If you find a surfboard on the beach, you assume that a surfer has passed this way, not that the sands of the sea produced it over a millennial of time.
I have no problem believing in some forms of evolution, but I believe that God works within the laws of science. Mormonism does not abandon all current scientific research. Animals evolve in many ways; people are taller than previous generations; genes mutate. But it would be quite an exercise of faith to believe that out of chaos a surfboard appears. No matter how long the wave crash on the sands, no matter how many billions of years — you aren’t going to get that surfboard. Thinking like that requires more faith than science.
Energy and matter are linked and Joseph Smith talked about the eternal nature of matter in 1844. The Pearl of Great Price explains that time is relative — how the planets spin at different rates. Later, in 1905, Albert Einstein gave us E=mc2 and the Twin Paradox.
Mormons believe in a God that organized pre-existing matter. He does not create matter. Matter is neither created, nor destroyed. “There is no such thing as immaterial matter.” (D&C 131:7) Joseph taught that matter and intelligence (the thinking part of you) are eternal, meaning not created. God did not create matter, or your intelligence. Those have always existed.
Matter in it’s natural form is chaotic. Someone must organize it. Joseph Smith claimed that God did not make the earth
“out of nothing; for it is contrary to a rashanall mind & reason that a something could be brought from a nothing…..this earth was organized or formed out of other planets which were broke up and remodelled and made into the one on which we live.” (“Rough Stone Rolling”; Bushman, p. 421; from “Words of Joseph”, journal entries of first-hand witnesses)
This idea is different than many religions, but it makes sense to me. Mormons believe in creation out of something.
The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter in the universe is constant. It just changes from one form to another. For example, if you burn a piece of wood, the matter does not disappear. It becomes other things — smoke, water vapor, ashes. It just changes but is not destroyed. Mormons do not believe in creation ex nihilo — creation out of nothing. Early Christians and Jews did not believe this either.
The second law of thermodynamics has to do with energy always running downhill if left on its own. This is called entropy. A car that runs out of gas will not run again until you do something — hike to the gas station, put gasoline in a red can, bring it back to the car, and put it into the tank. Entropy is disorder. Without someone intervening, energy and matter become disorganized. According to the law of entropy — we should not exist — but we do. Someone has organized this.
That someone is God. And those that helped him. We all love to create. And we all know how quickly things decay, disintegrate, and fall apart.
