posted
I got into this very conversation with a close friend of mine (very religious) the other day. Unfortunately, I don't really have time to post the whole jist of the conversation here now, but I am also interested in what others have to say.
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There are a lot of ideas of how dinosaurs can match with the bible. I don't believe any of them. It's not that I disbelieve them -- it's just that I don't actively believe any particular one.
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They don't because our ancestors didn't know about dinosaurs and assumed the world was only 3000 years old.
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Very little is known/recorded about the earth prior to the creation of Adam/Eve (we're talking the biblical version here, okay). And not much more is known about the time between the creation of man and the time of Noah's flood. If you look, those are all compressed to just a very short space in the Bible.
So I'm sure there is a lot left out that we can ask God about someday!
I saw this guy speak at a church once. He's pretty charismatic. Um. Yeah. Looks like he really believes what he is saying.
Posts: 1545 | Registered: May 2002
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I've not encountered any references to them in the Bible. But IMHO, if God is smart and powerful enough to create the earth and the people in it, then he's also smart and powerful enough to create fossils and skeletons of things that didn't exist just to see what the scientists would do with them.
Pretty good sense of humor, no?
Posts: 159 | Registered: Jun 2004
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No, there is no mention of dinosaurs anywhere in the Bible, nor do they really fit in with the Bible anywhere.
But that's OK. The Bible is not God's Big Book of Everything. It doesn't have to talk about everything. That is not its purpose.
I must admit that I sometimes get frustrated with people who insist that, if it ain't in the Bible, it ain't true. Not saying that this would apply to anyone here.
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
I had a major discussion on this once in a university religious studies class. Here are a few of the theories espoused by the prof and some of the students (some of the prof's ideas were actually from other sources). Please note that these are all theories and are not my opinion. Please also note that these were all based on the idea that there is a God and that he created the earth:
1. God used unorganized matter to form the earth. Within this matter were bones of dinosaurs.
2. While the bible says that the earth was created in six days, this does not specify six twenty-four hour time periods. The word "day" should more properly be translated as "phase" (like a phase of construction). We have no idea how much time occured between phases, so the animals (including dinosaurs) could have been here for millions or billions of years before God planted the Garden of Eden and created man.
3. They were all killed in the flood. Scientists are wrong in their carbon dating methods. Carbon dating assumes that the entire earth cooled at the same time. If it did not do so, carbon dating is not reliable. Therefore, bones assumed to be millions of years old could only be thousands.
4. Scientists who take a bunch of misc. bones and design animals are wrong. There were no dinosaurs. Bones can be deformed when wet and under pressure. The true shape of the bones of normal animals were changed during the flood.
Posts: 279 | Registered: May 2004
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quote: First, you need a really small dinosaur and/or a really big bible.
Next, carefully place dinosaur between pages.
Close cover.
Push down very hard.
I've got a bunch of dino stickers. I think that's your answer. The best place to put them is probably in First Kings, as dinosaurs were probably some of the first kings of the animal world...
Posts: 1592 | Registered: Jan 2001
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quote: As a new Christian, 35 years ago, I obtained the entire KJV Bible on 16 rpm records. I spent hours listening to Alexander Scourby read the Bible to me with that wonderful English accent. One day I tried listening to the Bible at 33 rpm (double-speed) and was surprised to find that after a few minutes of getting used to the “Donald Duck” sound of his voice I could understand it quite well if I followed along in my Bible. Reading at double speed was like living someplace for years and then flying over it to get a bird’s eye view. Seeing it from the air is so different! That began a long-standing habit of reading my Bible at double speed every once in a while. I found it kept me more focused and helped me read 10 to 30 chapters a day with no problem. (One day I read the entire New Testament in 12 hours!) “Flying through” the scriptures lets you see things from a different view that is amazing!
Our technical department at CSE has now produced a series of 35 CD’s that contain the entire KJV Bible at double speed so you can listen to the Bible in about 30 hours! Now your drive time, workout time or housework time can be a great time of spiritual growth as well. See our web site or call and ask for item #750 “The Bible on CD (Double Speed)”. Just $99.00 +S&H
I find it very amusing that somebody would pay $100 for cds of the bible read too fast to understand without following along.
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I should point out that carbon dating assumes no such thing about the rate of the earth cooling. Ditto radiometric dating, which basically agrees for the overlap between the two.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:1. God used unorganized matter to form the earth. Within this matter were bones of dinosaurs.
The problem with this is the uniform pattern of the dinosaur and other prehistoric animal findings. There are too many patterns to the way the bones and tracks are discovered. You don't find a twisted and distorted mess. Rather, you find distinct species in specific places, sometimes together in a very organized fashion -- as if they suddenly died in motion (attributed to flash-floods, mudslides, volcanic eruptions, etc.) like Vesuvius. A potpori of unorganized matter would be, well, unorganized.
quote:2. While the bible says that the earth was created in six days, this does not specify six twenty-four hour time periods. The word "day" should more properly be translated as "phase" (like a phase of construction). We have no idea how much time occured between phases, so the animals (including dinosaurs) could have been here for millions or billions of years before God planted the Garden of Eden and created man.
This is similar to my own theory. I believe, but only speculatively, that dinosaurs are not only pre-historic, but perhaps pre-Biblical. At the least they are, as far as creation narratives are concerned, irrelavant. As another person said, the Bible is not a handbook of ALL things. Well, if you are not an Evangilical Christian at least. In relation to the first, but very different from it, I believe the dinosaurs and other such creatures were part of the creation of the earth in a very direct way -- laying the foundation for its current and progressing structures. This, of course, touches on a belief in creationist-evolution.
quote:3. They were all killed in the flood. Scientists are wrong in their carbon dating methods. Carbon dating assumes that the entire earth cooled at the same time. If it did not do so, carbon dating is not reliable. Therefore, bones assumed to be millions of years old could only be thousands.
The problem with this is that there are not any mixing of evidence. In other words (as a quick example), you don't find the fort of a human with the bones of a dinosaur. In fact, you don't find particular sets of anything mixed in with different time eons. There are some reports of such things, but they are often discounted by further research, or a single instance that scientifically can't be checked by similar instances. Carbon dating, by the way, is not a very reliable geological measuring stick after a certain length of time. You can go hundreds of thousands, but you can't millions. Instead what you have is rock "layering" and fossils that will always be found at a particular rock formation level. It is true that these are more speculative methods, but they are also very uniform and predictable.
quote:4. Scientists who take a bunch of misc. bones and design animals are wrong. There were no dinosaurs. Bones can be deformed when wet and under pressure. The true shape of the bones of normal animals were changed during the flood.
The worst theory yet, to be sure. Totally disregards displacement theory. Things can expand and contract, but they can't enlarge without living (and not dead) growing tissue. Even if this crush theory was true, you aren't going to go from a size five foot to a size five hundred foot (i.e. displacement, like getting in a tub). Besides, fossils are relatively easy to put together once you know the relationships of the main pieces. True, you can confuse a bone here and a head or tail there and mess up on the relative look of the dinosaur. But, that isn't going to be a mess up so large that it will turn out to be a completely different species. A frog will not be mistaken for a bat.
Addendum: Carbon dating assumes the relative breakdown of the molecular structure of tissue once an organism has died.
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