Are dinosaur fossils a test of faith?

[veterinarian]

My husband came up with this idea a few days ago: what if dinosaur fossils are only in existence in order to test God's people (or to trick them)? So that, he said, people's faith in God is tested: believe God, or believe man's ideas?

He said this after I grumbled for the 1,000,000th time about how-can-these-people-tell-what-color-skin-dinosaurs-have-from-a-bare-bone? I get annoyed when I see many of the dinosaur TV shows these days because I just do not understand how these people can determine many things (skin color, mating behavior, nasal anatomy, vocalizations) from just a collection of bones. Yes, I can tell quite a bit about an animal from it's bones.........but not it's skin color! For instance: there are areas on each bone in a body that show where muscles, tendons, and ligaments were attached. From that, one can extrapolate what the animal's muscle structure had been but not the color of the skin over the muscles. And many TV shows about dinosaurs these days do not talk at all about how most of the information is nothing more than someone's dream.

What does everyone think? Could dinosaurs be part of the lie/delusion that the Bible mentions for the last days? Does the Bible even address this sort of thing?

For many years, many people have searched the Bible and done their best to fit the fossil record (and its associated climate changes) into the Biblical account of creation. Maybe they should have concentrated on the Bible alone.



Just an idea, and some questions. Ask these questions in any setting of professionals and you are likely to be "tarred and feathered"!

[Murph]

Dinosaurs and man lived together on the earth probably until the flood. I think there were dinosaurs on the ark. After the flood the earth's climate changed dramatically and could no longer support animals that required as much edible vegetation as the dinosaurs so they died out. The earth before the flood was tropical and sub-tropical...lots of big plants for the dinosaurs to eat. After the flood it got colder and did it fairly fast.

Dinosaures couldn't have lived before man walked the earth because death doesn't predate man. Remember Adam. Nothing died before he sinned...on the back of sin rides death.

The Bible mentions Behemoth and Leviathan. Talks about them in Job 40 and 41. Go see. Many think they were dinosaurs. I think they were. One of my favorite verses has to do with God playing with Leviathan like a little bird. "Wilt thou play with him as with a bird?... " Job 41:5. I can picture God playing with a dinosaur like a little bird...and smile every time I see that mental picture.

I would say it is a part of the learning process. As we study the Bible we begin to realize that as smart as man thinks he is he still can't corretly answer the questions God asked Job. Man has most of it wrong. The Bible has 100% of it right! We just have to study it and realize that it is an absolute authority on everything including dinosaurs...

;D

[Keith]

Marilyn, you offered that perfectly.

While at Moms for coffee this morning I saw a new commercial on television for the Science Channel. In it they show the discovery of a fossilized whale skeleton in the middle of the desert. The scientists were trying to come up with explainations as to why it was there, and their ideas were all scientific hogwash.

I looked at Mom and said "Or, it could have simply died there during the global flood." She just looked at the TV and shook her head.

You know why men don't believe the Bible? They don't want to.

"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." (Romans 1:21)

[Murph]

That is why fossils of sea creatures are found on the mountain tops...waters were there too.

[Murph]

Brings to mind a great story about the man who discovered the "rivers in the sea." He was a sea captain, I think, and he became ill. To pass the time while he was getting well he asked his daughter to read the Bible to him. She read from Psalm 8. Verse 8 reads,

"The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas."

He asked her to read it again and she read "...paths of the seas." As soon as he was well he went out and started his work. He discovered the "paths of the seas"...ocean currents!

Amen! It's all there, in the Bible and all we have to do is listen when it speaks.

[Keith]

Amen!

[Murph]

Here is another example of where the scientist have it wrong. Note the age of the earth in the article, 17 million years and older?

Another question like Mr. and Mrs. Vet's...how do they know this stuff?

***

Yellowstone's plumbing exposed
Plume slants northwest; magma body bigger than thought

SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 14, 2009 – The most detailed seismic images yet published of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano shows a plume of hot and molten rock rising at an angle from the northwest at a depth of at least 410 miles, contradicting claims that there is no deep plume, only shallow hot rock moving like slowly boiling soup.

A related University of Utah study used gravity measurements to indicate the banana-shaped magma chamber of hot and molten rock a few miles beneath Yellowstone is 20 percent larger than previously believed, so a future cataclysmic eruption could be even larger than thought.

The study's of Yellowstone's plume also suggests the same "hotspot" that feeds Yellowstone volcanism also triggered the Columbia River "flood basalts" that buried parts of Oregon, Washington state and Idaho with lava starting 17 million years ago.

Those are key findings in four National Science Foundation-funded studies in the latest issue of the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. The studies were led by Robert B. Smith, research professor and professor emeritus of geophysics at the University of Utah and coordinating scientist for the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory

www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/uou-ype121109.php

[veterinarian]

I like your explanation, Duck. Plus, the idea of God playing with Leviathan is a really neat picture.

I have always known that what God makes is very amazing, from the tiny little flower to the largest mountain.

Over the years I have lost much of my patience regarding the anti-God attitudes of many professionals. The individuals do not want to pay any attention to something that even gives a hint of belief in God. I am wrong to feel this way because so many of these individuals lead very pitiful lives; they need God, not judgment from me!