to the church leader and they say, well, the academic said this. Well yeah, it's not me, it's the academic.
John Dehlin [01:20:20] But also there, you know, the, the LDS Church, you know, claims 16 million members. They've got members of the US Senate, members of the House of Representatives, they've got Federal Judge Justices, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, not to mention all the professionals out there. It's a real disservice to millions of Mormons to continue to have such an anti science curriculum that leaves so many people like me and Carah and Gerardo and others like to be a faithful, obedient Mormon means to distrust and downgrade the validity of science and the scientific method.
John Dehlin [01:21:05] To feel like you're a faithful Mormon, you have to distrust and devalue science, which is going to have all sorts of implications, whether it's believing in germ theory, whether it's believing in modern medicine, whether it's believing in climate change. Not to get political but like there's real world implications for teaching millions of people with edu. With money and power that science isn't necessarily to be trusted or even more explicitly that science is to be distrusted. Am I overstating that?
Gerardo Sumano [01:21:39] Well, I mean I don't want to get into the debate about vaccines. Right. But just to mention like no wonder why the church has hard had a hard time with their members to accept the validity or the safeness of vaccines. Even though the first presidency has come out with statements and promoting it and saying people should get vaccinated.
John Dehlin [01:22:05] I was trying to avoid that topic. That's why I said germ theory generically. Yeah,
Carah Burrell [01:22:13] personal revelation.
Simon Southerton [01:22:14] I'll make an observation. Try to tread carefully. At the early stages of the pandemic, I joined a, an online forum to discuss the science surrounding covert and it was created by an ex Mormon, good ex Mormon friend of mine, but there were many Mormons in the group and I had to leave after a couple of weeks because I repeatedly just felt this in the default position was to distrust science and to question absolutely everything and, and the motives.
Simon Southerton [01:22:55] So there was a question of questioning of the motives or distrust of the motives of the scientists, I think I remember putting up, we were discussing, I put forward a paper that was done by scientists. I think they were in France and they were looking at the, in the very early stages because we'd gone into lockdowns to protect everyone.
Simon Southerton [01:23:20] And they were looking at the levels, you know, when they brought in the tests to determine whether people had been infected. So any antibody, the earliest antibody tests and they found that there were very low levels, still only 2 or 3% of the French population, something like that had been infected.
Simon Southerton [01:23:43] And so the scientists just made the observation that it would, there is not enough immunity in the population that if you, if you ended lockdown straight away, that you had enough immunity in that to protect the population. That's a scientific observation.
Simon Southerton [01:24:03] But there are those in the group who felt, oh, they're, they're pushing their policy, they're pushing government policy. They weren't, they were just stating a fact that if, if only 2 or 3% of your population has been infected with COVID and you've got 97 have not been infected, if you stop lockdowns, then the virus is going to go rampant and you have thousands and thousands of people dying.
Simon Southerton [01:24:28] So yeah, so I had to, I just had to leave the group because it was not just one or two, it was just, I felt the, the default position was to distrust science. And I think it's probably connected with science uncovering things. A little bit uncomfortable.
Carah Burrell [01:24:48] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:24:48] That was my point to mention it just that Mormons used to distrust science. Like, I mean everybody can have their own opinions about vaccines, but we're talking about, about Mormonism and their relationship with science. And just the fact that, you know, the Salt Terrain has published articles by scholars, Mormon scholars talking about it just show like it's a fact that Mormons have had a hard time trusting science.
Simon Southerton [01:25:16] And it's not surprising when you see all of these quotes from, you know, apostles and even prophets that are just so critical of it.
Carah Burrell [01:25:27] As somebody raised in a very anti science family, let me just say that it really comes down to Mormonism.
John Dehlin [01:25:32] And it's the shadow of byu, by the way.
Carah Burrell [01:25:35] Yeah. In Provo the, the doctrines around like personal revelation are really important to a lot of Mormons. And so if you start with the presupposition that the church is true and you can, you can go on, whatever feelings you, that come into your heart is truth. Now that's directly, you're interpreting that as directly from God. That's a revelation that you've gotten that trumps all science. The People I know.
John Dehlin [01:25:57] So, and I'll just add, I'm going to be doing an episode in the next few days on the decline of the Mormon Church. Question mark. You know, inside information. So I've got an inside source, someone who works at a high level in the church. And he told me that in his stake, they're losing far more Mormons to sort of who are angry about the church accepting vaccines, promoting and encouraging vaccines. They're losing far more members on the right, conservative anti science side than they are on the left LGBT affirming, you know, faith crisis over, over church history kind of issues. So this is actually, this is actually causing a real fracturing in the church.
John Dehlin [01:26:48] It's sort of the chickens coming home to roost when you bring up a big percentage of your population being anti science and then there's a pandemic and then there's a vaccination that you want to encourage, literally to keep your members alive.
John Dehlin [01:27:04] Then the chickens kind of come home to roost when they leave your church because you're encouraging the support of science. Yeah, it's not to get political. I'm just saying, like we're talking about the, the delicate dance the church is now having to make because of its history of being anti science.
Carah Burrell [01:27:21] These things interlock. Trust me. I went, like I was saying, the Book of Mormon Evidence Conference. You have people not just talking about the young Provo.
John Dehlin [01:27:29] Right?
Carah Burrell [01:27:30] No, that was in Sandy.
John Dehlin [01:27:31] Oh, okay.
Carah Burrell [01:27:32] Because you have booths there and they're talking about the Book of Mormon evidence. That also has a lot to do with this young earth creationism stuff. We're talking about the earth having a core that's of ice and water. And then they're also selling, um, essential oils and all of those things just go right together and interlock per perfectly for people who are not super into science. And by the way, you meant, you mentioned Dean Sessions. He says in the speech that I watched that BYU is too progressive now and a lot of people are going further and further into their own little like, conclaves and, and their own little pods of Mormonism.
Carah Burrell [01:28:05] That's what I saw with, you know, Rod Meldrum and those type of people. They're more and more insular now, distrustful of even byu, distrustful of the prophets of the church pushing vaccines. And they get more and more into their own little ideas in this own little bubble. That's what, that's my, that's what I observed. And it's a wild, wild phenomenon. We'll get into it more and more, Simon, through all of these.
Simon Southerton [01:28:27] A little bit of the, A little bit of it here in Australia, but not nearly as. As see, the COVID is not really. I mean, we've got the fringe elements, but both of our major parties have been fully supportive of the vaccines and basically following the science. So there's, there's just this great, much greater acceptance of science in an evil, secular country like Australia.
John Dehlin [01:28:57] Let's get back to your slides.
Simon Southerton [01:28:58] Let's go back to the slides because this is a. I don't have references for this, but trust me, I've just drawn it from a bunch of, you know, Pew research sites and other people who've done surveys of the LS Church and whatever.
Simon Southerton [01:29:14] But so this is. This, I think illustrates. And this in the next slide will illustrate the challenge that the church has in the acceptance of human evolution is just so widespread and growing. The next slide will show this really clearly. But so for all intents and purposes, you can. If you. If somebody accepts evolution from lower life, they reject young Earth creationism.
Simon Southerton [01:29:41] Okay? So if there's very, very high acceptance of evolution, they reject the unearth creationism we're seeing in this institute lesson. So among scientists, biologists and geologists, it's something like 99.9% who are trained and understand the science who accept evolution from lower forms of life, human evolution as well.
Simon Southerton [01:30:05] So it's just widely, widely, very widely accepted. Among scientists generally, it's a bit lower, about 95%. Now, I'll put a box here for BYU life scientists, but I suspect anybody with a PhD at BYU would fully accept evolution and probably even human evolution, given they're teaching it. There's.
Simon Southerton [01:30:26] So I suspect that at BYU it's very high. If you look at advanced sort of developed countries, you know, Australia, the uk, Sweden, I've lumped them all together here. I've come up with an approximate numbers, but it's about 85% of their population except human evolution over millions of years.
Simon Southerton [01:30:48] The US Is a real outlier. I've seen a, I've seen a graph where they rank about 50 countries. And I think the only country below America was Turkey. So you got, you know, about only about 50 of the US population. America's just very religious and quite, quite an interesting outlier in this, in the global population.
Simon Southerton [01:31:15] So, but when you come to Utah, if you rank U. S. States, Utah is the bottom of the U. Of the U.S. almost. Wow. It's down there with Alabama and Mississippi and other, other states, predominantly from the South, I guess.
Simon Southerton [01:31:32] I've also added a bar there for ex Mormons because I, you might have. Remember I did a poll about a couple of months ago. I can, I polled a bunch of ex Mormons here in Australia and in the US and I was quite surprised. It's very high. It's probably way higher than 95. I think it's close to 98 of ex Mormons who, who fully accept evolution over millions of years.
How Students' Beliefs Shift After Leaving the Church
Simon Southerton [01:32:02] So it's interesting isn't it? They go from an environment where it's, it's suffocatingly, you know basically young earth creationist ideas are the norm and accepted. They leave the church and they just completely let go of it.
John Dehlin [01:32:18] So Simon, I, I conclude at least two things from this slide. Well one is that ex Mormons are better than Australians but then I. Does that mean that ex Mormon Australians are the best of all? Is that, is that what you're saying?
Simon Southerton [01:32:32] No, I was actually quite surprised. We were no better than you guys. Australian ex Mormons are pretty much the same. Actually
John Dehlin [01:32:43] give you a compliment there Simon.
Simon Southerton [01:32:46] I've excluded people who like 10%. 10%. 10% of the Australians that I surveyed. The ex woman's in this, that I surveyed didn't have an opinion. Okay. And it's sort of. It was lower in America. America's a bit more polarized but I suspect it is. They just don't care the 10. So I don't think we had, we did have one person that said they were young earth creationists but they were American so they were, they had joined the Australian post Mormon group and.
Simon Southerton [01:33:19] But yeah, no that was very similar. I, I just a very hyper poor. I was quite surprised. I thought it was going to be you know, quite a bit lower. But this is a graph that is fascinating for what it reveals about the trends that are occurring in the world. And I think my theory is that the Internet is probably starting to influence these sorts of views on evolution.
Simon Southerton [01:33:49] So I'm. The graph that I'm showing here is the other result. It shows the results of a 35 year survey that was conducted on first year university students who are about to study biology at the university. Excuse me, at the University of New South Wales.
Simon Southerton [01:34:06] And each year about 400 students are surveyed as they walk into their first lecture and they're asked you know, do they what they believe and the options. There are only four options on the survey. One of them do you basically do you accept human evolution over millions of years without any intervene intervention from God so they fully accept evolution.
Simon Southerton [01:34:30] Then one option was do you, do you believe God directed evolution over millions of years. Another option was they're uncertain. And the final option was do you believe that the earth was that evolution or do you believe basically creationism that life was created on the Earth about 10,000 years ago?
Simon Southerton [01:34:53] So it's interesting because when I, this survey started not long after I had commenced university, and back then about 50% of kids believe that God directed evolution over many years. That's now dropped down to around about 20% over the 35 year period.
Simon Southerton [01:35:15] But in the same time the number that fully accept a evolution without a God involved has risen from 30% to I estimate today 70%. And you can see there's a line, so they've got, each year they've got a dot and there's a line that plots where the, so you know where, where it's heading and it's, it's, there's a clear uptick.
Simon Southerton [01:35:48] So it's actually sort of accelerating in the last 20 years the acceptance of evolution. And you can see a very clear downtick in the acceptance of creationism which back in, you know, 1985 was around about 10% of the students fronting up at university believed creationism ideas. That's now down in 2022 to probably closer to 2, 2 to 3%.
Simon Southerton [01:36:16] And that's looks like it's accelerating down. And I don't think there's any real surprise here because if you go on the Internet now with the explosion of scientific information in the last 10, you know, 20 years or 30 years with the human genome and all of the exciting sciences being published, it's not just the science, it's the science communication.
Simon Southerton [01:36:43] And the world has just got really, really good scientists and communication science communication specialists have become very, very good at explaining in very simple terms how things work and what evolution means and the basis of DNA and all this sort of stuff. So it's, it's, it's very easy to understand that kids these days who are very literate on the Internet find their way in, in to see these videos. And many of these are just only five minutes and I've, on the, the final slide, I've actually got links and I think Harada will put these up afterwards to a couple of links that explain DNA science in five minutes.
Simon Southerton [01:37:33] And they are absolutely brilliant. They explain them more beautifully than I ever have ever seen before. They're truthful, they're honest and they're accurate, but they're just so beautifully explained with the graphics and, and worlds very well, very simple explanations from very competent communication specialists. So it's no surprise. So these are trends that the Church cannot push back, can't ignore.
Simon Southerton [01:38:06] These are, I don't, I suspect that these trends are happening in the US I suspect probably in Utah as well because Mormon kids are going to see all of these videos explaining evolution and DNA and all that sort of stuff. So it's just interesting to see that change in those positions that are going to come the way of the Church because the younger generation is growing up very, very science literate.
Simon Southerton [01:38:37] But I threw in this slide to contrast the Church's position with the Catholic position on evolution. The Catholic Church actually has quite a deal of respect for science. In fact, since 1936, I think it's about 85 years, the Catholic Church has had a pontifical academy at the, in the Holy See in, in Rome where they have scientists that are employed. They even invite non science, other scientists that are not Catholics to come and speak at the academy. They, the only thing they have to agree to is to not be rude to the, the Catholic Church. They can talk about any science. So the Church is very open to science.
Simon Southerton [01:39:23] And this is what Pope Francis said in 2014. When we read the account of creation in Genesis, we risk imagining that God was a magician complete with an all powerful magic wand. But that was not so. Evolution in nature does not conflict with the notion of creation because evolution presupposes the creation of beings who evolve. That's the Catholic Pope. Sorry, the Pope is a Catholic, obviously. I think that's a joke.
Carah Burrell [01:39:57] That's a great contrast though between you know, 2014.
Simon Southerton [01:39:59] But that will be if you go back to that slide. I just wanted to make one more point with regards to the Pope. That is not a sudden change of position for the Catholic Church in 2014. Okay. The Catholic Church has been cool with this stuff for decades. Okay. They are not taking a stand, they're not going to die on this hill.
Simon Southerton [01:40:24] But it's interesting that they have and if you go, and you can go online, read about the academy, so they make lots of very, it makes sensible. If you're the head of the biggest church on one of the biggest churches on the planet, you need to be abreast of these things. You need to be abreast of science.
Simon Southerton [01:40:42] They take lots of positions on science, moral positions which you know, might be questionable, but in terms of science, they, they, they, it's like they sort of, they respect science and scientists. You see a very, I think it's quite a clear difference with the Church because the leaders, the LDS Church seem to believe that they're the experts on everything and they're making claims in the scientific field which are very problematic.
Carah Burrell [01:41:15] And you're saying.
Simon Southerton [01:41:17] But yeah, contrast that with Harada. You might want to read this one out. You put it in there. But yeah. Russell M. Nelson's views on evolution. This is a quote. He was interviewed by the Pure Research center back in 2007.
Gerardo Sumano [01:41:32] He said, to think that man evolved from one species to another is, to me, incomprehensible. Man has always been man. Dogs have always been dogs. Monkeys have always been monkeys. It's just the way genetics works.
Carah Burrell [01:41:50] There's one kind of monkey, one kind of dog.
Simon Southerton [01:41:53] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [01:41:53] One kind of human, one kind of Homo sapiens.
Simon Southerton [01:41:57] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [01:41:57] Basically what he's saying. He's saying, I don't know what a species is and I don't know how genetics works. He's admitting the problem as he's talking.
Simon Southerton [01:42:05] Yeah. It's just. It's actually not the way genetics works. And if we go on to the next, we're going to finish off with just a couple of slides.
Gerardo Sumano [01:42:16] Sorry. Go ahead, John.
John Dehlin [01:42:18] It is just outrageously bizarre that a medical doctor in the 21st century, in a global world religion, shows such a paltry and embarrassing level of intellectual sophistication. I am deeply embarrassed that this guy leads our church holding this point of view.
Simon Southerton [01:42:47] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:42:49] You added this, Simon. I don't know if you want to talk about it, just really quick.
Simon Southerton [01:42:52] It.
Gerardo Sumano [01:42:53] That's this sentence that says the less a heart surgeon knows about evolution, the better.
Simon Southerton [01:42:58] Yeah, that's a. That's a quote from me, actually. It's just. I don't. He's not an expert on evolution. He's probably not. He's forgotten everything he was taught in evolution at university. It was probably a university where most of the places where he studied, they probably didn't believe evolution anyway.
John Dehlin [01:43:19] But he's influencing millions of people. And that's. That's the problem.
Carah Burrell [01:43:24] Influenced me right out of the church, as a matter of fact. Literally, those. Those that one in the Joseph Fielding Smith quotes are honestly, like triggering. I could cry because it was me reading those quotes, recognizing that I could not be in a church where that was the prophet that was leading it because like John said, it was embarrassing. I don't want to be associated with it. I was on that track. The maybe God did evolution. But there you are. He's not even admitting the evolution.
Simon Southerton [01:43:51] Pains me. Well, I'm going to show you a couple of slides now about dog evolution. Okay. Because just when you start searching online, there are just dozens and Dozens of amazing research papers that have been published on dog evolution just in the last five years, 10 years.
Dog Domestication as a Window Into Evolution
Simon Southerton [01:44:14] But dogs and wolves are 99, 99.9% identical at the genome level. It's well known amongst scientists that dogs are domesticated wolves. Okay, so they're 99.9%. To give you some context, most. The human next to you, sitting next to you is probably about 90. Their genome is about 99.9% the same, similar to yours. So the, the amount of variation that we have between dogs and wolves is similar, very similar, not much different to the variation we have in the human population.
Simon Southerton [01:45:01] All they are is just highly selected breeds. I mean, they're actually a very, very beautiful illustration of evolution in action. Okay. You have all of this random variation in the wolf genome and in the ancestral, the earliest dogs that were domesticated, which obviously would have looked very much like wolves, but they carried a huge amount of variation and then humans have selected them.
Simon Southerton [01:45:33] So human is the natural driving force that has selected them when they're breeding them. And that's given rise to the massive variation that we have in dogs today. But this is a graph that I've, I'm showing a graph here which is basically, it's a, what they call a phylogenetic tree. So they've, they've grouped tree dogs into a tree based purely on the DNA similarity.
Simon Southerton [01:46:02] And in this paper, they'd gone back and they'd sequenced the genomes of some very ancient dogs that they'd found in Germany. And they can tell from the fossils very clearly that they're a dog and they're not a wolf.
Simon Southerton [01:46:15] And they found from that information that dogs probably began separating from wolves about 40, 000 years ago. And so by about 20, 000 years ago, they then started to diverge into the breeds of dog that we have that are common in say, China, India and Europe.
Gerardo Sumano [01:46:37] So before Adam.
Simon Southerton [01:46:39] Yes. 40, 000. Yeah. The other interesting thing. So that's from. You might even want to put that link to the Nature paper that was in 2017 in the show notes. Yeah. But the next slide and there's another link you can put in as well for the show notes, because this is pretty interesting one. But if you search for just dog evolution images, you'll probably find this image. But if you could expand that one.
John Dehlin [01:47:14] Yeah.
Simon Southerton [01:47:18] And what you can, on the left hand side of this diagram is a spectacular phylogenetic tree of dog evolution. So what the scientists have done is they've sequenced the mitochondrial genome. Most people have probably heard about the mitochondrial DNA work that was done on humans in Native Americans I've talked a fair bit about in the past.
Simon Southerton [01:47:43] But they've sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of over 650 dog breeds as well as wolves. And they've built, built this beautiful phylogenetic tree that groups dogs and they've grouped all of the dog, the major dog breeds into this beautiful spot spot, basically a circular phylogenetic cherry that, where it radiates from the center, which was where the original wolf ancestor of dogs came from.
Simon Southerton [01:48:17] And you can just see all of the major groups of dogs all bunch very neatly together in this phylogenetic tree. But what I've highlighted on the right hand side of the slide is a magnified area from that, from that slide showing the evolution of wolves and some of the ancient breeds that I think are quite interesting. One of them being the dingo.
Simon Southerton [01:48:50] Dingoes are a wild dog that's found in Australia. It's believed that it, it was brought here by humans between something like three and five thousand years ago. And the dingo, you can see because these phylogenetic trees, they group dogs that are very closely. If they're close together in the tree, that means they're closely related. And so you can see here that the dingo is most closely related to dogs that come from Asia. So there's a bunch of Asian breeds of dogs from say China and Japan that are grouped fairly close to the dingo. And that makes perfect sense because the dingo is brought in from probably from somewhere like Papua New guinea or from, from Indonesia in a migration.
Simon Southerton [01:49:46] But it also has in there a couple of North American breeds of dogs. I think if I can't, one of them, I think is the Alaskan Malamute and you've got a Siberian, a Husky there. There are very few North American breeds of dogs that are surviving, but there are two dogs there from the Arctic which have survived and they're also included in this tree and they are related to Asian dogs as well.
Simon Southerton [01:50:17] So you can see how the Australian dingo and the, the breeds in North America are related, descended from Asian breeds. Now that's interesting because wolves are native to both North America and, and to Europe. So why would it be that the North American dog breeds that the, you know, the Eskimos had and the Alaskans had, why would they not have been domesticated? It doesn't appear that they were domesticated from wolves in North America wasn't an independent domestication.
Simon Southerton [01:50:58] This means that the dogs, when the humans first came to the Americas, they brought with them dogs. Otherwise we would see a very different, very, very different branch for the breeds that are unique to the Americas.
John Dehlin [01:51:18] Interesting. So cool, Simon.
Simon Southerton [01:51:20] Yeah. So I think it's not always been dogs.
John Dehlin [01:51:26] That was.
Carah Burrell [01:51:27] Must have been really hard for Noah to keep track. All those on the ark too. So many kinds.
Simon Southerton [01:51:32] But you, you look at the staggering diversity of dogs. Yeah. That appears in how long? I would say the, the major breeds, you know, your terriers and your hounds and whatever. Spaniels, whippets and whatever. The major clusters probably were set in place a few thousand years ago because people was, you know, breeding dogs, you know, to accompany them when they're hunting, when they protect their families, or to, to sniff out things underground like ferrets or whatever.
Simon Southerton [01:52:09] So there were many. Early, early domestication sort of laid the groundwork for many of the modern breeds. But then it's just gone absolutely crazy in the last 300 years with, you know, what is now really quite dangerous breeding, because they're leading to the problem of inbreeding, where many of these breeds just have genetic. You sort of narrowed down their genetic base so much that you, you create, you increase the frequency of these problematic genes in their genome, so you end up with defects. So, yeah, it's a. I mean, it's beautiful to see this, but there are. There is a bit of a dark side to, to what's going on with dog evolution at the moment.
Simon Southerton [01:53:02] Why we've got a lot of crossbreeds like these poodle crosses with many, many different breeds of dogs these days. It's good from one perspective because it's sort of minimizing or reducing that sort of problem.
John Dehlin [01:53:14] But yesterday, Yesterday, Margaret and I were walking and I saw a cross between a poodle and a Bernese mountain dog. And if you've ever seen how big Bernese mountain dogs are, I am wondering how that worked.
Gerardo Sumano [01:53:29] Yeah, they're pretty, pretty famous.
John Dehlin [01:53:31] The owner actually made the point that, that the mom is the Bernese mountain dog. She felt like that was important to tell me.
Gerardo Sumano [01:53:38] Yeah, usually the smaller dog will be
Simon Southerton [01:53:41] the dog with the dad.
Gerardo Sumano [01:53:42] Sometimes they will like, my, my. My husband's really into dogs. Really, really into dogs. So sometimes they would do like, artificial insemination if the dot. Because usually you want the, the dad to be a small dog. So you would do artificial insemination to the big dog, which would be the mom.
Simon Southerton [01:54:03] Yeah, yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:54:04] Kind of interesting.
Simon Southerton [01:54:05] Well, that's, that's. You can see one of the aspects of evolution there. You're getting a breeding barrier which is occurring. You know, if you just let them. Things run their course for another you know, a few thousand years. I mean, there already are breeds of dog, but you can't, you can't interbreed with them because, you know, you can't interbreed a Chihuahua with a, you know, a massively large Saint Bernard, I suspect would have to be done in a certain way around, as you mentioned, John. But the same thing occurs in trees.
Simon Southerton [01:54:40] In Euclips, there's an example of, there's one eucalypt called Eucalyptus globulus which has a massive flower that's probably two or three, you know, a couple of centimeters across. And when you, you can cross it with other eucalypts that have a very small flower, but the, you can't pollinate the male from the small flower. You can't take the small male flower pollen and pollinate the, the big Eucalyptus globulus flower because the pollen hasn't got the energy to get down, fertilize the seeds in the flower.
Carah Burrell [01:55:17] See, that is a running debate. Does size matter? That's right.
Simon Southerton [01:55:23] In trees. Some trees. But that's how very often speciation occurs. You get these barriers to reproduction that crop up and then a new species is out there. But there's often a period, and this will come up in the, when we talk about human evolution, long periods where there's still a bit of cross mixing between, that's going on in our past. We're going to hear a bit about that. But it's also a thing in dog evolution. So there was a long period of time when wolves were still mating with dogs and I think they can even mate today with dogs. We get mixing between dingoes and Australian domesticated dogs as well. So they can still interbreed. So that's been a little bit of a complicating factor in the tracking, the evolution of dogs because they will breed with wolves.
John Dehlin [01:56:17] So, Simon, to summarize what point you're making with this amazing dog chart and analysis. Tell us, Tell us what, tell us what we should conclude. Sorry, let me find the right view. Tell us what we should conclude.
Simon Southerton [01:56:33] Well, yeah, the, basically, it's just that it's, it's, it's happened over, you know, tens of thousands of years and all aspects of evolution have been involved. It's considerable variation in the wolf population, probably new variation coming in from wolves. That's a, that's the raw material for evolution. And then you've got selection. So, and where you, you know, humans, we're part of the natural world. It's natural selection that's occurring just as done by humans. I mean, some people will call it artificial selection, but, you know, it's a selecting driving force and you can see the impact of it in. So in the massive diversity in, in dogs today. You, you know, you could be excused for believing that some are different species, but given enough time, they will turn into different species.
Gerardo Sumano [01:57:37] And, and at the end, well, the re. I think dogs is a really good example. Just to reiterate what you were saying, Simon, dogs are a good example of evolution in a short period of time that we can, you know, see it in, in a very short period of time how all these breeds have developed and how. Yeah, so, so it's a very palpable example of evolution. And I, I also think it's interesting that that also.
Simon Southerton [01:58:11] Yeah, I picked it because. I picked it as an example because the prophet mentioned dog evolution. So, right, the bait was hung out there and I took the bait. But imagine a situation you can like throughout history. You can imagine the way evolution works is you've got all this variation.
Simon Southerton [01:58:32] Just imagine if a. Something happened and a particular variety of dog was the one that everyone wanted and all the other ones, they just dropped them. That's sort of how evolution works. There'll be a particular force in evolution. A niche will open up or a new food source will come along that a one variety of dog, say, can really latch onto.
Simon Southerton [01:59:00] That population then explodes, becomes massive. It then lives for thousands and thousands of years. It starts accumulating genetic variation. Then if another force comes along, another driving force of natural selection comes along, then you can get more and more speciation occurring. If people are interested in looking at many other other examples of this, there are beautiful. If you go to the Smithsonian, they've got beautiful illustrations of whale evolution. Whales are really fascinating because they land animals evolved out of the sea.
Simon Southerton [01:59:40] Well, the whales went back from land animals. So there's a beautiful. And they've got many of the skeletons of all. Many of the ancestors of whales now really clearly identified. So it's a fascinating story, whale evolution. A particularly interesting thing I heard, I read just recently is from the, from the rocks that the skeletons are buried in, they can determine the oxygen concentration in the. As they were formed because. So as the fossil is the animal dies and is buried and the fossils are formed, the oxygen in the soil can tell you whether that organism was in a land animal or if it was in fresh water or if it was in salt water.
Whale Evolution and the Fossil Record
Simon Southerton [02:00:30] And it's. They've been able to match up when the whale ancestors were living in fresh water. From the, the rocks that were formed nearby.
John Dehlin [02:00:41] Fascinating.
Simon Southerton [02:00:41] So whales is a really good one. Another one is horse. Evolution is fascinating. Yeah. Carah's pointing at something.
Carah Burrell [02:00:52] No, just like a. Okay with me.
Simon Southerton [02:00:55] Cool. You're just, you're really animated.
Carah Burrell [02:00:58] That's, that's cool because I freaking love evolution. I'm just like, can't sit still. It's true.
Simon Southerton [02:01:05] Well, evolution is going to be a constant theme throughout many of the scientific episodes. And I'll, I'll talk a little bit more about it at the molecular level, but because molecular genetics gives a. Is the. Really, the building is the. That's the nuts and bolts of how evolution occurs.
Summary: Mormon Doctrine Versus Evolutionary Science
Simon Southerton [02:01:23] But yeah, look, to wrap up for today, I thought I've just sort of to summarize, I think it's quite clear that Mormon doctrine is fairly black and white. And it's due to the additional LDS scripture that we have. Adam is the father of the human race. Adam lived about 6,000 years ago. And the Garden of Eden is a real place.
Simon Southerton [02:01:48] So they're, they're almost not negotiable. It's very, I haven't seen much sign of any leaves of the church moving away from those. And it's quite clear from, you know, even James E. Talmage, who was fairly pro science, he rejects, does not believe that humans evolved from a lower form of life. And that's fairly. A fairly widespread view in the church.
Simon Southerton [02:02:17] However, many Christian churches don't have this problem. They don't have a problem believing that Adam and Eve, the story of the, you know, the Garden of Eden, Adam, Eve is fiction. Meanwhile, we've got Mormon scientists would be why you are teaching human evolution.
Simon Southerton [02:02:35] And yeah, I don't know how long that'll go on this, this, this sort of almost bipolar handling of, of human evolution, which. So go ahead.
John Dehlin [02:02:52] No, go ahead, Go ahead, Simon.
Simon Southerton [02:02:54] I was just going to shift on to the next slide, which sort of gives a brief.
John Dehlin [02:02:57] Well, what I would. If we can go back, Gerardo, what I would add to that summary slide is that Mormon doctrine teaches that prophet seers and revelators speak directly to God. They have been miseducating the members for well over 150 years now that this has been damaging to the intellectual development of the LDS Church membership. But also now the church is trying to have it both ways, where they don't denounce the past utterances of prophet seers and revelators, but they also don't come out in support of evolution. And so they, they have this kind of oatmeal middle ground. Where they decline to take a position.
John Dehlin [02:03:48] And that leads to more confusion. And it also leads to a continued, you know, fracture and schism within the church, as the church has a large branch of science deniers and science haters, and then. And then a bunch of other people that want to leave the church because the church is too, Too back, backwoods, too primitive, too unsophisticated.
John Dehlin [02:04:14] And it just ultimately begs the question, what is the value of Mormon scripture if it can get things so fundamentally wrong? What is the value of prophets, seers, and revelators if they not only don't see this ahead of time, but even.
John Dehlin [02:04:29] Even half a century after, or a century after this stuff is revealed, they still won't embrace it? And then what does it mean now to all the. You know, if. If the church gets it wrong on evolution and on the age of the earth and on Adam and Eve, which all Mormon doctrine and theology and scripture are based on, including the temple ceremony. What. What else did the Church get wrong?
John Dehlin [02:04:52] And I think that's part of what this series is going to help us explore. Are the other things the church has gotten wrong over the years. Is that. Am I being too harsh?
Simon Southerton [02:05:04] There was a general authority when and spoke at. His name is Pearson, one of the general authorities, was under the direction of the leaders of the church, spoke at one of the apologetic meetings fair in about 2017 or 2018, I think. And in defense of the Book of Mormon, he encouraged independent voices. Okay, that's a green light for crazy town. He's encouraging people to get online and. And produce videos to defend the Book of Mormon. Well, they're doing it for not just the Book of Mormon, but they're doing it for young earth creationism. I mean, Rodney Meldrum is a product of encouraging independent. We're not taking a position and encouraging these independent voices.
John Dehlin [02:05:55] Yeah, I'm not sure we. I'm not sure we told you, Simon, but we plan on having Rodney Meldrum on Mormon stories in the next few weeks.
Simon Southerton [02:06:01] All right, We.
John Dehlin [02:06:04] We may. We may seek your support in preparing for that interview.
Simon Southerton [02:06:07] Finally caved in.
John Dehlin [02:06:09] No, we're not caving in.
Carah Burrell [02:06:11] Yeah, my mom has never watched my. This podcast until she's like, when's he coming on? She can't wait to watch Rod, tell us what's what. Tuning in, Simon.
John Dehlin [02:06:22] We're going to be careful. We're not going to let him spout pseudoscience. We are. We are going to have him tell a story, and then we're going to put him on the record of what his Positions are, but we're not going to let him try and argue them in any persuasive way. But we do want to get him on the record of what his positions are.
Simon Southerton [02:06:42] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:06:44] Publicly. Yeah.
Simon Southerton [02:06:46] Well, that's probably going to be an episode I can respond to.
John Dehlin [02:06:51] And we're not gonna. We're not gonna.
Carah Burrell [02:06:52] You're not gonna bait them or anything.
John Dehlin [02:06:54] We're not gonna beat him up, and we're not trying to, like, set a trap. No, but he influences at least tens of thousands of people, and I have
Carah Burrell [02:07:04] a personal stake in it just because my parents are always sending me his books and things. So, yeah, I think, like John said, that he influences a lot of people. So getting him on record of just the things that he believes without having too many convincing arguments. I mean, I don't think they are convincing, but, yeah, doing it in a respectful way on this platform.
John Dehlin [02:07:27] You pay attention to Meldrum a lot, too, right?
Gerardo Sumano [02:07:31] A little.
Simon Southerton [02:07:31] Not a lot, but yeah.
Carah Burrell [02:07:34] Yeah, yeah. And, Simon, just so you know, Rodney has seen the episode that you did with Gerardo of you, you know, debunking the heartland model.
Simon Southerton [02:07:43] Oh, yeah, Yeah. I think he responded on. I think I actually listened to his response. He responded. Another podcast. Yeah. Series. Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:07:53] Mormon Buggeries.
Carah Burrell [02:07:55] Mormon Book reviews. Yeah.
Simon Southerton [02:07:56] But I mean, he didn't. Basically, it didn't really give solid responses to the science. No, I mean, it's just a. It's a tricky thing. Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:08:13] Well, let's talk about what we've got next, and then I want to close by replugging our. Our series and asking people to support Word. So what's next on what's next to Bat, Simon?
Human Evolution and the Book of Mormon
Simon Southerton [02:08:24] Well, I think the next thing is when we've talked a little bit about human. Human evolution. But as I mentioned at the beginning, you know, I opened a can of worms with creation. There's a whole bunch of science topics that come up out of that candle. I think the first.
Simon Southerton [02:08:41] First one that's worth addressing is really human evolution in detail. So we'll go over a little bit of what we've talked about here, but probably talk a bit more about some of the comments church leaders have made about evolution, but then go out and. And I'd like to go through some of this, just the science related to human evolution from a range of areas.
Simon Southerton [02:09:06] I don't want to just sort of give lots and lots of evidence from, you know, a range of fields. I just want to tell little stories about particular pieces of science that I think are really extremely compelling. One of them is. Is the presence of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in our genomes.
Simon Southerton [02:09:29] These denisovans died out 60,000 years ago and the anthols died out about 30,000 years ago. Okay, so how is it? That sounds very pre Adamite to be carrying that DNA, but there are many other pieces of molecular evidence that are independent that really clearly illustrate that we are humans have evolved from common ancestor with primates and all living things.
Simon Southerton [02:10:07] Right. So and I, I, some apologists are starting to comment about these sorts of things and I'll have some interesting quotes from Hugo Perego who's famous for. He was pretty much the principal author of the DNA versus the Book of Mormon essay.
Simon Southerton [02:10:28] But he has spoken about human evolution. He believes that humans evolved 200,000 years ago. He doesn't have any problem with pre Adamites. So yeah.
Carah Burrell [02:10:44] Do you mind if we ask you another follow up question as we wrap up?
Simon Southerton [02:10:49] Sure.
Carah Burrell [02:10:51] So in your opinion, how do like evolutionary scientists that are Mormon embrace evolution and also stick out, stick with the Mormon beliefs at the same time? What's your opinion on that?
Simon Southerton [02:11:03] I think there are a few things that they just don't form too hard an opinion on. I suspect. Well, I suspect they believe that evolution is a process that God used over millions of years to guide the formation of our species. I don't know how they grapple with Adam and Eve. Hugo Perego does try to grapple with Adam and Eve a bit, but his escape clause is always, oh, the Church doesn't have a position on this. But as we can see, the Church has made many positional statements over the years.
Gerardo Sumano [02:11:49] If the positive, if it's possible that all the human species came out of a couple. Right, like Adam and Eve.
Simon Southerton [02:11:58] Yeah, we'll talk about that. There's just not enough genetic, there's so much genetic variation in the human population. You can't squeeze it through two people 7,000 years ago. Right, just.
Carah Burrell [02:12:10] And that's the Mormon position. That's what we learn in the temple. It's what we learn from scriptures. As you pointed out.
Simon Southerton [02:12:15] That's the, that's the LDS position. And humans are being, this is abundant evidence that China has been heavily populated by humans for 10,000, 20,000 years. Humans have been in Asia for 40 to 50,000 years. Aboriginal Australians have been in Australia for 50 to 60,000 years. So if you start insisting that if all humans descend from Adam six or seven thousand years ago, then there's going to be Mormons who attempted to narrow down that human population who are genuine atomites and the other ones that are not descended from Adam. And then you're getting into very dangerous territory. And there are some early statements in the church, quotes I might dig out from very early on in the history of the church where they claimed that it was the white race were descended from Adam.
Carah Burrell [02:13:16] Okay, yeah, that's a problem.
Simon Southerton [02:13:18] This is, I mean, this is a minefield for the church. Yeah. A real minefield. So. But I won't, I won't tread too carefully. We'll set a few of them off.
John Dehlin [02:13:30] All right.
Simon Southerton [02:13:31] Yeah.
Closing Thoughts and Supporting the Project
John Dehlin [02:13:31] Well, before we close, I have to make one more pitch really quickly for those of you who joined us late that didn't hear the introduction or for those who haven't kind of thrown their support yet. I just want to make sure everybody hears what we announced at the beginning that we're super excited that we're launching a new, it's kind of a pilot project with Dr. Simon Southerton. Our plan is to have him come once a month on Mormon Stories podcast and over, you know, 12 to 15 to 20 month period, hopefully do an episode a month where he takes on various aspects of Mormon doctrine and analyzes how they match up to science.
John Dehlin [02:14:15] And we will be, we want to, we will be paying Dr. Southerton or Simon for his work. So we're asking everyone to Please go to MormonStories.org podcast Simon, click on the donation button, Become a monthly donor and we promise that 100% of your donations to this project will go to support Simon. And when you click that donate button, you'll get a little message that gives you a link to a PDF, which is Simon's new book. New I say in the past year or two, it's a book called the Sacred How Native American DNA Exposes Mormonism's Lamanite Myth. It's a follow up to Losing a Lost Tribe.
John Dehlin [02:14:55] That was Simon's first book on this topic. But it's a really important book. And if you want the latest in DNA and Native Americans in the Book of Mormon, support Simon, support the education, the informed consent of Mormons and non Mormons everywhere, and support Simon's work on Mormon stories, please.
Simon Southerton [02:15:18] Thanks, John. I was just going to say that it. Yeah. When I talk about Sacred Curse was published a couple of years ago. Even in that couple of years, there's just been really fascinating discoveries and I'll try to, when I talk, do a podcast, have the absolute latest research that's relevant to the particular topic. Like for example, the fact that Polynesians reached the Americas, you know, a couple of hundred years before Columbus reached The Americas that was only discovered in the last 18 months. Wow. So really fascinating stuff. And that's. So. That's not even in my book, John.
Gerardo Sumano [02:16:00] I think there's a couple people saying that they donated, but they haven't gotten the link to the book. Is it something that's going to happen later?
John Dehlin [02:16:09] So, no. The way I set the donation button up is they get. They should get a reply email that gives them the link. And if it's not working, if you donated and you didn't get a reply email with the link, just email me@mormonstoriesgmail.com I will send you the link directly. But what should happen is you should get a reply email that includes the link. But we just set the system up. We won't rip you guys off, but we'll take care of you and we'll test it and make sure it works after this. I set that up like 30 minutes before we came to air, so.
Simon Southerton [02:16:44] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:16:45] Yeah. And Gerardo, can I just. Thank you. I know you put a ton of work into this. Getting Simon's audio set up, his camera, helping Simon with the research and with the slides, and just making all this happen. Gerardo, you are a rock star. You are a super valued and treasured member of this team. We love you and appreciate you so much. Thank you for making this happen, Gerardo.
Simon Southerton [02:17:10] And same. Same here. Gerardo's been fantastic. Found some really neat little links. So, yeah, these little videos. He put me on an absolute cracker of video the other day. And it's really been very helpful. He's been very helpful. Thank you, Simon.
John Dehlin [02:17:28] You're. You're a legend, Simon. You're a. You're a pioneer. You're a legend and we honor you. We're not worthy. We should do a Wayne's World. Thank you, Simon, for coming.
Simon Southerton [02:17:41] There's a good influence on you.
John Dehlin [02:17:46] Wayne's World's before Carah's time, right?
Carah Burrell [02:17:47] I grew up on Wayne's World, actually.
Simon Southerton [02:17:49] Oh, okay. All right.
Carah Burrell [02:17:52] I think you better leave. There you go.
John Dehlin [02:17:55] Thanks for helping us not have this be a sausage fest. You. It's great to have you on.
Carah Burrell [02:18:01] I made it into one with all of my questionings about size. Apparently in the comment section.
John Dehlin [02:18:04] Always respect that I was bringing down the level of discourse with humor or
Simon Southerton [02:18:11] raising a level of people understand, which is very important.
John Dehlin [02:18:15] Okay, well, well, Simon, again, thank you. Gerardo, Carah. Thanks everyone. And thanks to all our viewers and listeners that made amazing comments on the live stream. We really appreciate that. Thanks to everyone who donated. We did have several People donate. You can still do it. If you're on YouTube right now, you can click on the Little Simon Southerton campaign. We're up to $354.
Simon Southerton [02:18:36] Oh, gosh.
John Dehlin [02:18:36] We hope to pay Simon at least a thousand dollars per episode. We've also got donations coming in to. To the link, the donor box link. Those are monthly donations. If we can, you know, we. We love monthly donations because then we can know that we're going to be able to meet the goal. So thank you. YouTube's great donations there. But also for those of you who are willing to donate in the donor box link, that'll allow us to predictably pay Simon or figure out what we can do to fundraise to throw. Throw Simon a little cheddar cheese for his amazing work.
Carah Burrell [02:19:10] Throw him a little shrimp on the barbie. You could say on the barbies.
Simon Southerton [02:19:15] So backstory to that. Shrimp is not a word that we use in Australia.
John Dehlin [02:19:19] What do you use for shrimp? What's the word?
Simon Southerton [02:19:21] Pruned prime. That was. That whole thing was Americanized prone. Yeah. All right. Yeah, it sounds terrible.
John Dehlin [02:19:33] Thanks. All right, well, thanks, Simon. Thanks, everyone. Thanks to all. You support Mormon stories and. And please be good to each other. Please share this episode with everyone that you think could benefit from it. Please send it to Carah's mom and dad, Carah's siblings. Please send it to every church member in Utah county and in Cache Valley and in Southerton Utah and in Idaho and Arizona.
Carah Burrell [02:20:05] Let them reckon with what their church teaches versus what the university teaches.
John Dehlin [02:20:09] Just let them get educated about science. And if you're going to have to choose between Mormon doctrine and science, and if there's a conflict, go with science. And I promise you, eventually the church will follow along. True.
Carah Burrell [02:20:23] I don't know. I feel like they're going towards. Well, we'll have to talk about in the next episode. Are they going towards small tent Mormonism? Are they doubling down?
John Dehlin [02:20:29] We'll see. We'll see. I also have a great episode coming up on. On, you know, is the Mormon Church in Decline? Tips from an Insider that's going to be coming out in the next few days. It's. I think it's going to be kind of a blockbuster, at least a relative blockbuster. So stay tuned for that. We've got Rodney Meldrum coming up, lots of cool episodes in the coming weeks, Months and Years on Mormon Stories podcast. And Carah, I'm sure you'll. You'll be bringing us some cool stuff like you did the Jordan McKay episode.
Carah Burrell [02:20:58] Yeah. Did you guys like Jordan McKay's episode this week. We had some great viewership. A lot of people tuned in.
John Dehlin [02:21:03] We had the highest YouTube viewership ever this week. Thanks to Jordan McKay and Carah for, for lining that up.
Carah Burrell [02:21:10] Yeah, you guys haven't seen them yet. It's a three part episode so go check them out. They're really popular right now.
John Dehlin [02:21:15] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [02:21:16] So yeah, we've got a lot of exciting stuff coming from Mormon Stories. We already mentioned Margi's Thrive project, this Simon's other project. We've got John Larsen on regularly and then John and I have a few other projects we're going to be announcing in the coming weeks too.
John Dehlin [02:21:28] So yeah, and check out if you happen to be interested. Thrive St. George is next weekend, obviously in St. George. Natasha, David Bachavoy, Jesse Funk. I'm going to be there. Lots of cool people are going to be there. Go to thrivebeyondreligion.com to register. And then there's going to be a Thrive Houston, A Thrive Southerton California and a Thrive Florida on April 2nd. And along with Thrive Time for Women in Salt Lake City over general conference weekend. So please go to Thrive Beyond Religion to register for those amazing events where we do our best to create community communities of support focused on healing and growth for progressive and post Mormons. So thanks everyone. Stay tuned. Thanks Carah. You rock. Thanks Simon, Gerardo and everyone else and love you guys. Be good to each other and we'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast, Choose Science. Thanks everybody.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
Hosts John Dehlin, Gerardo Sumano, and Carah Burrell interview Dr. Simon Southerton, an Australian geneticist and former Mormon bishop, who was excommunicated for speaking too openly about Book of Mormon historicity and the DNA research about Indigenous Americans.
This interview marks the launch of a new series on Mormon Stories Podcast. Like with the John Larsen and Margi Dehlin (THRIVE Stories), Simon plans to appear monthly to explore the many ways in which Mormon Doctrine clashes with modern science.
This episode covers the Mormon Church teaching of The Creation.
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We will be paying Simon for his work, but need your financial support to make this happen.
100% of your donations at this link will go to support Simon!
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- Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church by Simon Southerton
- The Sacred Curse: How Native American DNA Exposes Mormonism’s Lamanite Myth by Simon Southerton
- Mormon Stories interview with Simon Southerton, “DNA, Lamanites, and the Book of Mormon”
- Mormon Stories interview with Simon Southerton, “New Temples Veil Mormonism’s Decline”
- Mormon Stories interview with Simon Southerton, “Rod Meldrum’s Book of Mormon Heartland Model”
- January 2022 Old Testament Institute Lesson on the Creation
- Old Testament Chronology Graphic
- Mormon Doctrine by Bruce R. McConkie
- “Information, Reproduction, and the Origin of Life,” by Homer Jacobson, American Scientist, 1955
- Creation: Accident or Design? by Harold G. Coffin
- “In defense of peer-reviewed science,” BYU Department of Geological Sciences, The Daily Universe, April 4, 2017
- BYU’s Dr. Michael Whiting defends evolution on Twitter
- “Ancient European dog genomes reveal continuity since the Early Neolithic,” by L. Botigué, et. al., Nature Communications, July 18, 2017
- “Genetic evidence for an East Asian origin of domestic dogs,” by Peter Savolainen, et.al., Science, November 22, 2002
- “Rod Meldrum responds to John Dehlin and Simon Southerton” on Mormon Book Reviews with Steven Pynakker
- “What is DNA and How Does It Work,” on Stated Clearly with Jon Perry
- “An Introduction to the Human Genome,” HMX Genetics, Harvard Medical School
- Upcoming Thrive events
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One Response
I love this podcast. Thank you,
I left the church during Covid quarantine mostly because of many of our Ward and church members refused to acknowledge that it was a real thing and even protesting vaccines etc.
There are many other reasons I had for leaving but this was the last straw.