God has not told us all he knows

We are grateful to know that there are two methods of gaining needed knowledge: (1) the evolving disclosures of man discovered by the scientific method and (2) the truths disclosed by the spiritual method, which begins with faith in God and relies on scriptures, inspired teaching, and personal revelation. There is no ultimate conflict between knowledge gained by these different methods because God, our omnipotent Eternal Father, knows all truth and beckons us to learn by both methods.

Those who don’t believe in God, who formally reject traditional religious morality, and who rely solely on the tests of scientific evidence fulfill a Book of Mormon description of those “who live without God in the world.”

Elder Richard L. Evans had a good answer for those who are caught off balance by some scientific evidence that seems to be contrary to what we interpret from the scriptures:

There may be some seeming discrepancies. Do not worry about them. Eternity is a long time. I have a great respect for learning, for academic endeavor and the university atmosphere. . . . I have a great respect for science and scientists and for the search for truth. But remember this: science after all (even when it is true and final and factual) is simply man’s discovering of a few things that God already knows and controls in his ordering of the universe. . . . God has not told us all he knows. We believe in continuous revelation. Be patient. Keep humble and balanced in all things.

Humility, faith, and trust in the Lord are the remedies for wavering. As the Book of Mormon teaches, the Lord “doth bless and prosper those who put their trust in him.” Trusting in the Lord is a particular need for all who wrongly discount the commandments of God and the teachings of His prophets by measuring them against the latest findings and wisdom of man.

President Dallin H. Oaks

"Coming Closer to Jesus Christ," BYU Speeches. February 10, 2026. See also Russell M. Nelson, “Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives,” Ensign, May 2018.

how we know what we know

One of the pillars of philosophy is the examination of how we know what we know. How can we prove that what we believe is true? In most cases, we can’t.

In reality, even many of the things we think of as hard facts aren’t. They’re half-truths. They’re assumptions. They’re misinterpretations. They’re guesses. They’re based on cognitive biases, faulty information, or conditioning. Use science as an example. What we believed five, ten or twenty years ago has since been disproved. We have made radical leaps in understanding and those leaps are continuing every day. What we know today will one day be looked upon as archaic and outdated. 

Gary John Bishop

Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.106

science investigates; religion interprets

[Some believe] that there is a conflict between science and religion. But this is not true. There may be a conflict between soft-minded religionists and tough-minded scientists, but not between science and religion. Their respective worlds are different and their methods are dissimilar. Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge that is power; religion gives man wisdom that is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.  

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Strength to Love by Martin Luther King, Jr. Harper & Row. 1963. Fortress Press Gift Edition 2010. p. 4

revive the gods of paganism

Although the influence of the Bible has guided Western Civilization for two thousand years, there are still those who seek to revive the gods of paganism, only now the gods have modern names: not Kronos but Progress; not Aphrodite but Sex; not Apollo but Culture; not Athena but Science. One has only to survey certain aspects of the modern world to see the cults of the gods still preserved. The point is not to condemn the gods as such, but only the worship of the gods. 

The Lord’s Question: Thoughts on the Life of Response by Dennis Rasmussen. Brigham Young University Press. April 1985. Chapter Five, “Fear Ye Not Me?” p.50

never have recognized the existence of progress

The Spaniards are perhaps the only Europeans who really never have the feelings that things seen are real, that the truths of science make for progress. Spaniards did not mistrust science they only never have recognized the existence of progress.


Picasso by Gertrude Stein. Courier Dover Publications. 1984. p.12

the employment of symmetrical tessellation

The employment of symmetrical tessellation is an important feature of its abstract decoration. Tessellation is the covering or tiling of an entire plane with non-overlapping shapes. Regular tessellation makes use of one shape of tile; semi-regular uses more than one. In 'wallpaper' symmetry, the pattern is repeated in all directions, up and down and sideways. In 'frieze' symmetry the pattern runs in one direction only. In 'rosette' symmetry the design motif is reflected or rotated, but without further repetition. The mathematician George Pólya has proved that there are nine basic frieze patterns and seventeen basic types of wallpaper pattern. All seventeen are to be found in Islamic art. The most obvious application of tessellation in the Alhambra is in the tile work of the various dados, where repetitive pattern is used to rest the eye. There is a kind of playfulness in this kind of pattern generation - and particularly in the way that it is often impossible to determine what is foreground and what is background. This playfulness attracted the Dutch artist who is most famous for his paradoxes, M.C. Escher. He claimed to feel an affinity for the Moors even before visiting the Alhambra. He first went there in 1926 and then again in 1936. However, though he admired Moorish tessellation techniques, he thought it a pity that they did not employ figurative imagery in their patterning. This is, of course, what Escher is famous for - making patterns based on interlocking fishes and birds, or black demons and white angels. In the course of the last century or so the study of tessellation has become an important field of mathematics in its own right, something which gives force to the following observation by the painter Tom Phillips: 'Just as art is hidden everywhere in ornament, so science also finds many of its formulations already inherent in ornamental practice. The implications of map theory, game theory, topology, the fractals of chaos theory, game theory, topology, the fractals of chaos theory, have all lurked in ornament, awaiting their elevation to science.' The Alhambra is a stone book in more than one sense, for not only are its walls decorated with religious and poetical texts, but those texts are framed by geometrical designs that are, to all intents and purposes, demonstrations of mathematical theorems.

Robert Irwin

The Alhambra. 2004. p.118-121

The true test of a brilliant theory [is] what first is thought to be wrong is later shown to be obvious.


Assar Lindbeck ArgMax.com

All real scientists exist on the frontier. Even the least ambitious among them deal with the unknown, if only one step beyond the known. The best among them move deep into a wilderness region where they know almost nothing, where the very tools and techniques needed to clear the wilderness, to bring order to it, do not exist. There they probe in a disciplined way. There a single step can take them through the looking glass into a world that seems entirely different, and if they are at least partly correct their probing acts like a crystal to precipitate an order out of chaos, to create form, structure, and direction. A single step can also take one off a cliff.

John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History p.262

The two most important questions in science are “What can I know?” and “How can I know it?”

Science and religion in fact part ways over the first question, what each can know. Religion, and to some extent philosophy, believes it can know, or at least address, the question, “Why?”

For most religions the answer to this question ultimately comes down to the way God ordered it. Religion is inherently conservative, even one proposing a new God only creates a new order.

The question “why” is too deep for science. Science instead believes it can only learn “how” something occurs.

John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History P.14-15