65 million years ago, long before human beings evolved, some catastrophic event, or maybe series of events, caused the mass extinction of many species of plants and animals, most notably dinosaurs. Or so the stories say. But this, it turns out, is all they are: Stories. Religious stories, at that, being themselves a small part of a much larger narrative. This narrative, according to Evolutionist Michael Ruse, "...is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality." (1).
But as with all history, any narrative about dinosaurs, lacking a reliable written record, require large amounts of speculation. But there are many challenges to the standard popular narratives, both from within and without the Evolutionary community. Ultimately, when all things are considered, the Evolutionary narrative does not hold up. What we find instead is that the Biblical narrative, which holds that man and dinosaurs were created during the same week, and co-existed until the eventual extinction of the dinosaurs, is much more plausible.
Absence of evidence
The first clue to the fact the Evolutionary narrative is wrong is that, strictly speaking, there isn't one. Although there is a vast array of theories, no one really claims to know what happened to the dinosaurs. The most popular narrative is that a meteor struck the Earth, killing most of the dinosaurs. How did this kill them all? Unknown. How did everything else survive? Also unknown. Nevertheless, challenging this narrative has historically been a career-ending ordeal.
One scientist who found this out the hard way is Greta Keller, the "b***" who was described as "...“the most dangerous woman in the world,” who “should be stoned and burned at the stake.”" (2). Her crime? She proposed that volcanic activity may have been responsible for the death of the dinosaurs, rather than this meteor. But it turns out, "The great splat of an asteroid that might have wiped out the dinosaurs apparently didn't get all of them." (3).
The Evolutionary stories about the extinction of the dinosaurs, though viciously defended, are also highly flexible, for the same reason Obi Wan Kenobi went from being trained by Master Yoda in the original trilogy to being the direct apprentice of Qui-Gon Jinn in the prequel trilogies. Rather than being solid historical narrative based on firm evidence, it is made up, and the evidence is either forced to fit, or is cast out entirely.
Of course, Christian narratives, while they are stronger, do still require some speculation. In the end, there are three facts that make speculation essential: 1. We know dinosaurs existed, 2. We're fairly certain they don't anymore, and 3. We cannot be certain how we went from fact 1 to fact 2. This, however, does not give us the right to make stuff up, nor to mock, and even threaten, those who have different ideas. Nevertheless, because this is a spiritual battle, the experience of Greta Keller is just a small sample of the experience Christians have had since before our Lord ascended into Heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father until His enemies are made His footstool.
The science
One thing that is essential to understand is that this is actually not a scientific issue. Science and history are distinguished by their tense. Science deals primarily in the present, whereas history deals with the past. Gravity is an excellent example. Gravity, in its simplest terms, is the force that pulls objects together. It's why "what goes up must come down", rather than us being able to just jump right into space. Gravity is not a historical narrative. While it was, of course, active in the past, and will continue to be so in the future, we are able to study it in the past. You can even do so right now, outside the laboratory, and with no professional equipment. Jump, you will fall. Pick something up, it will have weight. Drop it, it will fall. This all happens right now, and can be observed happening right now.
But what about the story of Isaac Newton, and how he discovered gravity when an apple fell on his head while he was reading under a tree? This is not a scientific narrative. If it happened, which we have no scientific way of proving, it happened in the past. We cannot observe it, it doesn't happen now, and it will not happen in the future. Even if we see people getting hit in the head with apples today, that doesn't prove the story of Newton's apple happened in the past. At best, it shows it is plausible. But to find out if this story is true, we must go to the historical record, and not to science.
The extinction of the dinosaurs is a historical issue, not a scientific one. We cannot observe these events today, nor will we be able to do so in the future, because they happened in the past. To illustrate this, let's do a bit of word play.
Gravity pulled objects towards the center of the Earth.
Gravity pulls objects towards the center of the Earth.
Gravity will pull objects towards the center of the Earth.
Dinosaurs went extinct.
Dinosaurs are going extinct.
Dinosaurs will go extinct.
Note how gravity works in all three tenses, but the extinction of the dinosaurs does not. Dinosaurs, at least in theory, have already gone extinct. Therefore, gravity is a scientific issue, but the extinction of the dinosaurs is a historical one.
With that being said, there is some place for science in this debate. After all, in the end, it all takes place within the same reality. We know dinosaurs existed precisely because we can observe their remains in the present. But certain facts about these remains have implications regarding the history of the dinosaurs. Not surprisingly, few of them are especially supportive of Evolutionary narratives.
For a long time, it has been taught that fossils take millions of years to form. If true, this would certainly refute the Biblical narrative, which precludes any life on this Earth, and indeed the very existence of any created thing, much older than 6,000 years. Amazingly, some institutions, such as the Museum of Western Colorado’s Dinosaur Valley, USA have gone as far as to even define "fossil" as "Any evidence of life more than 7,000 years old." Talk about tipping your hand...
But as we have advanced in the field of science, any and all attempts to claim fossils prove evidence of life older than 24 hours have dissipated. Why? Simply because scientists at the University of Bristol can now make fossils that quickly. (4). The resulting fossils are identical, both to the naked eye and under the microscope, to those found in nature.
Of course, this doesn't prove the Biblical narrative, nor does it really disprove the Evolutionary ones. It does, however, put them on equal footing, removing the claim that if dinosaur fossils exist, then dinosaurs must be older than the Bible would allow.
One thing that gives the Biblical narrative an edge, however, is that dinosaur fossils usually contain things which simply cannot survive millions of years. Carbon-14 (C-14), for example. The irony of this is that C-14 is often cited as evidence against the Biblical narrative. Supposedly, C-14 dating can be used to determine the age of archaeological specimens which once contained carbon between 500 - 50,000 years old.
Now, we can save the debates about how accurate C-14 dating is for another article. Suffice to say for now, we can grant the maximum of 50,000 years. After this amount of time, any C-14 within a sample would be so scant as to be untraceable. Therefore, the presence of detectable C-14 in a sample is evidence that it is younger than 50,000 years.
Because of this, it is typically seen as a fool's errand to attempt to carbon date dinosaur remains, which are typically assumed to be a minimum of 55 million years old, more than 1,000 times the maximum age that can be dated by C-14 dating. Nevertheless, there have been attempts to carbon date dinosaur bones, revealing that there is, in fact, undecayed carbon within them. For example, some researchers presented their findings of C-14 in dinosaur bones at a Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Singapore. Having sampled 8 dinosaur specimens, the researchers found their bones all dated between 22,000 - 39,000 years old.
Their presentation was subsequently, without word to the researchers, removed from the conference website. Naturally, the researchers did enquire as to why, to which two chairmen replied "there is obviously an error in these data". (5). Translation? "This evidence doesn't fit our religious views, so we're going to censor it."
But beyond all imagination, C-14 isn't the only thing found in dinosaur fossils which ought not be. Soft tissue is found far more often than Evolutionists would like. This, of course, is positively devastating to their case. Even under optimal conditions, soft tissue cannot be preserved for 2 million years. And of course, nature very rarely provides such optimal conditions. I can guarantee you, nowhere on Earth has provided such optimal conditions for 65 million years. Soft tissue from dinosaurs should not be a thing. Yet, it is. It is because no, dinosaurs are not millions of years old.
The history - Observed extinctions
But you don't need to find evidence of "youth" in the fossils to know this. To begin with, extinction is a common tragedy. It happens frequently. This is why we have conservation efforts to prevent it. Many species today are seriously threatened, with some of them being considered extinct in the wild, living only in captivity. Others are not even that lucky. The most common example of this is the thylacine, a.k.a. the Tasmanian tiger, which was officially declared extinct when the last captive survivor died on September 6th 1936.
The exact causes of extinction, even with organisms we observe suffering it, are varied, and often mysterious, but can often be traced to things such as climate change, disease, and even human activity. The expansion of human territories often leads to the destruction of animal territories, and of course, hunting can be quite damaging to them as well.
The history - Living fossils
Of course, there is some difficulty in declaring any organism truly extinct. To do so almost requires omniscience, as there could be living specimens we are simply unaware of. Numerous times, "extinct" organisms have defied this expectation, being presumed extinct, only to be discovered alive again, and in some cases even well known to people living around its native habitat.
Time would fail us to list the so-called "living fossils", but suffice to say for now, many organisms believed to have been extinct, even from the so-called dinosaur times, often show up alive, and even identical to their fossil counterparts.
Although I have no intention of detailing many examples, I have decided to pay particular attention to the Wollemi pine. The Wollemi Pine is a living fossil, a tree that supposedly went extinct 150 million years ago. For reference, that's 82 million years before t-rex supposedly evolved. In spite of its alleged Jurassic extinction, the Wollemi pine was discovered alive and well again in 1994, in a remote patch of rainforest in Australia. This discovery, according to Professor Carrick Chambers, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, is "the equivalent of finding a small dinosaur still alive on Earth". (6).
This alone should shatter any and all resentment of the idea that dinosaurs and man could have co-existed at some point in history. If a supposedly Jurassic-era plant can add itself to the excessively long list of organisms which supposedly went extinct millions of years ago, only to re-surface in the modern day, then it would be no small thing if an actual dinosaur showed up alive.
The history - The vindication of cryptozoology
Ironically, though none have ever been captured, there is evidence of such things. Cryptozoology is a field of study that deals with animals not officially recognised by modern biology. While it sounds quirky, especially to those who want it to be so, cryptozoology may be seen as the pre-cursor to zoology itself. It's just common sense. Every living orgnanism, no matter how common it is in our eyes, was, at some point in the past, not recognised by science. This is because science does not create truth, nor even define it; it observes. Thus, what is officially called science is actually just an official recognition of those observations. But an animal's existence precedes the observation thereof.
Organisms studied by cryptozoology are typically called "cryptids". These are often spectacular, even "mythical" beasts, such as the Loch Ness Monster. However, they may also be as simple as the humble okapi. The okapi is a giraffe-like creature native to the Congo, and can now be found in zoos around the world. However, until 1901, it was regarded as a myth, even being given the name "African Unicorn". It turns out, these beautiful beasts are anything but mythical, and for obvious reasons, are no longer considered cryptids.
Over time, cryptozoology has been vindicated as a legitimate field, with many cryptids being officially recognised by science as real creatures. To put it simply, cryptozoology can be described as "following a lead" to the potential discovery of new living organisms.
Or old ones.
As previously mentioned, many cryptids actually resemble living organisms otherwise known only from fossil evidence. It is possible, much like the Wollemi pine, that dinosaurs existed until relatively recently, and may even still exist today. The latter possibility seems less likely as time goes on, though there is not a single Bible believer who would be surprised if one did join the ranks of the living fossils. But the former, based on the historical record, seems almost certain.
The history - the early days of paleontology
One difficulty of paleontology is it's hard to study living things that aren't actually alive. With dinosaurs, we have very little to go on, and of course we had a lot less in the beginning. The result is that even what we now think we know may not necessarily be accurate.
This, ironically, means that even Evolutionary cladograms may get absolutely shredded by new fossil evidence. The old whale Evolution tree, for example, is riddled with holes. Initially, Pakicetus (meaning "whale from Pakistan") was known only from fragments of its skull, allowing Evolutionists to speculate that it was an ancestor of whales. Thus, it was often depicted as a web-footed swimmer. More evidence was discovered, however, and we now know it was well designed for running.
But paleontology did not begin as a boon for desperate misotheists wanting to free science from Moses. In fact, the very word "dinosaur" was coined by Sir Richard Owen, a firm believer in the Biblical narrative, and vocal opponent of Darwin's nonsensical assault on reality.
But you don't need to be motivated to make mistakes, and as can be expected, the early days of paleontology is full of them. To begin with, dinosaurs as a whole were assumed to look much like modern reptiles, with their legs splayed outwards, and their tails dragging along the ground, like a lizard. This, we now know is both biologically inaccurate, and actually quite impractical.
Other mistakes include the positioning of the iguanodon's thumb spikes, and the stegosaurus' back plates. Initially, the thumb spikes of the iguanodon were assumed to actually be horns on the nose, as shown by early models which can still be seen at the Crystal Palace Park in London, made to the specifications of Richard Owen himself.
Similarly, early depictions of the stegosaurus were quite inaccurate, due in large part to the fact their back plates are not attached to the skeleton. Because of this, Othniel Charles Marsh initially mistook them for aquatic, turtle-like creatures, with the plates interlocked across the back like shingles on a roof. This mistake is forever immortalized in the name "stegosaurus" - roofed lizard.
The history - Suspicious artifacts
No one can be blamed for the honest mistakes of early paleontology. When all you have is a few scattered bones, you're almost certain to arrange them incorrectly, even if you are well trained in the relevant fields. But these honest mistakes do make it far more unlikely that untrained men, lacking this scientific training, and in many cases even living before the scientific revolution, would fare any better.
With that in mind, consider this image. What does it look like to you? When shown to audiences around the world, and in particular when shown to children, the answer is overwhelmingly "stegosaurus". This is not surprising, with those distinctive plates running down its back, and a final plate on that huge tail. But it was carved in a Cambodian temple around 1,200 A.D., along with several other animals.
If the carving had been made in the 1900s or later, it's unlikely anyone would object to this identification. It's quite clearly a stegosaurus, with this not only being the first suggestion of its identity, but really the only one. Even those who object rarely, if ever, have another suggestion. They do have some objections, of course. Maybe it's an imaginary creature that, by sheer coincidence, resembles a stegosaurus. This would make it an anomaly, however, as it is found among several real creatures one would expect the artist to be somewhat familiar with. Perhaps it's a different creature standing in front of a bush, though one would have to explain why this "bush" so perfectly hugs the back of the animal, and doesn't seem in step with the other decorative designs at the temple. Ultimately, the simplest suggestion is that it is as it appears to be; a stegosaurus.
And it's not even alone. Although there are many artifacts that cannot be verified, such as the legendary ica stones, many others can. Take, for example, the brass engravings on the tomb of Bishop Richard Bell (1410 - 1496 A.D.).
This engraving appears to depict two sauropods locked in battle, in similar ways to giraffe combat. Although I've never seen other Creationists suggest this, I also note what appears to be a club on the end of the left one's tail, which leads me to specifically identify it as a shunosaurus, which was discovered in 1977.
It seems to me that sauropods are the most commonly depicted dinosaur in ancient art. Not that others aren't also common, as the Angkor stegosaurus shows, but sauropods seem particularly common. And in similar positions, at that. Wherever two or more sauropods feature, it seems their necks are always locked together in some way.
The history - Dragons of old
Aside from countless illustrations, we also happen to have many stories to go with them. To begin with, even modern men, such as pygmies in the Congo, or aborigines in Australia, still describe some very dinosaurian beasts, even in some cases worshiping them as gods. The most commonly cited example is Mokele Mbembe, whose name means "blocker of rivers". Mokele Mbembe is regarded as anything from a terrifying monster to an actual god in the Likoaula region of the Congo. Although complications such as civil war have made expeditions to the region excessively difficult, and no conclusive proof of Mokele Mbembe has been found, descriptions of it seem rather dinosaurian, and the locals have been reported to identify sauropod drawings as Mokele Mbembe. It would appear, then, that until relatively recently, the Likoaula region of the Congo has been home to at least one small sauropod. Australia also has its fair share of dinosaur-like creatures known to, and described by, the locals. The kulta, the Burrunjor, and the Bunyip, are all examples of creatures whose descriptions resemble dinosaurs.
But these can theoretically be explained by contact with the scientific world. It seems unlikely, but while the chances are low, they are never none. Thus, it cannot be completely ruled out that the tribesmen saw images of dinosaurs beforehand, and integrated them with their own myths and legends.
But even if this is so, again, the stories are nothing new, and predate the myth of Evolution by many years. Many cultures, no matter how geographically isolated, report the presence of large reptiles, all of which resemble dinosaurs to some degree or another. Furthermore, the further back in history you go, the less legendary these stories appear to be.
This phenomena is so prevalent that it forced well known atheist and avid Evolutionist, Carl Sagan, to speculate that memories can actually be passed down to one's offspring. He theorised that although there were no humans around 65 million years ago, our mammalian ancestors did live alongside the dinosaurs. Thus, just as cats and dogs seem to have an everlasting natural feud, our ancestors "remembered" dinosaurs long after their extinction, then began adding legendary aspects to them.
The implications of this theory are quite staggering. It is, of course, ridiculous to suggest memories can be passed down to one's offspring. Even if it was possible, it wouldn't last for that long. You're talking about incalculable numbers of generations, each having some degree of memories of these huge lizards, and yet, suddenly, we lose them, just in time to discover bones that happen to confirm the existence of these prehistoric monsters. Is anyone convinced by this ridiculous theory?
But the sheer insanity of this idea tells us that Sagan's back was against the wall. When forced to choose between saying something stupid on the right, and acknowledging the element of truth in dragon legends on the left, Sagan couldn't be restrained. He chose to make up one of the silliest psychological theories the world has ever known.
On the flip side, you have John of Damascus, a.k.a. John Damascene (675 - 749 A.D.). In an essay entitled "On Dragons and Ghosts", John of Damascus weighed in on the issue of dragons, specifically what they were, and what people should think of them. His essay is a thorough refutation of various fables and superstitions people held to at the time. Though he had some rather outlandish beliefs, he was certainly no fool, and typically tried to keep both himself and his audience grounded in reality.
In this particular essay, John of Damascus deals with many legends ascribed to dragons, being particularly irked by the idea that they could morph into humans in order to consort with human women. This, he said, is against the natural order, as God only made two intelligent species: Human beings, and angels. Dragons, by contrast, are mere animals, being subject to man as any other. "I am not telling you, after all, that there are no dragons", he says, continuing with "dragons exist but they are serpents borne of other serpents. When just born and young, they are small; but when they grow up and mature, they become big and fat so that they exceed the other serpents in length and size. It is said they grow up more than thirty cubits; as for their thickness, they become as thick as a huge log."
Of course, an Evolutionist will just treat such essays as pure fiction, but there's no real reason to do so. In the eyes of John of Damascus, and indeed of many who wrote such accounts, the problem wasn't convincing people that these mythical beings were real, but that they were only real. That is, people in his time had ascribed some rather insane legends to them. But to John, and others who had no time for imagination, these were just regular animals. They're born, they grow, they die, they can even be killed (as he says one was), but they are nothing more than rather large animals. In a world that even then was familiar with things like whales, it's not surprising at all that they would be unfazed by large creatures on land either.
The Bible
But John of Damascus also had the advantage of being familiar with the Bible, which also contains a mixture of well known, and more obscure creatures. Of course it contains things like the lion, ostrich, pig, dog, sparrow, and many others, but it also contains animals whose identity is not so certain. The identity of the mighty re'em, for example, has been lost to history, and thus appears differently in many different Bible translations. The Tanniyn, similarly, are not fully understood, and are translated differently across different Bibles.
But two creatures that are of particular note in Scripture are Behemoth and Leviathan, two mighty creatures that are prominently focused on in Job chapters 40 and 41. There have been suggestions as to their identity. Leviathan is occasionally said to be a crocodile. But there are several points against it being just any crocodile, chief among which is its ability to shoot fire from its nostrils. Based on the description in Job, Leviathan is more likely a sarcosuchus, a large crocodile with a bulbous nose containing a mystery cavity, possibly used to mix the chemicals required to produce the fiery effect ascribed by scripture.
But such a large crocodile is still a long shot from a dinosaur. Behemoth, on the other hand, simply cannot be any animal known to live in the modern day. Many Bible commentaries identify Behemoth as either a hippo or an elephant, but this conclusion is easily rejected due to the description of its tail, which moves like a cedar. Cedars are large trees, quite inappropriate to describe the twigs on the back of an elephant or hippo. The only known animal that fits the description of Behemoth is a sauropod dinosaur.
The Theology - God owns dinosaurs
During His ministry, Jesus said "For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”" (John 5:46-47), and given the devastating impact Evolution has had on the world, it's clear that he takes those words a lot more seriously than even those who claim to believe in Him. Moses, of course, wrote Genesis, under direct inspiration of God. Thus, it is an infallible book, and is actually eyewitness testimony of the first moments in history. In it, we learn the truth about the origin of all things, including dinosaurs, but also including sin.
Sin is the rebellion of a sentient being against God. Almost immediately after mankind was created, we disobeyed God, seeking to be like Him and determine our own paths. This trend, started by the first human being, continues today. The result? Death. By causing us to deny this historical fact, the devil also sets us up to deny the solution. For many, the transition is instant. No Adam, no Jesus, simple. But with all the evidence we have, it's clear that the opposite is true. Because Jesus really is who He says He is, we can therefore believe Him when He regards Genesis as a factual historical narrative. But this was designed to lead us to Him, rather than He leading us to Genesis.
In some ways, dinosaurs can be described as "missionary lizards." They are a very effective tool for Evolutionists to lead unsuspecting people astray, fooling them with silly religions like Evolution. But by the same token, they can be used to show just how silly that particular religion is, as well as show just how ahead of its time the Bible really is. Thus, we can argue, as I am doing now, from dinosaurs to their maker.
See, just as God can approach dinosaurs with His sword (Job 40:19), He has that sword ready for us. But He is not so willing to use it. Though all have sinned, and the wages of sin is death, God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. God loved the world in this way: He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal life. All who confess Jesus as Lord, and believe God raised Him from the dead, will be saved.
References
1. Ruse, M - How evolution became a religion: creationists correct? National Post, May 13, 2000.
2. Bosker, Bianca - The Nastiest Feud in Science, The Atlantic, What Really Killed the Dinosaurs, September 2018 (link)
3. Moskowitz, C - Some Dinosaurs Survived the Asteroid Impact, Live Science, April 28th 2009 (link)
4. Coxworth, B, - Lab-made Fossils Cram 1000s of Years into 24 Hours, July 25 2018 (link)
5. Fischer, John Michael - Carbon-14-dated dinosaur bones are less than 40,000 years old. New Geology (link)
6. Chambers, C., cited in "Jurassic Pot Plants On Sale Soon", Dr David Whitehouse, BBC News, December 25th 2003 (link)