It's seems increasingly popular for members to pick and choose their beliefs around Adam and Eve being parables/symbols or selected humans among other living humans. While I sit somewhere around these thoughts in my personal perspectives, the church statements on the matter seems to leave very little room for this perspective.
The latest official statement by church leaders, reprinted in 2002:
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” (Moses 1:34), and we are therefore in duty bound to regard him as the primal parent of our race...
There is nothing in this, however, to indicate that the original man, the first of our race, began life as anything less than a man, or less than the human germ or embryo that becomes a man...
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, basing its belief on divine revelation, ancient and modern, proclaims man to be the direct and lineal offspring of Deity.
http://www.lds.org/ensign/2002/02/the-o ... n?lang=eng
It states, in the face of deep contradictions from scientific perspectives, that the entire human race is descended from Adam and Eve. That they are the first parents of us and the "first of all" men and women.
To extend sources to manuals/official LDS resources:
Ponder for a moment your own relationship to Adam and Eve—your ever-so-great grandparents. Have the ensuing millennia made them seem unreal to you, like fictional characters in a novel? They are real and they are alive. Adam will return to earth prior to the Millennium to preside under Christ at the great council of Adam-ondi-Ahman (see Daniel 7; D&C 116), and he will lead the armies of the Almighty God to battle against the assembled hosts of Satan in the last great battle of the earth (see D&C 88:112–15).
The world would have you believe that Adam and Eve were primitive and superstitious, that they brought about the Fall through immorality, or even that they are imaginary, mythical persons. But as you read about them remember how the Lord views these two great souls. Think of what special qualities they must have possessed to have been chosen to lead the way.
https://www.lds.org/manual/old-testamen ... n?lang=eng
I find no support in any LDS source that Adam and Eve lived anything other than 6000 years ago. The idea that the entire human race started from two people, 6,000 years ago is frankly ludicrous. I don't believe it. Science doesn't support it. I'm happy to see them as symbolic moments in human history. They are more useful as symbolic principles representing every person's journey through the eternities. But not as the origin of the human species. I've been asked, "but what about the fall?" I fall every day. Besides, we've always
believed as LDS that "...men will be a punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression."
Saying all that about Adam and Eve, which has little wiggle room in our published doctrine, there is more room for personal perspective when it comes to the age of the rock we stand on and the process of bringing the earth into its natural cycles:
A third theory says that the word day refers to a period of an undetermined length of time, thus suggesting an era. The word is still used in that sense in such phrases as “in the day of the dinosaurs.” The Hebrew word for day used in the creation account can be translated as “day” in the literal sense, but it can also be used in the sense of an indeterminate length of time (see Genesis 40:4, where day is translated as “a season”; Judges 11:4, where a form of day is translated as “in the process of time”; see also Holladay, Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, pp. 130–31). Abraham says that the Gods called the creation periods days (see Abraham 4:5, 8).
If this last meaning was the sense in which Moses used the word day, then the apparent conflict between the scriptures and much of the evidence seen by science as supporting a very old age for the earth is easily resolved. Each era or day of creation could have lasted for millions or even hundreds of millions of our years, and uniformitarianism could be accepted without any problem. (For an excellent discussion of this approach see Henry Eyring, “The Gospel and the Age of the Earth,” [Improvement Era, July 1965, pp. 608–9, 626, 628]. Also, most college textbooks in the natural sciences discuss the traditional dating of the earth.)
While it is interesting to note these various theories, officially the Church has not taken a stand on the age of the earth. For reasons best known to Himself, the Lord has not yet seen fit to formally reveal the details of the Creation. Therefore, while Latter-day Saints are commanded to learn truth from many different fields of study (see D&C 88:77–79), an attempt to establish any theory as the official position of the Church is not justifiable.
https://www.lds.org/manual/old-testamen ... n?lang=eng
But that leaves one problem. Can you find an LDS source supporting the idea of death before the fall? I can only find it in the other direction:
Latter-day revelation teaches that there was no death on this earth before the Fall of Adam. Indeed, death entered the world as a direct result of the Fall (2 Ne. 2:22; Moses 6:48).
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bd/death
Before the Fall, there were no sin, no death, and no children.
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bd/fall-o ... e?lang=eng
“There was no death in the earth before the fall of Adam. …
“The gospel teaches us that if Adam and Eve had not partaken of that fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would have remained in the Garden of Eden in that same condition prevailing before the fall. … In regard to the pre-mortal condition of Adam and the entire earth, Lehi has stated the following:
“‘And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end’ [2 Nephi 2:22]” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 1:108–9).
https://www.lds.org/manual/doctrines-of ... d?lang=eng
This is still the predominant published position of the church.
I managed to find some obscure quotes from Elder James E Talmage.
Elder James E. Talmage said,
"...life and death have been in existence and operative in this earth for ages prior to [Adam]."
Talmage to Heber Timothy, 28 Jan. 1932, Talmage Papers; cited in Richard Sherlock, "A Turbulent Spectrum: Mormon Responses to the Darwinist Legacy," Journal of Mormon History 4:? (1975): 45–69.
The oldest, that is to say the earliest, rocks thus far identified in land masses reveal the fossilized remains of once living organisms, plant and animal. The coal strata, upon which the world of industry so largely depends, are essentially but highly compressed and chemically changed vegetable substance. The whole series of chalk deposits and many of our deep-sea limestones contain the skeletal remains of animals. These lived and died, age after age, while the earth was yet unfit for human habitation.
Address Delivered in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Utah Sunday, 9 August 1931
http://en.fairmormon.org/Evolution:Prim ... th_and_Man
With the approval of the First Presidency, this address was given in the Tabernacle and later published in the Deseret News, as a Church pamphlet, and in The Instructor. I've managed to dig and have found the talk quoted in the Ensign/on LDS.org
Latter-day Saints share Elder James E. Talmage’s conviction that “within the gospel of Jesus Christ there is room and place for every truth thus far learned by man, or yet to be made known."
Foremost, the scriptures testify of Jesus Christ and how we may receive the blessings of salvation and exaltation through his atonement. They reveal why (not necessarily how) the earth was created, and what laws and principles a person must follow to obtain eternal life. The goal of science, on the other hand, is to learn how (not why) the world was made and to understand the laws and principles governing the physical world.
The different roles science and religion play is illustrated in a study of the dinosaurs. From the fossil record we learn that the dinosaurs were the dominant animals on earth between 225 and 67 million years ago. Some were carnivorous, others herbivorous. Some were small, while others were gigantic, weighing up to eighty tons and growing to lengths of more than ninety feet.
The existence of these animals is indisputable, for their remains have been found in rocks all over the earth. What eternal purpose they played in the creation and early history of the earth is unknown. The scriptures do not address the question, and it is not the realm of science to explore the issue of why they were here. We can only conclude, as Elder Talmage did, that “the whole series of chalk deposits and many of our deep-sea limestones contain the skeletal remains of animals. These lived and died, age after age, while the earth was yet unfit for human habitation.” (“The Earth and Man.”)
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1987/09/i-ha ... n?lang=eng
The talk was briefly referenced in a January 1998 article:
http://www.lds.org/ensign/print/1998/01 ... &clang=eng
Unfortunately (some might say), Joseph Fielding Smith, followed by his son in law Bruce R. McConkie disagreed with Elder Talmage and ensured that from the 1960s onwards the "no death before the fall" message became embedded in LDS consciousness.
In the end this whole thing reminds me that I have to continually lower my expectations of what doctrines a prophet can proclaim with certainty or authority. I think the only thing we should expect them to teach are the "doctrine of Christ." All of other LDS "doctrines" (and I mean all of them) seem like transient opinions based on the environment the leader has been raised in.
The Prophet Joseph Smith confirmed the Savior’s central role in our doctrine in one definitive sentence: “The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it.”
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2 ... t?lang=eng
The spirit might still teach me to live and apply the other teachings or "doctrines." But that doesn't make them God's universal reality for the whole world. Just a man-made toolkit to be applied to my life and a small minority of fellow saints. Not doctrines, simply personalised principles applicable to my circumstances.
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