Posted on 05/04/2019 12:05:47 PM PDT by pcottraux
No, Dinosaurs Aren’t in the Bible: Part 3
How Young Earth Creationists Get Dinosaurs Wrong
By Philip Cottraux
For part 3 of this series, I want to critique Young Earth Creationism from a viewpoint that doesn’t get much attention; its scientifically incorrect portrayal of dinosaurs and the clumsy way it tries to factor them into the creation account. Let me disclaim once again; this has nothing to do with the age of the earth and although I’m personally an Old Earth Creationist, I’m not at all trying to prove that the planet is older than 6,000 years.
One of the early advocates for Young Earth Creationism was George McCready Price, whose 1923 book The New Geology first tried to use the flood of Noah to explain fossils of prehistoric beasts. While the scientific community didn’t take any of his claims seriously, in 1961 Henry Morris and John Whitcomb, Jr used the book as a springboard for a follow-up, The Genesis Flood (although he wasn’t given much credit, likely due to being a Seventh-Day Adventist). The Genesis Flood was also a repudiation of Bernard Ramm’s criticisms of Price in his 1954 book The Christian View of Science and Scripture.
The flood became the base around which Young Earth Creationists built many speculations. Perhaps its most substantial claim was that the pre-flood world was surrounded by a large water canopy that kept out ultraviolet radiation while increasing hyperbaric pressure in the atmosphere, leading to 100% oxygen levels. This would explain why people lived for up to 900 years in the early chapters of Genesis; after Noah, all that water had come crashing down, thinning the atmosphere and shortening the human lifespan.
I used to believe the water canopy idea myself, and even speculated about it in a previous blog on the science of Noah’s flood. However, I no longer think it’s a valid explanation; Christian astrophysicist Hugh Ross debunks it as a scientific impossibility on page 126 of Navigating Genesis. Going into the details will get me off-topic, but this isn’t to take away from the long life spans of the antediluvian world, just that the water canopy theory doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
Nevertheless, the claim I’ve seen in Young Earth Creationist material time and time again, from Answers in Genesis to the Institute for Creation Research to Kent Hovind’s DVD series, is that the hyperbaric pressure allowed reptiles to live for hundreds of years; and since they never stop growing, reach immense sizes, becoming the dinosaurs (until Noah’s flood wiped most of them out).
The problem is that this requires a wildly outdated depiction of dinosaurs. Young Earth Creationists tend to portray them in a manner reminiscent of 1950s artwork: lumbering reptilian beasts with scaly green skin and dragging tails.
I find it irritating to see only “pop culture” dinosaurs appear at the Creation Museum or the Ark Encounter. The velociraptors on Noah’s Ark happen to resemble the creatures from Jurassic Park—a great movie, but we now know many of its star attractions didn’t look at all like we thought at the time. Furthermore, you never see any of the lesser known but no less fantastic species such as Giganotosaurus, Therizinosaurus, or Carnotaurus, for reasons I’ll deal with in a little bit.
Before we get into that, let me address dinosaurs as “reptiles that never stopped growing.” The problem here is that if a lizard grew indefinitely, you would end up with a really big lizard; to be fair, such a creature did exist at one time, the Megalania. Think of a komodo dragon as big as a van; these frightening monsters stalked Southern Australia but (thankfully) have been extinct for many years.
Two unique features are used to classify dinosaurs; the skull and the hip. Dinosaurs fall into three categories: ornithiscians (four-legged herbivores like Triceratops and Stegosaurus), sauropods (long-necked herbivores), and theropods (bipedal carnivores). They belonged to a larger group called archosaurs, which are distinctly diapsids, meaning they have two temporal holes in each side of their skulls (all mammals, including humans, are synapsids, with only one skull opening behind each eye). So this is what dinosaurs and reptiles do have in common.
What they don’t have in common is the hip bone structure. Reptiles have an extension that makes their legs protrude from either side of their bodies. That’s why most drag their bellies and tails on the ground as they scamper about. Dinosaur legs, on the other hand, were directly underneath their bodies; and when it comes to the bigger ones, for good reason!
Dinosaurs were many things. “Overgrown reptiles” was not one of them.
However, they were closely related to another common animal. While most people are aware that the evidence for a link between dinosaurs and birds is growing, the claim that dinosaurs were birds is a bit misleading; the opposite is actually true. Birds have been reclassified as dinosaurs.
Specifically, all modern birds have been placed in the theropod dinosaur group, which makes them close relatives of tyrannosaurids and dromaeosaurs. The best evidence obviously is fossilized feather imprints. After browsing Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research’ websites, every article I found on the subject mostly dismissed the findings. There seems to be very tortured logic trying to explain how “these aren’t really feathers” or “why would God put feathers on dinosaurs?”
There seems to be an aversion among Young Earth Creationist institutes to accept feathered dinosaurs, and I suspect it’s for two reasons: fear of evolutionary implications, and an insistence that dinosaurs were reptiles that never stopped growing before the flood due to the water canopy.
But evolution aside, if theropod dinosaurs were birds, they were birds. Because feathers aren’t all that links the two; the hip and diapsid skull structure more or less seal the deal. Inevitably, we have to accept the evidence and move on. Doubling down on a previous idea in light of new findings does more harm than good.
But feathers do more than link dinosaurs and birds; they also give us valuable scientific insight into theropod life cycles. When any life form is first conceived, its features and proportions are wildly different than when it reaches adulthood. Whatever the species, embryos and newborns tend to have extremely large eyes and craniums with disproportionally small limbs, and are hairless or featherless when born. But as the animal grows into maturity, its features normalize as the head grows at a smaller rate than the body. For humans, more hair grows on different areas through puberty. This process is called ontogeny.
Recent discoveries of juvenile species has shed enormous light on dinosaurs’ ontological process. While feathered carnivores might be disappointing to those of us who grew up on classic-looking reptilian creatures; never fear; the feathering mostly seems to be common among dromaeosaurs. The ornithiscians and sauropods still more or less look like we’ve always imagined (though probably more brightly colored than the usual dull gray or green we’re used to).
Much is made about how inaccurate the raptors in Jurassic Park are. It is true that the velociraptor mongolias was only three-feet tall. However, in the book it was made clear that the creatures were actually deinonychus, nicknamed “raptor” from the larger group it belonged to. Next to the Utahraptor, perhaps the most exciting recent paleontological discovery was the Dakotaraptor in 2015, a 16 foot-long species that has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the dromaeosaurs were completely feathered. Nevertheless, this makes them no less terrifying than in any of the movies. Think of them as enormous, flightless ground hawks of the Cretaceous.
Fossilized T-Rex hatchlings have proven that the tyrannosaurs were entirely feathered as babies. Amazingly, they looked like ducklings covered with fuzzy down. However, a paper published in 2017 contained the most thorough examination of adult skin impressions of the stomach, chest, neck, pelvis, and tail, and revealed that a full-grown T-Rex appears to have had few if any feathers. So recent depictions in the scientific community have over-feathered tyrannosaurus until it resembles a giant chicken. However, at its monstrous size, feathers would have provided unnecessary insulation, causing overheating. So far, it seems the tyrannosaurus still looked a lot like how we’ve always imagined, the only difference being a row of quills running down the creature’s back.
So what about the process in-between? The answer was discovered with a new species, the Yutyrannus, in 2012 in northeastern China's Liaoning Province. At about thirty feet long, the juvenile specimen wasn’t exactly a tyrannosaurus, but a very close relative from the tyrannosaurid family that gives us the best picture so far of what a “teenage” T-Rex would have looked like. Being half-feathered, we see that tyrannosaurs went through a molting ontological cycle, born completely covered with feathers but losing them as they got bigger.
My challenge to the Young Earth Creationist movement is to update its portrayal of dinosaurs. Abandon the “reptiles that never stopped growing” narrative and realize that these fantastic creatures were beasts of their own unique species. According to Aristotle, the most crucial aspect of scientific philosophy is not being emotionally attached to previous in light of new evidence. This makes science skeptical of itself and therefore self-correcting. In other words, falsifiable.
-Ross, Hugh. Navigating Genesis: A Scientist’s Journey through Genesis 1-11. RTB Press, Covina, CA, 2014, pages 203-206, 126.
-Mussuer, Anne. “Megalania Prisca.” Australianmuseum.net. Last updated November 14, 2018. Accessed May 4, 2019. https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/australia-over-time/extinct-animals/megalania-prisca/
-Duff, R. Joel. “How Have Young Earth Creationists Responded to Feathered Dinosaurs?” Thenaturalhistorian.com. June 30, 2018.
-Ham, Ken. “Feathered Dinosaurs? Did Birds Evolve from Dinosaurs?” Answersingenesis.org. October 4, 2016. Accessed May 4, 2019. https://answersingenesis.org/media/audio/answers-with-ken-ham/volume-123/feathered-dinosaurs/
-It’s Okay to be Smart (from PBS Studios): “Did Dinosaurs Really Go Extinct?”
-“Reptile/Dinosaur Definitions.” Cppd.edu. Accessed May 4, 2019. https://www.cpp.edu/~djmoriarty/orni/z329%20Defiinitions%20-%20diapsid,%20archosaur,%20dinosaur.pdf
-“Ontogeny.” Wikipedia.com. Last edited April 5, 2019. Accessed May 4, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontogeny
-Weisberger, Mindy. “Baby T-Rex Was an Adorable Ball of Fluff.” Livescience.com. March 6, 2019. Accessed May 4, 2019. https://www.livescience.com/64936-t-rex-new-look-exhibit.html
-Kubersky, Seth. “World’s most scientifically accurate T. Rex model now on display in New York.” Attractionsmagazine.com. March 14, 2019. Accessed May 4, 2019. https://attractionsmagazine.com/worlds-most-scientifically-accurate-t-rex-model-now-on-display-in-new-york/
-Than, Ker. “One-Ton Feathered Dinosaur Found: Fluffy and Fierce.” News.nationalgeographic.com. April 4, 2012. Accessed May 4, 2019. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/04/120404-yutyrannus-feathers-dinosaur-science-nature-biggest/
-Trey the Explainer: “Paleo Profile: Dakotaraptor”
-Katz, Brigit. “T. Rex Was Likely Covered in Scales, Not Feathers.” Smithsonianmag.com. June 8, 2017. Accessed May 4, 2019. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/t-rex-skin-was-not-covered-feathers-study-says-180963603/
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On Day 6 God created all the animals that live on dry land, so dinosaurs are indeed in the Bible.
Mayhaps the flood was to wipe the DNAsaurs from the earth along with the dna corrupted peoples.
I find that one to be complete bull. The thing about oxygen is that it oxidizes. This same process, that helps our bodies to create energy, is also the process that causes iron and rebar to rust, necessitating major repairs to bridges, roads and buildings, and, along with other factors, causes wood and other materials to burn, necessitating fire departments and cleanup specialists (Servpro). If the oxygen content of the atmosphere was 100%, we'd all be lucky to live even 9 years (forget 900!), before we'd burn out or die from spontaneous human combustion, IMO.
I like one Catholic thinker's explanation of why our ancient ancestors lived such long lives: they were simply not burdened by the collective weight of all our sins to a relatively early grave, the way later descendants were.
I hope that’s a parody!
Perhaps an updated cartoon will have Jesus riding a dragon?
Just look at you geaux, mister Cottraux:
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:pcottraux/index?tab=articles
You seem amazingly focused upon promoting yourself.
Interesting article but I have to disagree and have my own take. IMO, Dinosaurs are referred to in Genesis as “beasts” along with everything else. But, scientists are also correct, the Earth has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. When I read Genesis, God created the Earth, and beasts AND MAN prior to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were not cavemen, rather they lived in a Garden, and they were made later. And so Adam and Eve is the story of man. The 6000 years is not the history of earth. It is the history of man. God made Adam and Eve 6000 to 7000 years ago. God breathed life and gave a soul to Adam and Eve so they would have the capacity to know right from wrong and receive the Holy Spirit. Other men and women had been around for quite sometime. We know this because After Adam and Eve had their two sons, Cain slew Abel, Cain went into the land of Nod and found a wife and he continued to live. So where did Cain go to find a wife if Adam and Eve were the only couple on earth? Anyway, later on, God has a flood that kills off all of mankind, along with any beasts or life that had not already become extinct, that was able to survive such a disaster. Noah and his family were teh sole survivors. Noah and his family of course were descendants from Adam and Eve. Scientists today have completed DNA tests proving that all of mankind descended from one man. However, scientists erroneously concluded that this evidence disproved the story of Adam and Eve. As usual they are misguided. What the DNA chain proved was that the one man we all descended from was from the time of the Great Flood. Since all of the surviving men were sons of Noah, the DNA evidence ends and correctly proves that we all descended from Noah. Thus, we are also all descendants of Adam. Interestingly, this means the flood is responsible for killing off all remaining humans that were on the earth that had no soul/spirit.
No need. The SEQUENCE of events, from the creation to energy to light cooling per nuclear theory to matter to the formation of the stars, sun, planted and moons, continents and seas, continental drift and the clearing of the atmosphere, life from the dead to plants to land creatures, to birds first (dinosaurs ) and then mammals and domesticated animals is accurately written in genesis. Times are a bit off. But, then again, they had no zero, no powers of ten yet.
So do Jussie Smollett and now he in trouble.
Maybe THAT'S where Vinny got his "yutes" .... ?!
If you believe birds are dinosaurs...then dinosaurs are indeed in the Bible. The term “dinosaur” is a term coined by Sir Richard Owen in the 1800’s...so the large “dinosaurs” or even smaller ones could be considered a beast. So if dinosaurs are “beasts”...then, they are in the Bible.....what selection factors caused a dinosaur to become a bird? Could a large reptile such as an alligator evolve to become a “dinosaur”? What would be the selection pressure?
Can anyone trace the epigenetic-dna-rna-protein-cytologic-organ-organism-environment path for the evolution of a living “creaure”?
Creature...that is.
Love that movie; saw it again just the other night. Both Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei were world-class funny in that one!
Genesis 5:4.
Given the fact, the word and definition of dinosaur didn’t come about until rather recent, no, there is not dinosaurs in the Bible.
Nor are there panda bears, honey badgers, hornets, squids or other sorts of animals.
Kind of, not detailed b/c it was just part of creation.
I was surfing funny clips on youtube last night and that was one of ‘em
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