Because many Latter-day Saints, as well as many people in general, have not been taught evolution very well, they will often dismiss it out of hand, especially when it it encroaches upon their understandings of the origins of human beings. Likewise, it is very unlikely that they have explored the evolutionary process, along with the environment, all of nature, and persons in a web of life, as wonderful gateways to spiritual exploration and transformative experiences.
In this Latter-day Faith podcast episode, host Dan Wotherspoon is joined by evolutionary biology professor T. Heath Ogden in an effort to focus on the spiritual sensibilities that go hand in hand with evolution as the creative force that brings forth change, increased complexity, specialization, and the ever-widening diversity that is produced through its quiet but powerful work. They don’t delve here into the nuts and bolts of the basic processes (so no real biology lessons here) as much as engage each other in an effort to convey how their understandings and acceptance of this process have enriched their spiritual understandings and vitality for life, including a greater appreciation for their fellow beings as also part of this pathway to growth, development, and flourishing.
There is a spirituality in the study of nature and in immersion in the natural world that, when experienced, changes us, grounds us, and brings forth in us greater compassion, gratitude, and also a greater appreciation for all life and its significance–including our own lives. Toward the end of the discussion, they also wrestle together about how the concept and reality of God might or might not enhance and inform, or perhaps distract and obscure, all the wondrous views of life and energy that are ours to experience, should we allow ourselves to do so.
Listen in! We know you’ll find a lot in it worth chewing on.
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Additional materials related to nature, oneness, spirituality found there, etc.
Birdtalker, “One,” song and video
Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Symeon the New Theologian, “We Awaken in Christ’s Body”
We Awaken in Christ’s Body
English version by Stephen Mitchell
Original Language Greek
We awaken in Christ’s body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.
I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in His Godhood).
I move my foot, and at once
He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? — Then
open your heart to Him
and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ’s body
where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us, utterly, real,
and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed
and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
he awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.
Thank you for performing Joshua and Karen’s wedding. I’m sorry but I have found and deeply thought through many many facts and sound reasoning of Creation. There are many huge holes in evolution. I saw a convincing video on a camel, a Bison and other animals. They described in detail how a camel survives so long in the heat without water that anyone of its many features to allow that had to exist completely for it to do what it does, gradual leading to those features means it could never have survived without those features. That is just one argument. If I can find that presentation it’s a good watch. Also the fact that there are no bones of all the in betweens. There would be huge amounts. Another is that Darwin himself in his book said his book was fiction and that’s what he believed. Then there is the facts that came out that many wanting power and recognition and fame faked many of the pre homo sapiens supposedly bones. All 45 of them were found to be frauds.
If God can instantly and miraculously heal in many humans thru prayer huge changes in their body or resurrect a human where all the atoms come together so quickly then why can’t he by his word create instantly a form of life spiritually and then physically. The grandfather’s of two men of the most influential men pushing Darwinism in the early days were some of the worst persecutors of Joseph Smith the genealogy exist. Don’t have there names tho. I don’t believe the periods of creation were in man’s time period of a day. But in Gods a thousand years to one day. When Christ comes and the earth is burnt. How fast is the earth going to reseed or be replanted. That will be interesting to watch. Thank you for reading.