Dinosaurs Lived with People? Really?!
Teaching in a non-Christian, atheistic country, I
have had to think in concise ways for kids to comprehend creation as taught in Genesis. In
studying it pretty thoroughly for several years, I see no reason to muddy up the clear
reading of the text.
Because secular science has "gotten it wrong" so often, I really feel we
need to start simply with what the text of the Bible says and then go
out from there. Do we have reason to believe the simple, straightforward
reading? There are many sites to get answers for the other
scientific doubts that remain. I believe there are very good answers out
there. (Here is one.) There are several
others. Here are some quick bullet points, first from the Bible and
then from science:
1. The Bible says a few times that everything
was made in six days. The N.T. (including Jesus) affirms this. The
days have the qualifiers "evening and morning" to help us see this
clearly.
2. The Bible does not say any animal or anything was created separately
from these six days.
3. Therefore man and dinosaurs were created in the same week.
4. Another reason it does not work to say that the days are ages of
time: There was no death before sin. According to Gen. 1:29-30, God gave
every plant for food (not meat) at the beginning. This was because
there was no animal death. (Plant death is different in the Hebrew and
in common experience. Plants do not feel conscious pain.) Interestingly,
the first animal death is when God sacrifices an animal to make clothes
to cover Adam and Eve's sin. We should remember our own sin when we
think of death - any animal or human death.
More Biblical evidence:
5. Job's "Leviathan" & "Behemoth" (Job 40 & 41) match the
description of dinosaurs. No other animals do. No other animal has, for
example, "a tail like a cedar". (Job 40:17)
6. The Bible refers to dragons and so does almost EVERY other ancient
culture. Why? The only explanation is that there must have been some
similar non-mythical animals people really witnessed.
Apart from the Bible we have found:
1. Dinosaur soft tissue (skin and blood cells). This makes no sense if they were 65 millions years old.
2. Various drawings/artwork and stories of actual encounters with dragons throughout history.
3. Even secular scientists now admit that the majority of the dinosaur fossils we find were buried in massive floods.
4. Various dating methods actually support a young earth much more than an old earth.