top of page
Writer's pictureBible Brian

The pointless debate about feathered dinosaurs


"And God said "let there be dinosaurs, and let them not have feathers under any circumstances, and let their unfeathered state be absolute proof that the scriptures are true, for if dinosaurs had feathers, the scriptures could not be true." And so God made the unfeathered dinosaurs, and behold, it was good." - No Bible verse ever


The debate over whether or not dinosaurs had feathers is, in my opinion, about as relevant to the origins debate as whether or not they had lips. Looking through the book of Job, we see just how much authority God retains over His creation. In this book, He describes a number of things He has created, including various animals. And He effectively says to Job "look at this. I made it that way, and I did so because I wanted to. Who are you to say I shouldn't have?"


And indeed, who are we? What God wants to make, He has the right to make, and what He wants to destroy, He has a right to destroy. This includes dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes. Therefore, if God made dinosaurs with feathers, why should that bother a Creationist any more than a platypus?


Of course, many Evolutionists (though there is much dissent within the ranks) are quite keen to maintain their dino to bird narrative, and so it's understandable why they would make such a fuss about feathered dinosaurs. It's just in their nature to say "this thing is similar to that thing, so they must share some common ancestry". It's silly, but that's just how they think. But for Creationists, science matters more than speculations. Let God be God, let nature be nature. The discussion of feathered dinosaurs is an interesting one, but irrelevant to the origins debate, simply because the presence of feathers in dinosaurs tells us nothing about how they came to have those feathers. If God, in His wisdom, decided to give dinosaurs feathers, then bring forth the evidence for that, and rejoice in His creativity. If no evidence can be found for feathered dinosaurs, why should it matter to us? Other reptiles lack feathers, too. Even many birds, while they still have feathers, have feathers for different purposes.


In fact, this is a better argument against Evolution. Flightless birds lose flight functionality in their feathers, they don't start off flightless and gain the ability to fly. Therefore, if we assume dinosaurs had feathers, their inability to fly means their feathers would degrade, not evolve into flight feathers.


Ultimately, we are free as a species to have any discussion we want. Did dinosaurs have lips? Did they actually roar? Did they roam in packs, or hunt solo? All of these are interesting discussions, but they are separate discussions from the origins debate. However God made the dinosaurs, they were dinosaurs, and feathers have nothing to do with how they came to be dinosaurs. Therefore, we can afford to separate the discussion of feathered dinosaurs from the origins debate.

14 views
bottom of page