Elder Rasband’s Science Lesson: How Noah’s Flood Caused Continental Drift

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Science, take note! Elder Rasband just dropped a new theory on continental drift, and it's a howler. In Rasband's recent remarks, he claimed the continents didn’t drift over millions of years, but were violently slammed apart by Noah’s Flood. Pair that with a literal Missouri location for the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve as our direct biological ancestors, and you have a textbook case of anti-science ignorance. Just imagine the anti-science rhetoric we'll see at General Conference if Rasband ever becomes prophet. Science textbook publishers, brace yourselves.

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.or ... er-rasband

[Philo Sofee]

I........... uh............I just can't..........what an utter embarrassment of a mind.

[Gadianton]

it's hard to read a subtitle like, "A Land of Promise ‘Preserved for a Righteous People’" knowing that the article is talking about the people in the pictures, who come across as a bunch of goofballs. Yeah, this huge plan was mainly to give a great life to these yokels.

Rasband is not only ignorant of geology, but Ben Franklin's call for prayer was an embarrassment to all the participants of the constitutional convention, and even he complained that only "three or four" at the convention would care to include God on the matter. To avoid embarrassing the aging statesman, the convention was adjourned and never brought the matter up afterward. The convention was able to work out their disagreements "by the arm of flesh" -- guided by their own reason. Now, it's possible God had something to do with it. Who am I to say he didn't, but the participants did not invite God via prayer into the matter. So the constitution was finished, not only without formally calling upon God for his help, but actively avoiding the suggestion to publicly make God part of it.

Can you imagine how ridiculous the constitution would have turned out if choads like Rasband and Oaks had been a significant part of the constitutional convention and prayed to the Mormon God for the courage to pen the document according to their own biases and self-interests?

At least Franklin, had he got his way with the prayer, wouldn't have brought Jesus into it since he didn't believe in Jesus.

[simon southerton]

Rasband’s talk is effectively an official endorsement of Young Earth Creationism. Rodney Meldrum will be over the moon with this type of pseudoscience.

How embarrassing for the hundreds of BYU genetics and geology academics who know Rasband is plain ignorant.

[drumdude]

Now a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Elder Rasband recalls saluting the flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

“‘One nation, under God,’” he repeated in the Marriott Center on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, on Sunday, June 28. “Those words have stayed in my heart and my soul for all these years.” Elder Rasband was the keynote speaker in the 2026 Patriotic Service of America’s Freedom Festival.

Which God(s) would that be, Elder Rasband? Adam? Jehova? Yaweh? The heavenly council?

Perhaps he should say “One nation, under Mormon God.”

[I Have Questions]

Rasband’s talk is effectively an official endorsement of Young Earth Creationism. Rodney Meldrum will be over the moon with this type of pseudoscience.

How embarrassing for the hundreds of BYU genetics and geology academics who know Rasband is plain ignorant.

It’s also endorsing Noah’s flood as a global flood. Rasband has needlessly made himself look a bit dim, uneducated. I recall Dodo Holland giving an almost identical account of the splitting of the continents connected with Noah’s flood.

[Craig Paxton]

I knew Ron years ago. He was an intelligent, thoughtful, and very capable guy. You don't rise to a senior executive position at Huntsman Chemical by being unintelligent or unable to evaluate complex information. That's part of why this latest comment has me literally scratching my head. I'm left gobsmacked.

The statement doesn't simply express faith in scripture; it appears to make specific historical and geological claims as though they describe the physical history of the Earth. Taken at face value, it implies that the Garden of Eden was in what is now Missouri, that humanity is only about 6,000 years old, and that today's continents were split apart during Noah's Flood. Those aren't merely theological assertions, they directly contradict an overwhelming body of evidence from geology, paleontology, genetics, archaeology, astronomy, and physics.

Modern science doesn't suggest the continents separated a few thousand years ago. Plate tectonics has been operating for hundreds of millions of years. We can measure the movement of tectonic plates today with GPS, date rocks using multiple independent radiometric methods, trace magnetic reversals preserved in the ocean floor, and reconstruct the formation and breakup of supercontinents over immense spans of time. Likewise, evidence from ice cores, tree rings, sediment layers, coral reefs, and the fossil record all converge on an Earth that is approximately 4.5 billion years old, not thousands.

Even from a theological perspective, I find this puzzling. Many people of faith, including countless scientists who are themselves deeply religious, see no conflict between belief in God and accepting the scientific evidence for Earth's history. They view Genesis as conveying spiritual truths rather than serving as a modern geology or history textbook. That approach allows faith and evidence to coexist without forcing one to deny the other.

What surprises me most is that Ron, of all people, understands how evidence works. His career required analytical thinking, weighing competing explanations, and making decisions based on data. That's why it's difficult for me to reconcile the executive I remember with someone making claims that would require dismissing virtually every scientific discipline that studies Earth's history.

Of course, everyone is entitled to their religious beliefs. Faith, by its nature, often involves accepting propositions that cannot be proven empirically. But when religious belief extends into making empirical claims about geology, biology, or the age of the Earth, those claims inevitably become subject to the same standards of evidence that apply everywhere else. On those questions, the evidence is remarkably consistent and extraordinarily robust.

Perhaps what disappoints me isn't that Ron believes these things, people can believe whatever they choose, but that someone with his intellect appears willing to present a literal interpretation of ancient scripture as though it were established historical and scientific fact. That isn't a reflection of where the evidence leads; it's a reflection of a commitment to a particular theological framework that takes precedence over the evidence.

For someone I once regarded as exceptionally pragmatic and intellectually rigorous, that's the part I find hardest to understand.

[Gadianton]

That's interesting Craig. As a leader in that company, how truthful do you think he was with employees and shareholders?

In my mind, it's pretty obvious how some leaders can both be pragmatic and effective but still talk nonsense, because lying is a big part of the job. Granted, many leaders I've seen go through revolving doors at companies I've worked for are totally incompetent, lie a lot, and are outright useless, but there are some effective ones, and the effective ones also are good liars.

As an example, a very long time ago I worked at a company that suddenly brought in a consultant to streamline things. We all suspected things couldn't be good. But, he played the high-energy optimist. This was in California. About five minutes into his first speech, I realized this joker was Mormon. That was confirmed a few weeks later. He was an achiever for sure, an entrepreneur who built very successful companies. He even tried to do missionary work, was self-deprecating about being Mormon to pique people's interest. He joked once about using the Urim and Thummim to "translate the Hebrew" in a company meeting with everyone there and nobody laughed because people literally didn't get it. He apparently didn't know that using the Urim and Thummim to translate texts is something only Mormons believe. I thought about telling him later but decided against it. He's basically making a fool out of himself. He don't care, he's rich and into business and just assumes his religious beliefs are true and has never put the slightest thought into it.

As it turned out he was there for one reason, to fire half the company (I was spared). The day after the firing, he disappeared. So for like three months, he had all these meetings with us to build company unity and talk about the future and basically just distract everyone. You have no idea what a piece of crap this guy was. He literally didn't contribute anything but firing people, and even that was just for optics. Anyone who had worked there for the last five years could have made an equally good guess about who to get rid of to keep the company going as a skeleton. Consultants like him get brought in for optics, to guard against lawsuits from affected employees; it shows the decision was independently made by an "expert" third party and so nothing was personal. But here's the thing, the day the ax came down, everyone was shocked because he played the part so well and actually had everyone convinced everything was going in a positive direction through his natural priesthood positivity and finely tuned skills as a liar.

So that's how he represented the church. He got everyone's trust, got everyone to like him, and tried to let everyone know about the Church to the extent he could get away with it and let as all know Mormons have a sense of humor and are decent successful people. To give you an idea at how up in the night these Mormon business leaders are, during one of those meetings leading up to the big event, he said he was pulling a late night the night before (as if he were working so hard to benefit us personally), got hungry and so went to the fridge and took someone's sandwich. He didn't really apologize or offer to reimburse the person he'd ripped off, he tried to make the point that we're all family and should feel at home here. Someone bringing their lunch to work (instead of going out) is probably hourly, and probably someone he fired a couple weeks later. But how brilliant is that? Somewhere deep in my mind, I clearly interpreted such a move in a positive light, indicating he was there to build the business, because who would do that? Who would steal someone's sandwich, admit it, not offer to pay for it, say it's cause we're family, while he'd been staying up late probably working on paperwork to fire the person from whom he stole? Totally got me. Who would do such a thing? A Mormon business leader.

And it wasn't the last time I've narrowly dodged a Mormon consultant gutting the company I was working for far away from Utah, and in the most underhanded ways possible. The next time it happened it was Mitt Romney at the helm.

[malkie]

I knew Ron years ago. He was an intelligent, thoughtful, and very capable guy. You don't rise to a senior executive position at Huntsman Chemical by being unintelligent or unable to evaluate complex information. That's part of why this latest comment has me literally scratching my head. I'm left gobsmacked.

The statement doesn't simply express faith in scripture; it appears to make specific historical and geological claims as though they describe the physical history of the Earth. Taken at face value, it implies that the Garden of Eden was in what is now Missouri, that humanity is only about 6,000 years old, and that today's continents were split apart during Noah's Flood. Those aren't merely theological assertions, they directly contradict an overwhelming body of evidence from geology, paleontology, genetics, archaeology, astronomy, and physics.

Modern science doesn't suggest the continents separated a few thousand years ago. Plate tectonics has been operating for hundreds of millions of years. We can measure the movement of tectonic plates today with GPS, date rocks using multiple independent radiometric methods, trace magnetic reversals preserved in the ocean floor, and reconstruct the formation and breakup of supercontinents over immense spans of time. Likewise, evidence from ice cores, tree rings, sediment layers, coral reefs, and the fossil record all converge on an Earth that is approximately 4.5 billion years old, not thousands.

Even from a theological perspective, I find this puzzling. Many people of faith, including countless scientists who are themselves deeply religious, see no conflict between belief in God and accepting the scientific evidence for Earth's history. They view Genesis as conveying spiritual truths rather than serving as a modern geology or history textbook. That approach allows faith and evidence to coexist without forcing one to deny the other.

What surprises me most is that Ron, of all people, understands how evidence works. His career required analytical thinking, weighing competing explanations, and making decisions based on data. That's why it's difficult for me to reconcile the executive I remember with someone making claims that would require dismissing virtually every scientific discipline that studies Earth's history.

Of course, everyone is entitled to their religious beliefs. Faith, by its nature, often involves accepting propositions that cannot be proven empirically. But when religious belief extends into making empirical claims about geology, biology, or the age of the Earth, those claims inevitably become subject to the same standards of evidence that apply everywhere else. On those questions, the evidence is remarkably consistent and extraordinarily robust.

Perhaps what disappoints me isn't that Ron believes these things, people can believe whatever they choose, but that someone with his intellect appears willing to present a literal interpretation of ancient scripture as though it were established historical and scientific fact. That isn't a reflection of where the evidence leads; it's a reflection of a commitment to a particular theological framework that takes precedence over the evidence.

For someone I once regarded as exceptionally pragmatic and intellectually rigorous, that's the part I find hardest to understand.

[my bolding]
My darling wife often tells me that I need to be more positive, so I've decided to look on the bright side, and to thank Elder Rasband. His talk provides the world with two precious truths:

• Mormon teachings are firmly attached to ludicrous falsehoods - such as young earth creationism, and the story of a literal world-wide flood
• Religious leaders expect their ex cathedra statements to be taken at face value, however ridiculous they might be

The result is a need for world-class mental gymnastics on the part of the faithful to try to justify what the leaders are teaching, and to sustain them as god-inspired men who know better than the entire scientific community.

So my plea to Elder Rasband is: carry on, good sir!

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

That feeling when your unc unironically starts talking about the flat earth theory …