This kind of goes along with the creation vs evolution post a little bit before this. I thought this was a little different so I'm making a new post.
So, earlier today I was talking with my sister about God and whatnot. (She is not a believer) We ended up on the topic of where dinosaurs fit in if God created everything. As she was referring to the "research/evidence of dinosaurs done by scientists/whoever".
Go to www.creationscience.com. This is the site of Walt Brown Ph.D. You can read his book online and he explains about the flood and how it caused the world of today including fossils, comets meteors, water on the moon and more. His Ph.D. is from MIT.
Dionsaurs? Really? Is this what your sister wants to use to discredit God?
I"m betting she has never seen a baby's heartbeat on an ultrasound machine when the baby was in her belly. Nothing against her, we've all been there. Once you know God is real it's hard to imagine there's still people who disbelieve.
Basically, my approach nowadays is pretty simple. I don't have to prove anything. I just keep asking them, "Well who created that?" To which they say something like, "everything can be explained by science"...then I say, "but who created the molecules, where did they come from?". You go on like that for 5 minutes and they really have no answers.
The world is like a child, convinced they know it all. We probably have no more idea of what is really going in the universe than an ant knows about building a nuclear reactor.
Don't stress trying to "prove" God to anyone, espcecially family. He will touch their souls at the right time, just like He did yours.
Someone might ask, why are dinosaurs not mentioned in the BIBLE?
First of all the Bible was not written in ENGLISH and dinosaur is a word that was invented in England in the 1800s.
Secondly, the Bible was written about 1900 years ago to as long as 3000 years ago, before the word was invented.
The Bible DOES mention the types of creatures that are now identified as "dinosaurs" however.
There are various words that are used for which I will give the common translation: Flying Serpent, Dragon, Giant, Behemoth (Large Heavy Quadraped), Unicorn (Single-horned, or having a Prominent Horn), Leviathan (Large Aquatic Reptile).
Now some say that Dragons are "mythological" and that was the common thought until dinosaurs were discovered. For any honest reader, it is apparent that the dragons of the Bible, and the dragons that are mentioned in numerous cultures, and represented in all kinds of artwork throughout the world are QUITE clearly the same creatures that are called dinosaurs. Many of the representations appear to be COMPOSITE, that is a combination of various features of several different animals that may have been vaguely recalled.
Moreover, there are many man-made illustrations, carvings, paintings, and sculptures of dinosaurs, and these renderings pre-date the discovery of dinosaur bones in the 1800s. The artwork must have been done by people who actually saw dinosaurs!
So, this evidence argues against the notion that "dinosaurs went extinct millions of years before the appearance of man."
The Bible declares that dinosaurs were created within days of the creation of man, and that therefore they must have lived contemporaneously with humans. In addition, many dinosaur fossils are found to contain SOFT TISSUE, blood cells! When the supposed fossilized bones, which are supposed to be entirely INORGANIC are cut on saws, there is the unmistakable odor that one smells when bones are burnt. These dinosaur remains are not tens of millions of years old. They are only a few thousand years old.
Floodnut - Do you have a source for your information on soft tissue in dinosaur remains?
I remember reading an article a few years ago about a T-Rex bone that was found to have "soft tissue" that "could not be identified" but "resembled red blood cells".
I say if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it's probably not a grasshopper.
According to a 1991 Gallup Poll, of the scientists and engineers in the US, only about 5% were creationists. Considering only those working in the relevant fields of earth and life sciences, there are about 480,000 scientists, but only about 700 believe in "creation-science" or consider it a valid theory (Robinson 1995). This means that less than 0.15 percent of relevant scientists believe in creationism. And that is just in the US, which has more creationists than any other industrialized country. In other countries, the number of scientists who accept creationism drops to less than one tenth of 1 percent.
This was in 1991, way before the human genome project, after which evolution was basically established as a fact. No real scientist denies the fact of evolution anymore. The debate is over. Face it.
My question is, no one in this discussion (and I would venture to say on this site) is a scientist. I am not a science major but I took some hard sciences in college and even that was very challenging. I can't even imagine how difficult it must be to get a PhD in science. Imagine all the writing, publishing work, thousands of pages and articles to read; it's ridiculously difficult.
What astonishes me is the sheer arrogance of certain religious people without any serious training in the sciences who dare stand up to the whole, world-wide academic institution of science, and who dare to say that scientists are wrong on evolution because of [insert creationist argument].
Seriously, don't you think scientists have thought of that objection? Just imagine, hundreds of thousands of evolutionary biologists around the world who devote their daily lives ONLY to the study of evolution--and they all come to the same basic consensus. Don't you think they've thought of your silly creationist objections? Seriously.
Actually, I've studied the subject quite extensively as I home schooled and raised my four sons. I don't have a degree in any of the hard sciences, but I did raise a son who is in his Senior year at a major University with a major in Microbiology and a minor in something along the lines of evolutionary cell biology. As a matter of fact, he is soon to become the first person EVER to use the University's scanning electron microscope to photograph a specific bacteria strain which was discovered by his research team. He's the only undergrad on the team, incidentally. We have a Creation ministry which points out the fallacies in the idea of evolution.
The argument that very few scientists claimed to be creationists in 1991 is hardly a valid reason for claiming that creationism is not scientific. In fact, at the American Geological Society meeting in Ovtober 2011, there were several creationists who gave presentations. Peer-reviewed scientific journals, such as the Journal of Paleontology and Geology, have published papers by creationists. The lists go on and on. The number of people with degrees in the hard sciences who realise that evolution is a belief system is growing daily.
The person who wrote the (Creationist) science curriculum I used with my sons, Dr Jay Wile, holds an earned PhD from the University of Rochester in Nuclear Chemistry. I'd call that a hard science. :-)
