SteveP's answer to current teachings about the origin of man: Pretend they don't exist

This post is my response to Steve's BCC article (found here).

One of the most science friendly apostles of this dispensation explained the origin of man this way: "Man is the child of God.... He is born in the lineage of Deity, not in the posterity of the brute creation." (James E. Talmage, "The Earth and Man.")

Yes, Talmage died in 1933, but no apostle before or since has contradicted him regarding man's lineage. And, in fact, his view is strongly corroborated by today's living apostles and prophets.

THE NOBLEST WORK OF THE GREAT DESIGNER

Thomas S. Monson asks, "Who can doubt that there is a designer?" He answers using both thoughtful consideration and the revealed word of God: "If there is a design in this world in which we live, there must be a Designer." President Monson reminded that "the Grand Designer created the heaven and the earth." For example, there was light because the Grand Designer said "Let there be light." The sun, moon, and stars "came by His design."

"Man alone," he said, "received intelligence, a brain, a mind, and a soul. Man alone with these attributes had the capacity for faith and hope, for inspiration and ambition." He testified that "Man [is] the noblest work of the Great Designer." (Ensign, May 2010.)

THE CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT

D. Todd Christofferson:  “Those who believe that our bodies are nothing more than the result of evolutionary chance will feel no accountability to God or anyone else for what they do with or to their body. We who have a witness of the broader reality of premortal, mortal, and postmortal eternity, however, must acknowledge that we have a duty to God with respect to this crowning achievement of His physical creation. In Paul's words:

“ ' What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

" ' For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s'  (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).”  (Ensign, Nov. 2010.)

NO ANCESTRAL BLOOD LINES TO BEASTS

Boyd K. Packer:  “An understanding of the sealing authority with its binding of the generations into eternal families cannot admit to ancestral blood lines to beasts.” (“The Law and the Light.”)

"No lesson is more manifest in nature than that all living things do as the Lord commanded in the Creation. They reproduce “after their own kind.” (See Moses 2:12, 24.) They follow the pattern of their parentage. Everyone knows that; every four-year-old knows that! A bird will not become an animal nor a fish. A mammal will not beget reptiles, nor “do men gather … figs of thistles.” (Matt. 7:16.)

In the countless billions of opportunities in the reproduction of living things, one kind does not beget another. If a species ever does cross, the offspring cannot reproduce. The pattern for all life is the pattern of the parentage. (Ensign, Nov. 1984.)

WE SHOULD OVERCOME SUCH FOOLISHNESS

Russell M. Nelson:  “Through the ages, some without scriptural understanding have tried to explain our existence by pretentious words such as ex nihilo (out of nothing). Others have deduced that, because of certain similarities between different forms of life, there has been a natural selection of the species, or organic evolution from one form to another. Many of these people have concluded that the universe began as a 'big bang' that eventually resulted in the creation of our planet and life upon it.

“To me, such theories are unbelievable! Could an explosion in a printing shop produce a dictionary? It is unthinkable! Even if it could be argued to be within a remote realm of possibility, such a dictionary could certainly not heal its own torn pages or renew its own worn corners or reproduce its own subsequent editions!

"We are children of God, created by him and formed in his image. Recently I studied the scriptures to find how many times they testify of the divine creation of man. Looking up references that referred to create, form (or their derivatives), with either man, men, male, or female in the same verse, I found that there are at least fifty-five verses of scripture that attest to our divine creation....

“I believe all of those scriptures that pertain to the creation of man. But the decision to believe is a spiritual one, not made solely by an understanding of things physical, for we read that 'the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.' (1 Cor. 2:14.)

“It is incumbent upon each informed and spiritually attuned person to help overcome such foolishness of men who would deny divine creation or think that man simply evolved. By the Spirit, we perceive the truer and more believable wisdom of God.

“With great conviction, I add my testimony to that of my fellow Apostle Paul, who said, ‘Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

“ ‘ If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.’ (1 Cor. 3:16, 17.)” (Ensign, Jan. 1988.)

THE CHURCH'S CURRENT OFFICIAL POSITION

"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 declared that Adam was  ' the first man of all men.' "  ("The Origin of Man,"  Ensign, Feb. 2002;.)

The introduction to this formal First Presidency statement emphasizes that it is the Church's current "doctrinal position on these matters."