One of the arguments in both the CES Letter and Letter for My Wife is that science supposedly disproves scripture. When I first read that section, I laughed. How could anyone put such faith in something so full of assumptions and contradictions?

Reconciling science and religion has been my father’s lifelong work. It’s something I’ve been around my entire life. His book, Science and Religion: Reconciling the Conflicts, exposes how fragile many so-called “scientific proofs” really are.

Science, when honest and humble, is a wonderful way to learn and build. But have we not seen again and again how often “settled science” turns out to be wrong? What was considered proven twenty years ago is often overturned today. Think of how “science” once treated women’s health or nutrition assuming that men and women are the same.

And you can’t forget the Covid 19 “pandemic” where we watched as people in power used “science” as a shield—declaring, “I am Science”—while later evidence revealed dishonesty and manipulation behind the data. It’s a powerful reminder that science can be misused just like anything else when pride and agenda replace truth.

Reconciling science and religion has been my father’s lifelong work. His book, Science and Religion: Reconciling the Conflicts, shows how fragile many “proofs” are when you actually examine the methods and the assumptions behind them.

Science Has Value, But What are the Motives?

Science is useful when it is honest, humble, and limited to what can be observed and verified. History shows a long list of “settled” ideas later overturned. What was proven twenty years ago is often revised or reversed today. That is not a reason to hate science; it is a reason to stop treating current models as untouchable truth.

So much of what is taught as science today isn’t just based on observation and the scientific method. It’s shaped by motivation. My dad points out that most scientists work under huge pressure to publish results that fit the accepted view. Their jobs, grants, and reputations depend on it. If they question long-held theories like evolution or an ancient earth, they risk losing funding, credibility, and even their careers. Even professors at BYU are under these same pressures. Science today is built around a system that rewards agreement, not discovery. It’s no surprise then that results that challenge the mainstream are quietly ignored or reinterpreted until they fit what’s already believed.

Money and politics also play a big role. Most research is funded by governments or institutions that already reject the idea of a Creator. To keep that funding, scientists must phrase their work in ways that support the naturalistic worldview—that everything must be explained without God. Data that point otherwise are treated as “errors” or adjusted to protect the model. It’s not always individual dishonesty; it’s a system that trains people to believe that the only acceptable answer is one that removes God from the picture.

And then pride and prestige get involved. Scientists are human too—they want recognition, awards, and status. Over time, that human pride turns “science” into its own kind of religion, where faith is placed in human intellect instead of divine truth. The public hears only the final, polished version of the story—textbooks and headlines that make theories sound like absolute fact, when in reality even scientists quietly admit how uncertain much of it still is. My dad said it best: modern science has become less about searching for truth and more about defending a worldview that refuses to admit the hand of God.

The Problem With “Scientific” Dating Methods

Age-dating methods are used as a bludgeon against scripture. The problem is simple: the math is precise, but the inputs come from assumptions. Change the assumptions and the answer changes.

Core Assumptions That Carry the Whole House

• Assumed starting conditions. Dating equations need to know the original amounts of “parent” and “daughter” isotopes. Nobody was there to measure them. Models guess the initial mix from comparisons or circular references to other dates.
• Assumed constant decay rates. Calculations assume decay rates never varied, regardless of past conditions. If rates ever shifted, even slightly, long timescale ages move by huge margins.
• Assumed closed systems. Samples are treated as sealed for thousands or millions of years. Real rocks interact with heat, fluids, pressure, and fractures. Gain or loss of isotopes breaks the clock.
• Assumed inheritance rules. Some methods assume daughter products were zero at the start, or that they can be “corrected” by isochrons. If the inheritance model is off, so is the age.

Additional Sources of Uncertainty Doctors Rarely Mention

• Contamination and exchange. Carbon in bones, charcoal, shells, or water can be diluted, replaced, or mixed from multiple sources. The lab can measure today’s content precisely, but that tells us little if the sample’s carbon changed over time.
• Reservoir effects and mixing. Oceans, lakes over limestone, and groundwater often yield “older” or “younger” radiocarbon signals unrelated to true age.
• Calibration model dependence. Radiocarbon dates are “calibrated” with tree rings and other chronologies that themselves include assumptions, missing/extra rings, and subjective cross-matching.
• Method disagreement. The same sample can return different ages by different methods (e.g., C-14 vs. U-Th vs. K-Ar). Picking the “right” answer often follows expectations, not independent verification.
• Lab precision vs. total uncertainty. A ± value usually reflects instrument counting precision, not the much larger uncertainty from the assumptions above. The reported number looks exact, but it is not the whole error.
• Model circularity. Geological time scales and radiometric dates are used to adjust each other. When a result conflicts with the expected layer age, the “outlier” is reinterpreted or discarded.

Bottom line: precise numbers resting on untested assumptions are not “proof” against scripture. Changing any key assumption changes the date.

“Similarity” Is Not Proof of Evolution

After discussing the age of the earth, the author of Letter for My Wife moves to evolution and treats it as established fact. We need to separate two different claims:

What Everyone Sees

• Variation within a kind (microevolution). Dogs vary. Finches vary. Bacteria adapt. These are small changes using existing genetic flexibility.

What Is Claimed But Not Shown

• One species turning into a new species (macroevolution). The record does not show verified, step-by-step transitions that build new body plans and systems. Fossils appear fully formed. “Missing links” stay missing.

Shared DNA or similar body parts do not prove descent. They can also point to a common designer. Of course living things share building blocks if a single Creator made life to function in the same world. Using similarity to claim descent is an assumption, not a demonstration.

On Claims That “The Church Keeps Changing”

The letter strings together quotes from Joseph Fielding Smith, other leaders, and a few modern “LDS scientists,” then claims the Church is backing away from earlier views to fit “overwhelming evidence.” That is misleading.

What the Church Actually Does

• Defines doctrine, not laboratory models. The mission of the Church is to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the plan of salvation. It does not publish official positions on scientific details like the age of the earth or mechanisms of biology.
• Allows personal opinions. Leaders and Latter-day Saint scholars are free to hold views on science. Personal opinions are not binding doctrine. Quotations that disagree with each other do not prove the Church is “hiding” anything.

The irony is obvious: the accusation focuses on supposed “changes” in the Church while ignoring how often science itself rewrites its own story. The letter offers a collage of quotes that aren’t even organized along the same general theme and idea, not proof.

Creation and the Materials of the Earth

As Latter-day Saints we accept the scriptural statement that God said, “We will take of these materials and make an earth.” Even if modern science could perfectly measure ages—which it cannot—it would only speak to the age of the materials, not when God organized them into this world. Old materials do not challenge the doctrine of divine creation.

The Larger Issue: A World Explained Without God

Why do these shaky methods get taught as certainty? Because many classrooms and institutions operate from a starting goal: explain the world without God. When “what is taught as science” is built to exclude God by definition, the conclusions will also exclude God by design. That is not neutral inquiry. That is a worldview.

The Bible was never meant to be a science textbook or a history book. It is a sacred record meant to teach us who we are and how God relates to us. Personally, I believe that church members who accept the idea of a billions-year-old earth or believe that God used evolution in creation are mistaken—but that has nothing to do with their salvation or standing in the Church. This misunderstanding only becomes dangerous if it leads them to doubt or turn away from God.

Final Thoughts

People feel a clash between science and religion because the way many ideas are taught in science classes makes them sound like final truth, when they are often models, theories, and guesses—attempts to explain reality while refusing to acknowledge God or the Creation.

Honest science and true religion do not contradict. Conflicts arise when speculative methods are presented as unquestionable facts and then used to attack faith. God’s word stands. Human theories change.

Flaws With the Scientific Argument in Letter For My Wife

When asking Chat GPT the flaws it saw with the Letter for My Wife Chapter on Scientific Evidence, personally, I do believe that the earth is young in at least the sense that man has been on it only as long as the Bible teaches, but there are many in the church that do believe “the science.”  This was chatgpt’s assessment:

The Scientific Evidence chapter gives the impression that it’s simply laying out “what science says,” but the entire approach is built on a false contrast. The Letter takes mainstream geology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology—which the Church does not officially reject—and then frames those facts as if they are in direct conflict with Latter-day Saint doctrine. Instead of acknowledging the long history of neutral or pro-science statements from Church leaders (including the 1909 and 1910 First Presidency statements, the 1931 First Presidency letter, the BYU Evolution Packet, and the consistent “no official position” stance), the chapter cherry-picks only the most anti-evolution quotes from Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie and presents their personal opinions as if they define the religion. The chapter quietly ignores the fact that these statements have never been canonized, never accepted as binding doctrine, and were openly contradicted by other apostles at the time.

The chapter also treats the creation timeline in Doctrine and Covenants 77 as if it were meant to function as a geological clock, which it isn’t. It assumes that “7,000 years” refers to the literal physical age of the Earth, even though D&C 77:6 is clearly describing symbolic seals in the book of Revelation—not a scientific chronology. Modern prophets and official Church manuals emphasize that the creation accounts are not intended to be scientific explanations, yet the Letter presents an extremely literalistic reading as the only valid LDS interpretation. From there, it sets up an easy strawman: because radiometric dating and the fossil record show billions of years of life, the Church must be wrong. This argument only works because the Letter ignores every statement from Church leadership that allows for an old Earth, pre-human life, or evolutionary processes.

The most misleading part of the chapter is how it handles “death before the Fall.” The Letter presents McConkie’s personal view—that absolutely no death occurred anywhere on Earth prior to 6,000 years ago—as if this is an official, binding doctrine. Yet the Church has repeatedly declined to define this issue. Many faithful Latter-day Saint scholars and leaders interpret the “no death before the Fall” passages in scripture as applying only to humans, or only to the Garden, or only to spiritual death. The Letter ignores all of those possibilities and instead insists that LDS doctrine requires a young-Earth creationist worldview. Having built that false requirement, the chapter then declares the entire faith incompatible with science. In reality, the conflict it describes exists only because the author chose the most rigid, outdated, and non-binding interpretations and treated them as the official position of the Church.

1. Treats personal opinions of past leaders as official doctrine

• Quotes Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie as if their views define Latter-day Saint doctrine.
• Ignores that their anti-evolution comments were never canonized, never binding, and were actively contradicted by other apostles.
• Leaves out First Presidency statements teaching that the Church has no official position on evolution or the age of the Earth.

Flaw: Takes the most rigid individual opinions and pretends the entire Church teaches them.

2. Misrepresents Doctrine & Covenants 77 as a scientific claim

• Treats the “7,000 years” language as if it is a literal geological timeline.
• Ignores that D&C 77:6 is a symbolic explanation of the seven seals in Revelation, not a scientific age of the planet.
• Leaves out the fact that modern Church manuals explicitly caution against reading scripture as geology.

Flaw: Turns symbolic prophecy into a scientific statement so it can later “debunk” it.

3. Presents mainstream science as if the Church opposes it

• Describes radiometric dating, the fossil record, and human evolution as if the LDS Church officially rejects all of it.
• Completely ignores one hundred years of statements—from the 1909 First Presidency to recent General Authorities—affirming that the Church takes no official position on evolution.
• Leaves out BYU’s own Biology Department, which teaches evolution as the scientific foundation of modern biology without conflict.

Flaw: Invents a conflict between the Church and science that the Church itself does not claim.

4. Uses selective evidence to force a Young Earth Creationist narrative onto the Church

• Treats a literal 6,000-year Earth as the required LDS position when it is not.
• Ignores interpretations held by faithful Latter-day Saints that:
  • death before the Fall applied only to humans,
  • or only to the Garden,
  • or refers to spiritual death,
  • or was never meant as a global biological timeline.

• Excludes the views of apostles and scholars who openly accept pre-Adamic life.

Flaw: Reduces everything to the strictest possible reading so the Church can be declared “unscientific.”

5. Sets up a strawman argument

• First, the Letter asserts: “The Church teaches the Earth is 7,000 years old and evolution is false.”
• Then it uses scientific evidence to prove: “The Earth is not 7,000 years old and evolution is real.”

But the Church does not teach the premise that the Letter is trying to knock down.

Flaw: Creates a fake conflict so the conclusion looks inevitable.

Bottom Line

The “Scientific Evidence” chapter doesn’t expose contradictions between LDS doctrine and science. It manufactures those contradictions by using the oldest, most literalistic statements, ignoring everything that doesn’t fit, and pretending symbolic scripture was intended as geology. The chapter’s argument only works because it misrepresents both science and the Church’s actual teachings.

 

 

 

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