A little yuletide profundity for ya.

The snow is falling outside. The ground and windshields are draped by a frozen concoction with the enticing consistency of cranberry ice. A custom family-sized stuffed pizza from Papa Murphy's is baking in the oven, filling the apartment with the cozy potpourri of aromas you only get from a Christmasy blend of Canadian bacon, pineapple, sausage, olives, chicken, green peppers, tomatoes, chives, traditional pizza sauce, and made-fresh today bread. A documentary on the geologic history of Yosemite Valley plays quietly on the tv. Soon I'll be feasting, enjoying a holiday film feature. This is the life.

Anyway, I figured since it's bound to come up a bunch in coming years, I may as well state my official, but still amendable, views on the origins of the planet. I'd hate for anyone to think I was apostate. I'm not. Really.

First off, the gospel is, was, and ever shall be true. Nothing ever offered man has proven more reliable, logical, genuine or beneficial than the good news of our Lord. I recognize that, and will stand by Him in anything He teaches. That said, it seems to not be His purpose to teach just exactly what went down before we came up. Every thinking Christian recognizes the potential for a multiplicity of interpretations of each passage of scripture, which can only be solved by revelation. When revelation is lacked, there is mighty room for speculation, friends, mighty room. My thoughts and early conclusions are as follows:

-- We don't know. My youthful philosophy on radiometric dating was, simply put, "You weren't there a billion years ago, how do you know this answer is right?" No scientist, no theologian was ever around for anything concerned with the formation of the planet. Either it was all done in some way we haven't fathomed and time began 6000 years ago so we all missed it, or it took 4.6 billion years as science speculates, which leaves us with about 500 years' decently recorded history, or about 1/9,200,000 of Earth's history that we can reliably describe. And in that time, relatively nothing has happened.

--God did it. Whether He organized everything just right in that little speck of infinity, then hit the 'Go' button and has looked on in satisfaction ever since the Big Bang, or whether He globbed the matter together in His labratory, dug the canyons with His mighty index finger and pinched up the mountain ranges between His unconquerable thumbs, then set Adam down and hit that 'Go' button, it was Him that set everything in motion in His own knowing way.

--Rocks are cool.

-- There are those who point to what is reputed around here to be the only talk ever given in conference on the matter, by Elder Talmage, approved by the 1st Presidency, in which he preached deep time, and stated that death had been going on for billions of years before Adam. There are also those who point to such statements as that I read in the Old Testament manual on Sunday after everybody'd moved on, in which Elder (maybe President by then) F. Smith said something to the effect of, "It is impossible for any man to believe in this theory of the earth, and to believe in the Plan of Salvation. Any man who says he believes both is a liar and a fool, because it's impossible." Other authorities have stated their feelings towards either side of the issue. I reckon this to be similar to the Christian divide between salvation through works, and that through grace. Every reasonable discourse I've heard on either side of that issue has said pretty much the same thing, they just don't realize that they already agree, because neither understands their 'opponent's' meaning. I may well be completely wrong, but it seems likely to be the case if inspired men are, with such conviction, at odds with each other.

--A lot about evolution and the big bang and all that stuff does make more sense than you'd think. That may only be because scientists can say whatever they want to make stuff make sense, and I've no desire to become a biologist, nor intention of becoming an astrophysicist, so I'll leave that to them. Did we come from monkeys from fish from plankton from chemicals from stars from light from an infinite speck of infiniteness, to become humanity with the crowning addition of spirits to the prepared tabernacles? Or were we molded and planted here in no time at all? I dunno. They both seem logical and justifiable to me. Tell that to the next democrat who calls me closed-minded, will you?

-- Geology works. The more I learn about science, the more laughable it seems to me. If ever there was a misnomer, it was science. We don't hardly 'sci' anything. We can't see small enough to understand chemistry, nor grand enough to understand the universe. So people guess until they come up with something that works, and if nobody can disprove it, the guess is built on as the foundation of truth until further notice. They are good guesses, though, because they work. Without science, we'd still be in caves. No comfort so common to us would be available without science. We can make plastic, build and fuel cars, grow food, do all sorts of amazing things, largely because of chemistry, and we know where to find the materials to create these things because of geology. It's entirely possible that when the Creator was poking and prodding this ball of clay to perfection, He built it so as to lead us to these conclusions about dinosaurs and prehistoric swamps and plate tectonics so that we would know how to access the treasures He'd planted inside the planet. That is to say, the Earth would be young, but it would be His purpose for us to treat it as though it was old. Or it could be that old. Or we could just be really lucky. Whatever the case, the model they've come up with works, so one can make the world a better place by studying it, using it, teaching it and advancing it.

--Brother Brigham says Satan can make pancakes. Maybe he can make fossils too? Or maybe the "more refined" matter of spirit creations can leave imprints to become fossils? It's a stretch. We're just brainstorming here.

--The order of creations in the scriptures matches reasonably well with the order of such things according to science. If you accept ancient algae as a plant (it was photosynthetic and green?) and suppose that science is allowed one mistake in putting stars before planets, when the scriptures say it was planet then light, it fits okay! Fascinating, I thought.

--I really don't know everything about geology, and geologists really don't know everything either. Heck, the entire modern state of the science is based on plate tectonics, and we've only been working with that since the 1960s. That's not a very long time to decode a planet.

--Miracles happen, and if the brother of Jared or the brother of the brother of Thomas S. Monson (see, his brother's brother, it's him, right? see what I did there?) says unto yon Rocky Mountain range, "Be thou cast into the sea!" it shall be done. And then geologists the world over will throw up their hands and take to liquor.

--God thinks very quickly, and could almost certainly keep up if he sped up the process a hundred billion times until we got here. It may well have happened in what we would call an instant, rather than billions of years or six days. And yes, that 'almost certainly' was a joke. I'm sure He could.

--It apparently doesn't matter, because it hasn't been revealed. So I'm just gonna play along, and then find out when I go over the Jordan. In the meantime, should I be describing whatever aspect of creation and say something about, "See, 350,000,000 years ago, blah blah blah..." I'm just speaking as a geologist speaks to the best of our human understanding. I realize it could be entirely wrong.

And I guess that's that. I had a couple other thoughts, I think, but it's hard to keep track of them all at once, ya know? I'll surely add and subtract from this as time goes by without telling anybody unless it comes up. I know nobody here thinks I'm apostate, I'm mainly just getting my thoughts out there and gearing up for a lifetime of dirty looks from ward members who think I'm possessed of a devil, along with the jeers of my atheist coworkers. Whoo-hoo.

I have now updated my blog for the first time since school started. What a refreshing feeling! Oh, and I wanted to share this video 'cause it's super amazing. And that's that. Charlie Brown Christmas på svenska, the time is yours.