Can I, another Mormon, offer a little bit of context here?
Henry B. Eyering is the First Counselor of the First Presidency of the church; in simple terms, he's second in command here. In other words, he is a very high ranking leader of a large branch of Christianity*.
I remember a sermon this man gave - and I'm a little fuzzy on the specifics, so please bear with me - where he was attending a seminar or watching a presentation or something on something concerning astronomy, I believe. And in spite of this seminar or whatever detailing things that occured millions of years ago,
he recalls having received a witness from God that what was being presented was true and worth studying.
Point being, Mormons and science - and I mean real
science, not "science" - are two things not uncommonly seen together. Granted, a good many of us are like my grandfather, who thinks that claiming that the earth is older than 6,000 years is heresy, but many of us are perfectly comfortable
discussing the behavior of our simian ancestors**.
Maybe it's a little confusing to see happen, and it can be frustrating trying to articulate exactly why it happens. But it happens, more often than you might think.
My personal thoughts? God made a grand, mighty, marvelous, beautiful, fascinating universe for us to live in. It'd be a sin to willfully remain ignorant of what's in it and how it works.
*Whether or not we qualify as Christians is neither here nor there, and is beside the point.
**The creator of
Schlock Mercenary is, as far as I can tell, a practicing Mormon. The comic includes lots of hard science in it.
