Introduction
Let me start off by saying that it is completely understandable to feel confused about this topic. There is a rich history of conflicting statements by various leaders and scientists within the Church concerning the creation of plants and animals, the origin of man, the age of the earth, etc. Understanding that science is an ever-growing, iteratively improving discipline that continually discovers new things can also help. Most people would likely agree that when seeking to really know the truth, the more angles from which we can examine a question, the better. Additionally, science is an entirely different way of knowing, called an epistemology, from religion and when they seemingly address the same topic, it can be confusing if you are unfamiliar with the epistemological rules and nuances of each. Both science and religion have rules that provide boundaries for the questions they are each equipped to answer (and exclude those for which they are not an appropriate epistemology). This doesn’t mean that they can’t both come together to answer important truths. Thankfully, we know from the words of a modern prophet that
There is no conflict between science and religion. Conflict only arises from an incomplete knowledge of either science or religion, or both…This university is committed to search for truth, and teach the truth…All truth is part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Whether truth comes from a scientific laboratory or by revelation from the Lord, it is compatible. (1)
Even Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of this dispensation said, “One of the grand fundamental principles of ‘Mormonism’ is to receive truth, let it come from which it may”(2). The First Presidency has declared, “Our religion is not hostile to real science. That which is demonstrated we accept with joy”(3). We, as Latter-day Saints, are honest seekers of all truth, let that truth come from where it may. As a faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and as a biologist who studies evolution at Brigham Young University, I have spent more than a decade studying these topics and how best to communicate about them in a scientific and faith-promoting way. As such, I believe I can provide some insight into these topics. So, let’s get started!
Death Before the Fall
Summary: The Church has no official stand on the age of the earth, nor is there a consensus doctrine on death before the fall of Adam. Science confirms that many organisms lived and died prior to the age of Adam and that the Earth is around 4.6 billion years old. To learn more, read on.
It is understandable why this topic might be confusing. Let’s start with these two statements in the LDS Bible Dictionary(4):
“Latter-day revelation teaches that there was no death on this earth before the fall of Adam. Indeed, death entered the world as a direct result of the Fall.”
The Fall of Adam being placed at 4000 B.C. in the Chronology of the Old Testament
They seem to claim that there was no death on the earth before the Fall of Adam, placing that event around 4000 B.C. (approximately 6000 years ago). But where does this information come from? What is the Bible Dictionary? Is it canonized scripture? Should it be taken as Church doctrine? To answer these questions, we can turn to several places, first of which, is the introduction to the Bible Dictionary, itself, contained in the LDS scriptures. It states,
Many of the entries draw on the work of Bible scholars and are subject to reevaluation as new research or revelation comes to light. This dictionary is provided to help your study of the scriptures and is not intended as an official statement of Church doctrine or an endorsement of the historical and cultural views set forth.(5)
We learn from this that the Bible Dictionary is not part of canonized scripture, nor does it represent official Church doctrine. In fact, the second place we should look is into the history of this study guide. The Bible Dictionary was published in 1979 to accompany the Latter-day Saint version of the Bible. A committee of the Church, chaired by Thomas S. Monson (then a member of the Twelve Apostles), commissioned Robert J. Matthews, a BYU Professor of Ancient Scripture, to compile it. Matthews used a Bible Dictionary printed by Cambridge University Press as a template; much of the content in our version is identical to this version.(6) And all of it is subject to revision “as new research or revelation comes to light.” Thus, various statements from the Bible Dictionary should not be used as Church doctrine to be contrasted with scientific understanding. That was not the intended purpose.
But is it possible that there really was no death before the fall? It’s an excellent question. Let’s consider what we know from science, remembering “that which is demonstrated, we accept with joy.” We know from science that countless organisms have lived and died for upwards of 1.9-3.5 billion years(7) upon an earth that coalesced into solid form upwards of 4.6 billion years ago.(8) We have discovered countless fossils of these organisms that tell of a rich evolutionary history on this planet. In fact, I have several of those fossils sitting in my office at BYU, those of 53-million-year-old fish from the Green River Formation in Wyoming! We know that life began in the oceans, that the advent of photosynthetic bacteria changed the face of the planet, introducing oxygen into our atmosphere around 3.5 billion years ago.(9) We know that insect-like organisms and plants moved onto land around 470-450 million years ago,(10) and that the first four-legged vertebrate creatures to walk on land occurred around 360 million years ago.(11) In other words, there is clear and plentiful evidence to demonstrate that life has existed, and that organisms lived and died, for a very, very long time on earth. And we know that this vastly pre-dates the emergence of Homo sapiens, our species, estimated to be somewhere between 250-300,000 years ago.(12) (We’ll talk more about this in the next section.)
How does this mesh with scripture? From the Book of Mormon, we learn from the prophet Lehi that if our first parent, Adam, had not fallen, he (and “all things which were created”) would have remained “in the same state in which they were after they were created” (2 Nephi 2:22).(13) However, Lehi does not expound upon what that means. What is this state? Does it apply to all creatures on Earth or just to the Garden where Adam dwelled? And is this suspended state referring to the state at which the creations then existed at the time of the Garden of Eden (after countless eons of life, death, and evolutionary change), or does it apply all the way back to the beginning of the creation? Based on all we know about scriptural writings, it seems clear that Lehi was speaking symbolically (as the scriptures often do) about the spiritual state of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and that this was not meant to comment on the biology of the creation, of natural death, evolution, fossils, etc. Additionally, he was speaking with an ancient Israelite knowledge of science. Likewise, the questions God gave to Joseph Smith concerning the revelations of John (D&C 77:6-7) about the seven books are also symbolic; the Church has no official stand on the age of the Earth.(14)
Multiple Hominid Species and Neanderthal DNA Present in Adam’s Descendants
Summary: The Church has no official position on evolution, including human evolution. Science confirms that many hominid species lived and died prior to Homo sapiens. Science also confirms that early Homo sapiens species interbred with Neanderthals. None of these is in conflict with our revealed doctrine about God’s children and their place in the Great Plan of Happiness. To learn more, read on.
What an excellent question! It is fascinating to think about the way in which God might have created our mortal bodies. Does it include an evolutionary past? Do we have ancestors who weren’t quite in the image of God and therefore not quite human? Let’s start off with what we know from a religious standpoint about the origins of human beings. From Genesis 1, verse 27, we know that “…God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”(15) From the latest Official Declaration of the Church on this matter, given in 1925, we learn that (emphasis added)
Adam, our great 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 pre-existence 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… Man is the child of God, formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes, and even as the infant son of an earthly father and mother is capable in due time of becoming a man, so that undeveloped offspring of celestial parentage is capable, by experience through ages and aeons, of evolving into a God.(16)
From a more recent statement in the Church’s magazine to youth, the New Era, we read (emphasis added),
Though the details of what happened on earth before Adam and Eve, including how their bodies were created, have not been revealed, our teaching regarding man’s origin are clear and come from revelation. Before we were born on earth, we were spirit children of heavenly parents, with bodies in their image. God directed the creation of Adam and Eve and placed their spirits in their bodies. We are all descendants of Adam and Eve, our first parents, who were created in God’s image. There were no spirit children of Heavenly Father on earth before Adam and Eve were created.(17)
As a Church, we do believe that Adam and Eve were special, they were our first parents, the first spirit children of Heavenly Father to be on the earth. We also believe that we are in the image of God, and from Joseph Smith’s account of the first vision, we know this to be true. However, does this mean that other organisms, many resembling humans, could not have existed on earth before Adam? I have concluded that it does not.(18) Accepting that organisms lived and died before the Fall, then just like the saber-toothed tiger, or the Woolley Mammoth, hominids also lived and died before Adam.
So, what do we know from science? Let’s first define “hominid”. A hominid refers to anything in the family Hominidae. This includes humans and their ancestors, but also the great apes that are alive today (e.g., chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans) and their ancestors. So, let’s be a little more precise in our language. What I believe the authors meant to use when they posed this question was “hominins”. Within the family Hominidae is a subfamily, Homininae, that includes gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans (excluding orangutans), and within that subfamily is a tribe called Hominini, which only includes humans and their closest relatives, such as Australopithecus, Ardipithecus, or Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis)(19). All of these species fit into Hominini due to these distinct characteristics: mostly upright bipedal posture, larger brains, and the use of tools.(20)
I think what is puzzling to most people (and understandably so) is how these now-extinct, human-like organisms fit into the picture. Were they real? Did they really live on earth? How do we know? There are some great resources available at https://biology.byu.edu/reconciling-evolution/human-evolution, including where we find fossils, how we date fossils, how we identify fossils, how many fossils exist, etc. Briefly, there are at least 21 identified species of hominin that date back 5 million years belonging to multiple genera including Australopithecus, Ardipithecus, Paranthropus, and Homo. You may be familiar with ones such as Homo neanderthalensis (the Neanderthal), Homo habilis (the “handy man”), or Australopithecus afarensis (the famous “Lucy”). And for many of these species, we have discovered a large sample, so we know quite a bit about them. For example, we have over 300 Homo neanderthalensis specimens(21), and at least 18 individuals from Homo naledi, one of the most recent hominin discoveries.(22) Are these a part of our history as Homo sapiens?(23) Science would answer a resounding, Yes. Are these part of Adam’s history? We are not sure, and there is no revelation that clarifies this. The First Presidency of the Church offered a spectrum of viewpoints in speaking to the Priesthood organization of the Church in 1910:
Whether the mortal bodies of man evolved in natural processes to present perfection, through the direction and power of God; whether the first parents of our generations, Adam and Eve, were transplanted form another sphere, with immortal tabernacles, which became corrupted through sin and the partaking of natural foods, in the process of time; whether they were born here in mortality, as other mortals have been, are questions not fully answered in the revealed word of God.(24)
This spectrum certainly leaves room for the evolution of our mortal bodies. But no definitive answers have been given. The next question that naturally follows is, if evolution is a reasonable explanation for the creation of our bodies (again, this is an if, given no definitive revelation on the matter), where might Adam and Eve be placed in this history? Can science prove, or disprove, the existence of a primordial pair? To understand this, we need a very brief explanation of genetics:
You inherited your DNA (the information in the nucleus of each cell) from your parents, half from your mom and half from your dad, meaning each parent only gave you half of theirs. They, in turn, only inherited half of each of their parents’ DNA, and so on and so forth going back generations. Due to this simple fact, within about ten generations, you could have an ancestor with which you share zero DNA. This means they are a genealogical ancestor (i.e., a direct ancestor), but not a genetic ancestor (i.e., you have no genetic relationship with them). So, if we are looking for a single man and woman who are the ancestors of all the humans on earth, it becomes somewhat difficult, genetically. However, using principles of genealogy and the mathematics of inheritance (and looking at the whole population of humans, rather than at you individually), we can estimate that we could reasonably find an ancestor that is shared by everyone on earth around 5000 years ago (i.e., all of us can trace our genealogical ancestry to these people). However, this does not account for all the other DNA found in human populations. To encompass all DNA variants on earth, we would need to go back to a small population living perhaps around 20-30,000 years ago, who may have shared DNA with other Hominins like Neanderthals.(25) To look at it purely from a genetic standpoint, we can trace the unique DNA sequences in our mitochondria (this is DNA outside of our nucleus and it passes only from the mother to offspring). Scientists have traced this DNA back to a convergence point (a point at which we find no other variants in the population) around 180-200,000 years ago (i.e., “mitochondrial Eve”(26)); scientists can do the same study using unique sequences in the Y-chromosome (that pass only from fathers to sons), and they find a convergence point somewhere between 210-350,000 years ago (i.e., “Y-chromosome Adam”(27)). Any of these places would be a reasonable time point to place Adam and Eve.
Or, perhaps, we want to include Neanderthals in our definition of “human”, so we would need to trace our ancestry back to the common ancestors of humans and Neanderthals, which would place Adam and Eve more than 700,000 years ago. This could answer why we have people on earth today who carry DNA from Neanderthals. The evidence is robust indicating that early Homo sapiens populations interbred with Neanderthal populations in Europe. (28)
What science does not tell us (nor should it try – remember our epistemological boundaries), is whether Adam and Eve were real people who existed. As Latter-day Saints, we believe that they were.(29) Science does not tell us how Adam and Eve were spiritually created, and revelation offers no additional information. And science does not comment on whether God was involved in the process (i.e., science is agnostic)(30). As President Spencer W. Kimball said, “The Creators breathed into their nostrils the breath of life and man and woman became living souls. We don’t know exactly how their coming in to this world happened, and when we’re able to understand it the Lord will tell us”.(31) So, until we are given further light and knowledge on this topic, we need to be comfortable knowing that science and our religion are compatible; what conflict seemingly exists “…only arises from an incomplete knowledge of either science or religion, or both”.(32) I have a testimony of our Savior, Jesus Christ, of our loving Heavenly Father and Creator of the Universe, and of their Great Plan of Happiness for us. I am constantly in awe of Their creative powers as I learn and study Their works reflected in the physical world around us. I believe that by studying biology, we are studying the hands of God. May we all keep the faith and look for ways to unite two symbiotic epistemologies in our search for truth.
Sincerely, Dr. Jamie Jensen
About Jamie Jensen:
Dr. Jamie Jensen is a Professor in the Department of Biology. She is a discipline-based education researcher with dual expertise in biology, and educational psychology and pedagogy. Her research foci include improving biology teaching through the use of evidence-based instructional practices and overcoming barriers at the intersection of evolution and religion through effective science communication strategies. Additionally, as a member of the Broader Social Impacts Committee of the Human Origins Project at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, she works with scientists from a variety of religious denominations to help the public feel more comfortable with human evolution.
Russell M. Nelson, cited in Marianne Holman Prescott, “Church Leaders Gather at BYU’s Life Sciences Building for Dedication,” Church News, April 17, 2015
Joseph Smith, quoted in History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1949), 5:499
Joseph F. Smith, Anthon H. Lund, and John Henry Smith, “Words in Season from the First Presidency,” Deseret Evening News, December 17, 1910, 3
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd?lang=eng
See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/introduction?lang=eng#title1
Mortimer, William James (1992), "Bible: LDS Publication of the Bible", in Ludlow, Daniel H (ed.), Encyclopedia of Mormonism, New York: Macmillan Publishing, pp. 110–111
Stephen Moorbath, “Dating Earliest Life,” Nature 434, no. 155 (2005), https://doi.org/10.1038/434155a
“Age of the Earth,” United States Geological Survey, last modified July 9, 2007, https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html.
Blankenship RE, Hartman H. (1998) The origin and evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis. Trends Biochem Sci 23: 94–97
Tihelka E, Howard RJ, Cai C, Lozano-Fernandez J. Was There a Cambrian Explosion on Land? The Case of Arthropod Terrestrialization. Biology (Basel). 2022 Oct 17;11(10):1516. doi: 10.3390/biology11101516. PMID: 36290419; PMCID: PMC9598930; Kenrick, P. & Crane, P. R. The Origin and Early Diversification of Land Plants: A Cladistic Study(Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC, (1997)).
See https://evolution.berkeley.edu/what-are-evograms/the-origin-of-tetrapods/
“Homo Sapiens,” Human Evolution Evidence, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, last modified January 22, 2021, https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-sapiens.
see Alma 12:23-24 for a similar teaching; for further reading on interpreting this scripture, see https://benspackman.com/2024/02/joseph-fielding-smith-death-before-the-fall-and-2-nephi-222/
See Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Age of the Earth, https://eom.byu.edu/index.php?title=Earth
For more information on appropriate interpretations of these texts, see Todd Patterson, “Genesis 1:1–2:3: The Creation Account as Hebrew Poesis,” January 21, 2010, https://www.toddjana.com/genesis-11-23-the-creation-account-as-hebrew-poiesis/; “How to Read the Bible,” BibleProject, accessed February 13, 2023, https://bibleproject.com/explore/how-to-read-the-bible/; John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009).
First Presidency, “‘Mormon’ View of Evolution,” 1925
“What Does the Church Believe about Evolution?,” New Era, October 2016
See Jensen, J. L., & Bybee, S. M. Let’s Talk About Science and Religion (Deseret Book Company, 2023), see Chapter 6.
see https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/whats-in-a-name-hominid-versus-hominin-216054/
See Lisa Hendry, “Who Were the Neanderthals,” Natural History Museum, accessed February 14, 2023, https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.html
“Homo Naledi,” Human Evolution Evidence, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, last modified July 1, 2022, https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-naledi; for a more in-depth discussion of human evolution, see Uval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: Vintage Books, 2011); N. Shubin, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (New York: Vintage Books, 2008)
For a more in-depth discussion of human evolution, see Uval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: Vintage Books, 2011); N. Shubin, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (New York: Vintage Books, 2008)
Priesthood Quorums’ Table, “Origin of Man.” Improvement Era, 13 (April 1910): 57.
See a discussion by Dr. John Hawks, paleoanthropologist, at https://youtu.be/jpuM0MOBiVY?list=TLGG72bnZW7kMB8yOTEwMjAyNA
See Gitschier, J. (2010). All about mitochondrial Eve: An interview with Rebecca Canon. PLoS Genetics, 27(5):e1000959.
See https://biologos.org/series/evolution-basics/articles/mitochondrial-eve-and-y-chromosome-adam
Villanea, F.A., Schraiber, J.G. Multiple episodes of interbreeding between Neanderthal and modern humans. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 39–44 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0735-8
See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/believe/life-has-purpose/creation-and-the-fall
See discussion on the agnostic nature of science in Jensen, J. L., Faith and Science: Symbiotic Pathways to Truth, BYU Devotional, Nov. 3, 2020; https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jamie-jensen/faith-science-symbiotic-pathways-truth/.
Spencer W. Kimball, “The Blessings and Responsibilities of Womanhood,” Ensign, March 1976, 70–72, ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Russell M. Nelson, cited in Marianne Holman Prescott, “Church Leaders Gather at BYU’s Life Sciences Building for Dedication,” Church News, April 17, 2015.