Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article by James E. Talmage originally appeared in Science & Mormonism Series 1: Cosmos, Earth, and Man (2016).
Abstract: Elder James E. Talmage, the late apostle and geologist, asserts the reality of death before the Fall. He describes how vegetation and animals “lived and died, age after age, while the earth was yet unfit for human habitation.” He affirms the reality of Adam and Eve as historic personages, while asserting that “there must have been races of human sort upon earth long before” our “first parents” lived. While mindful that evolution was, in 1930, “but a theory, an unproved hypothesis” still in need of additional empirical support, he reminds the reader that the Gospel “is up-to-date and ever shall be.”
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About the Interpreter Foundation Book Chapter Reprint Series
The purpose of this reprint series is to make individual chapters from books published by The Interpreter Foundation more accessible to readers. Chapters from large format books will be made available as pdf files, while chapters from smaller format books will appear within the Interpreter journal, making this content available in a form suitable for many popular digital readers.
Although in some instances the formatting and pagination may have been changed, the content of this chapter, like others in this reprint series, is identical to what appeared in its original book publication. It has not been updated to incorporate research that has appeared subsequently nor to reflect the current practice of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to use the full name of the Church and to avoid terms such as “Mormon” and “LDS.”
I don’t believe that Science can come to understand the foundation or beginning of the earth. Our knowledge here is so limited by the results of the fall which affected the mind. If God does not want us to know things until He is ready to reveal them we are rather limited to what we can discover with our form of science. It is very interesting to study what science has found but I don’t think we should take any of it as truth unless it agrees with the doctrines revealed to us. Tomorrow or next week it may change to something different. We need to balance what we know to be true with what we discover.
Someday we will know it all.
Elder Talmage, from General Conference, October 1916, 75:
“When I see how often the theories and conceptions of men have gone astray, have fallen short of the truth, yea, have even contradicted the truth directly, I am thankful in my heart that we have an iron rod to which we can cling—the rod of certainty, the rod of revealed truth. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints welcomes all truth, but it distinguishes most carefully between fact and fancy, between truth; and theory, between premises and deductions; and it is willing to leave some questions in abeyance until the Lord in his wisdom shall see fit to speak more plainly. As the result of the combined labors of wise men I learn that man is but the developed offspring of the beast; and yet I read that God created man in his own image, after his likeness; and again, I stand on the word of God, though it be in contradiction to the theories of men.”
https://archive.org/stream/conferencereport1916sa#page/n5/mode/2up