Lindsay earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Brigham Young University in 1986, where he had also earned his undergraduate degree. He then was a faculty member at Georgia Tech's institute of Paper Tech Science from 1987 to 1994. He then began work for Kimberly-Clark Corporation in Wisconsin. He later went to work for Innovationedge in Neenah, Wisconsin, as director of solution development. Lindsay was the lead author of the book Conquering Innovation Fatigue.
LDS apologetics
Apart from his professional activities, he is also known for his writings dealing with the purported plausibility of the Book of Mormon and to a lesser extent for his work inMormon history, in particular responding to various statements from anti-Mormon sources and frequently asked questions about the LDS Church. His writings are primarily on his website at JeffLindsay.com, particularly his LDSFAQ section, though he has blogged regularly on the Mormanity Blog since 2004. More recently, he was selected as one of the bloggers for Orson Scott Card's Nauvoo Times where he blogs weekly. The Mormon Interpreter, a pro-LDS website featuring scholarship and apologetics, prominently featured Lindsay in the 2014 article "Eye of the Beholder, Law of the Harvest: Observations on the Inevitable Consequences of the Different Investigative Approaches of Jeremy Runnells and Jeff Lindsay" by Kevin Christensen. According to Christensen, Lindsay deals with the issues raised in Runnells' popular critical work "at greater length, over a much broader span of time, consulting a wider range of sources, providing far more documentation, and including far more original research than Runnells." Original contributions from Lindsay mentioned include his satirical treatment of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass as "evidence" of Book of Mormon plagiarism as well as treatments of the Book of Abraham and other topics. At the Mormon Interpreter, Lindsay has also been cited for a "thoughtful blog response to New York Times article" Several of Lindsay's writings have been published or cross-posted at another pro-LDS website, FAIRMormon.org, including his analysis of a critical response to one aspect of the Arabian Peninsula evidence for the Book of Mormon. Lindsay has written an article Does DNA Evidence Refute the Book of Mormon?, in which he concluded that many Latter-day Saints incorrectly assumed that Lehi's group was the primary genetic source for all Native Americans and recommended that such errant assumptions be abandoned. Additionally, he noted that the Book of Mormon does not make such claims regarding Lehi and therefore only encourages a more enlightened view rather than complete abandonment of the Book of Mormon. This was one of the early articles on DNA-Book of Mormon issues noted by the Church and made available as a PDF file on their LDS Newsroom at LDS.org. Lindsay is on the Executive Board of the Interpreter Foundation, an LDS apologetics organization. Some of Lindsay's claims have been criticized. For example, Richard Abanes, a writer critical of Mormonism, refers to Lindsay's work as "numerous self-published articles, not scholarly, extremely biased, articles often based on misinformation". Some LDS people also disagree with some of Lindsay's viewpoints. Lindsay worked in China for a time, leaving in early 2020.
