David Rives
Can I be a Bible-believing Christian and believe in dinosaurs? You know, the kind of dinosaurs we see in the movies? Right, you know those scary ones that lived millions of years ago, killed everything in sight, and then inexplicably turned into birds after all dying in a meteor explosion?
Well, maybe not those… See, some of that is fiction…
I’ve been on paleontological digs, and I’ve dug up the bones of these monsters that you see in the movies. They were REAL. But there are a few things that we hear about these creatures that are not based on fact. Let’s see if I can go over a few:
- When I dig up the bones, I have never yet found a date stamped on one saying “deposited 65 million years B.C.” In fact, what’s getting a lot of attention within the scientific community these days is the discovery of soft tissue inside some of these bones. This soft tissue should not even last for 100 thousand years… much less the millions required for evolution.
- While we know that dinosaurs really did eat other animals (because we sometimes find other creatures in their stomachs), it doesn’t mean they were ferocious. In fact, sperm whales, warthogs, and other creatures have long sharp teeth that look remarkably similar to the T-rex’s, but they aren’t carnivorous killing machines. Okay, so you still probably wouldn’t have wanted a pair of velociraptors as pets, but trying to describe their behavior from a bunch of bones takes quite a bit of speculation.
- 3. You might have heard that the last dinos went extinct millions of years ago, but dating methods show huge discrepancies in the alleged ages of dinosaur remains. There’s something going on here. Recently, a dozen carefully collected and preserved samples of fossils and dinosaur remains were sent in for testing. Measurable amounts of Carbon 14 were found in EVERY ONE! The maximum limit for C14 is 80 to 100 thousand years! The current evolutionary theories need at least 50 million. Maybe it’s time for a reevaluation?
So, are dinosaurs real? Sure they’re real. They’re even found in the Bible! But “dinosaur” is a recently coined word, and until the modern day, most people called dinosaurs, “dragons.” The word dinosaur means “terrible lizard,” and while they certainly were very large lizards, we don’t know how terrible they actually were. But, they must have been a sight to behold!
We often think of the term “dinosaur” as meaning prehistoric or ancient, but there are accounts all around the world of people fighting huge, terrible lizards and dragons. Think of medieval legends and Chinese symbolism. Maybe there’s more to the story than we’re being told in schools. Maybe the children’s stories and fairy tales about these dinosaurs living 65 million years ago are just that – Fairy tales.
The Bible says that land animals like dinosaurs were created along with other animals during the creation week. That means that mankind would have seen these creatures!
In fact, again and again, new scientific discoveries are consistently confirming what was written in the Bible all along. I’m not surprised.
I’m David Rives, truly the heavens declare the glory of God.
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1. Radiometric dating. It’s used widely by the oil/gas/mining industries with a value on absolute ages for chemistry purposes, like basin modeling. It works, it’s consistent, and paleontologists use the survey data done by these and government entities like the USGS to inform them on the dates of the fossils they find. Very rarely do paleontologists actually need to physically date a fossil location or find, because that industry has already done it for that area. ‘Soft tissue’ has been found, in every case, to have only survived in a mineralized form because its base composition or remains simply don’t decay like we thought it would 50 years ago. As our understanding of these remains (bone marrow and other internal structures of bones) advance, we’ve learned more. Your statement is horribly misinformed.
2. This statement is nonsensical. The science of osteology is incredibly advanced, and we know exactly what varied purposes teeth have. Sperm whales ARE carnivorous.
3. C14 can be found in nearly any surface eroded fossil if invasive bacteria have taken up residence on the rock. You may be referring to Mark Armitage’s triceratops horn find, which happened to have plant roots growing through it. But paleontology doesn’t use C14 dating on the fossils themselves to date them. That is done via Stratiagraphy and various cores usually sourced from regional geologic surveys referenced in #1.
4. The Bible NEVER mentions dinosaurs, or dragons for that matter. All the supposed cultural references we find in history, at best, might have been the result of people finding fossils, or with just active imaginations. Given especially the fact that creationism supposes only a 6,000 year old Earth, we should be able to find dinosaur remains with actual intact organic structures and most importantly, fully recoverable DNA. So far, we have found neither.
Mr. Butler,You have either missed the point, or are mistaken in your various
comments. Here’s how:
1. a) Radiometric dating – Does not provide “absolute ages” since the dating methods makes assumptions about initial conditions
b) Your statement “‘Soft tissue’ has been found in ‘every case’ to have only survived in mineralized form” – is simply incorrect. Blood and Tissue found by Dr Mary Schweitzer were not mineralized. In her own presentation she showed two pictures and asked “One of these cells is 65 million years old, and one is about 9 months old. Can anyone tell me which is which?” – the implied answer is no. Clearly there was no appearance of mineralization. Later explanations about iron slowing the
decomposition have been shown to be as much a grasping at straws as the initial statement that such soft tissues could last millions of years.
c) David Rives’ main point is valid: fossils do not come tagged or stamped with
dates. Those dates are estimated (incorrectly by secular scientists).
2. Are you intentionally trying to miss the point? His point – without direct observation having sharp teeth doesn’t mean the animal is automatically ferocious or a carnivore. Consider the Giant Panda, who has sharp teeth, but primarily eats Bamboo and is not “ferocious”.
3. Your main claim regarding C14 in fossils is contamination – the reason they find C14 in dinosaur bones is contamination. Isn’t it convenient that all dinosaur bones with C14 are contaminated, but none of the samples “widely used by the oil/gas/mining industries” (from your #1 point) are never contaminated? Those dates are always accurate, meaning never contaminated, right? This couldn’t be a case of special pleading, coupled with suppression of
evidence of non-contaminated fossils, could it?
You are correct however, that Carbon 14 is generally not used to date
fossils. That’s because Carbon 14 can only date things to about 80-100,000 years
old, which is much too short a time frame for evolutionists looking for dates greater than the alleged 65 million years ago when dinosaurs allegedly disappeared. Given
that fact, Carbon 14 should not be detectable in dinosaur bones. But what would
you detect if you did run a Carbon 14 test on dino bones? That is
the question that was being asked by doing the test. And the answer refutes an
old age for dino bones and the earth, so obviously old earthers are obliged to
come up with a reason for why the tests are wrong, and thus the claim of
"contamination" is common. If I were the lab performing such tests I’d be highly insulted at the accusation being made that all (not some but all) of my tests on
dino bones are invalid due to contamination. What does that say for the other
test being run?
So correct, fossils are generally not dated by C14, they’re dated via an
invalid circular reasoning process to come up with the date old earth believers
are looking for as I have pointed out
here.
4. Once again you’ve missed the point, so let me try to clarify it for you.
Regarding the word “dinosaur” – it was coined in 1842 by Richard Owen. The text of the Bible was completed by the end of the 1st century AD. So naturally the
word “dinosaur” doesn’t appear in the Bible since the word wasn’t invented until
more than a millennium after the Bible was completed. As for dinosaurs
themselves appearing in the Bible – most Bible scholars agree that dinosaurs are depicted in the Bible in Job 40.15 – 41:10 (Behemoth and Leviathan).
Your suggestion that cultures from history created dinosaurs from bones shows a striking ignorance of how difficult reconstructing dinosaurs from bones is. To get an idea, see my article
Does ancient art prove dinosaurs lived with humans? And by the way, it appears Dinosaur DNA has been found, though secular scientists won’t admit it yet. See DNA in Dinosaur Bones?
So overall I’d say David Rives’ article was very accurate while you’ve done your best to misconstrue the evidence.