Question: I have just recently come in touch with my spirituality thanks to this very page. I have always been taught in school the theory of evolution and have never even thought to question it. However last night after reading and then pondering it hit me; how can I believe evolution and creation to be true at the same time? So, to get right to it, what is the LDS belief on the theory of Evolution?
Response: Thanks for your e-mail. In it you asked what the LDS belief is on the theory of evolution.
We believe that the theory of evolution is just that…a theory. Our belief is precisely how the scripture portrays the placement of man on this earth. God not only created the earth and everything in it, but he also placed the first man and the first woman there, in the Garden of Eden, where they eventually began to "multiply and replenish the earth."
To believe otherwise suggests that God is not all-knowing and all-powerful, and that somehow, at the beginning of the earth, He was in some kind of an experimentation stage to see if He could "get it right" relative to what man was supposed to be about. On the other hand, we read in Gen. 1:26, "God said let us make man in our own image and after our likeness." So the question then comes, well, what then is God’s likeness? We read in Ex. 33:11, "And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." In Heb. 1:1-3, we find that Jesus Christ Himself is "the brightness of His Father’s glory, and the express image of His person." From these things, we can confidently conclude that God, our Heavenly Father, is a resurrected, perfect, immortal being, and we look like Him. We have the same kind of body and features as He does.
