Regarding Benjamin, no, I don’t think he was an occasionalist. Far from it. I think he is repeating the very early Hebrew view of God. (Largely lost when Christianity turned its theology towards more philosophical concerns regarding Being) A book I always heartily recommend to Mormons is by the Jewish scholar Jon Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil. The original view of God was that creation and existence was a constant battle or strife. Creation is never a one time for all event, but an ongoing re-creation. The image is God holding a bay the waters of chaos from which to provide a clearing for us where we can exist. I wrote a fairly philosophical discussion of this and the notion of such a clearing in Mormon thought over on my blog. It’s probably not of interest to most, but it does touch upon some of the notions you bring up, and perhaps is quite relevant now that I think of it to how to consider the whole issue of revelation.

I will clarify that Elizabeth, my wife, is a molecular biologist, and as nearly all biologists, she deals with evolution as a groundbase fact. I respect her knowledge and faith. I agree that our bodies show evidence of being evolved because they are. I also agree that there is a difference between hard open problems and broken theories. What I puzzle with is the use by God the Creator of a system that needs no user.

I will clarify that Elizabeth, my wife, is a molecular biologist, and as nearly all biologists, she deals with evolution as a groundbase fact. I respect her knowledge and faith. I agree that our bodies show evidence of being evolved because they are. I also agree that there is a difference between hard open problems and broken theories. What I puzzle with is the use by God the Creator of a system that needs no user.

You don’t like the idea that Venus was ejected from Jupiter (hence the red eye) and passed by the earth just in time to cause all the havoc recorded in the book of Exodus?

We know now that it was probably an asteroid.

Could you point out where on lds.org one can access the institute manuals? I couldn’t seem to find them. I can verify however, that the institute manual I or my wife bought not all that many years ago does indeed “approvingly” mention (on p. 28) three books by Velikovsky, which argue a young-earth creation model (via a truly eccentric–in both pertinent senses of the word–theory about planetary collisions). It also includes a whole section devoted more or less to dismantling evolutionary theory, using extensive quotations from the work of one Harold G. Coffin (about whom I know nothing).

Incidentally, the PoGP manual, published in 2000, still has some vestiges of creationism and young-earth-ism, but to a much lesser degree. No Velikovsky quackery, at least.

Basically my view simply has God as an actor within the universe acting according to its laws. He can change the environment, but abides by the laws he enacted. Further it requires less involvement by God which seems more in keeping with what we typically experience. Of course the greatest answer is by Ockham. That’s not to say that we may arrive at what Ebenezer suggested was an irreducible situation that can’t be explained by evolution. But thus far we haven’t found such, so why assume, because of our ignorance, that they exist?