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 immediately discredited it as having any validity. Because of my background, I am fully aware of the many assumptions and contradictions that are considered science today. It’s really hard for me to place any faith in “science.”
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, 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.
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, universalism, 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. Modern science has become less about searching for truth and more about defending a worldview that refuses to admit the hand of God.
The Atheistic Bias Behind Modern Science
Modern science has a completely godless foundation to it. It did not become atheistic because evidence demanded it. It became atheistic because the academic world made a decision to remove God from the discussion. Over time, references to God were edited out of scientific writings, and the spiritual beliefs of earlier scientists were pushed aside. This created the impression that real science must reject any role for God.
Universities and scientific journals reinforce this. Science and Religion Reconciling the Conflicts shows that every point of view is welcome in academic settings — except religious ones. Ideas that support scripture or historical accounts from the Bible are dismissed before the evidence is even considered. Catastrophic events, scriptural timelines, and the Flood are ruled out, not because they have been disproved, but because they do not fit the accepted naturalistic model.
Peer review strengthens this bias. Scientists who question mainstream theories or suggest any form of design are blocked from publishing and often pushed out of professional circles. The book gives examples of respected scientists who were treated this way simply for challenging the dominant view. Careers are built on staying inside the accepted framework, so most researchers learn very quickly what can and cannot be said.
As a result, what ends up in textbooks reflects the worldview of the people writing them. Evidence is presented through an atheistic lens. Conflicts between science and the Bible are portrayed as settled even when the science rests on assumptions. Students are taught to see scripture as myth and naturalism as fact and are not allowed to ever look at the data.
Much of what is taught in science today is shaped by ideology, not by neutral investigation. When God is excluded by rule rather than by evidence, the conclusions that follow are predictable.
Five Flaws of What is Considered “Science”
Science has always advanced through a pattern of confidence followed by correction. Every generation assumes it finally understands the world, yet history shows that many scientific claims once taught as fact were later overturned. In my Dad’s book he outlines several recurring problems in the way science explains the world, especially when those explanations deal with the past, origins, or questions that overlap with scripture.
Treats Assumptions as Fact
Science often treats assumptions as facts. Many scientific claims rest on layers of untested assumptions that are rarely acknowledged. Many of these assumptions simply cannot be tested by modern science. Early astronomers insisted that the Earth was the center of the universe and dismissed Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons, not because they had better evidence, but because their assumptions were treated as absolute truth. Modern examples follow the same pattern. Radiometric dating assumes original rock composition and constant decay rates, even though neither assumption can be proven. The book points to the Mt. St. Helens lava dome, which was known to be only a few years old, yet radiometric tests placed it at hundreds of thousands to millions of years. The technique was presented as precise, but it relied on assumptions that turned out to be unreliable.
Rejects Scriptural or Historical Evidence by Default
Another issue is the default rejection of scriptural or historical evidence. The book shows that many scientific fields, especially those dealing with origins or ancient history, dismiss biblical accounts before the evidence is even considered. Uniformitarian geology is an example. It assumes that all geological change must occur through slow, steady processes, which rules out events like the biblical Flood and massive earth changing destruction as described when Jesus died.
Yet growing evidence shows that rapid, catastrophic processes better explain many geological formations. For years, science rejected even the possibility of large-scale catastrophes because they did not fit the accepted model, even though both historical records and scriptural accounts pointed to them. Science did not disprove these records. It ignored them by default which end the end leads to far less accurate results.
The Peer Review System to Enforce Orthodoxy
The peer-review system also reinforces the dominant scientific worldview. The book gives examples of scientists who challenged mainstream theories and were pushed out of journals, denied publication, or ostracized by colleagues. Peer review is portrayed as a neutral guardian of truth, but in practice it filters out ideas that conflict with the accepted model. In the documentary Expelled, scientists openly admit that no article supporting intelligent design will be published, regardless of evidence. This is not an evaluation of data. It is enforcement of orthodoxy. History shows similar behavior. Galileo faced rejection not for lack of proof, but because his findings contradicted the accepted system. When gatekeeping replaces open inquiry, scientific progress slows.
Creates Career Pressure to Conform
Career pressure adds another layer that discourages honest questioning. Publishing is essential for a scientific career, and scientists know that challenging widely held assumptions risks their funding, reputation, and employment. The book cites researchers who were marginalized simply for proposing alternatives to popular theories. This pressure encourages conformity. It pushes scientists to present results that support existing models and to avoid lines of inquiry that would undermine them. Even small corrections to dominant theories can be met with resistance because careers and institutions are built on maintaining the status quo. This is not unique to modern science. It echoes the experience of many earlier thinkers whose ideas were dismissed until long after their deaths.
Presents Theories as Unquestionable Truth
A final issue is the habit of presenting theories as unquestionable truth, especially theories about the distant past. Claims about the age of the Earth, the formation of geological layers, and the progression of life over millions of years are often taught as fact even though they depend heavily on inference. The book shows that dating methods that appear precise are built on assumptions about the original state of materials, past conditions, and decay rates that cannot be verified. Tree ring dating was once treated as a simple annual count, but research now shows multiple rings can form in a single year. Geological layers were once said to require vast ages, but evidence of rapid deposition, such as sharp boundaries between strata, suggests they formed quickly. These examples illustrate how confidently science can proclaim certainty about events it has never observed.
The Problem With “Scientific” Dating Methods
One of the biggest supposed conflicts of Science and Religion has to do with the age of the earth as well as the plants and animals that have lived on it. When you learn how faulty the scientific dating system is, it makes world wide written histories, including biblical information much more credible.
Age-dating methods are used as a bludgeon against scripture. The scientists use confident tones and provide precise figures, but the (often greatly varying) inputs come from flawed assumptions. Change the assumptions and the answer changes — sometimes dramatically.
Core Assumptions That Make Modern Dating Completely Unreliable
- 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.
The past shows that confidence is not the same as correctness. If history teaches anything, it is that future discoveries will expose many of the flaws in what we currently treat as unquestionable scientific truth.
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. He is the great scientist. Human theories trying to explain it 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.
Believing Requires Faith
It requires faith to believe in religion. It takes faith to trust in spiritual things. In the same way, it also takes faith to accept many of the claims made by science, especially when so much of it rests on assumptions that cannot be proven and when past “settled science” has repeatedly been shown to be wrong.
When we choose to have faith in God, we find peace. We feel the Spirit. We gain a deeper understanding of life and our purpose. Faith in God brings joy and direction that cannot be replicated anywhere else.