Digging Up the Truth About Dinosaurs

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31

Greetings! Are you saying that the elephant is foreign to God’s experience?

At any rate, I would say that the simile “moves like a cedar (tree)” found in Job (thank you very much for posting that, by the way) is much more applicable to a gargantuan sauropod tail (in size etc.) than to the trunk of an elephant. The description is a better fit for a sauropod tail than an elephant’s trunk, as the text still likens behemoth’s tail to a tree, as opposed to a rolled up carpet etc. :wink:

My quick answer is that some smaller/moderately sized sauropods were definitely much longer, but not much taller than elephants. For instance, check this out: https://www.britannica.com/animal/sauropod/media/525547/205561.
(On a largely unrelated note: this is an example of where paleontologists were largely right, then wrong, then right again :wink: ).

The two translations you have here differ. At any rate, while only one of them (KJV) works well for your elephant interpretation, both translations work for a sauropod dinosaur. A drinking elephant does “draw up water,” but wouldn’t the elephant have to “be secure though the Jordan surge against its…tail?” Are the Hebrew words for tail and mouth the same?

A sauropod dinosaur, now, would definitely draw up water (think about its long neck), and it would still be secure in its great size even as the river “surged against its mouth” while it was drinking.

Also (given verse 24) are the Hebrew words for tail and nose also the same (given that an elephant’s trunk acts as its nose)?

How do you know this? Evidence? Even if they did stumble upon dinosaur fossils, how would ancient civilizations come up with giant reptiles instead of something like, say, a cyclops?

@AllenWitmerMiller
Thanks for the discussion!

32

Are you being facetious for the sake of humor? (No problem. Just wondering.)

Are you saying that you ascribe to a Dictation Theory of Biblical authorship?

Are you saying that knowledge about the mustard seed not being the smallest of all seeds is foreign to God’s experience? Do you doubt that the perspective of human author(s) is fundamental to Biblical linguistic and is essential to translation and hermeneutics?

33

A confused one:-) But seriously I’ve read Byers on many forums and he is hard to define. Best I can do is say he is an independent thinker and sometimes that independence involves some creative interpretation of facts or just plain not understand the facts. He had no allegiance to any standard YEC brand of thought but he also has no following in the sense that his ideas have drawn any traction among other creaitionists. Suggesting marsupial wolves and wolves and bears are the same kind is about all you need to know. I expect he would lump flying squirrels and sugar gliders (marsupial) because they have similar morphological features and natural history traits. Its as if the first criteria of determining how kinds are determined is gross appearance and our gut feeling (independent of facts - sort of a Trump gut knowledge approach) rather than any systematic approach.

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34

Sorry. I don’t follow that analysis at all. (Yes, I understand that you are saying that you believe the comparison to the movement of a tree matches a sauropod better than an elephant—but you didn’t explain why.)

Do cedar trees walk around? No they don’t. So the manner of movement of a cedar tree which can be used in a description of an animal must be talking about something else. (Obviously, size is not a manner-of-movement.) So what is the way that a cedar tree “moves”? Obviously, it can sway back in forth in the wind----just as an elephant’s trunk can sway. Moreover, an elephant can flexibly twist its trunk. Likewise, we can observe the flexibility of a cedar tree by bending and twisting its branches. (I’ve even seen trappers tie down a small cedar tree to provide a make-shift “spring” for a noose-trap.)

If the Hebrew simile comparing the behemoth and a cedar tree was about size, then your argument would be easier to follow. But that is simply not what the Biblical actually states.

35

I certainly believe that God created creatures which would multiply after their kind. Indeed, if ever mated pair of animals did not produce offspring very much like them, that would be powerful evidence against the Theory of Evolution.

Offspring are much like their parents. That is assumed in Genesis and that is also predicted and described by evolutionary biology. Yes, I suppose you could call that fact of reproduction a kind of boundary. But that in no way prevents evolutionary processes from producing changes in allele frequencies in populations over time.

I would certainly agree that God created multiplying-after-their-own-kind animals. I used to farm and so I can tell you that Holstein cows produce more Holsteins and Hereford cows produce more Herefords. Those are examples of reproduction after “after it own kind” where kind is a breed and not a species. Of course, if one crosses Holsteins and Herefords—which I actually did in alternating years to enhance the herd—the “after its own kind” could be applied to domestic cattle as a species. Both “after its own kind” situations is consistent with the Hebrews’ use of the word MIN.

MIN is a very flexible word in Hebrew, just as the word “kind” is very flexible in English and can apply to all sorts of categories of things, not just living things. Walmart sells all kinds of clothes and that categorization denoted by the word “kind” can apply to the type of fabric, the color, the type of garment (e.g., socks versus shirts), sizes, etc. We can classify and categorize according to all sorts of characteristics. That applies to both living and non-living things.

I’ve never seen a thorough lexicographic study establishing the Hebrew word MIN as a technical taxonomic term. We must be very cautious about committing an anachronistic fallacy in casually applying that sort of modern sense to an ancient text of a culture long ago. Yes, we must always allow for possibilities but we must first carefully scrutinize a concordance of the word MIN and see how the taxonomic-hypothesis holds up. Evidence matters more than gut reaction and personal bias.

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36

Let’s not forget the real reason behemoth couldn’t be a sauropod dinosaur is sauropod dinosaurs have been extinct for almost 66 million years. Kinda puts a kink in the sauropod explanation. :slightly_smiling_face:

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37

Yes, “kinda” is a great choice of words in such a context!

In my experience, this is where this kind of discussion on the AIG Facebook page will typically see a lot of posts citing “living fossils”, especially the discovery of living Coelecanths in the Indian Ocean back in the 1930’s. And the Kent Hovind fans tend to also mention the alleged sightings of a living Brontosaurus in Africa. (Sometimes you will even see someone post that funny photo of Civil War reenactors posing with a “dead pterosaur” that was produced for some TV show not many years ago. So many people think that the posed photo using a rubber prop is “proof” that such ancient creatures didn’t die out.)

Those posts are usually followed by the well-worn claims about how “scientists are constantly proven wrong” and “today’s scientific facts are tomorrow’s discredited falsehoods.” After all, scientists are hopelessly biased and so evidence “is always interpreted according to one’s worldview.” Thus, they conclude that science is mostly just personal opinion.

38

That isn’t precisely true…

Maybe they cam across a large vertebrea or skull, and imagined a behemoth…

There are many ways of “seeing” a sauropod that do not require them to be alive. Even if this is a description of a sauropod, it is not evidence of humans and sauropods living alongside one another.

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39

Finding dinosaur fossils doesn’t change the fact sauropod dinosaurs have been extinct for 66 million years.

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40

Well yes, but that wasn’t my point:

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A lot of people assume that nobody ever found a dinosaur fossil prior to the 1800’s. Unfortunately, a lot of books and websites continue to give that impression. For example, the Scholastic website says:

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/when-was-first-dinosaur-discovered/

It defies all logic to think that nobody had ever dug up a dinosaur fossil over the entire history of mankind until some two centuries ago!

It is almost as if they think that dinosaur fossils couldn’t be unearthed until somebody coined the word “dinosaur.”

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42

The description in Job 40 was of a living creature. How would a fossil “sway like a cedar” or feed on grass?

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43

In the same way that T-Rex’s continue to roar, in our imagination.

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44

Yup. I have some more stories for you!

Did you know that Columbus discovered America in 1942? Did you know that the entire two continents were entirely up for grabs. You could just claim the land for yourself, as no one else was living there. Pretty amazing right?

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45

Yes. And Europeans helped out the Americas by bring civilization! (One of the first things that various of the aboriginal peoples of the Americas noticed about the Europeans is that they stunk badly and rarely bathed. They thought them very savage and uncivilized.)

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46

@AllenWitmerMiller

The elephant interpretation of behemoth only has merit if you find a way to translate “tail” as “trunk.” Please address what I have written about why that does not make sense:

Keep in mind that the verses we are discussing are direct quotes from God. God knows how to describe His creatures.

Also, I would appreciate it if you (or someone else) would answer this pertinent question/point:

Thanks!

47

i question there is such a thing as species. I deny ability to reproduce has anything to do with segregating populations. A kind , as example, would be the snake. We all know today the great number of squeezers and spitters.
Noah was also to take seven pairs of clean kinds. So a true division of clean/unclean.
9This is important for YEC to explain why the ratio of KINDS after the floopd was different before the flood as indicated by fossils . Just an aside)
KIND is a definite boundary in genesis.
We have only clues as to what a KIND is.

48

What, then, are the clues that the snake is a “kind”?

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49

The clue for the snake is that genesis says it lost its legs as a punishment. Obviously the snake was satan using it etc.
So all snakes have no legs. so it must be that the snake losing legs was a KIND thing. So we know all snakes come from a original single kind. I have had YEC tell me snakes could be many kinds. NO!
To all be legless demands they are one kind.
NOW did Noah take one kind? I think so but its possible diversity in snake biology crossed thresholds to create divisions called KINDS. HMMM. Naw ! YEC needs to reduce biology into manageable KINDS numbers.

By the way. For those saying snakes in fossils , legless, are from great spans of time would reject the Genesis snake legg losing incident!

50

No. The Genesis text says nothing about the serpent losing its legs as a punishment. Read it again until you notice that fact.

The text of Genesis 3:14 says:

So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.

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