My MHA Presentation and Reconciling Science with Scripture

Here is a copy of my MHA presentation text, “Early LDS Attempts to Reconcile Scripture with Science: Pre-Mormon Pre-Adamites and Intellectual (In)Dependence.” As the text read at the meeting, it lacks footnotes and citations, but here is some of the bibliography.

• Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins,  David N. Livingstone
  • Livingstone has done some pioneering and interesting work in this area.
• The Scofield Bible: Its History and Impact on the Evangelical Church, Mangum and Sweetnam
• The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, Ronald Numbers
• Erosion of Biblical Certainty: Battles over Authority and Interpretation in America, Lee
  • A very important work showing how the adoption of enlightenment standards by the Bible’s defenders ultimately helped undermine it.
• Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana–America’s First Bible Commentary: Essays in Reappraisal, Smolinski/Stievermann
• Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: 1700-Present, van der Meer et. al.
• Isaac La Peyrère (1596-1676): His Life, Work and Influence, Popkin

This presentation was distilled from a much longer paper still under construction. I intend to submit it for publication somewhere in Fall. And of course, I’ll be speaking about interpretation and evolution (likely topic) in August at BYU, truth, scripture, and Genesis at the FAIR Conference in August, and reading the Old Testament in context at the Sperry Symposium in October at BYU.

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