Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Dinosaurs Always Give Me Trouble

It seems like a recurring issue of faith/logic/science in my life has been the trouble that dinosaurs create within my belief system and how I respond to people who question me about it.

It’s simply not logical to deny their existence. They definitely existed - the evidence is overwhelming.

The first obstacle I encounter is WHEN did they exist. The fact is that there is absolutely and unequivocally FAR more evidence for a young Earth than there is for the more commonly held belief in an old Earth.

See what I mean - I’ve already lost the majority of my readers. People have been so conditioned to believe that the Earth is millions (or billions) of years old, that they look with suspicion and derision upon anybody that says otherwise. The problem is the evidence for it is not there - or perhaps I should say that the evidence for it has been manipulated to fit prevalent theories. The arguments used are usually circular, or they use pseudo-science (all theories, by the way) to come up with explanations and tie together facts that should not be tied together.

Anyway, moving on. It’s pretty obvious that I believe in the biblical account of creation over the spurious theory of evolution, although, I admit that for quite a while I had trouble taking the account of the Garden of Eden literally. I thought that it was basically a story - accurate regarding how God created, but one example among many such gardens spread throughout the Earth. So the question remains - if I accept that dinosaurs lived, when did they live, because the Bible makes no specific mention of them.

The Bible DOES mention a couple the occasional creatures that MIGHT be a dinosaur or dragon, but not many. But, then again, neither does it mention very many other animals specifically.

What if the Bible story of the Garden of Eden is literally correct? Then dinosaurs could have co-existed time-wise with man, but not geographically. Man would be in the middle east while dinosaurs were everywhere else. That would explain everything. That’s why dinosaur remains are found everywhere EXCEPT, to the best of my knowledge, the middle east. There are remains found in North America, Africa, Asia, South America - but not the middle east.

Oh, there is one possible exception to the above. Although the theory (there’s that word again) has been pretty much dismissed and, as usual the scientists are revamping their theories, they once said that oil is the result of millions of years of dinosaur decomposition.

So, I’m back to where I started: dinosaurs are again giving me trouble. In places like Montana the remains are at or near the surface. You can hardly roam around without tripping over a bone, it seems. But in the middle east, dinosaur remains are thousands of feet (or more) below the surface and became oil. I don’t get it.