Question asked about existence of dinosaurs

[Della]

Someone asked this question in Ask an Apologist, to which Michelle Arnold gave great answers:

I’m trying to answer a question posed to me by an atheist and I’m stumped. Why did God create dinosaurs? If prevailing evolutionary theories are true, why would God create dinosaurs that we would never see in person but only in the fossil record?

I wanted to talk about this a bit more. I would answer by also saying that since God had the creation of man in mind before he created the world, everything that came before us, all the ways the Earth was formed (such as the creation of the moon by Earth’s early collision with another planet ) and the changes in the environment and the fauna and flora were a preparation for our being here, so that the Earth we know could support us.

It is certainly one way of understanding why all the life that came before us existed. It doesn’t matter that we weren’t here to see them while they were alive. Man is still the only creature that has named them, studied them, and appreciated them for who and what they were.

 

[richbansha]

Yes. That is all perfectly sound. Well said on both accounts.

I would like to toss something else into the arena. Couldn’t dinosaurs have been created for their own sakes? Does all of creation have to be justified in terms of its utility to humanity?

I am not saying that I disagree with Della. What I can say is that the human-centered shirt is a little hard for me to button on sometimes. Maybe I spent too many years in the physical sciences. I don’t know.

 

[MonkeyTape]

richbansha:

Yes. That is all perfectly sound. Well said on both accounts.

I would like to toss something else into the arena. Couldn’t dinosaurs have been created for their own sakes? Does all of creation have to be justified in terms of its utility to humanity?

I am not saying that I disagree with Della. What I can say is that the human-centered shirt is a little hard for me to button on sometimes. Maybe I spent too many years in the physical sciences. I don’t know.

I do think humans were, and are, the only reason the World exists. The Angels are in Heaven, nothing else has a soul so will never be in Heaven, so all the planst and animals cease to exist when they die. So I can’t see a reason they would exist if they will never be in Heaven.

 

[Della]

richbansha:

Yes. That is all perfectly sound. Well said on both accounts.

Thank you. :tiphat:

I would like to toss something else into the arena. Couldn’t dinosaurs have been created for their own sakes? Does all of creation have to be justified in terms of its utility to humanity?

Oh yes, of course. God may have just wanted to have dinosaurs. I remember the first time I saw the scene in Jurassic Park in which we see off in the distance a herd of some sort of herbivore dinosaur (their name escapes me at the moment). I thought how beautiful they were and how regally they moved–something like our elephants. And I said, “Thank you, God for allowing me through this movie to share in the joy you must have had in the wonder of these marvelous creatures!” I was truly awe-struck in the most profound sense of the word.

I am not saying that I disagree with Della. What I can say is that the human-centered shirt is a little hard for me to button on sometimes. Maybe I spent too many years in the physical sciences. I don’t know.

I know what you mean. When I saw film of a male lion killing the cubs he hadn’t fathered I wanted to stop him and save those babies, I was outraged and disgusted. But then I thought, no he’s just doing what his DNA is telling him to do–what has kept him and his kind alive for as long as lions have existed. Still, I would try to rescue those cub, if I could, you know what I mean?

I think that is what Adam and Eve were supposed to do–to tame the wildness in creatures to change them into creatures of peace, of love, as Isaiah describes when he says that the wolf will lie down with the lamb. Just my own theory. No one has to accept it.

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

Something had to be made to provide earily fertizier seriously think about it.

 

[MonkeyTape]

Daniel Marsh:

Something had to be made to provide earily fertizier seriously think about it.

Absolutely, not to mention oil, minerals, diamonds, etc.

Without man none of this would have been necessary.