JWs and Dinasours

by Jeannine 31 Replies latest jw experiences

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  Jeannine

  I apologize if this question has been answered on this board previously.

  What is the JWs position on Dinasours? According to JWs, when did Dinasours roam the earth ? Has the WT ever done an article on Dinasours ? Just wondering.
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  GetBusyLiving

  Some dub's believe that Jehovah placed the dinosaur bones to fertilize the ground and that living dinosaur's never really existed. That should give you some idea of the type of "stance" the society takes on dinosaurs.

  GBL
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  in a new york bethel minute

  Some dub's believe that Jehovah placed the dinosaur bones to fertilize the ground and that living dinosaur's never really existed. That should give you some idea of the type of ;"stance" the society takes on dinosaurs.

  i have never heard that "stance" before. it was probably just an opinion someone gave because they had never heard the society comment on it. maybe they were trying to be on the safe side... i have heard different things from jdubs, most commonly: dinosaurs were killed in the flood

  bethel minute
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  darkuncle29

  The Asleep! magazine once had Dinosaurs for the cover topic in the late 80's or early 90's. Basically they magiced it away with the "noone knows how long the creative days were" spiel.
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  GetBusyLiving

  The "fertilize the ground" theory isnt the societies official stance, but it just goes to show that it's one of those Jehovah's Witness grey areas, and is open to all kinds of fanciful (ie. bullshit) ideas amonst the rank and file. Truth is the society doesn't mention dinosaurs much at all, other than to imply that Jehovah must have had some purpose for them pre-global flood.

  GBL
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  Narkissos

  
  There were three articles in Awake!, February 8, 1990. In short, the WT acknowledged the existence of dinosaurs, but questioned their usual datation, in order to fit them into their interpretation of creative epochs. Here's the last and most controversial article in this issue:

  What

  Happened to the Dinosaurs?

  "PALAEONTOLOGY is the study of fossils, and fossils are the remains of life from past ages." But as one paleontologist said, it is "a highly speculative and opinionated science." This is evident regarding dinosaurs. Listing some speculations as to what happened to them, Princeton scientist G. L. Jepson stated:

  "Authors with varying competence have suggested that dinosaurs disappeared because the climate deteriorated . . . or that the diet did. . . . Other writers have put the blame on disease, parasites, . . . changes in the pressure or composition of the atmosphere, poison gases, volcanic dust, excessive oxygen from plants, meteorites, comets, gene pool drainage by little mammalian egg-eaters, . . . cosmic radiation, shift of Earth’s rotational poles, floods, continental drift, . . . drainage of swamp and lake environments, sunspots."—The Riddle of the Dinosaur.

  It is apparent from such speculations that scientists are not able, with any certainty, to answer the question: What happened to the dinosaurs?

  Sudden Extinction Theory

  A more recent theory was put forth by a father-and-son team, Luis and Walter Alvarez. Walter Alvarez discovered, outside the town of Gubbio in central Italy, a curious thin, red layer of clay sandwiched between two limestone layers in the rock formation. The lower layer of limestone yielded an abundance of fossils. The top layer was almost devoid of fossils, leading the geologists to conclude that life suddenly disappeared and that the thin, red layer of clay had some connection with the extinction.

  Analysis revealed that the clay was rich in iridium (a metal), 30 times richer than the concentration normally found in rocks. They knew that such high concentrations of this rare element could come only from the earth’s core or from sources outside the earth. They concluded that the iridium was deposited by a huge asteroid that hit the earth, causing the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs.

  After the discovery of the iridium-enriched clay at Gubbio, similar deposits were found in other parts of the world. Did this corroborate the asteroid hypothesis? Some scientists remain skeptical. But as the book The Riddle of the Dinosaur acknowledges, the Alvarez hypothesis added "fresh yeast to the study of extinction and evolution." And paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould admits that it could diminish "the importance of competition between species."

  Commenting on this new theory and the apparently sudden extinction of the dinosaurs, one science writer admits: "They could shake the foundations of evolutionary biology and call into question the current concept of natural selection."

  University of Arizona scientist David Jablonski concludes that ‘for many plants and animals, extinction was abrupt and somehow special. Mass extinctions are not merely the cumulative effects of gradual dyings. Something unusual happened.’ Their arrival was also abrupt. Scientific American observes: "The sudden appearance of both suborders of the pterosaurs without any obvious antecedents is fairly typical of the fossil record." That is also the case with dinosaurs. Their relatively sudden appearance and disappearance contradicts the commonly accepted view of slow evolution.

  The Dating of Dinosaurs

  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 Science and Technology Illustrated.

  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 Genesis Account and Dinosaurs

  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.
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  sonnyboy

  I was actually told by an elder that dinosaur bones were placed in the ground by Satan to discredit the Bible.
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  Narkissos

  
  
  Sonnyboy:
  

  
  Your elder was obviously a poor reader: actually the WT poked fun at this argument in another fascinating "anti-creationist" (that is, anti-nonJW-creationist) series (Awake! 3/8, 1983):

  Is This Science?

  How can creationists reconcile such evidence with their dogma that everything started just a few thousand years ago? When God created the rocks with uranium in them, did he also put in the right amount of the special isotopes of lead that would make them look a billion years old? When he made the Andromeda galaxy, did he also fill the path to the earth with light waves, all along its 10 thousand million billion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) miles, so we would not have to wait to see it in the sky? Would the God of truth purposely insert such illusions in his creation just to deceive us?

  Such reasoning reminds one of the story told of the little old Fundamentalist lady who was being shown through the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. She did not believe the park ranger’s speech about the huge reptiles that had once lived there and whose fossilized bones she was seeing. She offered another explanation for them: "The Lord put them there to fool you."

  Speaking of dinosaurs, where do they fit into the creationists’ scheme of things? In their view, human beings and dinosaurs and every other kind of animal, extinct or extant, lived on earth at the same time before the Flood. They were all swept away together in a grand mélange by the Floodwaters. How, then, do they account for the orderly sequence of fossils in sedimentary rocks, starting with simple forms of life in the lower strata and followed by increasingly diverse and complex creatures in higher strata? They can only offer a set of implausible and contradictory theories as to how all kinds of plants and animals could have been sorted out of the potpourri of carcasses and laid down in separate layers.
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  dedpoet

  We still have dinosaurs on the earth. There are 12 of them, and they live in New York, in the area known as Brooklyn. How do I know this? Well, there were photographs of them on a thread on this Forum only a few days ago!
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  Leolaia

  When the dinosaurs had fulfilled their purpose, God ended their life.

  So...what exactly was the purpose of a dinosaur?

  • The necks and heads of brontosauruses made great cranes (especially useful at quarries).
  • The beaks of bird-like dinos made great letter openers.
  • Some dinos made pretty good buzzers and sirens when their tails were pulled.

  But fortunately human technology caught up and when dinos were no longer needed, God mercifully wiped them out of existence.

  Let's hope God won't get bored with us and decide that we've finished our own reason for existing....