Digging Up the Truth About Dinosaurs

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8 posts were split to a new topic: Selections From “Digging Up the Truth About Dinosaurs”

I LOVE AIG but disagree with many points here.
First I don’t see dragon stories as memories of dinosaurs. In fact historic Christian teaching about the universal dragon story was that it was a universal memory of the talking snake of fame. It was worthy to repeat ever since.

I don’t think YEC should agree with the classification system that creates a dino class. God made KINDS. not dinos, mammals, reptiles etc. thats just mankind uniting unrelated creatures I say.
there were kinds on the ark that include within them these types of creatures called dinos. yet unlikely there wwere dino kinds.
Then I think the whole classification system is wrong. I think many so called dinos, like theropods, were just big flightless birds. So included in bird kinds.,
Possibly saurpods etc were just this or that kind that might even exist today.

After the flood there was a explosion of diversity and many creatures got hugh. I think the JOB reference is to one of these. Many YEC don’t see the k-t line as the flood line which cause confusion.
YEC should have a hunch God never created a dino division in nature.
All dino fossils ever found died in the first days of the flood. 4500 years ago. In fact they were all killed by the flood event and buried rapidly. thats why dino fossils show a spectrum of ages.

Why can’t dinosaurs have feathers?

And why can’t birds be living dinosaurs?

And if the k-t boundary was the flood line, where did the Iridium come from?

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You realize you just directly contradicted yourself in the span of two sentences, don’t you?

How do you define “kinds” according to the Bible?

What is your evidence that MIN in the Hebrew Bible should be understood as a taxonomic grouping?

In English, I can refer to different kinds of animals, such as big versus little, wild versus domesticated, fast versus slow. Does Hebrew MIN function similarly?

As a former Young Earth Creationist, I well remember my frustration with my colleagues who seemed to apply the word “kind” (MIN) as a kind of wildcard, all-too-flexibly encompassing whatever category fit the argument at hand. Thus, many YECs speak of “the cat kind” as a taxonomic family, yet they also treat all bacteria as a single kind! It seems like “kind” can be anything from a single species to an entire kingdom according to the needs of the moment.

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I’m not referring to feathers but to anatomy. Feathers are a good clue that one is a bird. Yet I wouldn’t make my case on it. just supplementary evendence. Its the body and head!

The only reason they say our birds are dinos is because of anatomy and then classification concepts which created the dinosaur. The few traits that 'dino birdlikes" would have in common with other ‘dinos’ can be explained away like marsupials having like common traits bit are actually just placentals with pouches. its the same equation.

I see the iridium claims as just elemonts coming in front of what followed. usually on top of it is volcanic material. they just never imagined a universal explosive unity of volcanoes going off…
like in north america. i see all the volcanoes , on the spine, exploding in a single day a few centuries after the flood.

Kinds is a hidden concept because of the distortion of nature at the fall. now Noah took JKINDS on the ark so he could tell. so its likely it must be basic.
wE only know there is a primate kind, we are a copy of, a snake kiud, then bird kinds as the dove and crow on the ark.
i don’t think there is a cat kind. rather the cat types are within a bigger kind but i’m speculating.

i see beatrs, wolves, marsupial wolves, probably seals as all within a kind. thats obvious to me.
I therefore suggest these ‘theropod dinos’ types that they say are bord like are in fact flightless birds in a spectrum of a diversity. so its no where birds come from but these are birds. they are not in some dino division or reptile division. god never created dinosaurs, reptile, mammal divisions. just kinds within a biological blueprint with boundaries.

I don’t know what you mean by that.

How is this “obvious”? How did you make these determinations?

How do you know this? Evidence?

What evidence do you have for such “boundaries”? And what enforces these boundaries?

Why does the Hebrew text of Leviticus speak of even very similar raptor birds as different kinds? (You haven’t answered my question as to how you determined that the Hebrew word MIN is at all taxonomic, such as in a Linnaean sense.)

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So, then, it seems that nothing can be known.

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3 posts were split to a new topic: Was the Earth a Perfect Paradise Before the Fall?

@Patrick

Some YEC’s (like Todd Wood) have no problem with feathered dinosaurs.

I would find it highly implausible that all dragon stories are accurately recounted memories of encounters with living dinosaurs (not to say that all of them aren’t, though). However, I do think that the widespread concept of dragons was largely derived from stories of dinosaur encounters. Really, how could so many different ancient civilizations come up with the same sorts of imaginary creatures? (More on that here: https://www.ce-debate.org/dragons-fiction-or-fact). @Robert_Byers, (as for the other part of your comment), I find the fact that pagan civilizations often revered snakes/serpents (or something similar within their geographic context) rather eerie given the account of Genesis 3.

As far as the AIG article, I still think that the case for the “Behemoth” of Job 40:15-24 being a sauropod (or potentially some other sort of dinosaur) is pretty solid. The sauropod dinosaur is currently the best fit for the description found in Job, as other suggested animals such as the elephant or hippo do not match every detail.

I would have appreciated if the AIG article had footnotes to back up its information, though. For example, “certain carvings and paintings [that] strongly resemble dinosaurs” do exist but I think the AIG article does interested readers a disservice by not citing places where more can be learned.

As far as theropod dinosaurs being giant birds, I am with @AllenWitmerMiller.

Thanks to all for the discussion!

2 posts were split to a new topic: Was the Behemoth a Dinosaur or an Elephant?

The lack of primary sources in AIG articles used to strike me as due to a casual attitude. But as time has gone by, I’ve become more cynical. I think AIG deliberately avoids details—and especially informative links to non-AIG sources—because that would make it easier for readers to get exposed to alternative explanations. For example, "certain carvings and paintings [that] strongly resemble dinosaurs” has in the past been linked by Ken Ham to the alleged “Stegosaurus plates” carving at the Ta Prohm Temple in Cambodia. But that idea has been discredited so many times in so many places that I think he is reluctant to have readers find out that the “dinosaur plates” also appear on other carvings as nothing more than background ornamentation of jungle leaves. (Of course, many paleontologists have noticed that the “dinosaur carving” fits no actual dinosaur fossil, Stegosauri included.)

It took little effort to find Ham’s claim debunked at:

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hebrew MIN is beside the point. its the word kind. the reader understands this.
It is a issue about kinds. Its a option kinds is fixed, with diversity never fixed within it, BUT a option is that creatures can pass a threshiold to become a new kind.
birds are not a KIND since on the ark two kinds were mentioned.
Yet snakes all are of one kind originally to justify the mutual loss of legs. was therefore there only one pair of snakes on the arl? I tend to think so but it could be there were many. Its issue for YEC.

Your evidence demands misses the principal of hypothesis.
The hunch/spark/hypothesis comes first and then sums up evidence to support it. I just introduce the hypothesis here.

Then that reader is assuming a popular fallacy: that Hebrew MIN and the English word “kind” are automatically some sort of absolute equivalent. (Of course, in this case, you are actually making my point for me: MIN is not a taxonomic term—just as the English word “kind” is not a taxonomic term!)

Translation of a word from one language to another should also be consider a Venn Diagram type of rough equivalence.

You need to reread what I wrote. Have you ever investigated all of the uses of MIN in the Hebrew Bible? If you did, you would see that your taxonomic claim breaks down, especially in Leviticus where raptors differing mainly in color are considered two different kinds.

Indeed, just as “big animals” and “little animals” are different kinds of animals in English, I consider MIN in Hebrew no more taxonomically technical than that.

When Genesis says that Noah brought various kinds of animals onto the ark, MIN/kind is being used quite similarly to when I might say that “My neighbor has all kinds of tools in his garage” to convey the idea that he has “all sorts of tools” or “a wide variety of tools”. (I wouldn’t even be saying that of every possible tool that exists in the world, my neighbor has collected one of each in his garage. A rigid literalist might make that assumption but that is not how language has to work. Indeed, when Peter preached to crowds from every nation on Pentecost, we can’t assume that the crowd included people from Japan and Argentina and Guam.)

Its a option kinds is fixed, with diversity never fixed within it, BUT a option is that creatures can pass a threshiold to become a new kind.

Robert, this is an example of something another participant wrote about: Some of your sentences are very difficult to interpret. Despite re-reading that sentence three times, I haven’t a clue what you are saying. If you rewrite it and explain it, I’m willing to give it another try.

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theropod dinos being flightless birds is a hypothesis. the evidence is its anatomy, which is why they say birds came from them, and then later examples of flightless birds, now extinct, that grew hugh and violent.
Then there were admitted birds in dino days with teeth. this would mean a spectrum could exist with them becoming flightless and big. So BANG your theropd dinosaur!
Then the unlikelness God created these divisions that man invented based on concepts of grouping critters with traits which avoids the greater number of traits that all critters have.

Idon’t see any memory from mankind of dragons being the dinos.
I don’t agree there were dinos. Kist creatures that were different.
They would not be big or impressive but boring. Elephants/rhinos are better.
The dragon is always a serpent, leggy, etc etc
Its historic to say its a fireside memory of the talking snake in the garden. Just as the flood story is remembered by all or almost.

The fossil record shows heaps of creatures called mammals that could better be the behemoth. no sauropod is needed. nOt saying it couldn’t be in the kind that Sauropods were in.
by the way in roman daus they found in Israel a creature, skeleton, they called a dragon.
Possibly a skeleton of the behemoth.

Genesus insist God created creatures on creation week AFTER THEIR KIND. a definate bounday. so what went on the ark would be these KINDS.
I suggest two options. One kind full of diversity but within kind.
Second option. That creatures could cross thresholds due to biological change and so new kinds be created. i lean toward the first option.

So, then, why could “kind” not simply refer to species, such that the boundary was the ability to mate and have offspring? Why must a “kind” be some sort of classification? God told Noah to put animals, each after their own kind, onto the Ark. The animals are not numbered, so one is left to extrapolate, and draw conclusions based upon the amount of room available what number of animals would fit, including food for such a length of time. So, then, the definition of “kinds” as you are presenting it is conjecture and not scriptural interpretation, right?

The most plain reading of the Bible is that described above. That “kinds” of animals are simply kinds of animals. The same way that days are days and nights are nights. I do not see the justification for this kind (pun intended) of mental gymnastics from the text.

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Showing your inner evolutionist. Interesting.

@Joel_Duff what type of hyperevolutionist is @Robert_Byers?