to ask Christians about dinosaurs...

[EastYorksLass]

This is a serious question - so I have been thinking a lot lately about whether God exists, the meaning of life and why is the world in such a terrible state... been thinking about going to church but still feel I am on the fence. One question which has really got me thinking (after watching dear old David Attenborough... ) is where do dinosaurs fit into all this. Sorry if this sounds very weird but I would love to hear an explanation!

Rubbish JW do not teach fossils are a trick of Satan. You can look on our official website and if you find that I will leave my religion I know it's not what we believe.

JWs believe the earth was created over a very long period of time and the earth was definitely not made in 24 hour days but 6 long periods of times. Geologists estimate that the earth is 4 billion years it could be this old for all we know, but we don't claim to know exactly but than the earth is very old and dinosaurs were long off the scene before man came on.

Someone else said dinosaurs flatten the vegetation is a believe of JW, we don't know why they were put on earth that's just a random persons opinion, we don't know claim to know why they where here, although like anyone else some people might like to guess doesn't mean we all believe the same things.

I personally believe we are made to question things and ask where we came from because we are made in God's image and are unlike animals in that sense but are bodies are made for the earth to share with animals so we are similar in physical ways because we all need oxygen and water and food we are made to live on earth. So we share similar DNA I heard even a banana has 50% same DNA as us and a chimp has 99% I will admit we are definitely a lot more like a chimp than a banana, but 50% is also pretty good 😉

Ok with the assumption you’re not being goady and with the caveat that I personally believe religion (or lack thereof) is a personal choice… here’s where I come down on evolution vs. creationism which is essentially what you are asking about. Oh and for reference I’m a non-practicing but traditional RC.

I believe that there is God does guide us at a high level, doing that by ‘creating’ us with the will and ability to reason and learn.  Therefore what we’ve learned so far is that evolution is the way we came to be.  We continue to learn and evolve, find new theories, explore our world, push boundaries, etc.  what we will ‘know’ to be fact in the future is unknown right now.   It could be that evolution and dinosaurs are spot on, it could be we appeared in a garden eating apples with a 🐍, or planted like potatoes by little green men last week with a preset history.   Who knows!  If God wouldn’t have wanted  us to ask questions and challenge, we wouldn’t have that ‘God’ given ability,  right?  

In other words by the fact that God didn’t create us to follow only a book that was written by fallible men, is proof to me that both God and dinosaurs can be real at the same time.  

 

Well shit… the formatting went wonky on that.

I’m too lazy to retype…here are the highlights of my profound thoughts 🤣

-God ‘created’ us with reasoning and learning ability
-We’ve learned that dinosaurs exist
-Man is fallible > man wrote the Bible > Bible is fallible
-God and dinosaurs can be real at the same time

Fairly liberal C of E Christian here. I believe in the theological idea that all truth is God's truth - anything knowledge we gain (whether through science or scripture) is God's. One could even argue that to reject this truth is to reject God (although I personally wouldn't tell a born-again Christian that their refusal to acknowledge the existence of dinosaurs is rejecting God as that seems unnecessarily rude and unkind).

The Bible itself has massive shifts in understanding (e.g. we go from there being two Gods to one God, and also from God being in one place to God being everywhere). I don't see why the reveal of new information should stop just because people stopped writing books for the Bible.

That's just my take anyway - not saying I'm right :)

You can contort any bible verse to justify any part of life.
If God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th then he created dinosaurs too? As you suggest the time line doesn't up. Personally I'd believe in science rather than religion it suits my nature where I require proof and evidence.
All religions have their own theories on the start of the world and can't all be correct. Faith means you believe in something that can't necessarily be proved, there is proof of dinosaurs existence, there is none to prove God did or does exist.

There's noting weird about dinosaurs. In mass extinction events the biggest animals go first as they need so much food.

That's it.

And yes, lots of dinosaurs were feathered. Not all though.

God had a dinosaur phase and grew out of it. Like most kids I know. So that's evidence that god exists and we are made in his/her/its image.
🦖🦕🦖🦕🦖🦕🦃🐓🦆🕊

Does this include all species of humans that have existed, or just H. sapiens?

Atheist here, raised catholic though. Generally their jist on it is not to take Old Testament literally, but the moral of the story - ie “god created the world” but not in 7 days

Any rational animal would be considered to have a rational soul. Non-rational animals are sometimes described as having a sensitive soul, and plants a vegetative or nutrative soul. Essentially any living thing has a soul - that's what makes it alive, and that soul reflects, or rather is the source of, it's nature.

This model is mostly from St Thomas's thinking, which he borrowed from Aristotle.

science largely corroborates the idea of an intelligent creator

No idea where you've picked this nugget up from, but it's complete and utter nonsense.

The girl who got the highest marks in my difficult medical based degree course didn't believe in dinosaurs. She also thought animals didn't have souls, so it was ok to euthanize them (as opposed to people). She was raised in a a deeply religious family. Religion indoctrination at a young age has a lot to answer for. Its brainwashing.

Intelligent design is as crazy as Satan digging holes to put dinosaur bones in.

Why do religious beliefs have to be respected?

Why though?

Did God create the universe to have a small group of honour sapiens worship him?

Seems like a risky strategy?

What if we hadn't evolved? What if there was no asteroid and the dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct?

What if Earth hadn't formed at all or if the Neanderthals had become the dominant species wiping us out?

No it doesn't

Because it’s polite.

Depends what you mean by respected and polite.

I can't stand the people who say all Christians think X or Y or justify thinking all Christians are bad people. It's no different from any other bigotry.

Similarly those who want to ban aspects of Christianity- they are just fascists.

OTOH there was a Christian the other day saying people should not use 'Jesus Christ' as an expletive. No-one has an obligation to respect religious views in that way.

I would say tolerate, rather than respect, as we do for all other views. Religion should be open to mockery and disagreement like any other opinion.

Possibly.

But to me you have to respect my weird belief just reads as you cant question or criticise it.

I think its ridiculous to believe that a god created the universe over billions of years and used evolution to get a wee human to worship him/them.

Believing in a literal genesis actually makes more sense. Much less cognitive dissonance

That sounds like a you problem then. Nobody is saying you can’t question or criticise it.

But to me you have to respect my weird belief just reads as you cant question or criticise it.

You can challenge it without criticising it. You don't have to agree with someone's beliefs - you can discuss it and question it. You just can't berate it.

Unless it's really obviously stupid like the sea's made of vimto

I’m a Christian, believe in dinosaurs and and an ‘old earth’ billions of years old. Also believe in evolution.

Some family and friends are creationist/6 literal days viewpoint and dinosaurs (doesn’t come up much tbh) range from living with people at same time/destroyed in flood/gap theory of creation account - can’t remember exact verse but there is a pause - where possibly a lot of time passes including dinosaurs,- fossils created to look old but really young so a tricksy satan/God testing faith/inaccuracy of carbon dating to date or age things correctly. Some are honest and say don’t know how it all fits but trust God/science will explain it or align it all one day. I’ve only met 1 person ever who said she didn’t really believe in dinosaurs - a flat mate at uni. When questioned further she said she thinks they lived with humans and artist interpretation make them look bigger/more scaley /monster like than they were and they live very long and remnants left over were killed in the flood. Some take the mention Leviathan later on in the bible to be a dinosaur and evidence they lived at same time as humans. Or it could be a crocodile. She also didn’t believe in cave people too or the ages of people - bronze/Iron Age. Well she did but they happened quickly and weren’t stages of millions of years 🤷‍♀️.

Oh good.

Believing in intelligent design is ridiculous

Why is the sea is full of vimto obviously stupid but believing in the resurrection or god not obviously stupid?