"A friend once expressed the opinion that God works in geological time. Another way of saying small moves, I think. Most often, I think that's all I can handle."
- A comment on this post at Real Live Preacher
That is an interesting reformulation of the concept of uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism basically states that every day geologic processes acting over a large period of time can produce the vast array of geologic features on the earth. We don't need to call on extreme events to explain to origin of mountains and deep canyons. We just need to understand the every day events and how they act to change the world over time. This is usually summed up in the idea that the present is the key to the past.
Following this principle, we can understand that the Grand Canyon was formed over millions of years of erosion by the Colorado River and its tributaries.
In many ways, evolution acts in the same way, where small selective pressures act over billions of years to produce the diversity of life.
I like applying the concept to our lives. For most of us, we live our lives without catastrophic events. Who we become is the result of the little, every day things acting over our lifetime. When we are lost, we didn't get there suddenly, we made many small missteps and one day found ourselves lost. Similarly, getting back to where we should be, doesn't happen at once. We need to make small steps in the right direction and let them build over time.
7:40:41 PM 
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