Did that "Ancient Serpent" Satan have anything to do with the Age of Dinosaurs?

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My kids and I have been watching a BBC series on dinosaurs, and it got me thinking----I have no answers, but a few thoughts are rolling around in my head:
  1. Satan is called “the Ancient Serpent” in Revelation, and he has always been associated from the beginning in Genesis with some sort of reptile-form, not a “snake” as his reptile-form had legs at first.
  2. Satan and his minions were cast down from Heaven to Earth at some point before Adam and Eve were created - “cast down to Earth” is significant, not to Hell, but to Earth. This could have been millions and millions of years before Adam and Eve.
  3. Satan hates God and his Creation, and hates the idea of humans being in the image and likeness of God, and especially hates the Incarnation (the vision of which is the reason for his rebellion according the some theologians, including St. Thomas Aquinas?)
Ok, here’s where I inject conjecture:
4) After being cast down to Earth, Satan somehow influences the life already created by God on Earth (somehow can include a lot of things, known and unknown). He causes to be made (not by creating, only by bending or corrupting) a race of super giant Reptiles, which take over the entire planet (Age of Dinosaurs) - Why? To make the planet completely inhospitable for humans. Not only for humans, but for mammals in general, since humans are mammals, he extends his hatred for us and Christ even that far.
  1. The story of lowly mammal critters struggling to survive in the footsteps of gargantuan Reptiles stomping and swooping and swimming all over the planet, and then the subsequent (unexplained) decline and extinction (defeat?) of the Reptile race, leaving room for mammals to rise to prominence, and, in time, for humans to be created and flourish, sounds to me like a great story, which mirrors the battle between Satan and God, and God winning by the small and weak (mammals) over the strong and fierce (dinosaurs) - it also incidentally sounds like the way Christianity took over the pagan Roman Empire and spread to the whole world, and in so many other ways - it had God’s fingerprints all over it, as they say.
Thinking about all this, I feel there must be some connection between Satan and the dinosaurs, and the battle for this planet which began long before Adam and Eve, and which will never end until the “Ancient Serpent” is overthrown in the Final Battle.

Lots of thoughts, hopefully someone else will find this interesting too : )
 
johndelacruz said:
My kids and I have been watching a BBC series on dinosaurs, and it got me thinking----I have no answers, but a few thoughts are rolling around in my head:
  1. Satan is called “the Ancient Serpent” in Revelation, and he has always been associated from the beginning in Genesis with some sort of reptile-form, not a “snake” as his reptile-form had legs at first.
Click to expand...
Which reptile form are we talking about?
  1. Satan and his minions were cast down from Heaven to Earth at some point before Adam and Eve were created - “cast down to Earth” is significant, not to Hell, but to Earth. This could have been millions and millions of years before Adam and Eve.
Click to expand...
Where did you get this information?
  1. Satan hates God and his Creation, and hates the idea of humans being in the image and likeness of God, and especially hates the Incarnation (the vision of which is the reason for his rebellion according the some theologians, including St. Thomas Aquinas?)
Click to expand...
Ok, here’s where I inject conjecture:
4) After being cast down to Earth, Satan somehow influences the life already created by God on Earth (somehow can include a lot of things, known and unknown). He causes to be made (not by creating, only by bending or corrupting) a race of super giant Reptiles, which take over the entire planet (Age of Dinosaurs) - Why? To make the planet completely inhospitable for humans. Not only for humans, but for mammals in general, since humans are mammals, he extends his hatred for us and Christ even that far.
Click to expand...
  1. The story of lowly mammal critters struggling to survive in the footsteps of gargantuan Reptiles stomping and swooping and swimming all over the planet, and then the subsequent (unexplained) decline and extinction (defeat?) of the Reptile race, leaving room for mammals to rise to prominence, and, in time, for humans to be created and flourish, sounds to me like a great story, which mirrors the battle between Satan and God, and God winning by the small and weak (mammals) over the strong and fierce (dinosaurs) - it also incidentally sounds like the way Christianity took over the pagan Roman Empire and spread to the whole world, and in so many other ways - it had God’s fingerprints all over it, as they say.
Click to expand...
Thinking about all this, I feel there must be some connection between Satan and the dinosaurs, and the battle for this planet which began long before Adam and Eve, and which will never end until the “Ancient Serpent” is overthrown in the Final Battle.
Click to expand...
Lots of thoughts, hopefully someone else will find this interesting too : )
Click to expand...
Interesting, yes. Fascinating, in fact.

But… are you suggesting that dinosaurs lived at the same time as humans? :confused:

And… why was Lucifer cast out of heaven? I thought the story had something to do with being jealous of mankind or something, but how could he have been jealous of mankind millions of years before it actually existed?
 
Interesting theory! Sort of even fits with the folks that think “aliens are reptiles” and those that think “alien reptiles are demons”.

I have wondered if evolution/big bang could be a result of The Fall. You know, Earth was paradise, perfection then sin entered and “Bang!” lol

Clearly I like a theory that covers creation and evolution…🙂
 
I think it’s very interesting how the huge and mighty reptilian dinosaurs were the ones to be destroyed from a fiery comet from the heavens, and the lowly creatures were the ones that continued to live on. There are theological lessons to be gained even from ancient history.

You might be reading too deeply into it though. :eek:. I think the dinosaurs were dinosaurs.
 
johndelacruz said:
My kids and I have been watching a BBC series on dinosaurs, and it got me thinking----I have no answers, but a few thoughts are rolling around in my head:
  1. Satan is called “the Ancient Serpent” in Revelation, and he has always been associated from the beginning in Genesis with some sort of reptile-form, not a “snake” as his reptile-form had legs at first.
  2. Satan and his minions were cast down from Heaven to Earth at some point before Adam and Eve were created - “cast down to Earth” is significant, not to Hell, but to Earth. This could have been millions and millions of years before Adam and Eve.
  3. Satan hates God and his Creation, and hates the idea of humans being in the image and likeness of God, and especially hates the Incarnation (the vision of which is the reason for his rebellion according the some theologians, including St. Thomas Aquinas?)
Ok, here’s where I inject conjecture:
4) After being cast down to Earth, Satan somehow influences the life already created by God on Earth (somehow can include a lot of things, known and unknown). He causes to be made (not by creating, only by bending or corrupting) a race of super giant Reptiles, which take over the entire planet (Age of Dinosaurs) - Why? To make the planet completely inhospitable for humans. Not only for humans, but for mammals in general, since humans are mammals, he extends his hatred for us and Christ even that far.
  1. The story of lowly mammal critters struggling to survive in the footsteps of gargantuan Reptiles stomping and swooping and swimming all over the planet, and then the subsequent (unexplained) decline and extinction (defeat?) of the Reptile race, leaving room for mammals to rise to prominence, and, in time, for humans to be created and flourish, sounds to me like a great story, which mirrors the battle between Satan and God, and God winning by the small and weak (mammals) over the strong and fierce (dinosaurs) - it also incidentally sounds like the way Christianity took over the pagan Roman Empire and spread to the whole world, and in so many other ways - it had God’s fingerprints all over it, as they say.
Thinking about all this, I feel there must be some connection between Satan and the dinosaurs, and the battle for this planet which began long before Adam and Eve, and which will never end until the “Ancient Serpent” is overthrown in the Final Battle.

Lots of thoughts, hopefully someone else will find this interesting too : )
Click to expand...
I found this post interesting. Its a theory though.
 
johndelacruz said:
My kids and I have been watching a BBC series on dinosaurs, and it got me thinking----I have no answers, but a few thoughts are rolling around in my head:
  1. Satan is called “the Ancient Serpent” in Revelation, and he has always been associated from the beginning in Genesis with some sort of reptile-form, not a “snake” as his reptile-form had legs at first.
  2. Satan and his minions were cast down from Heaven to Earth at some point before Adam and Eve were created - “cast down to Earth” is significant, not to Hell, but to Earth. This could have been millions and millions of years before Adam and Eve.
  3. Satan hates God and his Creation, and hates the idea of humans being in the image and likeness of God, and especially hates the Incarnation (the vision of which is the reason for his rebellion according the some theologians, including St. Thomas Aquinas?)
Ok, here’s where I inject conjecture:
4) After being cast down to Earth, Satan somehow influences the life already created by God on Earth (somehow can include a lot of things, known and unknown). He causes to be made (not by creating, only by bending or corrupting) a race of super giant Reptiles, which take over the entire planet (Age of Dinosaurs) - Why? To make the planet completely inhospitable for humans. Not only for humans, but for mammals in general, since humans are mammals, he extends his hatred for us and Christ even that far.
  1. The story of lowly mammal critters struggling to survive in the footsteps of gargantuan Reptiles stomping and swooping and swimming all over the planet, and then the subsequent (unexplained) decline and extinction (defeat?) of the Reptile race, leaving room for mammals to rise to prominence, and, in time, for humans to be created and flourish, sounds to me like a great story, which mirrors the battle between Satan and God, and God winning by the small and weak (mammals) over the strong and fierce (dinosaurs) - it also incidentally sounds like the way Christianity took over the pagan Roman Empire and spread to the whole world, and in so many other ways - it had God’s fingerprints all over it, as they say.
Thinking about all this, I feel there must be some connection between Satan and the dinosaurs, and the battle for this planet which began long before Adam and Eve, and which will never end until the “Ancient Serpent” is overthrown in the Final Battle.

Lots of thoughts, hopefully someone else will find this interesting too : )
Click to expand...
Sounds like a good plot for a fiction movie.

I don’t see anywhere that the devil was caste physically earth into some creature with a body like a dinosaurs.

Most dinosaurs were small and many plant eaters.

Many were more like birds than lizards

Mammals had no problem surviving with dinosaurs. In fact their small size helped them out compete the gigantic dinosaurs.

If Satan can talk to God like in Job, then I don’t think he was somehow confined to an animal like a dinosaur.

Interesting.
 
Jon_S said:
Sounds like a good plot for a fiction movie.

I don’t see anywhere that the devil was caste physically earth into some creature with a body like a dinosaurs.

Most dinosaurs were small and many plant eaters.

Many were more like birds than lizards

Mammals had no problem surviving with dinosaurs. In fact their small size helped them out compete the gigantic dinosaurs.

If Satan can talk to God like in Job, then I don’t think he was somehow confined to an animal like a dinosaur.

Interesting.
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Dinosaurs were not like mammals. Dinosaurs did not reach puberty and stop growing, they grew their entire life, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The very large dinosaurs were old old dinosaurs, so they would be generally much slower because of their age and size than their youthful smaller counterparts. Mammals would have feared the smaller younger versions than the bigger versions. But that is probably not BBC endorsed since it doesn’t have enthrall and the “oooh” factor required for maintaining audience interest.
 
Darryl_B said:
Dinosaurs were not like mammals. Dinosaurs did not reach puberty and stop growing, they grew their entire life, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The very large dinosaurs were old old dinosaurs, so they would be generally much slower because of their age and size than their youthful smaller counterparts. Mammals would have feared the smaller younger versions than the bigger versions. But that is probably not BBC endorsed since it doesn’t have enthrall and the “oooh” factor required for maintaining audience interest.
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So a velociraptor that lived long enough turned into a T Rex??

Seriously?

There were many species of small dinosaurs just like there are small birds and big birds and small lizards and big lizards.

does a small backyard lizard turn into a larger species like an iguana.

No of course not, even if both species grow their whole lives. They have different growth rates and sizes.

I don’t think mammals feared a baby duck billed dinosaur anymore than an adult…they both ate plants.
 
Dinosaurs were dinosaurs. As animals they were neither righteous nor evil, just animals. Dinosaur blood lines are not extinct, their descendants live on in the beautiful birds we willingly feed, just to watch them flutter about and fill our hearts with joy.

I will be honest, “serpents” are cast as the bad guys because HUMANS have an inborn fear of reptiles. Living in Africa with its multitinous number of aggressive venomous snakes and crocodiles will do this to you. I refuse to believe they are cursed by God or filled with Satan. They are just animals.
 
Christ_is_Risen said:
Dinosaurs were dinosaurs. As animals they were neither righteous nor evil, just animals. Dinosaur blood lines are not extinct, their descendants live on in the beautiful birds we willingly feed, just to watch them flutter about and fill our hearts with joy.

I will be honest, “serpents” are cast as the bad guys because HUMANS have an inborn fear of reptiles. Living in Africa with its multitinous number of aggressive venomous snakes and crocodiles will do this to you. I refuse to believe they are cursed by God or filled with Satan. They are just animals.
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I agree.

Satan may have manifested as a serpent, or it may be part of the primal fear if snakes humans have that equated the evil one with snakes in genesis.

It’s interesting. They have done studied with very young children and snakes and they almost universally are afraid if snakes. It is in our nature.
 
Jon_S said:
So a velociraptor that lived long enough turned into a T Rex??

Seriously?

There were many species of small dinosaurs just like there are small birds and big birds and small lizards and big lizards.

does a small backyard lizard turn into a larger species like an iguana.

No of course not, even if both species grow their whole lives. They have different growth rates and sizes.

I don’t think mammals feared a baby duck billed dinosaur anymore than an adult…they both ate plants.
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Dont quite know how you can interpret species change from what I said.
 
I do agree that dinosaurs were just dinosaurs, only brute beasts, animals, neither good nor evil, whether fashioned by Satan or not -

My opening post put forth a theory, one I find interesting, not because it holds up to close scrutiny in all its details or implications, but only because it makes me think about that part of Earth history a bit differently, and maybe come up with other theories about it and other things, just breaking out of the purely scientific mode of thinking, or the rather superficial Evangelical “Creationism” mode (i.e. dinosaurs lived with people and were on Noah’s Ark etc)

It seems to me, if science is to be believed in the bare facts about the age of Earth’s history and life on Earth etc, the timeline since the creation of Earth until the advent of humans was very very long, millions and millions and millions of years - I used to have a problem with that idea as a Southern Baptist, but as a Catholic I don’t, I see no conflict with it and Genesis.

Anyway, it seems that God took an awfully long time in preparing this planet for us humans to live on. We’ve been here a relatively short time (30,000 years?) compared to the hundreds of millions of years the Earth was “cooking” and other strange and marvelous life forms were living and dying out -

God is supremely Wise, and of course He has His reasons for how He does things, and we will never understand it all. I don’t understand how other mere humans build a laptop computer, how am I supposed to understand how and why God created certain creatures, or much less this planet or the entire universe? : )

I’m conflicted about the dinosaurs - on the one hand, I like the Satan-vs-God theory and their part in that, but…they are truly marvelous and awe-inspiring creatures. If God did make them as they were, like any other animals he’s made, he certainly had his reasons. One reason I can think of is that it helped prepare the ground, the soil, of Earth, for later life and human habitation. Dinosaurs lived on this planet for hundreds of millions of years - that’s a whole lot of biological matter (digested vegetation, dung, decayed carcasses, etc) that got laid down in layer upon layer in the ground, over millions and millions of years. It enriched the soil, and was also converted to carbon, coal etc. over time. Maybe that was the key reason God had those creatures on Earth for so long, that and also that they displayed his sheer creativity and power - and when he was done with them, or rather they had fulfilled their purpose, he wiped them out with a comet impacting the Gulf of Mexico, then it was on to the next stage of Earth’s development - all with the aim of preparing the Earth for us humans, and ultimately the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. God is never in a hurry to do something, and he always does it in the best and most perfect way - dinosaurs were, in His great Wisdom, somehow part of that perfect plan.
 
Jon_S said:
In response to you saying big dinosaurs were just really old small dinosaurs.
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I said dinosaurs don’t stop growing like mammals do and in the case of mammals they actually shrink. I did not say a cat grows into a horse grows into an elephant.
 
Darryl_B said:
I said dinosaurs don’t stop growing like mammals do and in the case of mammals they actually shrink. I did not say a cat grows into a horse grows into an elephant.
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Most dinosaur experts believe that dinosaurs had growth and development patterns more similar to today’s birds and mammals than reptiles. They grew fast, stopped growing when they reached adult size and had relatively short life spans for such massive creatures, pretty much the exact opposite of large reptiles.

I know it is only Wikipedia, but it is a good place to start.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiology_of_dinosaurs#Growth_and_lifecycle
 
Darryl_B said:
I said dinosaurs don’t stop growing like mammals do and in the case of mammals they actually shrink. I did not say a cat grows into a horse grows into an elephant.
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Ok,

I guess I misunderstood!!
 
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