Do Dinosaurs Fit into the Bible? Looking at God, The Universe and Dinosaurs

There is much you say that I agree with, but on the subject of time, or times of mankind and the times of God. There is scripture that tells us that God is eternal, thus, His time is also, eternal.” This time of God existed before the universe and mankind were created, and I believe that mankind steps over a line when they think they have God all figured out. In Isaiah 55:7-9 we read; “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

To me, this means that the thoughts of the smartest (and that does not always mean intelligent) man on earth could not reach the lowest level of God’s thoughts, let alone God’s highest thoughts. But on the subject of time, the same is implied; mankind can never really understand eternity because he has never experienced it. But to get down to biblical explanations of time where God is concerned, David wrote; “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.”

In the New Testament, Peter weighs in with; “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” I call your attention to; “be not ignorant of this one thing,” which means, know this without doubt! Then, this same length of time is brought forth again in Revelation 20:6; “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.” And to confuse others more, I tell people to consider verse 7, and tell me what you think; “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,”

However, I study a lot of books, but none as much as I do the Bible, and from what I get from these studies, as lengthy as it is, follows below.

Natural or scientific observations cannot be reconciled with heathenism or even polytheism, for scientific observations demand the assumption of one universal law. Solomon expressed this law thus;

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done:” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

The actual language of science, as expressed by Professor Thiele, a leading Continental astronomer in the early 1900’s, states that;

“Everything that exists, and everything that happens, exists or happens as a necessary consequence of a previous state of things. If a state of things is repeated in every detail, it must lead to exactly the same consequences. Any difference between the results of causes that are in part the same must be explainable by some difference in the other part of the causes.”

The law stated in the above words has been called the Law of Causality. It is used in Engineering and many other scientific occupations. It cannot be proved, but must be believed; in the same way as we believe the fundamental assumptions of religion, with which it is closely and intimately connected. The law of causality forces itself upon our belief. It may be denied in theory, but not in practice. Any person who denies it, will, if he is watchful enough, catch himself constantly asking himself, if no one else, why this has happened, and not that. But in that very question he bears witness to the law of causality. If we are consistently to deny the law of causality, we must repudiate all observation, and particularly all prediction based on past experience, as useless and misleading.

If we could imagine for an instant that the same complete combination of causes could have a definite number of different consequences, however small that number might be, and that among these the occurrence of the actual consequence was, in the old sense of the word, accidental, no observation would ever be of any particular value.

But, as Professor Thiele goes on to say–

“If the law of causality is acknowledged to be an assumption
which always holds good, then every observation gives us a
revelation which, when correctly appraised and compared with
others, teaches us the laws by which God rules the world.”

By what means have the modern scientists arrived at a position so different from that of the heathen? It cannot have been by any process of natural evolution that the intellectual standpoint which has made scientific observation possible should be derived from the spiritual standpoint of polytheism which rendered all scientific observation not only profane but useless.

In the old days the heathen in general regarded the heavenly host and the heavenly bodies as the heathen do today. However, by one man, Abraham, God created a nation, that being Israel, the home of the Jews (Hebrews), God related the startling truth that–

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”

This was preserved in the first words of the writings of Moses, their Law giver, and David declared, due to those writings;

“All the gods of the people are idols: but the Lord made the Heavens.” (Psalms 96:5)

From Moses the Law giver, the watchword was;

“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord.”

From these words the Hebrews not only learned a great spiritual truth, but derived intellectual freedom. For by these words they were taught that all the host of heaven and of earth were created things—merely “things,” not divinities–and not only that, but that the Creator was One God, not many gods; that there was but one law-giver; therefore there could be no conflict of laws. These first words of Genesis, then, may be called the charter of all the physical sciences, for by them is conferred freedom from all the bonds of unscientific superstition, and by them also do men know that consistent law holds throughout the whole universe. If the truth be told, it is the intellectual freedom of the Bible that the scientist of today inherits. They may not be able to rise to the spiritual standpoint of the teaching of the Bible, and consciously acknowledge that;

“Thou, even Thou, art Lord alone; Thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and Thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth Thee.” (Nehemiah 9:6)

But they must at least unconsciously assent to it, for it is on the first great fundamental assumption of a complete religion as stated in the first chapters of Genesis, that the fundamental assumption of all his scientific reasoning depends. There are other stories of the creation, but none as complete as that of Genesis. But problems with science will always remain in the mind of mankind. Why?

Science indeed can only consider the universe as a great machine which is in “working order,” and it concerns itself with the relations which some parts of the machine bear to other parts, and with the laws and manner of the “working” of the machine in those parts. The relations of the various parts, one to the other, and the way in which they work together, may afford some idea of the design and purpose of the machine, but it can give no information as to how the material of which it is composed came into existence, nor as to the method by which it was originally constructed. This includes the “Cell”, the “Atom” and all the parts and counterparts that have been discovered through research. Like the Universe, the body of mankind is a machine, though that may offend many, nevertheless, it is the truth. Once started, the machine comes under the scrutiny of science, but the actual starting lies outside its scope. And here we find a great difference between the science of God, and the science of man. God has the far greater power of understanding that man cannot comprehend, because God knows how to perform cosmic scientific creation as easily as folding a piece of material (Hebrews 1:12)

Men therefore cannot find out for themselves how the worlds were originally made, how the worlds were first moved, or how the spirit of man was first formed within him; and this, not merely because these beginnings of things were of necessity outside his experience, but also because beginnings, as such, must lie outside the law by which he reasons. By no process of research, therefore, can man find out for himself the facts that are stated in the first chapter of Genesis. They have been revealed, but science cannot inquire into them for the purpose of checking their accuracy; it must accept them, as it accepts the fundamental law that governs its own working, without the possibility of proof.

And this is what has been revealed to man:–that the heaven and the earth were not self-existent from all eternity, but were in their first beginning created by God. As the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews expresses it: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” And a further fact was revealed that man could not have found out for himself; is that this creation was made and finished in six acts, comprised in what the narrative denominates “days.” It has not been revealed whether the duration of these “days” can be expressed in any astronomical units of time as man understands it.

Since under these conditions science can afford no information, it is not to be wondered at that the hypotheses that have been framed from time to time to “explain” the first chapter of Genesis, or to express it in scientific terms, are not wholly satisfactory. At one time the chapter was interpreted to mean that the entire universe was called into existence about 6,000 years ago, in six days of twenty-four hours each. Later it was recognized that both geology and astronomy seemed to indicate the existence of matter for untold millions of years instead of some six thousand. It was then pointed out that, so far as the narrative was concerned, there was more than likely a period of duration that is impossible for man to examine between its first verse and its fourth; and some have suggested that the six days of creation were six days of twenty-four hours each, in which, after some great cataclysm of time between each ended 6,000 years ago, in which God shaped the face of the earth and replenished it for the habitation of man, the preceding geological ages being left entirely unnoticed. However, we have some that say man was in parts of the world more than 6,000 years ago.

Some writers have confined the cataclysm and renewal to a small portion of the earth’s surface–to “Eden,” and its neighborhood. Other commentators have laid stress on the truth revealed in Scripture that “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,” and have urged the argument that the six days of creation were really vast periods of time, during which the earth’s geological changes and the creation of its varied forms of life were running their course. Others, again, have urged that the six days of creation were six literal days, but instead of being consecutive were, as stated above, separated by long ages. And yet again, as no man was present during the creation period, save Adam, it has been suggested that the Divine revelation of it was given to Moses in seven successive visions or dreams, which constituted the “six days” in which the chief facts of creation were set forth, and a seventh day on which God rested.

So, until we can answer the above questions with facts instead of assumptions, we will never be able to completely understand the global warming and cooling that brings Ice ages, any more than we can understand the ways of God (Isaiah 55:8-9). All I can say with any known certainty is that God never changes (Malachi 3:6), but man is always chasing Change.

I was reading through the article and came across this comment. I don’t know if Mr. Pierce is still around, but I thought I’d give a brief answer to his questions for the benefit of anyone reading. First, the article being referenced (by Dave Woetzel) gives several examples of petroglyphs that appear to depict dinosaurs. Naturally, due to their assumption that dinosaurs went extinct about 65 mya, mainstream researchers reject this interpretation and try to find alternative explanations. None of these alternatives, however, are really plausible.

Mr. Pierce seems to argue that, since we find thousands of dinosaur fossils, it follows that natives would have seen thousands of dinosaurs, and of course, if they saw so many, surely there would be abundant drawings of them. The problem, of course, is that these fossils are from Flood layers; those thousands of species only existed before the Flood. A few dinosaurs were brought over on the Ark, but it seems likely that they could not cope well with the altered environment, and hence they began to die out. For this reason, dinosaurs were probably a rare sight for ancients after the Flood. There are still many potential depictions of dinosaurs across the globe. They are not all cave drawings; many take the form of carved figurines and ornamental embellishments. The article by Mr. Woetzel gives examples of many of these. However, dinosaurs were likely quite elusive, and drawings of them would be much less frequent than of the more common animals we see in those areas today.

So, in conclusion, Mr. Pierce gives no reason for rejecting the ostensible dinosaur depictions that have been found, and his reasons for expecting “hundreds of thousands if not millions of dinosaurs” in post-Flood times, and equally common drawings of them, are based on flawed logic and a misunderstanding of the YEC position.