Evolution

Evolution is the change of living populations across generations, and Restoration scripture, which describes Gods who organized matter and watched it until it obeyed, leaves room to read it as one of the means of creation. Mormon transhumanists add that humanity's power to direct its own development continues that work and must follow the same patient pattern.

Evolution comes from the Latin evolvere, "to unroll," first used of unrolling a scroll and later of anything that unfolds by stages. In biology it names descent with modification, the process by which populations change across generations as inherited variations are preserved or lost. Charles Darwin ended On the Origin of Species (1859) with the word "evolved" and adopted "evolution" only in later editions. A quick reading, common to many believers and many skeptics, sets evolution and creation against each other and requires a choice between Genesis and the fossil record. Latter-day Saint leaders have affirmed that God is the creator and that Adam was the first parent of the human family, while declining to rule on the mechanisms biology studies. Restoration scripture itself describes a creation that unfolds.

Let the Earth Bring Forth

The creation accounts give the earth an active part in producing life, and the Book of Abraham adds time and response.

Genesis has God say, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind" (Genesis 1:24). It has long been recognized that this command gives the earth a share in creation, and early Christian interpreters read it as God placing in matter principles that would unfold over time, as a tree lies hidden in its seed. Less often noticed is how far the Book of Abraham develops the idea. There "the Gods organized the earth to bring forth grass from its own seed" (Abraham 4:12), and then "the Gods watched those things which they had ordered until they obeyed" (Abraham 4:18). The Book of Moses adds that every tree grew out of the ground "naturally" (Moses 3:9). In these texts creation takes time, matter responds to direction, and the Gods wait for it. Many Latter-day Saint scientists have found in that picture a creation compatible with deep time and common descent.

Organized Matter and an Open Question

Restoration doctrine removes several grounds for conflict with evolution while leaving one question open.

Latter-day Saints believe that God organized the world from eternal matter and that intelligence itself progresses, so a long process of development fits the theology as a whole. The open question concerns death. Enoch teaches, "Because that Adam fell, we are; and by his fall came death" (Moses 6:48). Some readers take this to rule out any death before the Fall, while others apply it to human death or to Adam's line. In 1931 Church leaders debated exactly this point, and the First Presidency declined to settle it, advising that biology and geology be left to scientific research. In this connection, Paul supplies an order that suits an evolving creation: "that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual" (1 Corinthians 15:46).

Directed Evolution and Its Shadow

Mormon transhumanists see humanity's new power over its own biology as a continuation of creation, and they judge it by the pattern the Gods followed.

The word transhumanism was popularized in 1957 by an evolutionary biologist who proposed that the human species could, if it wished, transcend itself. With gene editing, embryo screening, and synthetic biology, that proposal has become practical. Mormon transhumanists read Paul's order, natural first and spiritual afterward, as describing a development that continues through human participation, since those who would become like God must also learn to organize matter and life. The same history shows the danger. The biologist who popularized the term also championed eugenics, and in the twentieth century tens of thousands of Americans were sterilized under eugenics laws upheld by the Supreme Court. In 2018 a researcher in China announced the birth of twin girls whose genes he had edited as embryos, without adequate review or informed consent, and a court later sentenced him to prison.

The Book of Abraham describes a different way of directing life. The Gods organize, give each kind its own seed, and then watch "until they obeyed," waiting for creation to respond. The test for any technology that directs human or animal evolution is whether it follows that pattern, organizing with patience and the consent of those who will bear the change, or imposes a design on bodies and populations that cannot refuse it.