Matthew Mason

2026-02-23

4 min read

An Update to My Faith Crisis

I was looking up some of the talks from one of the videos I touched on earlier in My Faith Crisis titled: Latter-day Prophets Speak on Evolution.

I wanted to list out the talks using Googles AI Gemini which it did surprisingly well. I’ll list them below.

While re-listening and reading, what caught my attention was Bruce R. McConkie’s speech at BYU titled The Seven Deadly Heresies. In it, he talks about evolution. Luckily, we have the audio recording because he says something completely different than what is written on the BYU website for the talk. In the written talk it says:

“Can you harmonize these things with the evolutionary postulate that death has always existed and that the various forms of life have evolved from preceding forms over astronomically long periods of time?”

“Can you harmonize the theories of men with the inspired words that say: […]”

McConkie_Bruce_1980_061, page 4

This is not what McConkie says at all in his talk. Listen to the talk at the 14:30 minute mark.

It should read the following:

“Try as you may, you cannot harmonize these things with the evolutionary postulate that death always existed and that the various forms of life have evolved from preceding forms over astronomically long periods of time.”

“Try as you may, you cannot harmonize the theories of men with the inspired words that says: […]”

I find it extremely misleading to fundamentally change Bruce R. McConkie’s talk to fit the current stance of the church. This rewrite changed the meaning of his talk completely. McConkie’s stance was that the belief in evolution was a heresy, a factual statement. It was not a question posed to encourage members to harmonize these two ideas as the rewritten text makes it out to be. Absolutely wild.

I need to listen to the rest of the talk and see what words and phrases they’ve tweaked compared to what was said.

Update:

Looks like this has been seen before. Found a Reddit thread on the topic and it appears BYU has modified the talk quite extensively. The thread on the topic can be found here.

Below is a list of the talks featured in the video Latter-day Prophets Speak on Evolution with their corresponding timestamps and official links:

  • 00:10 David O. McKay – “A Message for LDS College Youth” (BYU Address, Oct 10, 1952)

  • 03:10 Joseph Fielding Smith – “The Origin of Man” (BYU Address, 1954)

    • Note: This address is widely cited in his book Man: His Origin and Destiny. An official transcript of the 1909 First Presidency statement with the same title can be found here: The Origin of Man (1909)

  • 05:57 Harold B. Lee – “The Iron Rod” (General Conference, April 1971)

  • 08:08 Ezra Taft Benson – “The Book of Mormon Is the Word of God” (General Conference, April 1975)

  • 11:50 Ezra Taft Benson – “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet” (BYU Address, Feb 26, 1980)

  • 14:27 Bruce R. McConkie – “The Seven Deadly Heresies” (BYU Address, June 1, 1980)

  • 21:01 Mark E. Petersen – “Adam, the Archangel” (General Conference, Oct 1980)

  • 22:12 Bruce R. McConkie – “The Caravan Moves On” (General Conference, Oct 1984)

  • 31:05 Boyd K. Packer – “The Pattern of Our Parentage” (General Conference, Oct 1984)

  • 39:17 N. Eldon Tanner – “Staying on the High Road” (General Conference, Oct 1974)

  • 40:10 Russell M. Nelson – “Thanks Be to God” (General Conference, April 2012)

  • 41:37 Jeffrey R. Holland – “Where Justice, Love, and Mercy Meet” (General Conference, April 2015)

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