Genesis 1 teaches that God created the heavens and earth and all that was contained within them during the first week of creation—dinosaurs included. Yet evolutionists teach that life came about by accident, and that dinosaurs existed millions upon millions of years prior to the age of man. So which of these two accounts is true? Did man and dinosaurs coexist as the Bible teaches, or did they live millions of years apart as taught by evolution? For someone who does not take God’s Word at face value, the only means to answer this question is through physical evidence. Therefore, let’s take a look at which of these two beliefs is supported by physical evidence.
First, we need to recognize that most of what is taught about dinosaurs and their skeletal remains is contained within the realm of historical science—not operational science—meaning it involves interpreting evidence from the past, and when you realize that everyone has presupposed philosophical ideas and beliefs that bias their interpretations, you understand that their conclusions may or may not be accurate because they include speculation, personal bias and assumptions. For instance, if a paleontologist believes that Darwin’s Tree of Life is accurate, he will place the date of a discovered bone within that theory. If he does not agree with Darwin’s theory of evolution, he will usually place the evidence within a different timeframe. That’s what is wrong with the claim that there are “thousands of bones” supporting Darwin’s evolutionary theory. When bones are discovered and then dated according to a specific theory, of course they are going to support that theory. It’s called circular reasoning.
So where does all of this leave us according to dinosaurs, evolution and the Bible? If evolution is true there will never be any operational scientific evidence to verify it because it happened “before the age of man.” Yet if the biblical account is accurate and God created every living creature during the first six days of creation, man included, then we should see evidence within ancient writings that indicate man and dinosaurs did indeed coexist. But does this evidence exist? Is there proof that man and dinosaurs simultaneously roamed planet earth? Let’s take a look and see.
The modern word dinosaur (terrible lizard) wasn’t coined until 1842 by a creationist scientist named Richard Owen. Before 1842 dinosaurs were often referred to as dragons, and there are multiple civilizations that have some type of record, whether drawings or writings, of great dinosaur-like creatures coexisting with man. These ancient records include a hero named Gilgamesh from the land of Sumer in Babylon who slew a dragon, an ancient Indian carving that remarkably resembles an Edmontosaurus, and old legends of dinosaur-like creatures from Scandinavia, Italy, China, Ireland, Africa, Arabia and other areas of the world. The city of Nerluc, France was even renamed in honor of the killing of a horned dragon, and the old European science book, Historia Animalium, presents dragons as still being present during the 1500’s.
Also, biblically speaking, Job, the oldest book of the Bible—probably written around 2000 years prior to the birth of Christ—records two creatures whose descriptions remarkably resemble that of the ancient dragons. These creatures were referred to as Behemoth (meaning kingly, gigantic beast) and Leviathan (meaning dragon-like or great sea creature). Some of the newer Bible versions do the Word of God a disservice by changing the word Behemoth to hippopotamus or elephant. Yet Job 40:15-19 includes the description of Behemoth, and in this description we discover that Behemoth’s tail, “sways like a cedar.” Have you ever thought of a hippo or elephant’s tail as “swaying like a cedar”? Of course not. If this creature was a hippo or elephant the description would more likely have read, “swaying like a twig.” These versions have also changed the word Leviathan to alligator or crocodile, yet the biblical description of Leviathan (Job 41) presents him as a terrifying sea creature that no man would ever dare challenge. Let’s ignore the major detail that very little in this biblical description actually fits that of an alligator or crocodile, and just consider the fact that we have men who wrestle alligators with their bare hands!
Two final bits of evidence: First, near Glen Rose, Texas, you will find a human footprint fossilized inside a fossilized dinosaur track. The only way a human print could have been fossilized inside this dinosaur track is if the soil was still wet when both walked through the mud. Some have tried to claim that the human print is not human at all, but some type of dinosaur or other creature. Yet this theory is laid to rest by simply following the set of footprints for just a short distance, for no other creature makes the exact same footprint as that of a human. The only adequate explanation for these footprints is that man and dinosaurs coexisted.
Second, paleontologists have recently discovered what appears to be soft tissue from the exposing blood vessels in the skeletal remains of a Tyrannosaurus. This indicates that this specific T-Rex’s bones are only a few thousand years old. Even if this date is off by many thousands of years, it certainly does not fit into Darwin’s timeframe of evolution.
So where does this evidence lead…straight to the Word of God!
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