We are excited to present to you, our faithful readers, a new book by gospeldoctrine.com's author, Bryan Richards.

You can purchase it at Cedar Fort here

Joseph Smith and Charles Darwin: A Search for the Origins of Man is a historical and philosophical comparison of two great men. These contemporaries have revolutionized our understanding of God and provided the secular explanation of the origin of man, respectively. Now 200 years after the First Vision, this work compares the theological implications of God appearing to Joseph as an exalted Man with the development over the same 200-year span of an evolutionary theory that has become fact in the minds of most of the secular world.

Latter-day Saints, especially students of biology, zoology, comparative anatomy, etc. are incessantly challenged to believe evolution explains it all. This work compares the evidence and the conjecture. It also explores Joseph’s theophany and theology as a “science friendly” God—a God that never created matter out of nothing because matter is eternal—a God that teaches that spirit is refined matter, and that time is defined by the rate of planetary orbits. Indeed, the First Vision turned Christianity on its head; God was supposed to be an omnipresent, incomprehensible essence in the universe, not an anthropomorphic Being, Supreme Physicist, Divine Chemist, and Master Microbiologist.

Only three months after Joseph Smith recorded his official version of the First Vision, Charles Darwin began exploring the possibility that man is nothing more than an evolved primate. We suggest the timing is not coincidental. Other chronological coincidences are equally compelling. We explore what happened to Darwin’s own belief in Christianity? What really happened during his voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle that changed him from a Unitarian to an evolutionary? The answer is not what you have been taught in school.

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--Bryan Richards, content director

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