A Sunday citation

Last week I posted a quote about evolution and creationism. At the end it mentioned that it was sad that people aren't educated about the other scientifically viable theories for the beginning of the earth. I was only taught one, and as far as I knew, there was only one. But there are more. Here is a theory I found in the Old Testament institute manual that I find fascinating:

"A second theory argues that Abraham was told through the Urim and Thummim that one revolution of Kolob, the star nearest the throne of God, took one thousand earth years (see Abraham 3:2-4). In other words, on could say that one day of the Lord's time equals one thousand earth years. Other scriptures support this theory, too (see Psalms 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8). If the word day in Genesis was used in this sense, then the earth would be approximately thirteen thousand years old (seven days of a thousand years each for the Creation plus the nearly six thousand years since Adam's fall). Some see Doctrine and Covenants 77:12 as additional scriptural support for this theory.

"Although the majority of geologists, astronomers and other scientists believe that even this long period is not adequate to explain the physical evidence found in the earth, there are a small number of reputable scholars who disagree. These claim that the geological clocks are misinterpreted and that tremendous catastrophes in the earth's history sped up the processes that normally may take thousands of years. They cite evidence supporting the idea that thirteen thousand years is not and unrealistic time period. Immanuel Velikousky, for example, wrote three books amassing evidence that worldwide catastrophic upheavals in recent history, and he argued against uniformitarianism, the idea that natural processes in evidence now have always prevailed at the same approximate rate of uniformity. These books are Worlds in Collision, Ages in Chaos, and Earth in Upheaval."