I'm sorry, but the God I believe in, pray to, and love is a loving, caring God. Not the kind of God who would tell two parents to beat their 11-year-old daughter to death for mispronouncing a word. That's sick and evil and if there's not a special place in Hell for people like that, then one should be created.
But the following story I found online while browsing the Internet looking for a pattern to crochet my God-and-dinosaur-loving nephew a brontosaurus (his new favorite) toy for Christmas, and I came across the following article:
My neighbor gave my 8-year-old son toy dinosaurs:
I am a little shocked. She says she is a Christian, but the Bible doesn't say anything about dinosaurs. Should I let him keep them, as long as he understands that dinosaurs aren't real?
Even the PBS shows that he watches talk about dinosaurs and evolution, and how the scientists found these "bones" but the Bible doesn't say that God ever created them, and the earth is only 6,000 years old, not old enough to have "bones" that they say are MILLIONS of years old!
I know that Satan tries to trick us in many ways, and this is one way that he tries to fool man into believing that there isn't a God who created the universe. How can they be bones when they are made out of ROCKS?
I told my son that dinosaurs are one of Satan's many ways of tricking man, and he must talk to God before he plays with them.
Am I handling this right? My first 3 were all girls, and I adopted boys, and lots of mothers tell me that boys are often attracted to these dinosaurs. So I don't know what to do. Is this just harmless fantasy play for him, or should I be worried that he may go on to believe in things like evolution?
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Now I must admit that upon reading this my mouth hung open for quite a few seconds. At first I found myself thinking "Lady are you SERIOUS???" and wondering what loony bin she had to have escaped from. Then I realized that by thinking this way, I was being just like the judgemental bigots I so loathe. So I took a step back and decided to look at it from this lady's point of view.
No, the Bible doesn't say anything anywhere about dinosaurs. Yes, according to Biblical time, the Earth is not even 10,000 years old, which I admit makes for a lot of confusion between science and faith. But science is the belief in was you can detect with you 5 senses. Faith is believing in what you can't see, touch, hear, or taste.
Now, I love dinosaurs. I always have. I wanted to be a Paleontologist for a very long time. I have personally seen and touched dinosaur bones, so I know they exist. So how can we combine both science and faith to have a happy medium? Well, I did a bit of research and came up with this:
In the Book of Job, dinosaur-like creatures are mentioned and so they appear to have existed at the same time that Adam and Eve and their descendants existed. Job is an ancient book. If this book were placed in its true chronological order in the Bible, it would reside within the Book of Genesis since Job lived over 4,000 years ago.
In Psalm 74:13 it says, “It was you who split open the sea by your power; you broke the heads of the monster in the waters.” Isaiah 43:20 reads, “The beast of the field shall honor me, the dragons and the owls: because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen” and he also writes about a monster (51:9).
Now I must admit that upon reading this my mouth hung open for quite a few seconds. At first I found myself thinking "Lady are you SERIOUS???" and wondering what loony bin she had to have escaped from. Then I realized that by thinking this way, I was being just like the judgemental bigots I so loathe. So I took a step back and decided to look at it from this lady's point of view.
No, the Bible doesn't say anything anywhere about dinosaurs. Yes, according to Biblical time, the Earth is not even 10,000 years old, which I admit makes for a lot of confusion between science and faith. But science is the belief in was you can detect with you 5 senses. Faith is believing in what you can't see, touch, hear, or taste.
Now, I love dinosaurs. I always have. I wanted to be a Paleontologist for a very long time. I have personally seen and touched dinosaur bones, so I know they exist. So how can we combine both science and faith to have a happy medium? Well, I did a bit of research and came up with this:
In the Book of Job, dinosaur-like creatures are mentioned and so they appear to have existed at the same time that Adam and Eve and their descendants existed. Job is an ancient book. If this book were placed in its true chronological order in the Bible, it would reside within the Book of Genesis since Job lived over 4,000 years ago.
In Psalm 74:13 it says, “It was you who split open the sea by your power; you broke the heads of the monster in the waters.” Isaiah 43:20 reads, “The beast of the field shall honor me, the dragons and the owls: because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen” and he also writes about a monster (51:9).
So, it is my personal opinion that dinosaurs lived in the time of Adam and Eve, and that God wiped them out for some reason or another. Probably in the Great Flood. But how do we explain that scientists say that dinosaurs are millions of years old??
There are hundreds of early British and French explorers and trappers and American explorers and settlers that wrote down reports of sightings of giant mastodon bones still lying on the ground. Many of the Indians they spoke with mentioned them as being in recent memory.
The fact is that fossilization does not take millions of years since, under the right conditions, a bone, an old boot, and even wood can become filled with minerals fairly quickly. Necessary ingredients for fossilization, even in a few thousand years, are these... A quick burial under very deep water or volcanic ash.
Consider the Great Flood of Noah’s time... This would have provided excellent conditions for fossilization of plants and animals. There would have been a rapid burial by millions of tons of water and sediment. The fact is that today there are many dinosaur remains that are still not completely turned in to rock and that have not been fossilized. Millions of these have been found as bone.
Even today they are finding fish fossils that still have a fishy smell to them! The flood may have been the reason that many of the dinosaurs died out. Even the sea creatures would have died since many of their prey could have perished in the flood.
So my conclusion is this... Whether they are mentioned in the Bible specifically by name or not, dinosaurs existed. We find proof of that all over the world. They could have died from disease, the flood, or in some cases, hunted into extinction. Regardless, it is obvious that the dinosaurs did roam the earth at one time. It is also clear that the Bible makes mention of some creatures that fit their description. Therefore, Christians' belief in the Bible and the knowledge of the existence of dinosaurs, are not incompatible. In fact, they are completely compatible with God being the Creator of all life; plants, animals, insects, and mankind.
Now my big question is what would this very stressed mother think of my answer to her question about dinosaur toys being given to her son?
Scooter Out.
Scooter Out.
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