Dinosaurs?

by Paralipomenon 17 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Paralipomenon

  I was very curious about dinosaurs as a child. What was Jehovah's purpose for them?
  
  My mother used to say that they were used to prepare the earth for living, you know, like mulch and stuff. She was insistent that they were not carnivorous and that the large teeth were for eating large plants.
  
  It wasn't until my late teens that I showed her an article about the discovery of fossilized dino dropping with crushed bones in them. She quickly said: "Oh, it must have ate a small creature by mistake" I gave her a look that said "get real" and she corrected herself to "oh that's interesting" and carried on.
  
  I never did get a straight answer as to what JW's think of the dinosaurs, anyone else know the "official" stance?
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  lfcviking

  I remember having this conversation with JW's loads of times and they are simply not sure what the purpose of Dinosaurs was as the Bible says very little about them. I think theres only 1 reference to large animals of this kind and thats somewhere in the book of Genesis where it makes a reference to 'Great Sea Monsters'-possibly Dinosaurs.
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  Mystla

  I've always wanted to know why they had dinos on the inside of the cover of the Green NWT? Anybody else remember that? I used to look at those for hours as a kid.. maybe that's what it was for, keeping us poor bored kids occupied during neverending talks.

  So.. anybody know why they had pictures of dinosaurs in the Bible?

  Misty
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  ex-nj-jw

  I was told that it was to make the earth's crust more stable and once my mom told me that they were destroyed prior to Adam being created.

  Sounds like more JW BS as usual
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  Kudra

  Laaaaame.
  
  I always heard that they were there to provide fossil fuel for us humans.
  
  Dinos comprise hardly ANY portion of the fossil fuel we have. It's plant matter.
  
  Like god would have made a bunch of species to die just so we could have fossil fuel. Get real. Dubs believe the dumbest stuff.
  
  -K
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  Woodsman

  There was an Awake that suggested they were here to stamp down the earth. I remember telling witnesses that was embarassing and that was when I was an auxilary pioneer. I guess I was destined to leave.

  I have some fossilized dinosaur dung, ( coprolite ), and one dinosaur footprint cut out of the rock from Ct. I also have several fossilized teeth. I have always wanted a raptor claw but they are too expensive.
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  New Worldly Translation

  Yeah I remember those dino's being in the old green bible, haha. They also had dino's in the orange paradise book getting killed in Noah's flood.

  I never understood the explanation of the dinosaurs being used to eat and tread down overgrown vegetation for man coming on the scene. For a start why would god let his garden get so overgrown and further why invent dozens of new species to mulch it and then kill em off. Also in a year or so the veg would have grown back anyway, never mind the 65 million year gap that actually took place.

  This is from the WT Library CD - Awake 1990

  The

  DatingofDinosaurs

  Dinosaur bones are regularly found in lower earth layers than are human bones, leading many to conclude that they belong to an earlier time period. Geologists call this time the Mesozoic period and subdivide it into the Cretaceous, Jurassic, and Triassic periods. The time frames used for these periods are on the order of tens of millions of years. But has this been established with any certainty?

  One method being used to measure the age of fossils is called radiocarbon dating. This dating system measures the rate of decay of radioactive carbon from the point of death of the organism. "Once an organism dies, it no longer absorbs new carbon dioxide from its environment, and the proportion of the isotope falls off over time as it undergoes radioactive decay," states ScienceandTechnologyIllustrated.

  However, there are severe problems with the system. First, when the fossil is considered to be about 50,000 years old, its level of radioactivity has fallen so low that it can be detected only with great difficulty. Second, even in more recent specimens, this level has fallen so low that it is still extremely difficult to measure accurately. Third, scientists can measure the present-day rate of radioactive carbon formation but have no way of measuring carbon concentrations in the distant past.

  So whether they use the radiocarbon method for dating fossils or other methods, such as employing radioactive potassium, uranium, or thorium, for dating rocks, scientists are unable to establish the original levels of those elements through ages of time. Thus, professor of metallurgy Melvin A. Cook observes: "One may only guess these concentrations [of radioactive materials], and the age results thus obtained can be no better than this guess." That would especially be so when we consider that the Flood of Noah’s day over 4,300 years ago brought enormous changes in the atmosphere and on earth.

  Dartmouth College geologists Charles Officer and Charles Drake further add doubt to the accuracy of radioactive dating. They state: "We conclude that iridium and other associated elements were not deposited instantaneously . . . but rather that there was an intense and variable influx of these constituents during a relatively short geologic time interval on the order of 10,000 to 100,000 years." They argue that the breakup and movement of the continents disrupted the entire globe, causing volcanic eruptions, blocking sunlight and fouling the atmosphere. Certainly, such disruptive events could change radioactivity levels, thus distorting results from modern-day radioactive clocks.

  The

  GenesisAccountandDinosaurs

  While the radioactive dating method is innovative, it is still based on speculation and assumption. In contrast, the Bible account in the first chapter of Genesis simply states the general order of creation. It allows for possibly thousands of millions of years for the formation of the earth and many millenniums in six creative eras, or "days," to prepare the earth for human habitation.

  Some dinosaurs (and pterosaurs) may indeed have been created in the fifth era listed in Genesis, when the Bible says that God made "flying creatures" and "great sea monsters." Perhaps other types of dinosaurs were created in the sixth epoch. The vast array of dinosaurs with their huge appetites would have been appropriate considering the abundant vegetation that evidently existed in their time.—Genesis 1:20-24.

  When the dinosaurs had fulfilled their purpose, God ended their life. But the Bible is silent on how he did that or when. We can be sure that dinosaurs were created by Jehovah for a purpose, even if we do not fully understand that purpose at this time. They were no mistake, no product of evolution. That they suddenly appear in the fossil record unconnected to any fossil ancestors, and also disappear without leaving connecting fossil links, is evidence against the view that such animals gradually evolved over millions of years of time. Thus, the fossil record does not support the evolution theory. Instead, it harmonizes with the Bible’s view of creative acts of God.

  LOL! Don't even know where to start on that pile of misinformation
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  Woodsman

  Interesting article. I think the Watchtowers folly is that everything God did had a purpose so why did he create these animals that no longer exist. Then they try to explain what God's purpose for the dinos was so we can sleep at night and not worry that the dinosaurs weaken our faith in a purposeful God.
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  Mystla

  dino's in the orange paradise book

  Lol, NWT... I'd forgotten about those!!

  I remember asking my mom about them, several times, she never had a satisfactory answer....

  I haven't seen that picture in years and years.. 20 or so.. and yet I can see every detail.

  Misty
• 

  LanDi

  My favourite topic !!

  Jehovahs Witnesses don't really have an opinion, they have to wait for the Governing body ( "our mother" and Gods wife - surely blashpemous ) to tell us what to think , and advise us not to try and work something out on our own, but to wait on them to dispense it at the proper time, something CONTRARY to Bible teachings.

  Anyway, they do say that the Dinosaurs were created to simply tread down and consume the thousands of years of overgrowth of foliage. Their stance is, really escapist and they often say they must have died out in the flood and that the T Rex for example was a scavenger ( wouldn't the existence of predatorial dinosaurs contradict their version of the Bible and maybe the bible itself ? Hello Mr Raptor, binocular vision and as intelligent as a Chimpanzee )

  Well, looking at scripture, we know that dinosaurs must have been created with the animals on the same day. Also, does not the King James (and the Apocryfer - which mentions Daniel killing such a beast to prove to the babylonians it was not a God) regularly mention Dragons, which suspiciously is rendered as Hyena in our newer translations. We have legends from all over the world of these Dragon beasts, some of the descriptions WILL make your hair stand on end, check out the figures of Acacumbro (or something - pics are available on Bible.ca)

  Dinosuars ARE mentioned in the bible (fiery flying snake ISAIAH ) JOB 40 Behemoth ( 'Beast Beast' an intensive plural - ie : HUGE beast. Elephant would be beast) It is NOT a hippo as it " lies under the thorny lotus trees " or an elephant " It stiffens its tail [ yachpots - Hebrew ] like a cedar " (maybe I think - takes delight in ) Its strength is in its belly and its bones are like tubes of copper - obviously it is something VAST.

  Check out the following papers , I order them from my local Library (UK) and they are fascinating. This beast was not encased in ice ( a perfect preserver) for millions of years, and according to Jack Horner MOST fossils are not completely fossilized, but that most museums prefer to keep them intact. If it is heme, not blood inside this beast, it could not have survived 65 million years ( lets not get into a Physics ageing debate here !!!) Even the remaining fleshly structures could be manipulated and would revert back to their original shape when pulled and distorted.

  Now, I am under the impression in a church on BReedon on the Hill, Leicestershire England their is an ancient stone art depiction of a Bipedal Trex type beast hunting a back of four legged brutes.

  Type in Mokele Mbembe in Google. If you can get a copy of Prehistoric Survivivors by Carl (something, ahem) It makes for a fascinating read, even a Scientific American article from 1852 I think which describes a Beast shot down in South America by the Army, which resembled a devil dog from Greek mythology. Species have been dying out for thousands (millions?) of years, Dinosaurs went GRADUALLY. They Did survive the meteourite impact. But alas, not for long.

  Mary H. Schweitzer, Jennifer L. Wittmeyer, John R. Horner, Jan K. Toporski, Science, Vol 307, Issue 5717, 25 March 2005, 1952-1955, “Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex” (Ev)

  Schweitzer, Mary H., Mark Marshall, Keith Carron, D. Scott Bohle, Scott C. Busse, Ernst V. Arnold, Darlene Barnard, J. R. Horner, and Jean R. Starkey 1997A Heme compounds in dinosaur Trabecular bone Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 94, pp. 6291-6296, June

  Enjoy!