View source for Criticism of Mormonism/Websites/MormonThink/Conflicts with Science

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|H=Response to MormonThink page "Conflicts with Science"
|T=[[../|MormonThink]]
|A=Anonymous
|<=[[../The Greek Psalter Incident|The Greek Psalter Incident]]
|>=[[../Tithing|Tithing]]
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|L=Criticism of Mormonism/Websites/MormonThink/Conflicts with Science
|H=Response to claims made on MormonThink page "Conflicts with Science"
|S=
|L1=Response to claim: "the Church clearly teaches that story of Noah was a real event and it was a global flood"
|L2=Response to claim: "The Sun Gets Its Light from Kolob"
|L3=Response to claim: "From ancient dead animals and plants, it takes millions of years for oil and coal to form"
|L4=Response to claim: "What most LDS have been taught in church and believe as truth...Dinosaurs were never alive on this earth, because there was no death before Adam"
|L5=Response to claim: "What most LDS have been taught in church and believe as truth...Evolution Did Not Happen"
|L6=Response to claim: "Many of these Biblical traditions were believed as literal events....Adam and Eve were the first humans"
}}
</onlyinclude>

==Response to claim: "the Church clearly teaches that story of Noah was a real event and it was a global flood"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=MormonThink
|claim=How much clearer can you get? The Ensign article makes it extremely clear what the LDS position is on Noah and the Flood. [The Ensign articles are all approved by the First Presidency and almost considered scripture.]<br>....<br>
Even the LDS apologists acknowledge that the Church clearly teaches that story of Noah was a real event and it was a global flood.<br>....<br>
Most scientists do not believe that any world-wide flood has occurred. There are serious questions about where all the water came from and went.
}}
{{misinformation|There is a single ''Ensign'' article by BYU professor Donald W. Parry that describes the Flood of Noah as being global in scope. The critics insist that this must represent official Church doctrine because the Ensign is "almost considered scripture." 

However, if critics of the Church insist that one must accept an article by a BYU professor about a global flood as "almost scripture" just because it appeared in the ''Ensign'', then the same standard must be applied to LDS anthropologist John L. Sorenson's two-part ''Ensign'' article in 1984 that describes a limited geography model for the Book of Mormon. You can't accept one without accepting the other.

The point of this exercise? All this really proves is that not everything that appears in the Ensign is "almost scripture." We accept the words of the prophets and apostles that appear in the ''Ensign'' as "scripture for our time," however, many other things appear in the ''Ensign'' from other authors, and these things do not define "the LDS position." Such is the case with both a "global flood" (Parry's article) or a local Book of Mormon geography (Sorenson's articles).
}}
{{:Question: How do Latter-day Saints reconcile scriptural accounts of the Flood of Noah with scientific evidence of continuous human habitation on the earth?}}
{{:Source:Widtsoe:Encyclopedia of Mormonism:Earth:The Old Testament records a flood that was just over fifteen cubits}}
{{:Question: Why does the Church teach that the flood was a global event?}}
{{:Question: Are Church members required to believe in a global flood?}}
{{:Question: How could the Garden of Eden have been in Missouri if the Flood was local?}}
{{:Question: Doesn't the Bible say that the continents were divided immediately after the Flood?}}

==Response to claim: "The Sun Gets Its Light from Kolob"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=MormonThink
|claim=The Sun Gets Its Light from Kolob
}}
{{misinformation|The Book of Abraham does not state that the sun "gets it light from Kolob," and it is certainly not disputing the notion that photons are emitted from the Sun. The term "light" is used metaphorically, not literally. The October 2014 revision of the "Letter to a CES Director" modifies this claim slightly: "Facsimile 2, Figure #5 states the sun receives its “light from the revolutions of Kolob.” We now know that the process of nuclear fusion is what makes the stars and suns shine. With the discovery of quantum mechanics, scientists learned that the sun’s source of energy is internal, and not external. The sun shines because of thermonuclear fusion; not because it gets its light from any other star as claimed by the Book of Abraham." Regardless of the modification, the Book of Abraham is still not claiming that the sun "gets its light" in the form of photons "from any other star."
}}
{{:Question: What is the light which comes from the presence of God?}}
{{:Question: Does the Book of Abraham state that the sun gets its photons from Kolob?}}

==Response to claim: "From ancient dead animals and plants, it takes millions of years for oil and coal to form"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=MormonThink
|claim=The fossils of animals and plants that have lived and died on this earth are thousands and millions of years old. From ancient dead animals and plants, it takes millions of years for oil and coal to form.
}}
{{information|As far as we are aware, nobody in the Church disputes this.
}}
{{:Question: What does the Church teach on the subject of death before the Fall of Adam?}}
{{:Question: Was there no death on the entire earth before the Fall?}}
{{:Question: What was the state of things on the Earth prior to the placement of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?}}
{{:Question: What changes have been made to the ''Gospel Principles'' manual?}}
{{:Question: Is the concept of no death before the fall on the ''entire earth'' Church doctrine?}}

==Response to claim: "What most LDS have been taught in church and believe as truth...Dinosaurs were never alive on this earth, because there was no death before Adam"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=MormonThink
|claim=What most LDS have been taught in church and believe as truth...Dinosaurs were never alive on this earth, because there was no death before Adam.
}}
{{disinformation|Nonsense. The Church does not teach that "dinosaurs were never alive on this earth." BYU not only has an active paleontology department, but they have a Museum of Paleontology. The "no death before the fall" applies to Adam and Eve, and there is nothing to indicate that this applied outside the Garden of Eden. Dinosaurs would have existed on the earth long before Adam and Eve appeared.
}}
{{:Question: Question: How do we reconcile the actual age of the earth to the "seven thousand years of its continuance" mentioned in D&C 77:6?}}
{{:Source:Brigham Young:JD 14:116:whether the Lord...made the earth in six days or in as many millions of years, is and will remain a matter of speculation}}
{{:Source:John S. Lewis:Interpreter 8:71:Considering that Doctrine and Covenants 77:6 refers to “…this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance, or its temporal existence,” what led Phelps to speak of Earth as 2,555 million years old?}}

==Response to claim: "What most LDS have been taught in church and believe as truth...Evolution Did Not Happen"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=MormonThink
|claim="Evolution Did Not Happen.... (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, section "Evolution and Religion Cannot be Harmonized")"
}}
{{misinformation|It is not a doctrine of the Church that evolution did not happen. Various individuals have expressed a variety of opinions on the subject, but neither an acceptance nor a rejection of evolution prevents one from being a member of the Church in good standing.
}}
{{:Source:Hinckley:Deseret News:2002:What the church requires is only belief that Adam was the first man of what we would call the human race}}
{{:Question: What is the Church's stance on the theory of organic evolution?}}

==Response to claim: "Many of these Biblical traditions were believed as literal events....Adam and Eve were the first humans"==
{{IndexClaimItemShort
|title=MormonThink
|claim=Many of these Biblical traditions were believed as literal events by most of the general population in the 1800s as well. These include....Adam and Eve were the first humans.
}}
{{information|Latter-day Saints believe that Adam and Eve existed.
}}
{{:Source:First Presidency statement:1931:Leave geology, biology, archaeology and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research}}
{{:Question: How does the Church explain the existence of human-like beings on the earth prior to Adam?}}

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