[17] In fact, scientists declare that evolution is not good at creating new sequences, but uses existing DNA in pre-existing genes. As life gets more and more complex in the higher organisms with fewer and fewer uncorrected mutations getting through the multitude of correction enzymes, one really has to wonder how those novel sequences can possibly be created according to the standard theory of evolution going from the 4.5 million DNA bases for e coli to the 3 billion DNA bases for humans.
Kenneth Miller, “A True Acid Test,” Discussion from 1999 book Finding Darwin’s God.
“Behe’s Criticizes the eb System because it is Fashioned from Pre-existing Genes. But that is Exactly how Evolution Works!”
“The fact that each of these parts were scavenged from pre-existing genes doesn’t compromise this example a bit. At the time Hall deleted the true galactosidase gene, not one of these three components existed in its final, functional form. Mutation and selection produced each of them, not from scratch as Behe would demand, but from pre-existing genes. As Melndez-Hevia and his co-authors paraphrased Jacob in their study of the Krebs cycle “evolution does not produce novelties from scratch: It works on what already exists” [ J Mol Evol 43: 293-303 (1996)].”
RPMNote: e. coli has five million letters and mammals three billion letters. If evolution is not good at long new sequences, then how in the world can you go from the millions to billions of letters? If you need the new sequence “abracadabra alakazam” (or rather its equivalent in DNA language), how can that possibly happen via evolution?
Another very relevant question is how the new DNA correction enzymes would evolve in the bacteria genome that eventually would give this huge slowdown in mutation rates in vertebrates and mammals and much, much better error detection and correction for the higher organisms? Once again, this would be evolution of a new complex programming sequence in new genes that we are assured is not the way evolution works.
[18] Book of Mormon and Wikipedia size
Answers.com, “How many words does the Book of Mormon have?”
Book of Mormon: 268.163 words (LDS.org)
D&C: 134,804 words
P of GP: 30,362 words
Kingjamesbibleonline.org, “Popular Bible Words.” 2014.
“There are 788,258 words in the King James Bible. Of these, 14,565 are unique.”
LDS Scriptures total would be: 1,221,587 words
Wikipedia Size Comparsons, 2014.
4,403,074 articles using 2.6 billion words for English Wikipedia.
Other encyclopedias:
“Encyclopedia Britannica,” Wikipedia.org entry, 2008.
“The size of the Britannica has remained roughly constant over 70 years, with about 40 million words on half a million topics.”
[19] Ronald P. Millett, “The Stunning Self-Correcting DNA Information Molecule,” Meridian Magazine, April 23, 2013.
“This illustration shows the enzyme called DNA ligase repairing a break in a strand of DNA. These breaks occur at the rate of 1,000 to 1,000,000 molecular lesions in each cell, every day.
“It is almost unbelievable to me to see this example of how life is built upon a foundation that is extremely resilient and yet depends on so many ongoing processes, working constantly and dependably. Without this correction program continually running life would cease. In an excellent example of which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ the structure of DNA ligase, essential to maintain the DNA molecule, is also specified in the DNA information code. In other words, the formula for the repair enzyme is found in the mechanism it needs to repair. The cell would not last a day without this repair mechanism in place, so how does its formula get into the DNA and start working without having the whole system collapse and die? In my mind, this is definitely miraculous.”
Suzzane Clancy, “DNA Damage & Repair: Mechanisms for Maintaining DNA Integrity,” Scitable by Nature Education, 2008.
“Because DNA is the repository of genetic information in each living cell, its integrity and stability are essential to life. DNA, however, is not inert; rather, it is a chemical entity subject to assault from the environment, and any resulting damage, if not repaired, will lead to mutation and possibly disease. Perhaps the best-known example of the link between environmental-induced DNA damage and disease is that of skin cancer, which can be caused by excessive exposure to UV radiation in the form of sunlight (and, to a lesser degree, tanning beds). Another example is the damage caused by tobacco smoke, which can lead to mutations in lung cells and subsequent cancer of the lung. Beyond environmental agents, DNA is also subject to oxidative damage from byproducts of metabolism, such as free radicals. In fact, it has been estimated that an individual cell can suffer up to one million DNA changes per day (Lodish et al., 2005).”
[20] Russell M. Nelson, “Thanks be to God,” April 2012 General Conference.
[21] Here are more excerpts from the script from episode #2 of the new Cosmos series (“Some of the things molecules can do”) explaining the logic for the evolution of the eye along with some comments.–RPM
“Watch Episode #2 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: Explains the Reality of Evolution,” Open Culture, March 18, 2014.
Neil deGrasse Tyson:
“This is the awesome shape shifting power of natural selection. … Science reveals that all life on Earth is one. Darwin discovered the actual mechanism of evolution. The prevailing belief was that the complexity and variety of life must be the work of an intelligent designer who created each of these millions of different species separately. Living things are just too intricate, it was said, to be the result of unguided evolution.”
RPMNote: Creation of all the different species separately? Not necessarily so. The “kinds” of life placed on the earth could be the family or genera level of classification, not necessarily the species. Adaptability is built into each life form that is “plugged in” as it were to the power that gives life to all things. God as Genetic Engineer? Not considered at all. What about the “worlds without number” being a source of life for this new world? Not thought of at all. Except perhaps evolution advocate Richard Dawkins in an interview with Ben Stein, thinking that alien races could be involved in the origin of life on earth. Watch out for rhetorical straw men being created as religious beliefs in the origin and progress of life are oversimplified and caricatured.
This next reference especially shows the hypocrisy of the pure evolutionary approach claiming evolution without intelligence.
IMDb Quotes, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” 2008.
Ben Stein: What do think is the possibility that there then, intelligent design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics… or in evolution?
Richard Dawkins: Well… it could come about in the following way: it could be that at some earlier time somewhere in the universe a civilization evolved… by probably by some kind of Darwinian means to a very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto… perhaps this… this planet. Now that is a possibility.
an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it’s possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the at the detail… details of our chemistry molecular biology you might find a signature of some sort of designer.
Ben Stein: [voice over] Wait a second. Richard Dawkins thought intelligent design might be a legitimate pursuit?
Richard Dawkins: And that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe. But that higher intelligence would itself would have to come about by some explicable or ultimately explicable process. It couldn’t have just jumped into existence spontaneously. That’s the point.
Ben Stein: [voice over] So, professor Dawkins was not against intelligent design, just certain types of designers. Such as God.
Returning to Cosmos Episode 2 transcript.
Neil deGrasse Tyson:
“Consider the human eye. A masterpiece of complexity. [21:55 from end of episode using the Hulu version] It requires a cornea, iris, lens, retina, optic nerves, muscles, let alone the brain’s elaborate neural network to interpret images. It is more complicated than any device ever crafted by human intelligence. Therefore, it was argued, the human can’t be the result of mindless evolution.
“To know if that’s true, we need to travel across time to a world before there were eyes to see. [21:12]
“In the beginning, life was blind. This was what our world looked like four billion years ago before there were any eyes to see. Until a few hundred million years passed, and then one day, there was a microscopic copying error in the DNA of a bacterium. This random mutation gave that microbe a protein molecule that absorbed sunlight. Want to know what the world looked like to a light sensitive bacterium? Take a look at the right side of the screen. Mutations continued to occur at random as they always do in any population of living things. Another mutation causes a dark bacterium to flee intense light. What is going on here? Night and day. Those bacteria that could tell light from dark had a decisive advantage over the ones that couldn’t. Why? Because the daytime brought harsh, ultraviolet light that damages DNA. The sensitive bacteria fled the intense light to safely exchange their DNA in the dark. They survived in greater numbers than the bacteria that stayed at the surface.
“Over time those light sensitive proteins became concentrated in a pigment spot on the more advanced one celled organism. This made it possible to find the light, an overwhelming advantage for an organism that harvests sunlight to make food.”
RPMNote: Looking at one of these proteins in the eyespot of unicellular green algae, we can see that all is not as simple as this explanation implies. The ChR2 gene consists of more than 5,000 DNA letters and has a complex function described in this paper referenced below which also compares the functions of the ChR1 and ChR2 genes.
Consider the semantic implications of the phrase “became concentrated” in the last quote from the script. We are so immersed in intelligence that even when we think we are doing non-intelligent random things, it ends up that we are surrounded by ubiquitous intelligence.
Hongxia Wang et. all, “Molecular Determinants Differentiating Protocurrent Properties of Two Channelrhodopsins from Chlamydomonas,” The Journal of Biological Chemistry, February 27, 2009.
AddGene.org, “Plasmid 18917: AAV-FLEX-rev-ChR2-tdtomato.
Information on the ChR2 gene from green algae (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii).
RPMNote: If a single letter change indeed is able to trigger these abilities all at once, then it is building on the existing gene’s capabilities and we would have to say that the gene was extremely well designed to have a single change now activate and enhance other programming in the gene. When we could do such an efficient design in AI programming, it was some of our best and most complicated work. If many changes are required, and these complex genes would have to be built in some fashion, letter by letter, according to evolutionary theory, then the exponential explosion for random mutations would quickly go into the world of the impossible. If you have any doubt that DNA is a complex, subtle and powerful language, just look at the explanations in papers analyzing these protein structures like this paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. And, this is not the only gene involved in the eye spot and flagellum activating reactions to eye spot light detection in single celled algae.
More from Cosmos episode #2 script continuing the full detailed explanation of human eye evolution:
“Over time those light sensitive proteins became concentrated in a pigment spot on the more advanced one celled organism. This made it possible to find the light, an overwhelming advantage for an organism that harvests sunlight to make food. Here’s a flatworm’s eye view of the world. This multi-celled organism evolved a dimple in the pigment spot. The bowl shaped depression allowed the animal to distinguish light from shadow to crudely make out objects in its vicinity including those to eat and those that might eat it, a tremendous advantage. Later things became a little clearer. The dimple deepened and evolved into a socket with a small opening. Over thousands of generations, natural selection was slowly sculpting the eye. The opening contracted to a pinhole covered by a protective transparent membrane. Only a little light could enter the tiny hole, but it was enough to paint a dim image on the sensitive inner surface of the eye. This sharpened the focus. A larger opening would have let in more light to make a brighter image but one that was out of focus. This development launched the visual equivalent of an arms race. The competition needed to keep up, to survive.”
RPMNote: Notice all of the active verbs describing this complex process: “deepened and evolved into a socket,” “slowly sculpting” and “sharpened the focus.” The higher level eyes are many orders of magnitude above the eye spot starter eyes and all require communication interfaces. As an AI programmer looking at DNA as a programming language, this complex system obviously cannot program itself. Incredible intelligence is involved at every level.
“But then a splendid new feature of the eye evolved: a lens that provided both brightness and sharp focus. In the eyes of primitive fish, the transparent gel near the pinhole formed into a lens. At the same time, the pinhole enlarged to let in more and more light. Fish could now see in high-def both closeup and far away. And then something terrible happened. Have you ever notices that a straw in a glass of water looks bent at the surface of the water? That’s because light bends when it goes from one medium to another, say from water to air. Our eyes originally evolved to see in water. The watery fluid in those eyes neatly eliminated the distortion of the bending effect. But for land animals, the light carries images from dry air into their still watery eyes. That bends the light rays causing all kinds of distortions.”
RPMNote: “pinhold enlarged” and “formed into a lens.” A complex system that is drenched in intelligence and they are describing it as such.
“When our amphibious ancestors left the water for the land, their eyes, exquisitely evolved to see in water, were lousy for seeing in the air. Our vision has never been as good since. We like to think of our eyes as state-of-the-art, but 375 million years later, we still can’t see things right in front of our noses or discern fine details in near darkness, the way fish can.
When we left the water, why didn’t nature just start over again and evolve us a new set of eyes that were optimal for seeing in the air? Nature doesn’t work that way. Evolution reshapes existing structures over generations, adapting them with small changes. It can’t just go back to the drawing board and start from scratch.”
RPMNote: An argument where a “perfect God” would not do it this way. He will do many things to give His children a valid test here on this fallen telestial earth. Remember, fortunately our mortal bodies are not the end that the Lord has in mind for us. If we compare life to a dramatic production of our second estate test, we are assured that God will go to great lengths for the salvation of even one soul. A celestial resurrected body and spirit is the end He has in mind.
“Or have angels ceased to appear unto the children of men? Or has he withheld the power of the Holy Ghost from them? Or will he, so long as time shall last, or the earth shall stand, or there shall be one man upon the face thereof to be saved?” (Moroni 7:36)
Back to the script:
“At every stage of its development, the evolving eye functioned well enough to provide a selective advantage for survival. And among animals alive today, we find eyes at all these stages of development. And all of them function. The complexity of the human eye poses no challenge to evolution by natural selection. In fact, the eye and all of biology makes no sense without evolution. Some claim that evolution is just a theory, as if it were merely an opinion. The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact. Evolution really happened. Accepting our kinship with all life on earth is not only solid science. In my view, it’s also a soaring spiritual experience.”
RPMNote: A very good example that seeks to show the full context of the theory of evolution being a scientific fact on equal footing with the theory of gravity is this quote. “A soaring spiritual experience?” He supports a materialistic theory that denies the effects of the individual spirit and the spiritual dimension as well as the individual intelligence in life and the life force in all living beings. Then he proclaims spiritual experiences. Unconvincing to me. “The complexity of the human eye poses no challenge to evolution by natural selection.” What a claim!
[22] Helga Kolb, “Simple Anatomy of the Retina,” Webvision: The Organization of the Retina and Visual System, 2011.
“The retina is approximately 0.5 mm thick and lines the back of the eye. The optic nerve contains the ganglion cell axons running to the brain and, additionally, incoming blood vessels that open into the retina to vascularize the retinal layers and neurons (Fig. 1.1). A radial section of a portion of the retina reveals that the ganglion cells (the output neurons of the retina) lie innermost in the retina closest to the lens and front of the eye, and the photosensors (the rods and cones) lie outermost in the retina against the pigment epithelium and choroid. Light must, therefore, travel through the thickness of the retina before striking and activating the rods and cones (Fig. 1.1). Subsequently the absorbtion of photons by the visual pigment of the photoreceptors is translated into first a biochemical message and then an electrical message that can stimulate all the succeeding neurons of the retina. The retinal message concerning the photic input and some preliminary organization of the visual image into several forms of sensation are transmitted to the brain from the spiking discharge pattern of the ganglion cells.”
[23] Kellogg Eye Center, Patient Care, “How the Eye Works,”
“Optic Nerve: A bundle of more than a million nerve fibers carrying visual messages from the retina to the brain. (In order to see, we must have light and our eyes must be connected to the brain.) Your brain actually controls what you see, since it combines images. The retina sees images upside down but the brain turns images right side up. This reversal of the images that we see is much like a mirror in a camera. Glaucoma is one of the most common eye conditions related to optic nerve damage.”
[24] JVC USA, Customer Support, “JVC D-ILA Projector Remote Control Guide,” 2011.
[25] “Fun with Morse Code,” apfelmus.com,
“Samuel F.B. Morse sent the first telegraphic message May 24, 1844,” America’s Library – Library of Congress.
[26] “S100 Computers: A Web Site for S-100 Bus Computer Owners,”
“This section of this web site is dedicated to software to run on S-100 systems. Clearly this could be a whole web site in itself. I will concentrate here on software that is focused on getting the hardware up and running and that I have either written myself or have used extensively.”
RPMNote: Here are some extracts from the PCGET and PCPUT files using the RS232 interface specification written in Intel 8080 assembly language code that we used in my lab at BYU in 1978.
_________________________________________
; PCGET.ASM – get files from the RS232 port (small extract from code)
; “. . .” show skips in the listing
; Equates to use the interface
MODEM$CTL$PORT EQU BASE$PORT ;A1H or 010H
MODEM$SEND$MASK EQU 4
SEND$READY EQU 4 ;VALUE WHEN READY
MODEM$RECV$MASK EQU 1
RECV$READY EQU 1 ;BIT ON WHEN READY
MODEM$DATA$PORT EQU BASE$PORT+2 ;A3H or 012H
; . . .
RECV$CHAR: ; Code to receive a single character from the interface port
MVI B,1 ;1 SEC TIMEOUT
CALL RECV ;GET CHAR
JC RECV$HDR$TIMEOUT
MOV M,A ;STORE CHAR
INR L ;DONE?
JNZ RECV$CHAR
;VERIFY CHECKSUM
MOV D,C ;SAVE CHECKSUM
MVI B,1 ;TIMEOUT
CALL RECV ;GET CHECKSUM
JC RECV$HDR$TIMEOUT
CMP D ;CHECK
JNZ RECV$CKSUM$ERR
; . . .
; PCPUT.ASM – Put files through RS232 port
; . . . Code to send a sector worth of characters over the RS232 port
SENDC MOV A,M
CALL SEND
INX H
MOV A,H
CPI 1 ;DONE WITH SECTOR?
JNZ SENDC
;SECTOR SENT, SEND CKSUM
MOV A,C ;GET CKSUM
CALL SEND
;GET ACK ON SECTOR
MVI B,4 ;WAIT 4 SECONDS MAX
CALL RECV
JNC SNTO ;NO TIMEOUT
;TIMED OUT WAITING FOR ACK
CALL TOUT ;PRINT ‘TIMEOUT’, ERRCT
DATERR LDA ERRCT ; .
. .
[27] “Operations Manual: Simply Modbus Master,” simply MODBUS. 2014
“The RS232 specification states a maximum distance of 50 feet at 20kbaud. Slightly longer connections are possible at slower baud rates depending on cable quality and noise in the area.”
[28] HDMI: High Definition Multimedia Interface, “Introducing HDMI 2.0,” 2014.
[29] Casey Luskin, “Cosmos episode 2: Mindless Evolution’ Has All the answers – If You don’t Think About it Too Deeply,” Evolution News and Views, March 17, 2014.
“With more eye-popping CGI and new splendid scenes of Neil deGrasse Tyson touring the solar system in his high-tech spaceship, Cosmos Episode 2 weighed in Sunday night on some of life’s most profound questions. Toward the end of the episode, Tyson honestly admits, “Nobody knows how life got started,” and even says, “We’re not afraid to admit what we don’t know,” since “the only shame is to pretend we know all the answers.” By this late stage of the episode, however, that came off as a nervously inserted qualification since the rest of the episode had so vigorously argued that what Tyson calls the “transforming power” of “mindless evolution” or “unguided evolution” indeed has all the answers to how life evolved on Earth. Except, that is, for a few cases where evolution was guided by human breeders, through “artificial selection.”
“In his account of the evolution of the eye, Tyson says that “a microscopic copying error” gave a protein the ability to be sensitive to light. He doesn’t explain how that happened. Indeed, Sean B. Carroll cautions us to “not be fooled” by the “simple construction and appearance” of supposedly simple light-sensitive eyes, since they “are built with and use many of the ingredients used in fancier eyes.” Tyson doesn’t worry about explaining how any of those complex ingredients arose at the biochemical level. What’s more interesting is what Tyson says next: “Another mutation caused it [a bacterium with the light-sensitive protein] to flee intense light.”
“This raises an interesting question: It’s nice to have a light-sensitive protein, but unless the sensitivity to light is linked to some behavioral response, then how would the sensitivity provide any advantage? Only once a behavioral response also evolved — say, to turn towards or away from the light — can the light-sensitive protein provide an advantage. So if a light-sensitive protein evolved, why did it persist until the behavioral response evolved as well? There’s no good answer to that question, because vision is fundamentally a multi-component, and thus a multi-mutation, feature. Multiple components — both visual apparatus and the encoded behavioral response — are necessary for vision to provide an advantage. It’s likely that these components would require many mutations. Thus, we have a trait where an intermediate stage — say, a light-sensitive protein all by itself — would not confer a net advantage on the organism. This is where Darwinian evolution tends to get stuck.”
“Schematic representation of a Euglena cell with red eyespot”
[30] The eye spot to human eye evolution example illustrates a common mistake: Make an unsupportable extrapolation from the simpler system to the exponentially more complex system. The key to discern this approach is the “exponentially more complex” description. A probability described by 10-700 is way, way, “over the top” more unlikely than one described by the probability 10-7.
Here is a well know example where that unsupportable extrapolation is made and believed by many as valid proof of the theory of evolution for higher life forms.
Stephen Ornes, “Bacteria learn new trick: Scientists show evolution in action in decades long E. coli study,” Student Science, October 12, 2012.
For the last 25 years, with a new generation almost seven times a day, generations of the bacteria e coli have been monitored in a laboratory at Michigan State University under the direction of Richard Lenski. Over 50,000 generations have been monitored and test cultures preserved. After about 30,000 generations (about 15 years), it was noticed that some of the cultures had developed the ability to digest the citrate that was part of the culture medium.
“The new experiment shows that evolutionary changes don’t pop up overnight – they emerge from the gradual accumulation of changes in an organism’s genes. A gene is information that’s passed from a parent to an offspring. But every generation – such as your parents’, your grandparents’, yours – tends to have some slightly different genes than the one before. Those changes add up and can lead to bigger, more obvious changes in behaviors or body functions.”
“Lenski’s team tracked the evolutionary change in the bacteria’s diet through about 13,000 generations. (It would take humans roughly 250,000 years to go through that many generations.)”
“The Michigan State biologists find that this process had three steps. In the first, at least two important genes mutated, or changed. This prepared the cell to eat citrate. During the second step, an unused gene that could move citrate within the cell became active again. In the final stage, that gene got busy, and the cell adapted other tweaks necessary to gobble up citrate.”
“‘The ability to be able to not just talk about how genes evolve, but to see it in action is just awesome,’ Emory University biologist Bruce Lenski told Science News. Lenski says the Michigan study clearly shows how organisms change over time. This is really getting at the nitty-gritty of evolution.'”
RPM comments:
Note that this ability came about over a long period of time, quadrillions of bacteria cell divisions, and involved only a very few changes to the genetic code. E. coli is believed to originally have had the ability to eat citrate but it was lost about a million years ago. Very few changes were needed to reactivate that ability.
In this experiment, simple as it is, I see the hand of God and the power of the light of Christ being demonstrated. To have a system that with a few changes can regain this ability is in itself inspiring. Without being plugged in as it were to the light of Christ, life would wither away, even these lowly bacteria.
However, provided that the bacteria is alive with all the miraculous things that implies, this is, I believe, a good example of evolution via chance mutation over a long period of time. It also shows the limitations of chance mutations with its final results giving the bacteria a very limited improved capability.
Note especially the comment that these few changes in rapidly mutating bacteria is equivalent to 250,000 years of human evolution. That is very interesting and essentially would limit human evolution to only a couple of tiny beneficial mutation.
Essentially, no human evolution would be able to occur based on this statement that is coming from biologists who firmly believe in evolution. I don’t know if they realize the implication of that statement.
Here is where this example can be compared to the eye spot / human eye evolution claims. At this point in the article on Lenski’s experiment a claim is made that, if believed, can be and is used to justify huge evolutionary jumps using almost trivial examples. Watch out for these invalid extrapolations.
Here is the quote:
“That may not seem like such a big deal [(being able to digest citrate)], and it’s not – for humans. But for the e. coli bacteria that these biologists have been studying, learning to eat citrate as food is as momentous as growing eyes or wings would be for larger creatures with lots of cells.”
The author implies that creating the new citrate digestion ability would be directly comparable to the larger problem of creating a complex organ like the eye. The complex multicellular eye might be compared to NASA’s DPS flight control system for the space shuttle with about 420,000 lines of code. The eye spot might be compared with a 14 line very simple program.
That extrapolation that they are comparable is invalid because there are exponential factors in the probability formulas for evolution to work and there is a huge difference between the two cases. The probabilities for the larger system to derive any benefit from chance changes immediately go exponentially way past the universal probability limit. What may be possible to randomly vary for the thirteen line program will be in fact totally impossible for the almost half a million line space shuttle program that had an exceptional record of reliability on the space shuttle flights.
“Case study: NASA space shuttle flight control software,” Statistical Software Engineering, National Academies Press, 1996.
“IBM’s Federal Systems Division (now Loral), which was contracted to support NASA’s shuttle program by developing and maintaining the safety-critical software that controls flight activities, has gained much experience and insight in the development and safe operation of critical software.”
[31] John R. Talmage, “The Talmage Story: Life of James E. Talmage–Educator, Scientist, Apostle,” 2012.
“Within the gospel of Jesus Christ there is room and place for every truth thus far learned by man, or yet to made known.”
“An excellent biography about one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Mormon scientists in the early 1900s. Not only was his scientific ability second to none (whether Mormon or not), but his scholarly knowledge was also unparalleled. Two of my favorite quotes describes the interplay between science and religious knowledge: Theories may be regarded as the scaffolding upon which the builder stands while placing the blocks of truth in position. It is a grave error to mistake the scaffolding for the wall, the flimsy temporary structure for the stable and permanent… Theories have their purpose and are indispensable, but they must never be mistaken for demonstrated facts.’ And The scientist is busily engaged in the study of secondary causes — the ways and means by which God works and through which He accomplishes His miracle. The Holy Scriptures should not be discredited by theories of men; they cannot be discredited by fact and truth. Within the Gospel of Jesus Christ there is room and place for every truth thus far learned by man, or yet to be made known.'”
[32] Ronald P. Millett, “Moroni Reveals a God of Miracles,” Meridian Magazine, March 27, 2013.
Original quote in: James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ, Salt Lake City, 1915. Pp. 148-149.
[33] James P. Harris, ed., “Essential James E. Talmage,” Chapter 37: “The Earth and Man,” delivered in the Tabernacle on 9 Aug 1931, 2013.
