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Dinosaurs (Behemoths)

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Dinosaurs (Behemoths)

Article by Dr. Richard Paley

What Are Dinosaurs?

Learn more about dinosaurs at Conservapedia.

Dinosaurs are large, reptilian land animals that lived in great abundance over 4000 years ago ("There were giants in the earth in those days" [Gen 6:4]), and were mostly wiped out during the Flood. Contrary to the depictions of them from Hollywood, dinosaurs were herbivorous ("he eateth grass as an ox." [Job 40:15]) and lived concurrently and in peace with man. They did not live 65 million years ago, as evolutionists claim, since nothing but God existed then. They were created on the sixth day along with the other land animals (plesiosaurs, pterasaurs and others of their kinds are not strictly speaking dinosaurs, and they were created on the fifth day with the other animals of the water and sky.) Dinosaur bones are often found in sedimentary rocks formed during the Flood and are harder than the bones of other animals ("his bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron." [Job 40:18].)

Man and Dinosaur
Man and dinosaur lived together peacefully around 2000 BC. (Illustration by Peggy Miller)

Pre-Noachian man tried to tame the dinosaur, wishing to use its might for evilness and arrogantly thinking himself as mighty as the Lord. This grieved the Lord, and He brought the Flood upon the earth [Gen. 6]. Species of dinosaurs were among the animals taken aboard the ark by Noah ("And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee" [Gen. 6:19],) and thus dinosaurs survived the Flood. Scholars theorize that some of these descendents of Noah's ark were used to aid Noah's progeny in building the Tower of Babel. After that fiasco, the Lord felt that man was clearly not worthy of associating with His most powerful creation anymore, and ever since dinosaurs have been hidden from us.

Dinosaurs have been a favorite propaganda tool for evolutionists since the 19th century, and continue to be used to promote the pseudoscientific religion of Evolutionism in the Secular media. Movies such as Jurassic Park and Disney's Dinosaur are designed to indoctrinate the masses into the Evolutionistic world view. The appeal of dinosaurs to kids is of particular interest to Evolutionists since it allows them to gain easy and willing access the minds of our children ("for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" [Gen. 8:21].) And by recasting the Lord's gentle behemoths as blood-thirsty "terrible thunder lizards," they are able to make appeals to -- and further support -- the base desires of our culture for violence ("Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth." [Ps. 58:2]).

For more on the propagandistic use of dinosaurs by Evolutionists, see:

Creation Science Evidences of Dinosaurs

This campaign has been very effective, as most people -- even most Christians -- aren't aware of the evidences that contradict the evolutionistic position. Evidence of man-dinosaur contemporaneity, although actively suppressed by the Evolutionistic hegemony, is in abundence and includes:

Historical References in the Bible

In the Book of Job, the Lord clearly describes dinosaurs (called "behemoths" by Adam, in the original Hebrew, and in the 1611 King James translation of the Bible; the term "dinosaur" having only been coined in the 1800's) by saying that [the behemoth] "moveth his tail like a cedar" [Job 40:17]. The Lord also states in no uncertain terms that the behemoths and man lived concurrently when He says to Job "Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee;" [Job 40:15]. This also indicates that Job was able to view dinosaurs for himself.

(See also: Are Dinosaurs In The Bible?)

Fossil Evidence

Many instances of overlapping human/dinosaur fossil tracks (footprints in mud that have become hardened into stone) have been found world wide. Some of the more famous are the Paluxy "Man Tracks" of Glen Rose, Texas and the "Tango Lagarto" of Patagonia. Also, evidence of human artifacts found with dinosaur bone fossils are surprisingly common -- surprising mainly since you never hear about them in Evolutionist literature. One typical case was the discovery of copper jewelry in the fossilized remains of the gizzard of a protoceratops found in the Gobi desert.

Petroglyphs

Apatosaur petroglyph: 'Prehistoric Indians,' Barnes and Pendleton, 1995, page 201
Field drawing of an Apatosaur petroglyph found at Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah. (Click for source.)

American Indians have documented on rock walls the dinosaurs they saw while immigrating into the Americas from the Middle East after the Flood. (See the inset "The Postdiluvian Earth" in my article about kangaroos for a map of the Earth immediately after the Flood Waters asswaged.) These petroglyphs, including one from the Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah that features a clear depiction of an Apatosaur, are irrefutable evidence of man/dinosaur contemporaneity that not even the most ardent Atheist can ignore. Here are some links to further pictures:

Extant Dinosaurs

Although exceedingly rare, living dinosaur and related species can still be found world wide. Some famous examples are the Loch Ness Monster, a Scottish plesiosaur (or leviathan); Mokele-Mbembe, an African sauropod; and the Chupacabra, a South American velociraptor. This obviously proves that man and dinosaur have existed -- and continue to exist -- contemporaneously.

NEW! (12/1/2002) Read all about Dinosaur Expedition 2002, a joint expedition of Fellowship University, The Creation Science Museum of Cleveland, and the Fairlight Institute which I participated in that uncovered startling evidence of extant Apatosaur in Africa.

For more on this topic see these sites:

Issues of Confusion

Over the years I have encountered a lot of confusion among the Secularly inclined, as well as some Christians, about a few issues on the nature of dinosaurs and how they relate to Creation. Most of this confusion is based on not viewing dinosaurs in a proper Biblical context, instead incorporating erroneous Evolutionistic assumptions to draw conclusions that seem to make Creation Science look at fault. (I believe that this confusion is probably the intention of the Evolutionists, who would rather muddle the issues than acknowledge Creation Science coherent.) Here are some of the more notoriously confused issues:

T-rex was a Herbivore

All animal kinds, as well as humans, started out as herbivores. This is clearly stated in the Bible [Gen 1:29-30]:

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
"And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so."

Before the Fall, there was no death nor bloodshed; it was only after Sin entered the world that animals started to die and to kill. Pre-Fall dinosaurs such as T-rex or velociraptors ate only vegetation, later developing, through the process of Entropic Genetic Degeneration (aka "microevolution,") sharper teeth and a hunger for blood.

But not all kinds of dinosaurs, nor every individual member of a particular kind, fell into bloodlust: Some kinds, such as the sauropods and the hadrosaurs, remained herbivorous (although, no doubt, becoming wicked in other ways); and herbivorous examples of dinosaur kinds that Evolutionists typically classify as carnivores existed up to the time of Noah (as I will explain in the next section.)

The reason there are no fossil examples of herbivorous T-rex with teeth more suited to shredding plants than flesh is because all those fossils we have came from the Great Deluge. The bones of herbivorous T-rex newly evicted from the Garden of Eden turned to dust long before the Flood came, and those that perished and were fossilized in the Flood had already succumbed to the wickedness of carnivorism.

Dinosaurs and the Ark

Dinosaurs were on the Ark. Although this is not stated directly in the Bible (as the Bible also doesn't state directly that aardvarks or zebras were on the Ark,) it is an inescapable conclusion based on both physical evidence and, more importantly, what the Bible does state. In Genesis 6:19, God commanded Noah thusly:

"And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female."

We know that dinosaurs were alive at the time since they were fossilized during the Flood, many in active poses suggesting fear of their impending doom and horrific realization, however faint and dinosaurish, of their God-displeasing wickedness. So necessarily, Noah had to have brought representatives of the dinosaur kinds into the Ark in order to properly follow God's command (and since Noah was a righteous man, this he would have done.)

One of the most common protests about dinosaurs on the Ark is that the carnivorous ones would have ate all the other animals, as well as Noah and his family. And even if they could be safely contained in strong gopherwood cages, they would need large amounts of meat to keep them alive for the duration of the Flood (this last protest is also levied against other, currently carnivorous animals such as lions and tigers.)

However, this ignores the possibility that only herbivorous representatives of the dinosaur (and other) kinds were taken into the Ark. It would be unsurprising if Noah, who was chosen over the other wicked men for his unique righteousness, would see fit to choose those individual animals that were themselves righteous, leaving the wicked, carnivorous ones behind to perish. Strong evidence for this hypothesis is the fact that Noah and the other animals weren't eaten, or else we all wouldn't be here today.

Another protest is that the dinosaurs were too large to fit in the Ark. This is, of course, rubbish. We know the Ark was sufficiently large to hold all the kinds just fine since God gave Noah the dimensions. We must keep things in perspective: the size of sauropods, wooly mammoths, giant ground sloths, and the like were exceptional; it is the average size of the animal kinds that mattered, and the average was about the size of a house cat. Surely one could fit a great many pairs of house cats into a 300 by 50 by 30 cubit boat with room enough to spare for hay and water!

One last Ark-related protest that, amazingly, I keep hearing (it truly boggles my mind how Evolutionism has made people this confused about Creation Science): "How could the T-rex be both on the Ark and fossilized in the Flood?" If you haven't already figured this out by now, the simple answer is that only two T-rex were taken on the Ark from a much larger pre-Flood population of T-rex. The wicked ones left behind were the ones fossilized.

Dinosaurs and Lizards

In attempting to refute the false theories of Evolutionists, some have postulated that dinosaurs were not unique creations, but just alternate forms of common lizards -- such as one would find in one's garden today -- that either grew to immense proportions due to advanced age (many reptiles grow continuously, stopping only at death,) or suffered from the same sorts of bone afflictions caused by vitamin D deficiency from the sun being partially occluded by a global vapor canopy that afflicted pre-flood men (the so-called "Neanderthals" of the Evolutionists.)

While there undoubtedly are some "dinosaurs" named by Evolutionists that are nothing more than overgrown lizards -- the dimetrodon, for example -- the study of Flood remains, baraminological research1, Biblical hermeneutics, and the existence of extant dinosaurs under present environmental and eschatological conditions all support the reality of the special and seperate creation of dinosaur and lizard kinds.

So... yes Virginia, there really were dinosaurs, and they were some of the Lord's most magnificent creations -- from the mighty behemoths (apatosaur and its ilk) to the awe-inspiring unicorn (the progenitor of the ceratopsian baramin2). Although Evolutionists have tried to latch on to them and use them as propaganda tools, we shouldn't fall into the mistake of overreacting in our refutations of Evolutionism by denying dinosaur existence or diminishing them as mere lizards.

Footnotes:

  1. « For more on lizard/dinosaur apobaraminism, see: Losos, J. B, M. Leal, R. E. Glor, K. de Queiroz, P. E. Hertz, L. Rodríguez Schettino, A. Chamizo Lara, T. R. Jackman, and A. Larson (2003). Niche lability in the evolution of a Caribbean lizard community: evidence for Anoles as a single original Type. Baraminology 424:542-545.
  2. « See the section on unicorns in Genesis Park's "Dinosaurs in the Bible" article. Also see RAE Video 219: "The Biblical Reem: Possibly a Triceratops?" Doug Sharp, Rich Geer, John Goertzen.

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