There was a moment in Mormon history, in the 1950s, when some folks "in the leadership" were about to put the LDS firmly in the camp of the Bible-believing fundamentalist christians.
The infallible, spirit-of-God-breathed Word.
For one hundred and twenty years the LDS could go either with Joseph Smith's several versions of the Creation story, well, let's say as found in modern LDS scripture or could just wave a hand at the creation story and believe it might contain errors or changes made by man. . . . and a rising generation of LDS scientists were coming up more in the latter camp, believing the "Science" was superior somehow.
Henry Eyring, who could spin yarns about Albert Einstein. . . like "Albert Einstein didn't know beans. . . . . (audience audibly goes 'gasp'). . . . As we were walking across the commons at Princeton Albert saw some beans sprouting and asked me 'what are those?'", entered the dispute. Being the brother-in-law of Spencer W. Kimball, then an apostle of the LDS, he got a lot of invitations to talk to various church groups about things like the issues of faith and science.
He would say "I don't know how God did, but I know He did it" while opening the door to a less literal interpretation of the creation story. And he turned the tide for the LDS, who today mostly do believe in evolution in some manner but excluding the link to the skeletal or genetic specimens of a million or so years ago.
I noticed Trout's complaint about how his wife is one of the more steadfast of LDS believers, which allusion I interpret as being a religious literalist. Probably wants to be a housewife/mother sort with time to go to ward functions. And while I have indeed been annoyed sometimes by his speculations about who I am, one possibility exists that his wife has skimped on groceries lately and bought herself a laptop and a whole different ISP, and gone online as a "babe" or something.
But let me tell you how it all really is. Any good LDS should properly be in this orbit. Afterall, Brigham Young said Adam was brought here from another world, and that God brought all kinds of plants and critters here from those other worlds too. And as Parley P. Pratt, an aspiring scientific scholar of the mid nineteenth century and an LDS apostle as well, put forth in his
Science: Key to Theology , the various specimens of humans with their less than Godlike features and proportions are evolutionary results of transgressions over the ages. Other aspiring scientists with the ability to knowitall, have variously offered as explanations that there were several earlier attempts at placing mankind here on earth, all of which failed just like ours almost did with the exceptions of Enoch and Noah.
But, bottom line, Mormons can believe the creation story is something of a allegory dumbed down for, or by, the mere humans, or practically anything else they want to.
At any rate, this whole Brigham concept would give the scientists lots of lattitude for "missing links" and gaps in the geologic fossil record, and a whole lot more time for the basic principles of biological genetics to operate, and you really don't need to just throw out the babe of religion with the bathwater of the millenia of gossipers, ignorant speculators, and pious knowitalls like me.
And by the way, that whole strategy laid down in "Fascinating Womanhood" just never did address the issue of exactly how frustrating it is for an intelligent woman to be hitched to a troutbum.
