Okay, I really have no problem with the answer from Hamilton (and Pilgrim). I just had a personal opinion I wanted to share.
In Hamilton's penultimate paragraph, he says:
Now, I don't know Hebrew, but the footnote for the word "create" as used in the OT (specifically Genesis 1:1) means shaped, fashioned, or organized. Those of us who have been through an endowment session know that the language there is more along these lines. The world was organized or formed, not necessarily created out of nothing.I do believe dinosaurs roamed the earth millions of years ago because that's what all the evidence and peer-reviewed scientific literature indicates. I can't imagine our Heavenly Father creating the world in 6 days, while at the same time taking great care to make the world confusing for future scientists. Can you see him planting dinosaur bones, making the rocks look 4.5 billion years old, and creating all living things so that they appear to have come from evolution? I think those things actually happened.
It is my own personal belief that our world as we now know it could very well be under 10,000 years old, but the materials of which it was organized or formed (rocks, fossils, even ancestors of animals and humans, etc) existed as part of other worlds. Meaning, I'm not sure that dinosaurs actually walked this earth, but they may have walked on the rocks from which this earth was made. I also remember reading something just yesterday (was it on the board or that article that Hamilton linked to about Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, Jr?) that said there may very well have been humans on the earth before Adam and Eve, but that Adam was the first one into which Heavenly Father put one of His spirit children, thus making him the first Man.
I would elaborate on this, but I'm having trouble articulating my thoughts.
Is this even possible? I haven't studied evolution, nor do I even know much about science (I'm more of an artsy person...), but I just thought I'd get my theory out there and start some discussion. This stuff fascinates me.