Robert Kirby is on vacation. This is a reprint of an earlier column.

Sixty-eight million years ago, a female Tyrannosaurus rex fell over dead in Montana. She was probably pregnant. Evidence found in her fossilized bones suggests she was ready to lay eggs. She was almost certainly oblivious to the fact that her fossilized remains would one day contribute to a raging debate among a more evolved -- although not necessarily smarter -- species.

Today, scientists studying the T-rex fossils claim to have found evidence that solidifies the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds, strengthening the belief that birds were once big enough to use billboards as cuttlebones.

Ultra-serious creationists don't like this one bit and have accused scientists of everything from laboratory dimwittedness to being in deliberate league with Satan.

Personally, I believe in evolution. I don't completely understand it, but I prefer this view of how I physically came to be to the Adam and Eve version.

This is not to say Adam and Eve never existed, only that I don't buy the literally interpreted notion that one popped into existence and the other was a biological knockoff.

Believing in evolution does not eliminate God from my life. God working through evolution simply offers me a better explanation for what I see today than does the notion of a literal six-day creation of the Earth some 10,000 years ago.

Does it bother me that my belief runs contrary to the literal six-day creation described in the Bible? Not a bit. Save your e-mail.

I could be wrong about evolution. There is still a lot we don't know about … well, everything. So, I try to keep an open mind. I can't vouch for T-rexes, but truth is slippery stuff to humans. As Francis Bacon said, that which we wish to be true, we preferentially believe.

My preferential view has been assailed many times by people who see evolution as nothing more than blasphemy.

Over the years, family members, seminary teachers and missionary companions have offered alternative explanations of evolution's evidence. Among the more memorable:

» God allowed Satan to spread fossils around the world as a way of determining who was faithful enough to stick to biblical policy.

» God is a recycler and fossils are actually just leftover bits and pieces of former worlds combined to make this one.

» God intentionally tampers with carbon dating so as to provide false information regarding caveman bones, again in order to see who is faithful. Cain was a caveman.

» Being God requires a lot of on-the-job training. Dinosaurs and early man were just practice runs that God made before coming up with the finished product.

OK, you don't have to accept evolution as factual explanation for the fossil record. But please -- please -- come up with better explanations than the sort of stuff that makes it almost embarrassing to be called a believer.

Which came first, the T-rex or the egg? Beats me. Right now, all I know is that simply being here is more urgent business than how I got here.

If I get this tiny sliver of my own evolution right, later, when I'm a fossil myself, there will be plenty of time for arguing over whether God stuck to some plan.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com