Age Of Earth: Fossil Evidence Versus Religion

[McAvennie]

OK, don't want to offend anyone here. This is just some questions and opinions of mine and I realise that a lot of people think the opposite so this isn't an attack just an open debate. It is a sensitive issue and I don't mean to offend anyone or appear to be mocking anyone's belief's.

Basically, an argument I have, which may well be flawed this is why I ask, is that surely the discovery of dinosaur bones disproves the existence of God?

The bible states that God created the earth and that the first people he created were Adam and Eve and they were the first things on earth. Not sure of how many years BC this was, or how many millions and millions of years ago dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Does the scientifically proven age of dinosaur bones and primitive man not predate when Adam and Eve were born. If Adam and Eve were the first people on earth who were these neanderthal primitives whose bones have been found? Why aren't they mentioned in the bible? If dinosaurs roamed the earth before any man was here why isn't that mentioned in the bible, why would it say that Adam and Eve were the first people on earth if there had been people before? Why would they 'cover up' the existence of earlier life if it was known about?

Basically there is no mention of dinosaurs because they were not known about at the time. The more recent discovery of dinosaurs and how old they are surely exposes that the beleif that the earth was created by an all-powerful God.

To me this is obvious and I find it hard to beleive that so many intelligent people who would not be fooled over so many issues do not see this but still stick by their religious beleifs in the face of this evidence.

It seems to me that the bible and its stories were made up for whatever reason by people who didn't know any better, not in an insulting way but in the way that people used to think the world was flat. We laugh at that notion now in the light of science and fact yet we do not do the same with the creation argument now that so much scientific evidence suggests we evolved from primitive man.

Where primitive man came from, or the amoeba he grew from, is another mystery entirely, but I just don't get how so many millions of people beleive that we were created by an unseen, all powerful force. It is like the comical beleif of Aztecs (?) that the Sun was a God who must be worshipped and offered sacrificial gifts.

I guess a lot of people cling to religion as a comfort, as some kind of hope that there is something more than just birth, life, death. I look at things with the view that more likely than not we are born, live our lives and then die. Nothing afterwards just the end of the line. Therefore enjoy the hell out of every minute of your life and don't be restricted by religious boundaries etc.

Boil down any global conflict throughout time and it generally boils down to religion. With so many people willing to carry out such extreme acts of evil in the name of something which quite possibly doesn't exist, and nobody has any real had proof of, it just frustrates me so much. If people saw that religion wasn't really relevant any more and wasn't worth arguing and fighting over the world would be a much more peaceful place IMO and we could all get o with enjoying our lives as much as possible while we have them.

I could be wrong of course which is why I'd never say 100% one way or the other on this issue, but I'd like to know more about this theory as I could be totally misguided here and missing some important counter points. The people I've spoken to about this before are generally like minded and the few I've spoken to who aren't just dismiss it or claim they are offended and skulk off which just provokes a truth hurts attitude.

Any relevant information or opinions would be interesting. Hope this isn't a can of worms! Remember this is just my opinions.

 

[TulipTree]

I hope you consider this relevent, McAvennie:

Fundamentalist: A good friend once said "If God put dinosaur bones in the ground to test our faith, then so be it." I just looked at her like she had gone mad. In so many other ways she was intelligent and we had both rebuffed so much of the fundamentalist teaching we were exposed to. She was still active in a local church though and couldn't help being exposed to the "believe THIS PART as truth, or else" propanda. The point is, that for many people ancient history just doesn't mean anything, they just want to get along with the flesh and blood folks they know right now.

Catholic: Most Catholics, at least in America, just accept that the 6 days creation / 7th day rest is a lovely ancient creation hymn that is only uncanny in that it does give an almost an evolutionary order to life. It's been a long time since famous artists and philosphers were arrested and condemned for believing the earth revolved around the sun. Now they take pride in discoveries that the universe is an intricate place and that evolution is such a successful process. This just gives greater credit to God. In fact, many Catholics believe that man will have to continue to "evolve" spiritually to be ready to take their place as the "body" of christ. Then again, so many Catholics believe so many different things that I don't know if 10 lined up together would say the same thing.

So "no", the discovery of dinosaur bones and evolution doesn't necessarily negate Christian faith. The discovery is either accepted and included in faith, or rejected and included in faith.

 

[Anonymous]

I believe many Christians will argue for a less than literal interpretation of the biblical accout of creation. The "days" described might have been epochs, while the animals and plants are in any case described as having been created before Adam.

Elsewhere, Genesis talks about "behemoths", which I understand people have related to dinosaurs.

 

[Anonymous]

in the old testament, Adam and Eve where created after Elohim created the animals, and birds etc.

i think thats how it went... ?

http://www.hope.edu/academic/religion/bandstra/RTOT/CH1/CH1_TC.HTM

here is a good link with commentaries on the old testament.

i think, if taken as allegory, the bible can hold great wisdom .

 

[Anonymous]

First of all, McAvennie, I don't think you really needed the apology at the beginning! Your point is a perfectly valid and reasonable one, and after all it is the Fortean Times board, not an Evangelical Christian one. I think people here are freethinking and open, most of them. Anyway, your point...
Yeah, well I guess the first point to make is, the Bible does not say that humans were created first. To be fair, two people above have already made this point. The Bible states that humankind was not created until the sixth day (Gen. 1:26), after all of the beasts of the earth, whales and sea creatures, birds of the air etc etc.
Furthermore, no date is given in the Bible for the creation. All it says is "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". I also like the next verse "And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep..." That could be billions of years.
Some Christians interpret the "days" in Genesis as literal 24-hour days, but one could argue that they are in fact geological ages, or epochs as Captain Chunk says. So the fact that we have fossils from that time, including dinosaur fossils, does not militate against creation per se.
Also, the "proven age" of dinosaur bones is not wholly indisputable. Most such dates come from the radiocarbon-dating methodology, which is basically sound, I think, but which can fall over at times. It once found that the shell of a living snail was 25,000 years old.
Some people interpret the mention of the "behemoth" in Scripture (Job 40:15) as a dinosaur of one kind or another, living at the same time that humans lived.
Just my tuppence-worth.

Bill.

 

[Imperial_Call]

Very good question!

I was raised Catholic and I remember a teacher telling us about evolution of Man from apes to what we see today and being very confused about it ... another teacher explained that the bit of the Bible dealing with the Creation is a parable of sorts and that God didn't sit down and work for six 24 hour periods to make everything, it took a bit longer than that ...
I no longer have any faith in a benevolent deity, but I don't think the existence of dinosaur bones rules out the existence of one.
Back in the day when I was a Church going Catholic I had an atheist friend who used to (when it was "that time of the month") pick arguments about religion and God, she was quite determined that the Bible was a load of crap and could prove it because there are dinosaur bones, but no one's ever found Noah's Ark (wouldn't it have rotted after a while?)

 

[Alexius4]

Good lord, don't apologise! Anybody worth their salt is going to reflect upon the substance of your words, rather than leaping down your throat for speaking The Unspeakable.

Most Muslims don't have a hang up about a universe billions of years old. Evolution for us is an eloquent mechanism, it's discovery testament to mankind's capacity for reaching out into the world and understanding.

Some exceptions, of course; but remarkably few.

Don't imagine many non-litearalist Christian folk lose that much sleep about it either.

Reminds me of Augustine on the 'is the World shaped like a tabernacle or a ball' controversy. Whatever, said Augustine of Hippo - whether it is shaped like a big box, an orange, or Lionel Richie, it is just not relevent to the mission of Christianity, which is to bring mankind into a meaningful and loving relationship with God.

I go with that - the whole theological brou-ha-ha being a case of well educated and subtle minds losing sight of the wood for the trees. Happens.

 

[Cult_of_Mana]

Ever hear of the Reformation?

There are/were those who argue that the Bible's purpose is to teach spiritual and moral truths, not science.

 

[marion]

I remember my Geology A level teacher telling us that ammonites and the other life around at the time just seemed to appear with no obvious remains of predecessors, he couldn't explain why or how so said that they were there cause God poured a bucket of ammonites in the sea Maybe he was right!

 

[Anonymous]

Basically, an argument I have, which may well be flawed this is why I ask, is that surely the discovery of dinosaur bones disproves the existence of God?

That's only really a problem if you take the Bible as being literally true. I don't, nor do most Christians these days. I tend to beleive that God reveals His nature through His works, and that we're pretty obviously meant to learn something from the universe in which we find ourselves.

The true schism in Christianity these days seems to be no longer so much between Catholic and Protestant as it is between the faction that worships God, and the faction that worships the Bible.

 

[gyrtrash]

It's a great question McAvennie.

It's the one thing that stopped my 'born-again' colleague from buckling under for ages!
He now tells me that the dinosaur bones are put there by the Devil, to lure us all from the truth.

My feeling was, hey, why couldn't God have created the dinosaurs too?
I quite like God. He seems like a decent bloke most of the time. Me and him get on ok, except for the Funda mentalist Christians who don't like me liking him!

 

[Bullseye]

Slartibartfast, (the planet engineer) from the Hitch Hickers Guide to the Galaxy put them there to confuse us!.

.But according to Bishop Usher the world was created late one afternoon in 4004 BC. Yeah right!!!. You wont win with them, because they can twist everything round on theological/spiritual grounds.

 

[chockfullahate]

i remember being told that there were dinosaurs in the bible, one being mentioned was the creature "leviathan", and another one somewhere, but some people argue they are talking about hippos or crocodiles, can't remember which...

 

[TheQuixote]

I found this site a few days ago searching for something totally different (a UK recruitment agency for a friend) but this site appeared high on the search results.

Anyway it is a Christian site that discusses McAvennie's question re: contradictions in Evoultion/Dinosaurs and Christian teachings.

http://aig.gospelcom.net/

Answers in Genesis is;

...a Christian apologetics Ministry that equips the Church to uphold the authority of the Bible from the very first verse. The thousands of articles and media programs on this site answer questions about creation, evolution, dinosaurs, and much more

it is also building its own 'Creation Museum':
http://aig.gospelcom.net/museum/docs/031125_firstthings.asp

and this article discusses Dinosaurs in Biblical references:
http://aig.gospelcom.net/docs/2.asp
in a nutshell, the author asserts that the Bible states that God made Adam, Eve and the Dinosaurs. He also states that the Bible tells "us" that people did indeed live alongside Dinosaurs..hmmm

(The site also has articles upon the Ark and other related stuff)

 

[chockfullahate]

In the Bible, in Job 40:15-24, God describes to Job (who lived after the Flood) a great beast with which Job was familiar. This great animal, called 'behemoth,' is described as 'the chief of the ways of God,' perhaps the biggest land animal God had created. Impressively, he moved his tail like a cedar tree! Although some Bible commentaries say this may have been an elephant or hippopotamus, the description actually fits that of a dinosaur like Brachiosaurus. Elephants and hippos certainly do not have tails like cedar trees!

thats from the site above, and is the passage i was thinking of, and i'm sure leviatahn was a similar creature.

 

[Anonymous]

I found this site a few days ago searching for something totally different (a UK recruitment agency for a friend) but this site appeared high on the search results.

Some dinosaurs only had a brain the size of a walnut. So I guess if the recruitment agency you were searching was Manpower, that's probably why it came up.

Bill.

 

[Anonymous]

So, that's Christianity vs Dinosaurs, right?

Personally, the thought that God created us in his image is the wrong way round, we created him in our image - why create the entire Universe and all the stuff in it if we're His only interest?

My own Deities created the Universe for everything in it, not just us, we just happen (or so I'm led to believe) to be the only animals on the planet that 'get' religion - I anthropormorphise my Deities to make them easier to relate to, as I'm human (or so I'm led to believe ) but Human they ain't - their nature I can't concieve because I'm limited to Human perception.

IMO they created the dinosaurs, just as they created everything before and after and will create what comes after us.

We're not important, but we do play a part in the great scheme of things, whatever that may be.

 

[giantrobot1]

The true schism in Christianity these days seems to be no longer so much between Catholic and Protestant as it is between the faction that worships God, and the faction that worships the Bible.

That's hit the nail RIGHT on the head. Excellent.

I do find it confusing when people take the position: "Well, this book, written by human beings, says that God - who's all powerful - didn't do something, so there's no way he could have done this stuff we say he couldn't do. No I don't care if it's beautiful and intricate and fascinating and both complicated and simple - God could NEVER do that. It's impossible!"

Sigh. Some people.

 

[naSTEe]

Some dinosaurs only had a brain the size of a walnut. So I guess if the recruitment agency you were searching was Manpower, that's probably why it came up.

Bill.

lol..just left that particular employer....now they know all about dinosaurs

 

[Beakmoo]

Here's a good site, full of desperate arguments trying to convince us that dinosaurs died out a week last Tuesday
http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/dinosaurs.htm

 

[Cult_of_Mana]

We are talking about a book that tells a story about the liberation of hebrew slaves from Egypt but is unable to remember the name of a pharoah, and fails to notice any big buildings. What are they called again? Pyramids!

It's one of the seminal stories of the book, or so I'm told.

 

[Anonymous]

If the Hebrews were in Upper Egypt then they could have been blissfully unaware of the pyramids, and if Ahkenaten was the Pharoah at the time, then his court was no-where near where modern Cairo stands.... no need to mention the pyramids in Exodus, anymore than there is need to mention Hadrian's Wall in the story of the signing of the Magna Carta on Runnymead...

With Reference to the main topic, I found this:-

Kosher Dinosaurs
by Ross Mullin


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Some Israeli Jewish "fundis" (orthodox and ultra-orthodox) have been attacking a kosher dairy for depicting dinosaurs on its milk cartons. Fanatics say dinosaurs never existed, and hence are anti- Biblical.

Dr. Gerald Schroeder, author of Genesis and the Big Bang says dinosaurs aren't ruled out by the Tora. Genesis 1:21 says "And God created the large taninim...."

This plural noun has been variously translated as crocodiles, whales, or sea-monsters; but could easily mean "reptiles." Surely dinos belong in the class of "large reptiles."

As for the age of this world Schroeder says, "The Jewish calendar measures time from the creation of Adam; the six days of Genesis have never been included in calculations of the world's age."

And those six pre-Adamic "days" needn't be the standard 24-hour days experienced by us mortals after Adam's creation; but could be longer eras, experienced quite differently by Yahweh. Schroeder explains relative time this way: "When talking of time, perspective is crucial, as Einstein discovered. Events can be correctly measured as lasting 24 hours here on Earth; yet when observed from another spot may be seen as lasting anywhere from seconds to billions of years, depending on differences in gravity and velocity between the two locations. Such is the nature of time. Scientists measure the billions of years of the planet's existence from our perspective here on Earth. The amazing reality is that by considering the universe to be a single vast object, and by calculating time as it would pass for a being outside that object, those eons lasted exactly six days! So there were only six days before Adam, but these were six Days, as viewed from a divine perspective."

Scientific knowledge, he concludes, doesn't threaten Jewish religion. "The real threat is ignorance-secular ignorance of the Tora's true depth, and the believers' ignorance of the natural laws by which our universe functions." (- Jerusalem Post, international edition, week ending 4 Sept. 93).

Religions often get publicity from the rantings of their least competent spokes-fools. Freethinkers may enjoy laughing at such spectacles, which tend to drive intelligent folk away from organized religions.

Yet perhaps we should encourage rational intellectuals who also believe. As human institutions, religions do keep on changing, however slowly, until they die. Creed-cursed humanity (crucified upon a cross of parchment, to paraphrase William Jennings Bryan), might benefit if religions could evolve toward reason and tolerance, instead of devolving toward dogmatism and genocide.

Original Link

 

[TheOrigDesperado]

Evidence that the Bible was never intended to be taken literally is clear when Genesis talks of God creating all things in 6 days. Seeing as God only created the sun on the fourth day, and a day is a measurement of the earth going round the sun, then how could "days" 1 - 3 possibly exist?

Also, the Bible has been translated, re-translated and messed about with so many times that to apply strict interpretation to its English incarnation is unwise and somewhat illogical (and there's your fundamentalists for you)

So if you take "day" to mean "period", as it actually does, then Genesis is a decent enough account of what probably occurred.

 

[taras]

Evidence that the Bible was never intended to be taken literally is clear when Genesis talks of God creating all things in 6 days. Seeing as God only created the sun on the fourth day, and a day is a measurement of the earth going round the sun, then how could "days" 1 - 3 possibly exist?

A day is a measurement of the earth spinning once on its axis.

 

[Anonymous]

More convoluted rather than bad.

Hebrew/Aramic -> Greek -> Latin - > Language of Choice...

Run any bit of pose through enough langauges and it can wind up pretty odd, even when the sense has tried to be preserved

At least in the article I found is was simply from Hebrew to English (ttaninim->lizards) I find the God's relative perspective of days a little off putting since the Bruning Bush was clearly operating in the same time frame, but to get form Egypt to Palestine in 40-60years takes a different time frame, or piss-poor navigation (maybe both)

I find the selctive reading thing irritating in the extreme (cf my remarks on 'Gay Priests -Who Cares?' and depending on which bit of the OT you regard as true and which bits are 'figurative' means that folks who've had testicular cancer can no more enter the kingdon of heaven than gays... :eek!!!!:

 

[TheOrigDesperado]

A day is a measurement of the earth spinning once on its axis.

OK, your're right, what I said was a year, but my point is that without the sun there would be no reason for the concept of a day to have arisen (and nor could the Earth have performed such rotation without the presence of the sun).

 

[Anonymous]

I remember my Geology A level teacher telling us that ammonites and the other life around at the time just seemed to appear with no obvious remains of predecessors, he couldn't explain why or how so said that they were there cause God poured a bucket of ammonites in the sea Maybe he was right!

LOL how long ago was that?

Ammontes/Gonatites/Ceritites are one of the best examples in the fossil record of evoltion. The reason why there seems to be a lack of predecessors is due to the fact that they evolved to have a hard shell which allowed preservation. Before the inclusion of hard parts in organism chances of preservation was slim but still possible, eg. Burgess Shale in North America has excellent examples of organism which have only soft parts but the conditions which allowed the formation of those fossils are very rare indeed.

 

[Anonymous]

one would assume that pre-Ammonites would have some primitive hard parts, small calciferous plates or similar... you'd have to be looking for them I'd guess, but they could well be mistaken for the shells of ancient zoo-oplankton...

 

[McAvennie]

With relation to the Creation theory you have to watch the Ricky gervais DVD 'Animals'. The middle section where he takes us through the theory of creation is just sublime comedy...

Sample quote...

" 'And on the second day God said let there be light, and there was light, and it was good'. There's a fine line between pride in your work...and arrogance."


It is the funniest stand-up I've seen in years. The final 1/3 of the show tails off a bit but the firast 2/3 are excellent.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

One issue I find fascinating, is if you engage in discussion with one or more folks who have, a 'fundamental' religious belief based on ancient writings, or a derivative of same.

I ask the question: "Did dinosaurs exist, or not"?

Because... you can't have it both ways - either, there is indisputable evidence that dinosaurs existed and your religious beliefs are scrambled, or they never existed at all.

It tends to be a short conversation...