How Do Dinosaurs Fit Into Genesis?

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ROFL! That’s great.

I love the first movie but I thought every other Jurassic Park movie was awful. I feel asleep during The Lost World, and walked out on JP III.
 
Right. The question is whether that story was ever meant to be perceived as the literal truth.
 
St. Augustine explains an acceptable interpretation of Creation in Book 6 of his “Literal Meaning of Genesis,": which I think is helpful here.

He explains that the six days represent not literal days, but a scheme or plan of creation. The actual creation during those “days” was instantaneous and of things in potency and causation, but not necessarily their final visible form which would be shaped later over time. For example, he places the actual formation of man’s body after the seventh day (which explains why there is two creation accounts of man in Genesis):

St. Augustine
There can be no doubt, then, that the work whereby man was formed from the slime of the earth and a wife fashioned for him from his side belongs not to that creation by which all thing were made together, after completing which, God rested, but to that work of God which takes place with the unfolding of the ages as He works even now.
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This interpretation works well with concepts like an old universe, the big bang, and evolution–ie God created all things at once in potency (the big bang) and then formed them over time (old universe, evolution). St. Augustine elsewhere compares this formation of things to how mountains and rivers are shaped over time. Even with man, Genesis doesn’t say how long it took God to form man from the slime of the earth after the seventh day.

I think dinosaurs are simply part of this “shaping” that continues even today. From what I understand, they may have been part of the shaping of birds.
 
That’s either a scientific revolution that’s being kept incredibly quiet, or an error that was not subsequently reproduced. Guess which is more likely?
 
Usagi said:
That’s either a scientific revolution that’s being kept incredibly quiet, or an error that was not subsequently reproduced. Guess which is more likely?
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Soft tissue findings were all over the news. The thing is, more and more are being found.
 
 
This was my post.

“We have found dino soft tissue and dino bones C14 dated to 28,000 years ago.”​

I did not claim the soft tissue was dated. We found both soft dino tissue and we found bones that dated to 28,000 ya.

The problem with soft tissue is one has to overcome the long held understanding that it doesn’t last 65 million years, not even a million.
 
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Wait. So the Jewish people, the ones you know who kind of WROTE Genesis, and other texts, in all sorts of styles, allegory, poetry, songs, prayers, proverbs, etc.and who themselves never claimed Genesis as a straight out ‘history text’ must not know beans, then, and all the former Jews who became Christians and passed along their understanding of the Old Testament (that foreshadows Christ) must not have known anything about the text or said anything. Christians must have just grabbed the text and just thrown darts or something to come up with ‘theories’. . .

Oh wait. It seems to me that people who, when given actual commentaries from Catholic sources regarding material which Catholics claim as part of their sacred texts, throw out ‘mere speculation’ are the ones who are just throwing darts out there.
 
Thanks everyone for your (name removed by moderator)ut.

What I’m getting at is I thought during the time of Original Justice there was complete harmony, no killing. Yet dinosaurs killed prey to eat. How does this fit into the theological Original Justice?
 
MasterHaster said:
Are you suggesting controversy and confusion are positive?
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Is this forum ‘positive’? Q.E.D. 🤣
MasterHaster said:
A false narrative is a story that you perceive as being true but has little basis in reality.
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Wait a minute – you haven’t defined the narrative, you’ve described yourself !! By this definition, everyone who sees the creation stories as figurative narratives therefore does not see them as “false narratives”!

How about this: a ‘false narrative’ is one which attempts to mislead by telling untruths. By this definition… Genesis is not a false narrative.
PrisonerOfChrist said:
What I’m getting at is I thought during the time of Original Justice there was complete harmony, no killing. Yet dinosaurs killed prey to eat. How does this fit into the theological Original Justice?
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Does that apply to all creation, or just to man?
PrisonerOfChrist said:
I understand from this verse all creatures were originally created to be plant eaters and it wasn’t until after the fall they ate meat.
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If you take the story with a strict literalistic interpretation? Sure. The Church doesn’t require us to adopt that hermeneutic, though. So… no – we don’t have to believe that all animals were plant eaters and then suddenly got a taste for flesh after the fall of Adam.
 
Does this thread have to turn into cringeworthy bad science regarding dino dating.
 
I think Genesis is more myth than natural history. I do not try to reconcile the two at all.
 
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Gorgias said:
So… no – we don’t have to believe that all animals were plant eaters and then suddenly got a taste for flesh after the fall of Adam.
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I do love that fact that it seems to support a vegan plant based life style. 🙂
 
Shakuhachi said:
I do love that fact that it seems to support a vegan plant based life style.
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Except that it doesn’t. What it does do, though, is give folks who want to introduce anachronism into the text an opportunity to do so. “Veganism”, as such, isn’t part of the Scriptural narrative. Vegans in the 21st century, though, look back and eisegetically, read it into the text.
 
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