CES Letter Answers

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Evolution & the Fall ​

The claim:

"2 Nephi 2:22 and Alma 12:23-24 state there was no death of any kind (humans, all animals, birds, fish, dinosaurs, etc.) on this earth until the 'Fall of Adam,' which according to D&C 77:6-7 occurred about 7,000 years ago. It is scientifically established that there has been life and death on this planet for billions of years. How does the Church reconcile this?"[1]

The CES Letter frames this as a collapse: evolution disproves the Fall, the Fall is necessary for the Atonement, and without the Atonement the entire theological framework crumbles. It's a clean argument. It's also a false dilemma.

The question worth asking: Does the Church actually require what the CES Letter says it requires?

The Church has no official position on evolution ​

This isn't a dodge. It's the documented reality.

In 2016, the Church published a direct answer to the question "What does the Church believe about evolution?" in the New Era:

"The Church has no official position on the theory of evolution. Organic evolution, or changes to species' inherited traits over time, is a matter for scientific study. Nothing has been revealed concerning evolution."[2]

The statement goes on to affirm what the Church does teach: God directed the creation of Adam and Eve, placed their spirits in their bodies, and all humans are their descendants. But on the mechanism — how those bodies came to be — the Church is deliberately silent.

This isn't a recent accommodation. The pattern goes back more than a century.

Three First Presidency statements, one consistent position ​

1909 — "The Origin of Man." President Joseph F. Smith and his counselors published a statement affirming that "man began life as a human being, in the likeness of our Heavenly Father" and that Adam was "the first man of all men."[3] The statement called ideas that man developed from "lower orders of the animal creation" the "theories of men." But it said nothing about the mechanism of creation — how God formed Adam's body — and it did not address plant or animal evolution at all.

1925 — Reaffirmation. In the wake of the Scopes Trial, the First Presidency reissued the core of the 1909 statement — but with notable edits. The anti-science language was softened. The phrase about Adam not being "the first man upon this earth" was dropped entirely.[4]

2016 — "Nothing has been revealed." The New Era statement quoted above. Three words that close the door on anyone claiming the Church has settled the question: Nothing has been revealed.

Between those statements, one critical event occurred.

The 1931 First Presidency intervention ​

In the late 1920s, a sharp debate erupted among Church leaders. Elder Joseph Fielding Smith argued for a young earth with no death of any kind before the Fall. Elder B.H. Roberts and Elder James E. Talmage — both accomplished scholars — argued the geological evidence was overwhelming and that death in the natural world long predated Adam.[5]

The First Presidency under Heber J. Grant settled it — not by picking a side, but by refusing to:

"The statement that pre-Adamites existed is not Church doctrine. Neither side has been accepted as doctrine at all."[6]

They directed Church leaders to "leave Geology, Biology, Archaeology and Anthropology...to scientific research" and stop debating the matter in official settings.[6:1]

That decision still stands. Neither "no death before the Fall on the entire earth" nor "death existed everywhere before Adam" is a doctrine of the Church. The CES Letter treats the first position as official. It isn't.

BYU teaches evolution ​

If the Church considered evolution incompatible with its theology, it would be strange to mandate its teaching at its flagship university.

BYU's biology department has taught evolution since 1971, when Dr. Clayton White and Dr. Duane Jeffery launched the first undergraduate course in comparative evolutionary theory.[7] The course filled immediately. Today, BYU has one of the largest and most active graduate programs in phylogenetic systematics — the study of evolutionary relationships among organisms — in the country.[8]

The university distributes an official "Evolution and the Origin of Man" packet to faculty and students. It contains every First Presidency statement on the subject, plus the Encyclopedia of Mormonism entry on evolution. The message is clear: here is what the Church has said, and here is what it has not said.[9]

President Russell M. Nelson, at the 2015 dedication of BYU's Life Sciences Building, stated:

"There is no conflict between science and religion. Conflict only arises from an incomplete knowledge of either science or religion, or both."[10]

A Church that required young-earth creationism would not build a life sciences building, staff it with evolutionary biologists, and have its prophet dedicate it with that statement.

The "no death before the Fall" question ​

This is the hardest part of the CES Letter's argument, and it deserves an honest answer.

What the scriptures say ​

2 Nephi 2:22 reads:

"If Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And 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."

Alma 12:23–24 and Moses 6:48 teach that the Fall brought death into the world. D&C 77:6 refers to "seven thousand years of [the earth's] temporal existence." The 2017 LDS Bible Dictionary entry on "Death" states that "there was no death on this earth for any forms of life before the fall of Adam."[11]

The CES Letter reads these texts in the most rigid way possible and declares them incompatible with science. But that reading is not the only faithful reading — and the Church has said so.

Multiple faithful interpretations ​

The scriptures support at least three faithful readings of "no death before the Fall":

1. No death in the Garden of Eden. 2 Nephi 2:22 specifically says Adam "would have remained in the garden of Eden." The scope may be the Garden itself — a paradisiacal space — not the entire planet. Death could have existed in the natural world outside while Adam and Eve lived in a separate, protected state.[12]

2. No human death before the Fall. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, speaking in 2015, specified that there was no human death before the Fall — carefully avoiding the claim that all animal and plant life was immortal.[13] This reading preserves the theological core (the Fall introduced mortality for God's children) without requiring immortal dinosaurs.

3. "Temporal existence" as a spiritual category. D&C 77's "seven thousand years" may refer to the period of God's dealings with humanity since Adam — the era of covenants and accountability — not to the physical age of the planet. Elder James E. Talmage taught that the seven "days" of creation "do not include the period of our planet's creation and preparation as a dwelling place for man. They are limited to Earth's 'temporal existence,' that is, to Time, considered as distinct from Eternity."[14]

None of these readings require a 7,000-year-old earth. None require immortal trilobites. And none of them are fringe — they come from apostles, scholars, and the Church's own history topic on organic evolution.

What the Bible Dictionary actually is ​

The CES Letter cites the Bible Dictionary entry on death as though it were scripture. The Bible Dictionary's own introduction says otherwise:

"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."[15]

It's a study aid. Not a canonized text. Not a doctrinal declaration.

The CES Letter's false dilemma ​

The argument works like this:

  1. The Church requires a literal, young-earth, no-death-before-the-Fall reading of scripture.
  2. Science has disproved that reading.
  3. Therefore the Church's theology collapses.

Step 1 is false. The Church has never required that reading. The 1931 First Presidency explicitly declined to make it doctrine. The 2016 New Era says nothing has been revealed concerning evolution. BYU teaches evolution in its biology department. The Church's own history topic states that "the scriptures tell why man was created, but they do not tell how."[16]

What the CES Letter actually presents is a choice between two extremes: fundamentalist literalism or atheism. Accept every scriptural passage as a scientific statement, or reject the entire faith. There is no middle ground offered.

But there is middle ground — and it's where most of the Church's intellectual tradition lives.

The range of faithful views ​

PositionHeld byCore idea
Young earth, no pre-Fall deathJoseph Fielding Smith, Bruce R. McConkieScripture is scientifically precise; death entered the entire earth at the Fall
Old earth, death before Adam outside the GardenJames E. Talmage, John A. Widtsoe, B.H. RobertsThe geological record is real; Adam's Fall introduced human mortality
Theistic evolutionHenry Eyring Sr., many BYU scientistsGod used evolutionary processes; Adam and Eve are the first covenant-bearing humans
Agnostic on mechanism2016 New Era, official Church positionGod created Adam and Eve; the "how" hasn't been revealed

All four positions have been held by faithful, prominent Latter-day Saints. The Church has not condemned any of them. The CES Letter pretends only the first exists.

A distinguished tradition of LDS scientists ​

Henry Eyring Sr. — father of President Henry B. Eyring — was one of the twentieth century's most accomplished chemists. He received the National Medal of Science in 1966 for his development of transition state theory. He was also a devoted Latter-day Saint who wrote extensively on the compatibility of science and faith.[17]

The CES Letter opens its science section with Eyring's own words:

"Since the Gospel embraces all truth, there can never be any genuine contradictions between true science and true religion...I am obliged, as a Latter-day Saint, to believe whatever is true, regardless of the source."[1:1]

Then it proceeds to argue that science and LDS theology are irreconcilable — ignoring that the man it quoted spent his career demonstrating otherwise.

James E. Talmage held a PhD in geology and served as an apostle. In his 1931 address "The Earth and Man," delivered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle at the First Presidency's request, he stated that plants and animals "lived and died, age after age, while the earth was yet unfit for human habitation."[14:1]

John A. Widtsoe, also an apostle, held a PhD in chemistry from the University of Goettingen and wrote that scientific truth and religious truth cannot ultimately conflict because both originate from God.[18]

These aren't outliers. They're apostles. The Church didn't discipline them for their views. It published them.

The Fall as theology, not biology ​

The deepest problem with the CES Letter's argument is that it treats the Fall as a scientific claim about a specific biological event at a specific moment in natural history. It isn't.

The Fall is a theological category. It teaches:

  • Humanity exists in a mortal, fallen state. We experience death, pain, and separation from God.
  • This condition was not God's original design. Something happened — the Fall — that introduced mortality and spiritual death into human experience.
  • The Atonement of Jesus Christ overcomes the effects of the Fall. Physical death is conquered through resurrection; spiritual death is overcome through repentance and grace.

None of these claims depend on a specific date for the Fall, a specific mechanism for Adam's creation, or the absence of animal death before 4000 BC.

The theology works whether Adam's body was formed from dust in an instant or whether God guided billions of years of development toward a point where two beings were prepared to bear the divine image, receive spirits, enter a garden, and make a choice.

The CES Letter confuses the meaning of the Fall with the mechanism of creation. Science addresses mechanism. Theology addresses meaning.

What the Fall does require ​

The doctrinal core of the Fall — as taught in 2 Nephi 2, Alma 42, and the temple — includes:

  • Adam and Eve were real, historical beings (not purely allegorical).[2:1]
  • They lived in a paradisiacal state and made a deliberate choice.
  • That choice introduced mortality and the conditions necessary for human growth.
  • The Fall was planned and purposeful — "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25).

Evolution does not contradict any of these claims. It addresses a different question entirely: how biological organisms change over time. The Church affirms the what and why of creation. It has left the how open.

D&C 77 and the age of the earth ​

The CES Letter cites D&C 77:6–7 — which mentions "seven thousand years of [the earth's] temporal existence" — as proof the Church requires a young earth.

The word temporal is doing important work here. It means "pertaining to time" or "mortal" — not "total." James E. Talmage read it as the period since the Fall, distinct from the eons of creation that preceded it. The verse describes the earth's covenant history, not its geological age.[14:2]

Even on the most literal reading, D&C 77 doesn't say the earth is 7,000 years old. It says the earth has 7,000 years of temporal existence. Those are different claims. The creation period — however long — precedes the temporal clock.

The Church has no official position on the age of the earth.[16:1] David O. McKay, as Church president, wrote in 1957 that the Church "has issued no official statement on the subject of the theory of evolution" and encouraged BYU teachers to discuss geological timescales freely.[19]

Other hominids and Neanderthal DNA ​

The CES Letter also asks: "If Adam and Eve are the first humans, how do we explain the dozen or so other Hominid species who lived and died 35,000 – 2.4 million years before Adam?" And: "How do I have pre-Adamic Neanderthal DNA and Neanderthal blood circulating my veins when this species died off about 33,000 years before Adam and Eve?"[20]

These are real questions. They deserve real answers — not evasion.

The Church teaches that Adam and Eve were the first humans in the covenant sense: the first beings who received spirits from God, entered into accountability, and became subject to the Fall. Whether other hominid species existed before them is a question the Church has deliberately left open. As the 1931 First Presidency stated, "the doctrine of the existence of races of human beings prior to the fall of Adam was not a doctrine of the Church" — but neither was the denial of such beings.[6:2]

Neanderthal DNA in modern human genomes (roughly 1–4%) reflects interbreeding between anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals tens of thousands of years ago.[21] This is established science. It tells us something about biological history. It does not tell us when God placed spirits in bodies, when accountability began, or when the covenant relationship between God and humanity started. Those are theological questions that genetics cannot answer.

The CES Letter assumes that "first humans" must mean "first biological organisms resembling humans." The Church's teaching is more specific: Adam and Eve were the first children of God in a covenant sense — the first to bear the divine image, receive agency, and become subject to the plan of salvation. When that transition happened, and how it relates to the broader hominid family tree, is precisely the kind of question the Church has chosen not to answer — because it hasn't been revealed.

The positive case: why this is a strength, not a weakness ​

The CES Letter treats the Church's openness on evolution as a vulnerability. It's actually a mark of intellectual honesty.

Most religious traditions that stake their credibility on young-earth creationism have been forced into increasingly defensive positions as scientific evidence accumulates. The LDS Church has never been in that position — because its leaders, as early as the 1930s, deliberately refused to make young-earth creationism a doctrine.

The result:

  • BYU's biology department is a legitimate research institution with active evolutionary biology programs.[8:1]
  • The Church's official publications explicitly state that evolution is a matter for scientific study, not doctrinal pronouncement.[2:2]
  • The theological framework — the reality of the Fall, the need for an Atonement, the purposefulness of mortality — does not depend on a specific creation timeline.
  • Prominent apostles and scientists have modeled how to hold faith and scientific inquiry together for over a century.

The CES Letter needs the Church to be a fundamentalist institution that can't survive contact with modern science. The Church's actual record shows the opposite.

Bottom line: The CES Letter presents a false choice: accept a fundamentalist reading of scripture or abandon the faith entirely. But the Church has never required young-earth creationism, has no official position on evolution, and has taught evolution at BYU for over fifty years. The Fall is a theological truth about the human condition — not a biological hypothesis about the age of the earth. Evolution doesn't disprove it. The two answer different questions.

  1. Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Science," pp. 110–111. The CES Letter opens the science section with a quote from Henry Eyring's Faith of a Scientist about the Gospel embracing all truth, then argues that LDS theology cannot be reconciled with established science. ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. "What does the Church believe about evolution?" New Era, October 2016. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/new-era/2016/10/to-the-point/what-does-the-church-believe-about-evolution ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. First Presidency (Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, Anthon H. Lund), "The Origin of Man," Improvement Era 13 (November 1909): 75–81. Reprinted in Ensign, February 2002. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2002/02/the-origin-of-man ↩︎

  4. First Presidency (Heber J. Grant, Anthony W. Ivins, Charles W. Nibley), "'Mormon' View of Evolution," Improvement Era 28 (September 1925): 1090–91. The 1925 statement reissued the doctrinal core of the 1909 statement but removed the language characterizing evolutionary theory as "the theories of men." ↩︎

  5. James E. Talmage, "The Earth and Man," address delivered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, August 9, 1931. Published as a Church pamphlet in 1931 and reprinted at the Interpreter Foundation. https://interpreterfoundation.org/reprint-sm1-12-the-earth-and-man/ ↩︎

  6. First Presidency memorandum, April 1931, as recorded in minutes of the meeting. The First Presidency directed that "the doctrine of the existence of races of human beings prior to the fall of Adam was not a doctrine of the Church; and, further, that the conception...that there was no death upon the earth prior to Adam's fall is likewise declared to be no doctrine of the Church." See William E. Evenson and Duane E. Jeffery, Mormonism and Evolution: The Authoritative LDS Statements (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2005), 53–68. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  7. "50 Years of Teaching Evolution at BYU," BYU Life Sciences Magazine. https://lifesciences.byu.edu/magazine/50-years-of-teaching-evolution-at-byu. BYU's first undergraduate evolution course, Zoology 404: Comparative Evolutionary Theory, was launched in fall 1971 by Dr. Clayton White and Dr. Duane Jeffery. ↩︎

  8. "50 Years of Teaching Evolution at BYU," BYU Life Sciences Magazine. BYU's evolutionary biology program has grown to include one of the largest graduate programs in phylogenetic systematics in the United States. ↩︎ ↩︎

  9. "Evolution and the Origin of Man," BYU evolution packet, compiled 1992. Contains all First Presidency statements on evolution plus the Encyclopedia of Mormonism entry. https://biology.byu.edu/00000172-29e6-d079-ab7e-69efe5890000/byu-evolution-packet ↩︎

  10. Russell M. Nelson, remarks at the dedication of the BYU Life Sciences Building, April 9, 2015. "There is no conflict between science and religion. Conflict only arises from an incomplete knowledge of either science or religion, or both." Reported in Church News, April 14, 2015. https://www.thechurchnews.com/2015/4/14/23212914/elder-nelson-dedicates-life-sciences-building-there-is-no-conflict-between-science-and-religion ↩︎

  11. "Death," Bible Dictionary, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (2017 edition). ↩︎

  12. "Death before the Fall of Adam and Eve," FAIR. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Death_before_the_Fall_of_Adam_and_Eve ↩︎

  13. Jeffrey R. Holland, "Where Justice, Love, and Mercy Meet," general conference, April 2015. Holland specified that there was no human death before the Fall, a careful formulation that does not extend the claim to all biological life. ↩︎

  14. Talmage, "The Earth and Man" (1931). Talmage taught that plants and animals "lived and died, age after age, while the earth was yet unfit for human habitation" and that the seven periods of creation "do not include the period of our planet's creation and preparation as a dwelling place for man." ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  15. "Introduction," Bible Dictionary, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: "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." https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/introduction ↩︎

  16. "Organic Evolution," Church History Topics, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/organic-evolution. The essay states: "The scriptures tell why man was created, but they do not tell how." ↩︎ ↩︎

  17. Henry Eyring, The Faith of a Scientist (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1967). Eyring received the National Medal of Science in 1966 and authored over 600 scientific publications. He wrote extensively about reconciling his scientific work with his Latter-day Saint faith. ↩︎

  18. John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1943). Widtsoe held a PhD in chemistry from the University of Goettingen and served as an apostle from 1921 to 1952. He argued that apparent conflicts between science and religion arise from incomplete knowledge of one or both. ↩︎

  19. David O. McKay, letter to Professor William Lee Stokes, February 15, 1957. McKay wrote that the Church "has issued no official statement on the subject of the theory of evolution" and encouraged faculty to discuss geological evidence freely. See Evenson and Jeffery, Mormonism and Evolution, 71–73. ↩︎

  20. Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Science," pp. 110–111. Claims 2 and 3 in the science section address hominid species and Neanderthal DNA. ↩︎

  21. Richard E. Green et al., "A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome," Science 328, no. 5979 (May 7, 2010): 710–722. The study found that Neanderthals contributed approximately 1–4% of the genomes of non-African modern humans, confirming interbreeding between the two populations. ↩︎

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