“I was somewhat sorrowed recently to hear someone, a sister who comes from a church family, ask, ‘What about the pre-Adamic people?’ Here was someone who I thought was fully grounded in the faith.

I asked. ‘What about the pre-Adamic people?’

She replied, ‘Well, aren’t there evidences that people preceded the Adamic period of the earth?’

I said, ‘Have you forgotten the scripture that says, ‘And I, the Lord God, formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul, the first flesh upon the earth, the first man also. …’’ (Moses 3:7.) I asked, ‘Do you believe that?’

“She wondered about the creation because she had read the theories of the scientists, and the question that she was really asking was: How do you reconcile science with religion? The answer must be, If science is not true, you cannot reconcile truth with error.”

Harold B. Lee, Ensign Magazine “First Presidency Message” (Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, December 1972).