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<\/a>First of all, I wish a Happy Thanksgiving to everybody<\/em>. \u00a0Even to those who live in places where today isn\u2019t actually Thanksgiving Day. \u00a0May you have an absolutely wonderful day!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n For various reasons, I haven\u2019t written a \u201cThanksgiving column\u201d every single year. \u00a0But I\u2019ve done several of them. \u00a0In at least one year (2019), I wrote two<\/em>. \u00a0I shared a few of them yesterday. \u00a0Here are a few more. \u00a0I hope that somebody out there might find something worthwhile in one of them:<\/p>\n -2016-<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s not insignficant that the verbs \u201cto think\u201d and \u201cto thank\u201d (compare German \u201cdenken\u201d and \u201cdanken\u201d) share the same linguistic root. \u00a0The scriptures are replete with exhortations to \u201cremember,\u201d to reflect, to thank:<\/p>\n \u201cO give thanks unto the Lord,\u201d says the psalmist (105:1-5), \u201ccall upon his name: make known his deeds among the people.\u00a0 Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works.\u00a0 Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord. . . .\u00a0 Remember his marvellous works that he hath done; his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n Even secular-minded people should pause occasionally to consider the blessings that we enjoy. \u00a0We live in a universe, for example, that\u2019s seemingly fine-tuned for our arrival, on a privileged planet where the conditions are primed for life.<\/p>\n But those conditions have existed throughout history.\u00a0 Today, though, most Americans live in unprecedented luxury of which even kings couldn\u2019t have dreamed a few generations ago.\u00a0 Royal castles were drafty and cold then, and lacked plumbing.\u00a0 For us, by contrast, if the weather is too hot, we turn the air conditioning on.\u00a0 If it\u2019s too cold, we have central heating.<\/p>\n We can, if we choose, enjoy an unimaginably rich cuisine\u2014American one day, Chinese the next.\u00a0 Mexican, Thai, Indian, Japanese, French, Italian.\u00a0 We eat a variety of fruits and vegetables, without regard to season.\u00a0 The diet of a Renaissance prince was poor and monotonous compared to the offerings of a typical American supermarket.<\/p>\n For most of us, hunger and starvation aren\u2019t the issue; our problem is actually having too much.\u00a0 (Of course, that\u2019s not true of everybody, and now our challenge is to share with those most in need and, ideally, to bring them and others up to a better standard of living.)\u00a0 If anything, the traditional Thanksgiving feast has lost a bit of its \u201cspecialness\u201d because many of us eat pretty well all the time.\u00a0 (One of my students tells me, though, that she\u2019s looking eagerly forward to what she calls \u201cnon-ramen Thursday.\u201d)<\/p>\n Our technology, our labor-saving devices, would astonish our ancestors.\u00a0 We travel at unimaginable speeds in unthinkable comfort; we\u2019re upset if our flight is delayed for thirty minutes, and irritated when we\u2019re handed pretzels rather than peanuts or obliged to sit in a middle seat.<\/p>\n We listen to the Berlin Philharmonic or to the latest rock or country tunes wherever and whenever we want.\u00a0 We communicate cheaply and instantaneously at great distances.\u00a0 The world\u2019s knowledge is available to us with a few clicks.\u00a0 We watch movies on demand, whenever we choose.\u00a0 In our own homes.\u00a0 Whereas earlier generations were obliged to work from sunrise to sunset in order to survive, we worry about whether we\u2019re getting enough exercise.<\/p>\n Many of the diseases that once carried us off can be cured with simple medicines; other ailments can be fixed with routine procedures.\u00a0 Death still takes us eventually but, on the whole, we live pretty well until it does.\u00a0 When our hearing falters, we have hearing aids.\u00a0 We keep our teeth, or else we replace them\u2014along with our hips and our knees.\u00a0 Have you ever thought to be grateful for your glasses or contact lenses?\u00a0 Perhaps you should.\u00a0 What would your life be like without them?<\/p>\n Latter-day Saints, though, have specific reasons to be thankful, reasons that go far beyond material comforts and technological marvels.<\/p>\n The restoration of the gospel in the early nineteenth century provides modern corroboration of the biblical stories.\u00a0 It testifies of Christ\u2019s atoning sacrifice and of his resurrection from the dead, gracious gifts from a loving Father and his selfless Son.\u00a0 Because Christ rose, we too will rise, and the ordinances of the gospel link generations together for all eternity.\u00a0 Life wins.\u00a0Love wins.\u00a0 The restored gospel tells us of the plan of salvation, a plan of happiness that suffuses our lives with rich and deep meaning.\u00a0 It teaches us of a Heavenly Father who wants us to inherit everything that he has.<\/p>\n \u201cO give thanks unto the Lord,\u201d sings the Psalmist, \u201cfor he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever\u201d (Psalm 107:1)<\/p>\n Moreover, the restored gospel teaches us that\u2014like God, who seeks to share everything he has with his children\u2014we should share our abundance with our brothers and sisters.\u00a0 At this season, as at all others.\u00a0 \u201cBe ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect\u201d (Matthew 5:48).<\/p>\n -2017-<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIf you wish to make an apple pie from scratch,\u201d the late American astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan once quipped, \u201cyou must first invent the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n As Americans enjoy their Thanksgiving dinners today, many of those dinners will include apple pie.\u00a0 But any other food would serve to make Sagan\u2019s important point.<\/p>\n Unless we ourselves grew the apples and grains and other ingredients vital to our apple pie, we can\u2019t really claim to have made it from scratch.\u00a0 After all, those components came to us via complex and varied trade networks, from widely scattered farms.<\/p>\n Moreover, the hardworking farmers who grew our apples and the grains for our piecrusts didn\u2019t create them out of nothing.\u00a0 They came from pre-existing seeds.<\/p>\n Lest this column rapidly grow far too complicated, though, we\u2019ll concentrate only on the apples:<\/p>\n Rev. William Blaxton planted the first apple orchard in North America in Boston, in 1625.\u00a0 But apples had already been grown in Asia and Europe for millennia.\u00a0 In fact, the apple tree, which originated in Central Asia, may have been the earliest tree ever cultivated.<\/p>\n Where do apple trees come from, ultimately?\u00a0 The origin of life on Earth as a whole remains a mystery; science doesn\u2019t know how or whence it arose.\u00a0 But apples are very far from simple or primitive organisms.\u00a0 The apple genome, its genetic material, may contain more genes than any other plant genome yet analyzed, and perhaps even more than the human genome does.\u00a0 But even a single gene is a remarkable thing.\u00a0 Unlike the machines that humans create, DNA\u2014the hereditary material in cells\u2014has the capacity to reproduce itself.\u00a0 Planting a Porsche or a hammer doesn\u2019t yield new craftsman\u2019s tools or sports cars.\u00a0 Apple trees, though, produce seeds that, in their turn, yield new apple trees.<\/p>\n This would all be irrelevant, of course, had chemical and biological processes not created soil in which to plant apple seeds.\u00a0 Moreover, according to some current science, that soil wouldn\u2019t have contained key ingredients for the chemistry of life\u2014elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur\u2014if\u00a0 they weren\u2019t regularly replenished by the constant movements of the tectonic plates that cover Earth\u2019s surface.\u00a0 (In other words, you may owe your apple pie to the same forces that cause earthquakes.)<\/p>\n There would be no soil, though, no tectonic plates and neither apples nor apple pie if there were no Earth. Where did it come from?\u00a0 Our solar system formed roughly 4.6 billion years ago and, shortly thereafter, the Earth began to coalesce.<\/p>\n Ultimately, of course, the genesis of apples is to be found in the Big Bang, which occurred (for reasons that may lie forever beyond the reach of science) about 13.7 billion years ago.<\/p>\n But the path from the Big Bang to the appearance of life (and apple pies) on Earth is paved with remarkable facts.\u00a0 Somehow, only a fraction of a second after that unimaginable explosion, nature\u2019s fundamental forces were established\u2014in ways that make life possible.\u00a0 If, for example, gravity differed even slightly\u2014making you weigh a billionth of a gram more or less than you do\u2014or if the universe\u2019s expansion rate were even slightly slower or faster, or if the overall density of the cosmos varied by as little as 0.0000000000001%\u2014roughly the same precision required for a blindfolded man to choose a single predesignated coin from a pile of pennies sufficient to pay off the national debt of the United States\u2014either a \u201cBig Crunch\u201d would shortly have followed the Big Bang or, alternatively, atoms would have scattered so widely that neither galaxies, stars, planets nor apples could have formed.<\/p>\n Sir Fred Hoyle (d. 2001), an illustrious astronomer and a vocal atheist, conducted path-breaking research into the indispensable role that stars played in the synthesis of all the chemical elements heavier than helium\u2014including carbon\u2014without which life (and apple pie) would be impossible.\u00a0 What he found shocked him deeply:<\/p>\n \u201cA commonsense interpretation of the facts,\u201d he commented, \u201csuggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.\u201d<\/p>\n Making apple pie absolutely from scratch is plainly more difficult than most of us have imagined.\u00a0Downright mysterious, in fact.\u00a0 Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.<\/p>\n -2019 A-<\/strong><\/p>\n As we in the United States approach the national Thanksgiving holiday for 2019, it\u2019s appropriate to consider things for which we should express our gratitude.\u00a0 Obviously, of course, there\u2019s the good food that many of us will be eating.\u00a0 There are the family members with whom many of us will be gathering to share it.\u00a0 However, there is much, much more.\u00a0Indeed, our reasons for gratitude are virtually infinite.\u00a0 Here, let me suggest one vital factor in our lives that we almost always take for granted:<\/p>\n The phrase \u201cthin blue line\u201d\u00a0is sometimes used to refer to the role of the police in society, who hold chaos at bay and thus permit order and civilization to flourish. \u00a0The term could perhaps be used even more appropriately to describe the function of our terrestrial atmosphere, which allows not only civilization and order but sheer physical survival.<\/p>\n Our atmosphere as it exists today derives (as our oceans also do) from the \u201cdegassing\u201d of the primitive semi-molten earth, supplemented by later additions belched up from volcanoes and emitted by hot springs. \u00a0The atmosphere of early geologic times was composed of such gases as hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and various forms of hydrogen chloride. \u00a0We couldn\u2019t have survived those conditions.\u00a0 However, the lighter gases (e.g., hydrogen and helium) escaped toward space. \u00a0Five hundred miles above the earth, our \u201catmosphere,\u201d if it can still be called that, is composed of 50% helium and 50% hydrogen.<\/p>\n Somewhat later in our planet\u2019s history, living organisms developed that were capable of photosynthesis.\u00a0 They provided the oxygen that then permitted animal respiration and eventually the colonization of land, as well as providing the famous ozone layer that shields Earth (and us) from the sun\u2019s ultraviolet radiation.<\/p>\n Evidence for this sequence of atmospheric development can be found, to some degree at least, in Precambrian rocks and a few fossils, which show a transition from a largely oxygen-free environment to what we might term a free-oxygen environment.<\/p>\n Our terrestrial atmosphere is an exceedingly thin envelope surrounding Earth. \u00a0Perhaps somewhat more than 99% of our planet\u2019s air exists within a region no higher than thirty kilometers (or approximately eighteen miles) above sea level. \u00a0Earth\u2019s radius \u2014 the distance from its center to its surface or circumference \u2014 is 6400 kilometers (somewhat less than 4000 miles), which means that the thickness of that oxygenated region of our atmosphere is a bit less than 0.5% of Earth\u2019s radius.<\/p>\n But oxygen isn\u2019t evenly distributed even within that thin envelope.\u00a0 Denser and, thus, heavier gases such as oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor hang low in the current atmosphere, mostly within about three miles of the planet\u2019s surface. \u00a0That thin band is equivalent to approximately 0.00075 of Earth\u2019s radius, well under one ten-thousandth.\u00a0 Its outer edge is not far above our heads.<\/p>\n These heavier gases, especially oxygen, are essential to life. \u00a0More than roughly three miles above sea level, we humans cannot usually function very well without supplemental oxygen.<\/p>\n Any resident of lower altitudes who has climbed in the Colorado Rockies or the Sierra Nevada of California, or visited the old Inca capital city of Cusco in Peru, knows the risks of nausea and lightheadedness that are encountered there. \u00a0And death awaits those who travel, unaided, very much higher.<\/p>\n Federal regulations\u00a0require the use of supplemental oxygen by pilots who fly more than 30 minutes at cabin pressure altitudes of 12,500 feet (roughly 3.8 kilometers, slightly more than two miles) or higher. And at cabin altitudes above 14,000 feet (somewhat more than 4.25 kilometers, about 2.5 miles), pilots must use oxygen at all times.<\/p>\n Altogether, the gases in the atmosphere serve to insulate the earth by filtering out most cosmic radiation and, as mentioned, blocking most of the sun\u2019s ultraviolet radiation. \u00a0Furthermore, they prevent large swings in temperature. \u00a0They also burn up untold millions of meteors before those objects are able to collide with our planet. \u00a0Again, in these ways, too, they are essential to life.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also fortunate that our atmosphere deflects or reflects much interstellar \u201cnoise\u201d back into space. \u00a0Without that, radio and television broadcasts would be effectively impossible, lost in an impenetrable wall of static. \u00a0On its \u201cunderside,\u201d though, our atmosphere partially reflects (rather than merely transmitting) radio waves, which makes television and communication by radio possible.<\/p>\n As the Thanksgiving holiday draws near, there is much for us to be thankful for\u2014including the very air that we breathe.<\/p>\n -2019 B-<\/strong><\/p>\n Two weeks ago (https:\/\/www.deseret.com\/2019\/11\/14\/20959872\/daniel-peterson-the-miracle-of-earths-atmosphere-design-and-the-air-we-breathe), I argued that we should be grateful for Earth\u2019s atmosphere and the air we breathe.\u00a0 Today, still in the Thanksgiving spirit, I suggest gratitude for the dirt beneath our feet.<\/p>\n The internal\u00a0structure of our planet is a series of\u00a0concentric spheres. \u00a0A solid metallic \u201cinner core\u201d is surrounded by a liquid \u201couter core.\u201d \u00a0The \u201couter core\u201d\u00a0is, in turn, contained within Earth\u2019s viscous \u201cmantle.\u201d \u00a0 And then, finally, we reach the solid \u201couter crust,\u201d pretty much the planet of our daily experience.<\/p>\n Like the skin of an apple, Earth\u2019s crust is very, very thin in comparison to the overall radius of our planet. \u00a0Whereas Earth\u2019s average radius is 6,378 kilometers (3,958.8\u00a0miles), the thickness of Earth\u2019s crust ranges from about 70 kilometers beneath continental mountains (43 miles) to less than 8 kilometers (5 miles) beneath the oceans, which means that the crust represents just 0.005 to 0.00125 of that radius.<\/p>\n Rather like the film that forms on a cooling cup of hot chocolate, Earth\u2019s crust \u201cfloats,\u201d as it were, on the solid but soft and viscous or \u201cplastic\u201d\u00a0mantle\u2014much hotter and much more dense\u2014located underneath.\u00a0 (This gives new meaning to the expression \u201csolid earth\u201d or \u201cterra firma<\/em>.\u201d)<\/p>\n Obviously, we live atop the terrestrial crust. \u00a0But even that crust is mostly inhospitable to life. \u00a0On its surface, of course, things are (by definition) at air temperature. \u00a0However, at the bottom of the world\u2019s deepest mine, 2.4 miles down in South Africa\u2019s TauTona, the ambient air temperature is 55 degrees Celsius (131 degrees Fahrenheit) and the temperature of rock surfaces is 60 \u00b0C (140 \u00b0F). \u00a0Without artificial air conditioning, that air temperature alone would soon kill the miners. \u00a0So the lowest humanly habitable depth on our planet is generously reckoned as about two miles down into the crust.<\/p>\n Deeper crustal temperatures reach approximately 870 \u00b0C, or about 1600 \u00b0F. \u00a0To put this in perspective, 350 \u00b0F will bake bread. \u00a0At 1600 \u00b0F, rocks begin to melt. \u00a0Immediately beneath the crust is the solid but plastic mantle, where temperatures reach as high as 4000 \u00b0C (or nearly 7,250 \u00b0F).<\/p>\n Moreover, as my previous column noted, humans cannot usually function very well without supplemental oxygen beyond roughly three\u00a0miles above sea level.\u00a0 Which means that we can only live in a thin region, roughly five miles thick, within the combined area of Earth\u2019s nearly 3960-mile radius and its surrounding 500 miles of atmosphere.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a stunningly narrow range. \u00a0Humans can survive in only 5\/4460 (or 0.00112108)\u2014slightly more than a tenth of one percent\u2014of the vertical portion of Earth\u2019s combined mass and ambient atmosphere.<\/p>\n The loose, upper, \u201cweathered\u201d layer of Earth\u2019s crust is called \u201csoil.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s tempting to dismiss soil as mere \u201cdirt.\u201d \u00a0If something or someplace is \u201cdirty,\u201d we want to clean it, to get rid of the dirt. \u00a0But life on Earth would be impossible without soil. \u00a0For example, it helps to filter and clean our water, plays a vital role in cycling nutrients (e.g., the carbon and nitrogen cycles), and releases important gases such as carbon dioxide into our atmosphere.\u00a0 Very obviously, most plants require soil in which to grow. \u00a0They anchor themselves into the ground with their roots and thereby extract nutrients from it\u2014and animal life (including human life) clearly depends upon such plants.<\/p>\n Soil is not only vital to life. \u00a0It teems with life, itself. \u00a0A teaspoon of good soil, for example, will commonly contain several hundred million bacteria. \u00a0Moreover,\u00a0a typical acre of good cropland will serve as the home to more than a million earthworms. \u00a0And, of course,\u00a0many animals, fungi, and bacteria rely on soil as a place in which to live.<\/p>\n However, the primary layer where plants and other organisms live is the topsoil, which is usually only 5-10 inches thick where it exists at all.\u00a0 The formation of just an inch of topsoil can require up to 1000 years. \u00a0Below the topsoil is the subsoil, which is made up primarily of clay, iron, and organic matter. \u00a0Below the subsoil is the so-called \u201cparent material,\u201d mostly large rocks that have not yet been completely broken down\u2014so called because the topsoil and subsoil develop from it. \u00a0And beneath the \u201cparent material\u201d is bedrock, a large mass of solid rock located several feet below the surface.<\/p>\n So human life depends upon 5-10 inches of dirt on the surface of a planet that\u2019s nearly 8000 miles in diameter.<\/p>\n Now, though, I shift the tone a bit:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>