Over at Answers in Genesis, Buddy Davis has an idea. Well, it isn't necessarily his idea, but his article encapsulates creationist thinking on the topic; how can we use dinosaurs to spread creationism? He rightly points out that dinosaurs are used to teach evolution and millions of years...because they are a prime example of evolution in the fossil record and existed for millions of year. No humans, by the way, which I suppose is sadly necessary to mention. No humans until almost sixty million years after the dinosaurs died out.
Never mind that many Christians are not creationists, Davis wants to speak for all of them. Because of course, we all know that the Christians who accept evolution are really just a bunch of liberal compromisers destined for hell, naturally. He asserts that Christians can use dinosaurs to explain the origin of death. Oh, that's right, creationists assert that there is no death before the Fall of Adam and Eve, so they have to explain away the fossil record, charting millions of years of death long before any humans walked the planet. And dinosaurs were created during the six-day Creation event, how silly of me to forget.
So in the creationist mind, dinosaurs existed with humans, at least until after the Flood. Imagine with me, if you would be so kind, what these terrible lizards must have eaten if there was no death before the Fall. Sauropods ate plants, just like they did after the Fall. But surely the image of a tyrannosaur, velociraptor or even a spinosaurus eating plants, the tyrannosaur with teeth like a set of brand-new steak knives, is a mental picture to make anyone laugh, even the most die-hard creationists. And if dinosaurs were aboard the Ark, which took place after the Fall, then presumably there were carnivores on board. Perhaps that's why there aren't any unicorns today, the pair of tyrannosaurs ate them on the Ark (for unicorns are mentioned in the Bible, just in case you wondered--if you don't believe me, look at Job 39 and Psalms 29. Use the King James Version; my NIV translation has rendered it rather dishonestly as "wild ox").
Regardless of that, Davis asserts that dinosaurs were on the Ark, but likely died out afterwards because of numerous factors (I imagine that lack of genetic diversity, a problem for any species with so few numbers, was a factor). The author fingers a post-Flood Ice Age as a cause. Except that there isn't any geologic evidence for a worldwide flood much less an ice event following it. Nor is there any evidence that all manner of animals existing in the fossil record happened to live at the same time period, none. Instead, there are numerous levels of geological strata, encapsulating different epochs of life's history. We don't find trilobites with humans or rabbits, nor dinosaurs with giant ground sloths or mammoths. It just doesn't happen. To pretend that it did, that much of the fossil record is testament to a giant, worldwide Flood, does a great disservice to all the work in geology and paleontology that's been done in almost three hundred years. It cheapens the history of the world down to the level of a trite museum in Kentucky where dinosaurs wear saddles. The real history of the world, with its vast epochs of time and mind-staggering amount of biological diversity, is an amazing and wonderful story. I challenge anyone to go to the Carnegie Museum, look at the new dinosaur exhibit especially, and not be moved by the experience. To know that such creatures existed, even if we were not there to witness it, is humbling.
If Davis thinks, as he does, that putting dinosaurs on the Ark is going to bring unbelievers to Christ, he is in for a very bad surprise. It may work on a few, but overall the spectacle of creationism will undermine Christianity to most sane people who can see what a ridiculous farce Ken Ham and all his assorted hangers-on are. Missionary lizards? In creationist hands they become emissaries of stupidity.
Never mind that many Christians are not creationists, Davis wants to speak for all of them. Because of course, we all know that the Christians who accept evolution are really just a bunch of liberal compromisers destined for hell, naturally. He asserts that Christians can use dinosaurs to explain the origin of death. Oh, that's right, creationists assert that there is no death before the Fall of Adam and Eve, so they have to explain away the fossil record, charting millions of years of death long before any humans walked the planet. And dinosaurs were created during the six-day Creation event, how silly of me to forget.
So in the creationist mind, dinosaurs existed with humans, at least until after the Flood. Imagine with me, if you would be so kind, what these terrible lizards must have eaten if there was no death before the Fall. Sauropods ate plants, just like they did after the Fall. But surely the image of a tyrannosaur, velociraptor or even a spinosaurus eating plants, the tyrannosaur with teeth like a set of brand-new steak knives, is a mental picture to make anyone laugh, even the most die-hard creationists. And if dinosaurs were aboard the Ark, which took place after the Fall, then presumably there were carnivores on board. Perhaps that's why there aren't any unicorns today, the pair of tyrannosaurs ate them on the Ark (for unicorns are mentioned in the Bible, just in case you wondered--if you don't believe me, look at Job 39 and Psalms 29. Use the King James Version; my NIV translation has rendered it rather dishonestly as "wild ox").
Regardless of that, Davis asserts that dinosaurs were on the Ark, but likely died out afterwards because of numerous factors (I imagine that lack of genetic diversity, a problem for any species with so few numbers, was a factor). The author fingers a post-Flood Ice Age as a cause. Except that there isn't any geologic evidence for a worldwide flood much less an ice event following it. Nor is there any evidence that all manner of animals existing in the fossil record happened to live at the same time period, none. Instead, there are numerous levels of geological strata, encapsulating different epochs of life's history. We don't find trilobites with humans or rabbits, nor dinosaurs with giant ground sloths or mammoths. It just doesn't happen. To pretend that it did, that much of the fossil record is testament to a giant, worldwide Flood, does a great disservice to all the work in geology and paleontology that's been done in almost three hundred years. It cheapens the history of the world down to the level of a trite museum in Kentucky where dinosaurs wear saddles. The real history of the world, with its vast epochs of time and mind-staggering amount of biological diversity, is an amazing and wonderful story. I challenge anyone to go to the Carnegie Museum, look at the new dinosaur exhibit especially, and not be moved by the experience. To know that such creatures existed, even if we were not there to witness it, is humbling.
If Davis thinks, as he does, that putting dinosaurs on the Ark is going to bring unbelievers to Christ, he is in for a very bad surprise. It may work on a few, but overall the spectacle of creationism will undermine Christianity to most sane people who can see what a ridiculous farce Ken Ham and all his assorted hangers-on are. Missionary lizards? In creationist hands they become emissaries of stupidity.
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