Primary sources regarding Church leaders' statements about organic evolution/MOD 453

FAIR Answers—back to home page

If the story of evolution were true, then, I repeat, the earth today would be filled with living creatures in all these stages of evolutionary development. We would not be able to travel a mile without discovering some of them, for if the factor of increase was as great as these scientists tell us it was, in the millions of years the earth would have been over-populated. Under such circumstances, were this hypothesis true, scientists could save their time searching from one end of the earth to the other to find in fossils the evidence which they seek. It would be before them constantly in living forms inhabiting the earth in great abundance.

Sir Ambrose Fleming, British scientist and mathematician, has presented some very interesting figures on this question. In his very excellent work, The Origin of Man, pages 84-86, he has given us the following important information:

If the population at any place always increases by the same percentage of its amount at the time, then it grows according to the same law by which money increases when invested at compound interest—that is, when the interest as it accrues is added to the capital. Under this law the money doubles itself in a certain time. Thus if a certain sum, say (1)100, is deposited at 5 per cent interest per annum in a bank and left to accumulate at compound interest, it would become (1)200 in about fourteen years. Approximately some such law governs the growth of population, only the annual rate of increase in percentage is not constant. Thus from the article "Population" in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edition, we learn that in A.D. 1928 the world population was estimated at 1879 millions. In A.D. 1920, it was 1811 millions, and in A.D. 1845 it was 1009 millions. It is now, A.D. 1945, probably near to 1940 millions. It has therefore nearly doubled in ninety years. We have no exact data for the world population 1900 years ago, but certain not improbable reckonings would make it about 70 to 80 millions. It has therefore doubled several times over in the last 1900 years. But the span of time in which it has doubled in that past 1900 years has been much larger than at present. If we take it as likely that the world population at the present time is doubling in 100 years, then it can be shown that on the average the time of doubling has been four or five times as long in the period of time between, say, A.D. 45 and A.D. 1845.

In order to give time for the evolution of the human race from animal progenitors, the evolutionists are obliged to suppose an immense time period, a million years or more, for the process. The animal brain or the monkey-like paw cannot be changed by natural selection into the human brain or hand in a few generations. It must take vast ages, and hence each fragment of fossil "man" that is found is declared to be of great age, reckoned in hundreds of thousands of years. But there is an insuperable difficulty connected with such suppositions.

Supposing that the human race has been on this earth even for a period of a hundred thousand years and multiplying only at such a slow rate that the human population took 1000 years to double, then it can easily be shown that the progeny of even one single pair of human beings in the course of the hundred thousand years would have amounted to a number only expressed by 30 digits. It would be a million million billion at least. There would not be standing room for them on the earth at present. To produce the present population of 2000 million from one couple in 100,000 years it would be necessary for the rate to increase to be so slow that it took on the average 3,330 years to double in number. Still more slowly would it have to increase if we take the space of human existence to be a million years. But if this very slow average rate of increase is to take place it invariably implies that the birthrate must be very small or the death-rate very large. But both these conditions are antagonistic to evolutionary progress.

The Darwinian natural selection demands a copious birth-rate, because it is not every germ or embryo which possesses by chance some advantageous improvement fitting it more perfectly to live in its environment. Moreover, if it has such evolutionary improvement it must have a large chance to live and propagate its advance, because it cannot procreate in infancy. But a high death-rate is not favorable to such survival of the fittest. Accordingly the evolutionists are in this position:

The conditions they demand in order that some form of anthropoid ape or other mamal may be transformed into a man by Darwinian natural selection are quite inconsistent with the state of the world at present as regards human population. We have no justification for assuming some vague process called Evolution if the definite conditions required for Darwinian natural selection do not hold good. The outcome therefore of the inquiry as made in this chapter must be that the evolution of man from an ape-like or other animal ancestor is not proven. An increasing number of quite competent naturalists are adopting this opinion.

The lay reader need not, therefore, have his or her faith in the Creative origin of mankind disturbed by over-confident assertions that all scientific men now accept the evolution of mankind from an animal stock as definitely proved.

This argument and evidence is simple and complete and a thorough refutation of the organic evolutionary theories. Moreover, it is an historical fact that every historian knows, life is traced back to the Mesopotamia as the starting point. The story in the Book of Genesis states that the "ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountain of Ararat." From there Noah and his sons made their way towards the fertile valley to the south where their descendants began to build cities and cultivate the land. The oldest cities known were located in the Mesopotamia and are mentioned in Genesis as Babel, Erech, Accad, Calneh, Nineveh, Hur, or Ur, the home of Abraham's father. It was at, or near, Babel that the confusion of the language of the people took place and from that place the Lord scattered them to all parts of the earth. One of the earliest countries beyond these borders where settlers immigrated was Egypt and this land was first settled by the daughter of Ham, so the time of its settlement goes back close to the days when Noah came forth from the ark.

From: Joseph Fielding Smith, Man, His Origin and Destiny, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1954): 453-455.