The Salt Lake Tribune (Opinion, Nov. 5) rightly schools Utah Board of Education members Alisa Ellis and Lisa Cummins for their ignorance and illegal religious biases regarding teaching evolution.
Unfortunately, The Tribune undercuts its own lesson by offering a fake olive branch of compatibility between science and religion, forwarded from an LDS apostle.
A scientific “theory” is an explanation. Natural and supernatural explanations are inherently incompatible. Additionally, appropriate scientific education doesn’t depend on compatibility with religious beliefs. Deliberately distorting scientific education to avoid conflict with religion is dishonest.
The scientific explanation is that evolution an unplanned, unguided, natural process, devoid of intervention by an omnipotent deity who created people in His own image, directly or indirectly. It’s devoid of any supernatural factors at all.
That’s not “mainstream thinking” in Mormonism or conventional Christianity, The Tribune’s concluding remarks notwithstanding.
Yes, many Mormons accept the scientific observations that life on Earth evolved. But they reject the underlying scientific explanations, positing supernatural ones instead.
God-guided evolution is no more compatible with the scientific theory of evolution than illness from demonic possession is compatible with the germ theory of disease.
Simply agreeing that the patient is sick receives only partial credit, at best.
Gregory A. Clark, Salt Lake City