The First Presidency, under the leadership of President Joseph F. Smith, issued an official statement in which it r
epeated this rejection of the idea that man evolved from lower life forms:It is held by some that Adam was not the first man upon the earth, and that the original human was a development from lower orders of the animal creation. These, however, are the theories of men. The word of the Lord declares that Adam was "the first man of all men" (Moses 1:34) and we are therefore duty bound to regard him as the primal parent of our race. -- The First Presidency, Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, Anthon H. Lund
In recent years, Joseph Fielding McConkie, a professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University, has written eloquently about why the theory of organic evolution is incompatible with the gospel. Professor McConkie points out that evolution plainly and clearly contradicts the LDS doctrine of the Fall:
Is the theory of evolution compatible with the doctrine of the Fall? No. We can tug, twist, contort, and sell our birthright, but we cannot overcome the irreconcilable differences between the theory of organic evolution and the doctrine of the Fall. Some have argued for a form of theistic evolution--that is, a God-inspired evolution--in which lower forms of life progressed over great periods of time to the point that God could take the spirit of the man Adam and place it in an animal and declare it to be the first man. The argument is at odds both with scripture and with an official declaration of the First Presidency on the origin of man. The scriptures of the Restoration declare Adam to be "the son of God" (Moses 6:22) and the "firstborn" of all earth's inhabitants (Abraham 1:3). They further state that he and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God's body. In the book of Moses we read: "In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; in the image of his own body, male and female, created he them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created and became living souls in the land upon the footstool of God" (Moses 6:8-9, emphasis added). Let the idea not be lost that the physical body of God is being spoken of here. This plain declaration is sustained by the Book of Mormon, which teaches that the premortal Christ would take upon himself "the image of man, and it should be the image after which man was created in the beginning; or in other words, he said that man was created after the image of God, and that God should come down among the children of men, and take upon him flesh and blood, and go forth upon the face of the earth" (Mosiah 7:27, emphasis added). Similarly, the official statement of the First Presidency is that "Adam, our progenitor, 'the first man,' was, like Christ, a pre-existent spirit, and like Christ he took upon him an appropriate body, the body of a man, and so became a 'living soul.' The doctrine of the pre-existence--revealed so plainly, particularly in latter days, pours a wonderful flood of light upon the otherwise mysterious problem of man's origin. It shows that man, as a spirit, was begotten and born of heavenly parents, and reared to maturity in the eternal mansions of the Father, prior to coming upon the earth in a temporal body to undergo an experience in mortality. It teaches that all men existed in the spirit before any man existed in the flesh, and that all who have inhabited the earth since Adam have taken bodies and become souls in like manner" (Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 4:204, emphasis added). Be it Adam, Christ, or any other human being, the process of birth is the same. The First Presidency continues, "Man is the child of God, formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes" (Ibid., 4:206).
Evolution is the notion that lower forms of life can, through the course of generations, genetically improve themselves. For that to happen, both birth and death would have to exist. By contrast, Father Lehi teaches us that if there had been no Fall, "all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end. And they would have had no children," he tells us. Thus, he testifies, "Adam fell that men might be" (2 Nephi 2:22-23, 25). Enoch, teaching the same thing, said: "Because that Adam fell, we are; and by his fall came death; and we are made partakers of misery and woe" (Moses 6:48).
The gospel of Jesus Christ rests upon the union of three doctrines--the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement. They have been aptly called the three pillars of eternity. No meaningful understanding of the gospel can be had independent of an understanding of the interrelationship of these three doctrines. Unless we understand how things were created--that is, the original state or nature of things in prefallen earth--we cannot understand what they fell from or what the redemption seeks to return them to. Latter-day Saint theology recognizes God as the creator. Thus the labor of creation must be godlike. God does not do shoddy work. Having completed the work of creation, he declared it "very good" (Moses 2:31). All created things were in a paradisiacal state--a state in which there was no corruption, no aging, decay, pain, sickness, or death. It is this state to which the atonement of Christ seeks to return us, and it was from this state that Adam fell. This is a matter of developing, not evolving. Well might we ask, Did Christ redeem us from our present condition to take us back to a more primitive one, on in which living organisms are fighting with and destroying each other? We could hardly consider that a state of glory, yet the promise of the scriptures is that the earth is to be renewed and receive again "its paradisiacal glory" (Article of Faith 10).
Some have argued that the paradisiacal glory of which we speak was confined to the Garden of Eden while evolutionary processes were taking place through the rest of the earth. The great difficulty with this idea is that it confines the effects of the Atonement to forty acres (or whatever size the Garden of Eden was). The plain testimony of scripture is that the entire earth and all created things were affected by the Fall and thus recipients of the blessings of the Atonement. . . .
Elder Boyd K. Packer observed that
if the theory of evolution applies to man, there was no fall and therefore no need for an atonement, nor a gospel of redemption, nor a redeemer (see "The Law and the Light," in The Book of Mormon, Jacob through Words of Mormon: To Learn with Joy, Fourth Annual Book of Mormon Symposium, 1988, p. 15). The matter is really quite simple. Because Adam was the son of divine parents, he had an immortal body without blood. The Fall caused blood to enter his veins. It was a blood fall that required a blood atonement. One cannot tamper with the story of the Fall without tampering with the story of Atonement. . . .
In a further attempt to harmonize evolution with the gospel, some have separated man from the evolutionary process. They concede that man is the creation of God but maintain that the earth and all other life forms were created by evolution. Yet we know that all life forms were represented in Eden and like Adam and Eve were subjects of the Fall. Because of Adam they too will die and because of Christ they too will have claim upon immortality and eternal life. On the matter of the resurrection of animals Joseph Smith said: "Any man who would tell you that this could not be, would tell you the revelations are not true" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph, p. 291). To argue for the existence of life forms that were not subject to Adam's fall is to argue at the same time that they are not redeemed through Christ's atonement. Such an argument places God in the awkward position of creating that which he does not have the power to save. (Answers: Straightforward Answers to Tough Gospel Questions, Deseret Book Company, 1998, pp. 158-162).
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http://ourworld.cs.com/mikegriffith1/id110.htm , Bold Emphasis Mine. )