The Ensign Avoids (What Should Be) the Obvious

The August issue of the Ensign has a seven page story about the Church in the Galápagos (link). [In my best Church Lady voice]: Now let's see. Who do the Galápagos islands remind me of? What person is famously and intimately connected with them. Oh, I don't know. Could it be DARWIN?! [a.k.a. SATAN?!]

Before reading the story, I said to my wife, "I bet you that there isn't a single mention of Darwin." Then I started reading. In the second paragraph we get this:

Here, on the Galápagos, islands born of fire, life takes on precious meaning. It is a land where science and faith intermingle, where we come to understand that we are all part of a common humanity.

Then the article talks about the experience of individual members of the Church. OK, no mention of Darwin but the article is firmly focused on Church members, so I guess those sentences will do.

But then in a section titled, "What the Galápagos Teach Us," the article starts talking about ecology and my ears perk up.

As a tour guide and naturalist, André explains, "The Galápagos teach us that an ecosystem is like a living being. It's like a body. It has pressure, fluids, and organs. If one of those things goes wrong, then everything suffers."

Interesting. Ecology in the Ensign? Cool.

The Galápagos Islands also teach us about the vast grandeur of God's creations. Nothing is indigenous to the Galápagos. All life, plants, animals, and people are imports.

Yes!

"If you think about it," André explains, "the chances of life beginning here on the Galápagos are incredible. First, the lava rock had to decompose to the point where it would support life. Then freshwater sources had to develop. Then seeds had to arrive in a condition that would allow them to germinate. And they had to be able to pollinate each other.

"Then creatures had to arrive, whether floating on the water or flying or whatever. And members of each sex had to arrive at the same time and place and condition so that they could reproduce and find food and water. There are thousands of species of animals in the Galápagos.

Yes! Yes! We're almost there! (Except a pregnant female would do as well as an opposite sex pair.) Go on!

"Remember, the nearest land mass is 600 miles [1,000 km] away. For all of these conditions to be met is something of a miracle."

Yes! You've got it! Bring it home!

And yet that is exactly what the Lord, in His infinite wisdom, caused to happen.

Oh, Ensign. You're supposed to be feeding my faith, not my cynicism.

I guess I should congratulate the author for his skill at dancing within a Book of Mormon's width of Darwin and evolution without touching them. And nice use of the word 'grandeur,' which Darwin used in his famous closing of Origin of Species. I think it's best if it serves as the end of this post, too.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Update: The Church magazines deserve credit for an online photo gallery, as I explain in this post.

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