Some have used the following statement from the 1909 First Presidency Statement, “The Origin of Man,” to support a view that there were no “pre-Adamites” and/or a condemnation of macro-evolution.
It is held by some that Adam was not the first man upon this earth, and that the original human being 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 in duty bound to regard him as the primal parent of our race . . . Man began life as a human being, in the likeness of our Heavenly Father.
One recent attempt to use this First Presidency statement thusly is that of Susan Easton Black, Glorious Truths about Mother Eve (American Fork, Utah: Covenant Communications, Inc., 2018), pp. 40-41. Notwithstanding, such is greatly flawed. While one should read the entire article, Michael Ash’s discussion of this statement and its teachings in his The Mormon Myth of "Evil Evolution" refutes this absolutist misreading of the text:
Some have suggested this statement takes an anti-evolution stance. However, the First Presidency's statement doesn't address the mutability of species. Some have also claimed that since Adam is to be regarded "as the primal parent of our race," this rules out the possibility of evolution. Race, however, is not a biological distinction. James C. King, of the New York University School of Medicine, notes:
What constitutes race is a matter of social definition. Whatever a group accepts as part of itself is within the pale; what it rejects is outside. Acceptance and rejection are not absolute but can exist in various degrees. . . . . . .[T]he fact [is] that what constitutes a race and how one recognizes a racial difference is culturally determined. Whether two individuals regard themselves as of the same or of different races depends not on the degree of similarity or their genetic material but on whether history, tradition, and personal training and experience have brought them to regard themselves as belonging to the same groups or to different groups. . . .[G]roup differentiation [is].. .based on cultural behavior and not on genetic difference.[2]
Therefore, Adam can be the "primal parent of our race"—or cultural group—without discarding the evolutionary model. When it was recognized that the First Presidency's statement didn't address the origin of man's physical body, questions among members persisted. Less than six months after the official "statement," the following information was printed in the April 1910 Improvement Era:
Whether the mortal bodies of man evolved in natural processes to present perfection, thru the direction and power of God; whether the first parents of our generations, Adam and Eve, were transplanted from another sphere, with immortal tabernacles, which became corrupted thru 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.[3]
Thus, three possibilities were suggested for the creation of man's physical body: 1) evolution via a natural process as directed by the power of God; 2) transplantation from another sphere; 3) birth in mortality by other mortals. None of these three fits the typical "creationist" model.
Because the official "statement" didn't resolve the issues of evolution or the mutability of species, the controversy among members, and even BYU faculty members, continued. Evolution was being taught by faithful LDS professors at BYU, while other BYU professors (and at times, students or parents of students) opposed such teaching.[4]
In 1911 the controversy grew more intense, and several BYU faculty members became embroiled in this issue, resulting in bitter feelings and even some changes of employment.[5]
Notes for the Above:
[2] James C. King, The Biology of Race (N.Y.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), 160,163. See alsohttp://www.standard.net/standard/news/news_story.html?sid=20010628232006.6CA90+cat=news+ternplate=newsl.html
[3] Improvement Era, April 1910, 570. Although there was no author's name attached to this statement, a number of scholars have suggested that Joseph F. Smith was responsible for the material since he and Edward H. Anderson were the editors (see Duane E. Jeffery, "Seers, Savants and Evolution: The Uncomfortable Interface," Dialogue 8 (Autumn/Winter 1973): 60; David John Buerger, "The Adam-God Doctrine," Dialogue 15 (Spring 1982): 41; Erich Robert Paul, Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology [Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992], 175).
[4] Gary James Bergera and Ronald Priddis, Brigham Young University: A House of Faith (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1985), 150.
[5] Ibid., 134-48.
