CES Letter Answers

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Science ​

The claim:

"The problem Mormonism encounters is that so many of its claims are well within the realm of scientific study, and as such, can be proven or disproven. To cling to faith in these areas, where the overwhelming evidence is against it, is willful ignorance, not spiritual dedication."[1]

The CES Letter stacks four items: no death before the Fall, hominid species, Neanderthal DNA, and a bullet list of "discredited" claims including the Tower of Babel, a global flood, and Noah's Ark.[2] Each follows the same move -- find the most rigid, fundamentalist reading any Church leader has ever given, present it as binding doctrine, then show that science contradicts it.

What if the Church doesn't require what the CES Letter says it requires?

The Church settled this in 1931 ​

In the late 1920s, apostles B.H. Roberts and Joseph Fielding Smith clashed publicly over evolution and the age of the earth. The First Presidency under Heber J. Grant ended the debate with a formal memo: "Neither side of the controversy has been accepted as a doctrine at all." They instructed Church leaders to "leave Geology, Biology, Archaeology and Anthropology... to scientific research."[3]

That was 1931. Thirty years before Vatican II began similar recalibrations in Catholicism.

The CES Letter doesn't mention this memo.

BYU teaches evolution ​

A church that required young-earth creationism would not fund evolutionary biology programs at its flagship university.

BYU launched its first evolution course in 1971. The 1992 BYU Evolution Packet, approved by the Board of Trustees, compiled every First Presidency statement on the subject to clarify that evolution is an open question.[4] In 2016, the New Era stated plainly: "The Church has no official position on the theory of evolution."[5]

The apostles who were scientists ​

James E. Talmage held a PhD in geology. In a 1931 Tabernacle address -- requested and published by the Church -- he affirmed that plants and animals "lived and died, age after age, while the earth was yet unfit for human habitation."[6]

Henry Eyring Sr. won the National Medal of Science in 1966 and wrote extensively on reconciling faith and scientific discovery. John A. Widtsoe earned a PhD in chemistry and argued that conflicts between science and religion arise only from incomplete knowledge. Russell M. Nelson, a pioneering cardiac surgeon, said at the 2015 BYU Life Sciences Building dedication: "There is no conflict between science and religion."[7]

These aren't fringe voices. They are apostles and prophets.

The false binary ​

The CES Letter needs the reader's choice to be binary: young-earth fundamentalism or atheism. Accept evolution and the whole plan of salvation collapses.

But multiple faithful interpretations of "no death before the Fall" have existed for over a century. The scriptures support at least three readings: no death in the Garden of Eden specifically (not the entire planet); no human death before the Fall; or "temporal existence" in D&C 77 referring to the covenant era since Adam, not the planet's total age.[8][9] None require a 7,000-year-old earth. None require immortal dinosaurs.

The Bible Dictionary entry on "Death" that the CES Letter cites? Its own introduction states: "This dictionary is not intended as an official statement of Church doctrine."[10]

Built for discovery, not defensive retreat ​

"The glory of God is intelligence" (D&C 93:36). "Seek learning, even by study and also by faith" (D&C 88:118). These aren't recent accommodations. They are foundational scriptures that frame knowledge-seeking as a religious value.

A church that believes God still speaks is not permanently locked into 19th-century scientific assumptions. The trajectory from Brigham Young acknowledging "millions of years" in 1871 to the 2016 official neutrality statement is what institutional health looks like -- a tradition that holds its core theological commitments while leaving mechanism, timelines, and scope to scientific investigation.[11]

The CES Letter frames Latter-day Saint theology as fragile. The 150-year institutional record says otherwise.

Bottom line: The CES Letter's science section rests on a false premise -- that the Church requires young-earth creationism. The Church formally declined that position in 1931, has taught evolution at BYU since 1971, and has elevated trained scientists to its highest councils for over a century. The real question isn't whether faith can survive science. It's why the CES Letter pretends the Church ever staked its credibility on claims it explicitly refused to make doctrine.

  1. Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Science," p. 111. ↩︎

  2. Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Science," pp. 110--111. ↩︎

  3. First Presidency (Heber J. Grant, Anthony W. Ivins, Charles W. Nibley), Memorandum to the Council of the Twelve, April 1931. The memo settled the Roberts-Smith-Talmage debate by formally declining to adopt either position as doctrine. Reproduced in William E. Evenson and Duane E. Jeffery, Mormonism and Evolution: The Authoritative LDS Statements (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2005), 53--66. ↩︎

  4. Evolution and the Origin of Man (1992 BYU Evolution Packet), approved by the BYU Board of Trustees. Compiled official First Presidency statements on evolution from 1909, 1925, and related documents. https://ndbf.net/002.pdf ↩︎

  5. "What does the Church believe about evolution?" New Era, October 2016. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/new-era/2016/10/to-the-point/what-does-the-church-believe-about-evolution ↩︎

  6. James E. Talmage, "The Earth and Man," address delivered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, August 9, 1931, at the request of the First Presidency. Published in the Deseret News, November 21, 1931, and reprinted as a Church pamphlet. Talmage affirmed that "the older rocks of the earth's crust reveal fossils of animals and plants" long predating human life. ↩︎

  7. Russell M. Nelson, remarks at the dedication of the BYU Life Sciences Building, April 9, 2015. Reported in Church News, April 14, 2015. ↩︎

  8. Talmage's reading of D&C 77:6 -- that "temporal existence" refers to the earth's covenant history with humanity, not its physical age -- was well established by the time of his 1931 address. See Talmage, "The Earth and Man" (1931). ↩︎

  9. Jeffrey R. Holland, "Where Justice, Love, and Mercy Meet," general conference, April 2015. Holland specified that there was no human death before the Fall, a careful formulation that does not extend the claim to all biological life. ↩︎

  10. Bible Dictionary, Introduction, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "This dictionary is not intended as an official statement of Church doctrine or an endorsement of the historical and cultural views set forth." ↩︎

  11. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 14:116 (May 14, 1871). Young acknowledged geologic timescales well beyond a young-earth framework, stating that whether God "made it in six days or in as many millions of years, is and will remain a matter of speculation." ↩︎

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