I can't believe there hasn't been a thread on this yet, but not really. I am only making it because I wanted to know your take on Nelson's talk on Sunday morning. Specifically, I'd like Colton and franklin's, since they're in the business of science.
I wonder how some of the Mormon scientists, namely Henry B. Eyring, felt about it: "Anyone who has studied the inner workings of the human body has seen God moving in His majesty and power... Some think such marvelous things happened by chance or resulted from a big bang somewhere. Ask yourself - could an explosion in a printing shop produce a dictionary?"
Personally, I felt sorry for Nelson, and for the clowns that were laughing with him. My wife and I had a quick but heated argument about it. (I lost)
Henry B. Eyring is not a scientist. His father, Henry E. Eyring, was a pretty good scientist who wrote books about faith and science, and was at one time in the Sunday School Presidency, and helped in a number of ways to make science, including belief in evolution, compatible with being a Mormon in good standing.
HE Eyring would say positive things about discoveries compatible with a scientific view of evolutionary processes, and openly stated that the Earth was billions of years old, just like Joseph Smith once said, and put it all together as compatible with the fact that in Hebrew, the decimal point, or number of thousands, was not concretely specified, and left it open to translators later on to fit things to their own ignorance. He believed "Large Periods of Time" would have been a better translation than "Thousand Years" or "Day with the Lord".
While more of an education specialist as opposed to scientist, Henry B. Eyring probably read his father's books, but is simply polite enough to let other folks express their opinions without really heavy-handed censorship.
Russel Nelson is a scientist, too, and probably has some scientific basis for his statements, as well as religious ones. I agree with his statement perfectly, even though I accept evolution pretty much as an as-yet-imperfectly-understood phenomena. We have no data that could possibly relate to whether or not it is a natural process that is influenced by divine guidance, like say a disparate bunch of elites representing various independent states who could argue all summer and then finally settle on an agreement like our Constitution, which gave ordinary people vast and expansive rights to direct their limited government.
There are several points of view that can be taken and quite well-defended for some kind of "intelligent design", some of which don't necessarily involve a Judeo-Christian God. For example, there is prominent Russian scientist who worked through the Stalinist era without getting sent to Siberia, a professor Vernadsky, who developed a scientific theory about the "Noosphere", the whole underlying physical set of conditions necessary for life, and who believed nature has a pattern of creating the things necessary for life, a sort of "life-force" inherent in the universe.
Zen Buddhists and Hindus have their own understandings of the ultimate facts of life which essentially agree that we exist as some part of a sentient Nature. The very most fundamental kernel of "intelligent design".
However, American courts have decided they know more about it than anyone, and must prevent it from being discussed in public schools, in favor of Nietzsche's assertions that men who have power to play God should have the right to do so.
An explosion has a center, an expansion does not. The expansion of the universe was gloriously organized with the same beauty and detail that he gave to his description of the human body. I don't make fun of his study of God's creation and likewise he shouldn't make fun of my study of God's creation. He would not if he took the time to study out and understand the way he has studied the human body."