I was curious to hear what other believers understand about dinosaurs. I know we have a few young earth creationists here. I wondered what you understand about dinosaurs and when they existed, as well as hear from those that believe dinosaurs lived millions of years ago and how it fits into the bible.
Believers and dinosaurs
by Christ Alone 46 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Chariklo
I am a believer, in God, in Jesus Christ, in the Trinity and in science!
Dinosaurs are no problem!
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Christ Alone
Me too, char. But there are some Ideas floating around about dinosaurs and people existing at the same time up. Just wanted to get some various beliefs here.
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tornapart
I believe in the bible but not in the interpretations of it. Dinosaurs are a fact that can't be disputed. The bible speaks of creative days which I believe are periods of time that are neither literal nor even estimable. The earth according to science has been around for billions of years, which I believe. The bibles account of creation is very simple and some things don't even add up. Ie. how could plants be created before sunlight or insects? It's obvious that the account of creation is not to be taken literally but merely to give us an 'idea' of how it came about.
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cofty
Men like Kent Hovind and Ken Ham have made a career out of lying to christian children about these sort of issues.
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Christ Alone
True cofty. Embarrassingly I fell for some of ken hamm's ideas for a while. Big mistake
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cantleave
I have watched the flintstones - I know the truth thanks to Hannah and Barbera
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Chariklo
Men like Kent Hovind and Ken Ham have made a career out of lying to christian children about these sort of issues.
I've never heard of either of them. Outside my experience. Sounds like I haven't missed much, maybe?
As to dinosaurs living at the same time as man...well...there are stories in various parts of the world, including Loch Ness, and Nigeria, and of course England has its fair share.
How many of you have heard of the Lambton Worm? (Cofty will have, I'm sure.)
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tornapart
Cantleave.. The Flintstones... love it! hehe
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Terry
This is a cut and paste from the website answersingenesis.com
As you add up all of the dates, and accepting that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to Earth almost 2000 years ago, we come to the conclusion that the creation of the Earth and animals (including the dinosaurs) occurred only thousands of years ago (perhaps only 6000!), not millions of years. Thus, if the Bible is right (and it is!), dinosaurs must have lived within the past thousands of years.
Where Did Dinosaurs Come From?
Evolutionists claim that dinosaurs evolved over millions of years. They imagine that one kind of animal slowly changed over long periods of time to become a different kind of animal. For instance, they believe that amphibians changed into reptiles (including dinosaurs) by this gradual process. This would mean, of course, that there would have been millions of creatures during that time that would be “in between,” as amphibians evolved into reptiles. Evidence of these “transitional forms,” as they are called, should be abundant. However, many fossil experts admit that not one unquestionable transitional form between any group of creatures and another has been found anywhere. If dinosaurs evolved from amphibians, there should be, for example, fossil evidence of animals that are part dinosaur and part something else. However, there is no proof of this anywhere. In fact, if you go into any museum you will see fossils of dinosaurs that are 100% dinosaur, not something in between. There are no 25%, 50%, 75%, or even 99% dinosaurs—they are all 100% dinosaur!
The Bible tells us that God created all of the land animals on the sixth day of creation. As dinosaurs were land animals, they must have been made on this day, alongside Adam and Eve, who were also created on Day Six ( Genesis 1:24–31 ). If God designed and created dinosaurs, they would have been fully functional, designed to do what they were created for, and would have been 100% dinosaur. This fits exactly with the evidence from the fossil record.
Evolutionists declare that no man ever lived alongside dinosaurs. The Bible, however, makes it plain that dinosaurs and people must have lived together. Actually, as we will soon see, there is a lot of evidence for this.
What Did Dinosaurs Eat?
The Bible teaches (in Genesis 1:29–30 ) that the original animals (and the first humans) were commanded to be vegetarian. There were no meat eaters in the original creation. Furthermore, there was no death. It was an unblemished world, with Adam and Eve and animals (including dinosaurs) living in perfect harmony, eating only plants.
Sadly, it did not stay this way for very long. Adam rebelled against his Creator, bringing sin into the world ( Genesis 3:1–7 ; Romans 5:12 ). Because of this rebellion, Adam, and thus all of his descendants (you and me), gave up the right to live with a Holy (sinless) and just God. God therefore judged sin with death.
The Bible plainly teaches from Genesis to Revelation that there was no death of animals or humans before Adam sinned. (Consider just a few of the many passages, such as: Romans 5:12 ; Genesis 2:17 ; Genesis 1:29–30 ; Romans 8:20–22 ; Acts 3:21 ; Hebrews 9:22 ; 1 Corinthians 15 ; Revelation 21:1–4 ; Revelation 22:3 .) This means there could not have been any animal fossils (and no dinosaur bones) before sin.
After Adam’s sin, animals and people started to die. It was now a different world, one of death and strife. A world that was once beautiful now suffered under the curse placed upon it by the Creator ( Genesis 3:14–19 ). But a promise was given ( Genesis 3:15 ) that God would provide a way for the penalty of sin to be paid so there would be a way for man to come back to God.
Why Do We Find Dinosaur Fossils?
In Genesis 6 , we read that all flesh (man and animals) had “ corrupted his way upon the Earth ” ( Genesis 6:12 ). Perhaps people and animals were killing each other; maybe dinosaurs had started killing other animals and humans. In any case, the Bible describes the world as “ wicked. ”
Because of this wickedness, God warned a godly man named Noah that He was going to destroy the world with a Flood ( Genesis 6:13 ). God therefore commanded him to build a great ship (the Ark) so that all the kinds of land animals (which must have included dinosaurs) and Noah’s family could survive on board while the Flood destroyed the entire Earth ( Genesis 6:14–20 ).
Some people think that dinosaurs were too big, or there were too many of them, to go on this Ark. However, there were not very many different kinds of dinosaurs. There are certainly hundreds of dinosaur names, but many of these were given to just a bit of bone or skeletons of the same dinosaur found in other countries. It is also reasonable to assume that different sizes, varieties, and sexes of the same kind of dinosaur have ended up with different names. For example, look at the many different varieties and sizes of dogs, but they are all the same kind—the dog kind! In reality, there may have been fewer than 50 kinds of dinosaurs.
God sent two of every (seven of some) land animal into the Ark ( Genesis 7:2–3 ; 7:8–9 )—there were no exceptions. Therefore, dinosaurs must have been on the Ark. Even though there was ample room in the huge ship for large animals, perhaps God sent young adults into the Ark that still had plenty of room for them to grow.
Well, what happened to all the land animals that did not go on the Ark? Very simply, they drowned. Many would have been covered with tons of mud as the rampaging water covered the land ( Genesis 7:11–12 , 19 ). Because of this quick burial, many of the animals would have been preserved as fossils. If this happened, you would expect to find evidence of billions of dead things buried in rock layers (formed from this mud) all over the Earth. This is exactly what you do find.
By the way, the Flood of Noah’s day probably occurred just over 4,500 years ago. Creationists believe that this event formed many of the fossil layers around the Earth. (Additional fossil layers were formed by other floods as the Earth settled down after the great Flood.) Thus, the dinosaur fossils which were formed as a result of this Flood were probably formed about 4,500 years ago, not millions of years ago.
Have Dinosaurs Lived in Recent Times?
If the different kinds of dinosaurs survived the Flood, then they must have come off the Ark and lived in the post-Flood world.
In the Bible, in Job 40:15–24 , God describes to Job (who lived after the Flood) a great beast with which Job was familiar. This great animal, called “ behemoth ,” is described as “ the chief of the ways of God ,” perhaps the biggest land animal God had created. Impressively, he moved his tail like a cedar tree! Although some Bible commentaries say this may have been an elephant or hippopotamus, the description actually fits that of a dinosaur like Brachiosaurus. Elephants and hippos certainly do not have tails like cedar trees!
Are Dinosaurs Mentioned in Ancient Literature?
Interestingly, the word “dragon” is used a number of times in the Old Testament. In most instances, the word dinosaur could substitute for dragon and it would fit very nicely. Creation scientists believe that dinosaurs were called dragons before the word dinosaur was invented in the 1800s. We would not expect to find the word dinosaur in Bibles like the Authorized Version (1611), as it was translated well before the word dinosaur was ever used.
Also, there are many very old history books in various libraries around the world that have detailed records of dragons and their encounters with people. Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly for creationists), many of these descriptions of dragons fit with how modern scientists would describe dinosaurs, even Tyrannosaurus. Unfortunately, this evidence is not considered valid by evolutionists. Why? Only because their belief is that man and dinosaurs did not live at the same time!
However, the more we research the historical literature, the more we realize there is overwhelming evidence that dragons were real beasts, much like our modern reconstructions of dinosaurs, and that their existence has been recorded by many different people, even just hundreds of years ago.
What Happened to Dinosaurs?
Evolutionists use their imagination in a big way in answering this question. Because of their belief that dinosaurs “ruled” the world for millions of years, and then disappeared millions of years before man allegedly evolved, they have had to come up with all sorts of guesses to explain this “mysterious” disappearance.
When reading evolutionist literature, you will be astonished at the range of ideas concerning their supposed extinction. The following is just a small list of theories:
Dinosaurs starved to death; they died from overeating; they were poisoned; they became blind from cataracts and could not reproduce; mammals ate their eggs. Other causes include volcanic dust, poisonous gases, comets, sunspots, meteorites, mass suicide, constipation, parasites, shrinking brain (and greater stupidity), slipped discs, changes in the composition of air, etc.
It is obvious that evolutionists don’t know what happened and are grasping at straws. In a recent evolutionary book on dinosaurs, “A New Look At the Dinosaurs,” the author made the statement:
Now comes the important question. What caused all these extinctions at one particular point in time, approximately 65 million years ago? Dozens of reasons have been suggested, some serious and sensible, others quite crazy, and yet others merely as a joke. Every year people come up with new theories on this thorny problem. The trouble is that if we are to find just one reason to account for them all, it would have to explain the death, all at the same time, of animals living on land and of animals living in the sea; but, in both cases, of only some of those animals, for many of the land dwellers and many of the sea-dwellers went on living quite happily into the following period. Alas, no such one explanation exists (Alan Charig, p. 150).
But, one such explanation does exist. If you remove the evolutionary framework, get rid of the millions of years, and then take the Bible seriously, you will find an explanation that fits the facts and makes perfect sense:
At the time of the Flood, many of the sea creatures died, but some survived. In addition, all of the land creatures outside the Ark died, but the representatives of all the kinds that survived on the Ark lived in the new world after the Flood. Those land animals (including dinosaurs) found the new world to be much different than the one before the Flood. Due to (1) competition for food that was no longer in abundance, (2) other catastrophes, (3) man killing for food (and perhaps for fun), and (4) the destruction of habitats, etc., many species of animals eventually died out. The group of animals we now call dinosaurs just happened to die out too. In fact, quite a number of animals become extinct each year. Extinction seems to be the rule in Earth history (not the formation of new types of animals as you would expect from evolution).
