My time is up, but I have enjoyed my stay for the last couple of weeks. The last post for this guest session is more on the educational side, but I hope you like it.
Mobile genetic elements have become a little bit of a hobby-topic for me over the last few years. I am not a expert on them, just an interested observer. In this post I want to introduce you to a certain class of mobile elements called Alu elements. I hope that you will find them interesting too. (more…)
The words of the scientist, Henry Eyring:
“When President Joseph Fielding Smith’s book, Man, His Origin and Destiny, was published, someone urged it as an Institute course. One of the Institute teachers came to me and said, ‘If we have to follow it exactly, we will lose some of the young people.’ I said, ‘I don’t think you need to worry.’ I thought it was a good idea to get the thing out in public, so the next time I went to Sunday School General Board meeting, I got up and bore testimony that the world was four or five billion years old, that evidence was strongly in that direction.”
What an interesting context in which to find the words “bore testimony.” I am reminded of something said in a speech by his son, Elder Henry B. Eyring:
I know from my own experience, for example, that the Holy Ghost knows some of the mathematical equations used to solve problems in thermodynamics, a branch of the sciences. I was a struggling physics student studying in a book that I still own. I keep it for historical and spiritual reasons. Halfway down a page (I could even show you where it is on the page), in the middle of some mathematics, I had a clear confirmation that what I was reading was true. It was exactly the feeling I had had come to me before as I pondered the Lord’s scriptures and that I have had many times since. So I knew that the Holy Ghost understood whatever was true in what I might be asked on an examination in thermodynamics.
I wonder what other unconventional testimonies are born at Church headquarters, and I wonder how they are received.
A little over a week ago I was reading Stephen J. Gould’s essay, “Bathybius and Eozoon,” which appears along with others of his essays in The Panda’s Thumb, and came across an interesting passage. The quick background is that bathybius and eozoon were both scientific discoveries that initially appeared to help solve the problem of the origin of life, but were ultimately found to be mistaken and cast into the trash bin of scientific history. As in several of his other essays, Gould shows sympathy for wrong discoveries and their discoverers: (more…)
On June 1, 1980, Elder Bruce R. McConkie gave his speech, “The Seven Deadly Heresies,” which became famous (or infamous, depending on the point of view) for his denunciation of–among other issues–organic evolution. The speech was the source of controversy and after consultation with President Spencer W. Kimball, the printed version was modified to soften the tone [1]. A little over a year later, Elder McConkie gave another speech, titled “The Foolishness of Teaching,” that was printed by the Church as a pamphlet. In the speech, Elder McConkie listed some “doctrines that damn” [2,3]. (more…)
Thanks to the BCC folks for inviting me to contribute as a guest for a couple of weeks. I was born and raised in the Church, served a mission in the U.S., graduated from BYU, completed a Ph.D. in microbiology, and am now a postdoctoral researcher. Yes, and I have a family too. I spend more time than I should thinking about science and religion, and I record some of my thoughts at LDS Science Review.
