This is a video of Ron Hellings’ presentation on “Joseph Smith and Modern Cosmology” at the Science & Mormonism: Cosmos, Earth & Man symposium which took place on November 9, 2013.
This is also available as an audio podcast, and will be included in the podcast feed. You can listen by pressing the play button or download the podcast below:
Podcast: Download (Duration: 28:41 — 9.9MB)
Personally I like quotes like the following regarding Joseph Smith and Cosmology.
I also gave some instructions in the mysteries of the kingdom of God; such as the history of the planets, Abraham’s writings upon the planetary systems, etc. – Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 118
“… then will appear one grand sign of the Son of Man in heaven. But what will the wold do? They will say it is a planet, a comet, etc” History of the Church Vol 5
“When these stars return to the place where they were take from, it will cause the earth to reel to and fro. Not that the planets will come squarely against each other, in such case both planets would be broken to pieces. But in there rolling motion they will come together where they were taken from wich will cause the earth to reel to and from.” Homer M Brown quoting Joseph Smith
“And relative to the great highway which should be cast up when the planets returns to it’s place in the great northen waters, it will form a highway and waters will recede and roll back.” Homer M Brown quoting Joseph Smith
“Now Scientist will tell you that it is not scientific, that two planets coming together would be disastrous to both. But, when two planets or other objects are traveling in the same direction and one of them with a little greater velocity than the other, it would not be disastrous because the one traveling faster would over take the other.” Homer M Brown quoting Joseph Smith
“Immanuel Velikovsky, for example, wrote three books amassing evidence that worldwide catastrophic upheavals have occurred in recent history, and he argued against uniformitarianism, the idea that the 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. Two Latter-day Saint scientists, Melvin A. Cook and M. Garfield Cook, have also advocated this theory in their book Science and Mormonism. A short summary of the Cooks’ approach can be found in Paul Cracroft’s article “How Old Is the Earth?” (Improvement Era, Oct. 1964, pp. 827–30, 852).” https://www.lds.org/manual/old-testament-student-manual-genesis-2-samuel/genesis-1-2-the-creation?lang=eng
Existence preceded anything like a presumed “big bang” since energy, matter, and intelligence are eternal. A good presentation to this effect.