Dinosaurs and the Bible

  • Thread starter Thread starter savedbygrace92
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Robertanthony said:
Would it be correct to say that Adam was not the first man per se but that he was the first man to be infused with a God-given, immortal soul? And that distinction made him quintessentially different from other fellow men who may have lived in his day and age?
Click to expand...
Could a creature meaningfully be called a man if it did not have a rational soul? Not that that would change the fact that there were no men at the time of the known non-avian dinosaurs.
 
edwest2 said:
According to what the Church teaches, no. There is certainly no scientific basis for this idea since science cannot study the soul or anything supernatural.

Peace,
Ed
Click to expand...
I’m not sure if being immaterial automatically means the human soul is supernatural. Certainly the souls of other living things are natural, and it is a part of human nature to have a rational, immortal soul. Then again the human soul cannot arise from purely natural causes but must be created directly by God at the moment of conception, and so I could see calling it “supernatural” in the sense of having a supernatural origin. In this sense though, the entire physical universe as a whole would also be supernatural.

Also, while empirical science cannot study the human soul directly, it can study the body of which the soul is the form, and furthermore can study human psychology. I’m not sure there is any general knowledge concerning the natural human soul that could not be potentially known from this kind of study (with the assumptions and degrees of uncertainty always present in this kind of science). The grace that God gives to the soul would be another, truly supernatural matter which really would be beyond the purview of science, apart from some of the effects of actual grace.
 
buffalo said:
Recent Dinosaurs in the Amazon News Report
Click to expand...
Amusing, but notice how stylized the people and other animals in the painting are. Also apparently sauropods were unable to hold their necks upright as they are often portrayed in drawing and fictional movies. Whether this painting is a fraud (could a 5000 year-old painting survive in such excellent condition outside like that, even if it’s overhung by rocks?) or a creatively interpreted authentic painting, I think I detect some influences of Jurassic Park.

Furthermore, the narrator makes a logical jump from the people in the picture apparently hunting the animal to the people who made the picture, or others of their culture, having seen and hunted the animal. If this is really a 5000 year-old Amazonian culture, then we would know very little about them. Maybe the picture represents a mythological event involving a mythological creature, whether related or not related to the mythological creature asserted by the narrator as having been described by natives in the 1940s. As for that, we conveniently aren’t given any quote of the actual description of the mythological creature, nor the name of the explorer, nor even the name of the river- just an assertion that the description “fits” a sauropod. Heck, if both the legend and the painting are authentic (big “ifs”), the legend may be based on people of this later culture seeing the painting, or may be entirely unrelated, or again may be due to actual retained cultural knowledge, but of a mythological creature.

I’m not saying it’s absolutely impossible for non-avian dinosaurs to have survived into recent times. But I would think critically about the evidence provided for these kinds of claims, as well as the credibility of the source. If real evidence for dinosaur coexistence with humans ever surfaces, I think we’re sure to hear about it from mainstream sources.
 
Aelred_Minor said:
Amusing, but notice how stylized the people and other animals in the painting are. Also apparently sauropods were unable to hold their necks upright as they are often portrayed in drawing and fictional movies. Whether this painting is a fraud (could a 5000 year-old painting survive in such excellent condition outside like that, even if it’s overhung by rocks?) or a creatively interpreted authentic painting, I think I detect some influences of Jurassic Park.

Furthermore, the narrator makes a logical jump from the people in the picture apparently hunting the animal to the people who made the picture, or others of their culture, having seen and hunted the animal. If this is really a 5000 year-old Amazonian culture, then we would know very little about them. Maybe the picture represents a mythological event involving a mythological creature, whether related or not related to the mythological creature asserted by the narrator as having been described by natives in the 1940s. As for that, we conveniently aren’t given any quote of the actual description of the mythological creature, nor the name of the explorer, nor even the name of the river- just an assertion that the description “fits” a sauropod. Heck, if both the legend and the painting are authentic (big “ifs”), the legend may be based on people of this later culture seeing the painting, or may be entirely unrelated, or again may be due to actual retained cultural knowledge, but of a mythological creature.

I’m not saying it’s absolutely impossible for non-avian dinosaurs to have survived into recent times. But I would think critically about the evidence provided for these kinds of claims, as well as the credibility of the source. If real evidence for dinosaur coexistence with humans ever surfaces, I think we’re sure to hear about it from mainstream sources.
Click to expand...
There are a bunch more paintings and artwork.

In addition, now we have soft tissue that supposedly lasted 65 million years.
 
God could clearly present his plan for salvation but how we came into existence had to be put into allegorical terms? The bible is a book for all times. It wasn’t written just for those in the ancient world but for future generations as well. A real person named Adam caused original sin but everything else surrounding that fact is a poem or fabricated story?

God really didn’t do any miracles in the OT, they are just stories to explain natural phenomenon. Now or then we can’t understand anything. What a mess.
 
savedbygrace92 said:
So I was watching Jurassic Park earlier and that got me thinking about how dinosaurs are treated in Scripture.

I know there’s some mention of dinosaur-like creatures in the Old Testament and then I did some research. Or rather, I googled it and found out that there are Christians who believe dinosaurs may have co-existed with humans at some point and that the earth is only 5000 years old and that carbon dating apparently has some huge flaw.

And now I’m just confused and wondering how exactly can we reconcile the ideas we know about dinosaurs (they lived 65 million years ago and were probably wiped out by a comet or something) and the Bible (the Creation story).
Click to expand...
David Gregson answered a similar question about dinosaurs on the EWTN Q&A message board:
There is no explicit mention of dinosaurs, if only because the word wasn’t invented until the 19th century. Unidentified creatures of great size are mentioned under the names “leviathan” (Psalm 104:26) and “behemoth” (Job 40:15), but the apparent fact that no dinosaurs survived until man appeared on the earth makes it unlikely these names refer to them.
Click to expand...
Most Catholic theologians accept scientific estimates on the age of the earth (4.5 billion years) and on the period of the dinosaurs (200 - 70 million years ago). The first evidence of modern man is no earlier than 130 thousand years ago. The dinosaurs being long gone by then, the Bible has no particular interest in them.
Click to expand...
The Bible is a collection of divinely inspired texts, revealing our original relationship with God, our fall from grace, and our way of return to God (through Christ). Anything that doesn’t pertain to these fundamentals falls outside the purpose for which the Bible was written.
Click to expand...
But if there is no mention of dinosaurs in the Bible, neither is there any conflict between Bible and the fossil record. “And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds’” (Gen 1:24). This statement would cover every kind of land animal, including dinosaurs. Then finally, on the same “day” of creation, viz., the sixth, but many millions of years later, God created man, unique among all creatures of earth, as being made in God’s image (Gen 1:26).
Click to expand...
ewtn.com/vexperts/showmessage.asp?number=594652&Pg=F…&Pgnu=&recnu=
 
The big challenge relating to dinosaurs pre dating man and dying out before him is found in Romans 5:12 Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and deWhich trip was it?ath through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.

If sin came into the world through Adam’s original sin, and death entered the world from that sin, then how did dinosaurs die prior to Adam’s sin?

A priest proposed a possible solution. Adam’s sin affected creation retroactively – Just as Jesus’ death on the cross brought salvation retroactively to those in the Old Testament.
 
Conorcrrll said:
I wonder what you think about the following, with regard to evolution and also the idea of a being of human form without a soul.

One of our Dogmas of faith is that Mary is THE Immaculate conception i.e. the only Immaculate conception. For either of the above ideas to be true the Immaculate conception would have to be false, because Adam and Eve would have to have been immaculately conceived also, thus making Mary AN Immaculate conception instead of THE Immaculate conception.

One thing that some have said in opposition to what I have said above is that Jesus was an Immaculate conception, but obviously not, as he was not conceived, he assumed human form.

I look forward to hearing anyones thoughts on the matter.
Click to expand...
Adam and Eve were not conceived, they were made from clay; thus they can never be an Immaculate Conception. Only Mother Mary holds that title.
 
Chris_Patterson said:
The big challenge relating to dinosaurs pre dating man and dying out before him is found in Romans 5:12 Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.

If sin came into the world through Adam’s original sin, and death entered the world from that sin, then how did dinosaurs die prior to Adam’s sin?

A priest proposed a possible solution. Adam’s sin affected creation retroactively – Just as Jesus’ death on the cross brought salvation retroactively to those in the Old Testament.
Click to expand...
Read your Bible quote: “death spread to all men”. It does not say, “death spread to all men and to all animals”.

rossum
 
Just a heads up I use The Douay-Rheims Version of the Bible.
feed_me said:
God created the earth in 6 days, and rested on the 7th. 1 day is like a thousand years to the Lord 2 peter 3:8.The point is, God gave the the world 6 days to be evil from Adam and Eve till he returns, then he gives us a 7th day or as Rev 20 puts it a thousand year rein of peace from the devils that roam the earth. So, yes the Universe was created in 6000 years, and God rested on the 7th day or 1000 years. God rode the Brontosaurus, walked with the raptor, flew on a pterodactyl, and tamed T-Rex. 👍 😃
Click to expand...
One problem with this theory is:

In Genesis 1:
[5] And he called the light Day, and the darkness Night; and there was evening and morning one day.
Click to expand...
[8] And God called the firmament, Heaven; and the evening and morning were the second day.
Click to expand...
[13] And the evening and the morning were the third day.
Click to expand...
[19] And the evening and morning were the fourth day.
Click to expand...
[23] And the evening and morning were the fifth day.
Click to expand...
[31] And God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. And the evening and morning were the sixth day.
Click to expand...
So, it was established that one day equals one evening and one morning.

Therefore, if dinosaurs were real,(I am not saying they are,) then the would be alive at the time of Adam.

Secondly,

In Isaias 27:
[1] In that day the Lord with his hard, and great, and strong sword shall visit leviathan the bar serpent, and leviathan the crooked serpent, and shall slay the whale that is in the see.
Click to expand...
So Isaias, acknowledges that there is creature greater than a whale. It can be a devil by “bar serpent” and “crooked serpent” but if it is not. It may be a dinosaur. 🤷

God Bless.
 
TheFollower said:
Just a heads up I use The Douay-Rheims Version of the Bible.

One problem with this theory is:

In Genesis 1:

So, it was established that one day equals one evening and one morning.

Therefore, if dinosaurs were real,(I am not saying they are,) then the would be alive at the time of Adam.

Secondly,

In Isaias 27:

So Isaias, acknowledges that there is creature greater than a whale. It can be a devil by “bar serpent” and “crooked serpent” but if it is not. It may be a dinosaur. 🤷

God Bless.
Click to expand...
Not true, there is a morning and evening in a thousand years, there is just lots more, God was talking about his morning and evening, meaning the same way that a morning and evening is for him 1 day is a thousand years to him, the same is for us, except that we get many upon many. Dinos do exist, it takes time for them to reproduce, like any species.

Do you know how fast a species can reproduce and how many can be produced in a thousand years?

The firmament is the area between our atmospher and blackness on the edge of the universe. God created a greater light(sun) and a lesser light(moon) to govern the day and night. He created the stars(other worlds and galaxies) and set them in the firmament. Gen 1: 14-- read that whole section and you will see.

The area between the ground and atmospher is called the lower waters, then the firmament(2nd waters) and the outside of the Universe, or the black space where no light reaches is the 3rd waters. God calls them waters because he said in the beginning darkness covers the face of the deep Gen 1: 3. It is the eternal sea.
 
buffalo said:
I thought you were aware that it is now doubtful birds descended from dino’s.
Click to expand...
This is a strange statement, but let me point out that this thread has been moved to the Sacred Scripture forum, where discussion of evolution is banned. This doesn’t, I assume, mean we can’t discuss the age of the universe, timing of extinctions, taxonomy, that sort of thing, as long as we don’t directly get into evolution.
 
buffalo said:
I thought you were aware that it is now doubtful birds descended from dino’s.
Click to expand...
If this is Ruben’s research again, then his results are doubtful.

Conclusions

Considering the dubious nature of Ruben’s central conclusions regarding the physiology of Theropoda, detailed herein, the argument that endothermy in theropods has been falsified must be seen as speculative at this time. Until further data comes to light, the matter will remain open to contention.
Ruben is in a minority. That doesn’t mean he is wrong, but it doesn’t mean that he is right either. Parts of his work are weak. The current consensus is that the dino-bird link is still strong.

rossum
 
rossum said:
Read your Bible quote: “death spread to all men”. It does not say, “death spread to all men and to all animals”.

rossum
Click to expand...
True. But it is my understanding that the teaching of the Church is that Death and Decay came into the world as a result of Original Sin.

Quoting from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
400 The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination. Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man. **Because of man, creation is now subject “to its bondage to decay”.**Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will “return to the ground”,for out of it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history.

That paragraph Quotes Romans 8:21. I’ll quote from RSVCE

Romans 8:19-23 For creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the **creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay **and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves…

What I take from that, and what I have at least thought was church teaching, was that death entered the world because of original sin. Now, I’m one of those who believes dinosaurs walked the earth prior to Adam and Eve. But their death prior to Adam’s sin posed a bit of a struggle for me, since I believe death entered the world due to Adam’s sin. The two possible resolutions to that struggle (if we assume dinosaurs predated Adam) might be 1) What the Scriptures and the Church really teach relate only to the death of man 2) Adam’s Sin somehow retroactivally caused death and corruption to enter into the pre-Adam world.

I’m open to be educated as to what the Church specifically teaches on this particular issue. Solution #2 seems more satisfying to me, since I think we often get tripped up by linear thinking during times when Scripture is not written linearly.

In His love,
 
Chris_Patterson said:
True. But it is my understanding that the teaching of the Church is that Death and Decay came into the world as a result of Original Sin.
Click to expand...
You might find that the plants eaten by Adam and all the pre-Fall animals disagree with you. Plants can die as well as animals. Bacteria can die as well, and enormous numbers of them die inside our stomachs every time we eat anything. The cells of your body are dying every day of your life, and new cells are grown to replace them. Death is part of life, and inseparable from it. If Adam’s cells did not die, then he was not human, but something else.

It is not correct to believe that the pre-Fall world was perfect. Was the serpent perfect? It was there before Eve even thought of taking the fruit. Also look at Genesis 2:18 “And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone” (emphasis added) In a perfect world, there cannot be anything “not good”.
Quoting from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
400 … Death makes its entrance into human history.
Click to expand...
This supports my point. Death comes to humans as a result of Adam’s sin. The CCC does not deal with animal death.

rossum
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top