DINOSAUR DISCUSSION 4
Which one is it?
Can your eternal destiny depend on deciding between two choices?
So I remember quite a few years ago an older retired minister proposed the question:
Suppose you get to the end of your life and your entry into eternity consists of answering an examination paper.
So you sit there, look at the paper, open it up, and it consists of one question.
Just one question.
And there on the page are two examples which you have to read, and then make a decision.
The examples are outlining some activities of something Bible related.
One is the real case, and the other is a counterfeit.
In this case they are outlining some activities of supposedly the Holy Spirit.
You then have to decide, which one is the real Holy Spirit?
That's it. Just one question. Which one is the true, and which one is the false?
Doesn't seem like a hard question.
Or is it?
How do you think you would go?
OK about now someone is wondering just what in the world has this got anything to do with dinosaurs?
That comes in on the final example. And it's pretty climactic.
So keep reading.
Example 2
This one's pretty scary as it will actually impact EVERYONE alive on this planet when it happens.
There's been a lot of discussion among Christians that Jesus is supposed to be coming back to this world one day.
And sure enough suppose one day some majestic being turns up looking just like Jesus.
Well it has to be Jesus, doesn't it?
Suppose this being utters some of the same gracious truths that Jesus uttered when he was here before? Must be Jesus, right?
And he heals people. Jesus healed people. So it must be Jesus.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Unfortunately there is an enemy of God who would probably be happy to play this game and take as many people with him as he can. Down the plughole.
And it says in the Bible this enemy has power to deceive the whole world. And if it were possible, even God's elect.
So this enemy has some ability to counterfeit even the Second Coming. Maybe not exactly, but close enough to catch a lot of people off guard.
Two decisions. Is this the real Christ or a counterfeit?
There it is again. One question.
Is this the real Christ or a counterfeit?
How do you think you would go?
Example 3.
This one's pretty scary too as we are right in the middle of this one.
Most Christians believe that the Bible is the word of the living God and outlines a path for us to follow on our walk to eternity.
I've even had a friend tell me that one acronym for the Bible is:
Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth
Pretty much to the point. For Christians. And not to be ignored.
And sure, the Bible is much much more than this, but it is a fun acronym that someone somewhere came up with.
And it still is good advice.
But what if in this world we just couldn't believe what we were seeing?
And we now have come to a time with AI where some deceptions are occurring and catching a lot of people out.
But what about the world itself?
What if there were some things that just do not agree with the Bible and we are in fact being told they are the truth and the Bible is just plain wrong?
The scientists in this world.
Well it's clear that the Bible is not a scientific textbook.
BUT
There are some things that can very simply be determined. Approximately.
Many people have looked at the Bible genealogies and chronologies and tracked this back to the opening books of the Bible. And it doesn't matter how you do this. Unless you reinterpret some time periods to mean something else. Which a lot of people do.
But taking a simplistic approach, basically you get something like approximately 6,000 years from the recorded Creation to our time.
From the Creation?
That means the Earth may only be approximately about 6,000 years old.
Well that's pretty much in disagreement with what the leading scientists of our time believe.
They believe it's more than thousands of years old.
Actually more than millions of years old.
Even billions of years old.
From the rocks and meteorites.
But the rocks and meteorites are from the Creation, depending what you believe.
So who's right?
Back to the person sitting the exam paper.
One question.
Two examples given.
The scientists of the world state the age of the Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old
AND
Bible chronology suggests the world may only be approximately 6,000 years old.
A simple enough choice.
Or is it?
Which would you choose?
Repercussions for the dinosaurs
If the Earth is only 6,000 years old, what does that do for the dinosaurs?
Where do the dinosaurs come from?
Many Christians believe God made the dinosaurs along with all the other animals.
How do we know about dinosaurs?
From all the fossils.
And where did all these fossils come from?
Most Christians believe they came from the Flood when all the dinosaurs were drowned and deposited in layers, and finally became fossilized.
This also supposedly explains the geologic column when all the rock layers were laid down and so we find them today.
There are some problems with both of these views.
If the dinosaurs were deposited in layers at the time of the Flood, then the heaviest dinosaurs should appear in the bottom layers and the lightest ones should appear in the top layers. But the dinosaurs are found in the Mesozoic layers, roughly in the middle of the column. So these layers could not have been formed as a result of the Flood.
Further there are problems with dinosaurs tracks and nests and eggs.[1] All found in different depositional layers. But it would take the dinosaurs a lot of time to make these nests and lay eggs and leave tracks in different layers.
And we are told that rock layers can take many years to form.[2] So if all these different layers had to come into existence from the Flood, then layers taking many years could not have happened within a forty day period which is all we have theoretically for these nests and eggs and tracks to be buried and compressed to make rock layers containing all these things. And many layers of them. With a lot of time required between these different layers forming.
Simply put, the geologic column could not have been formed from the Flood as sedimentary layers being laid down then.
It’s just not possible.
So when were they laid down?
If it did not rain before the Flood then they weren’t laid down any time before the Flood. This means these rock layers came into existence some other way.
They must be a construction or a fabrication. Possibly occurring at the Creation, or any time up to the Flood.
Either way, when they came into existence, these rock layers were constructed, fabricated or refabricated with all the fossils built into them.
Which means that none of these creatures found within were ever living creatures and buried at some time. They were originally fossils. That includes the dinosaurs found in the Mesozoic rock layers.
So all these dinosaurs basically came into existence just like they look like today, as fossils in the rocks. Not as fossil remains, but as something else.
This means that none of these dinosaurs ever existed as living breathing creatures at any time in the past.
Something to think about.
REFERENCES
1.
many new nesting sites have been found all over the world ...
Dinosaur eggs are known from a variety of depositional environments.
Beach sands: Floodplains: Sand dunes:
One ancient beach deposit in northeastern Spain actually preserves about 300,000 fossil dinosaur eggs.
http://web.archive.org/web/20200727101303/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_egg
A nest of 15 young dinosaurs uncovered in Mongolia — cousins of Triceratops — now suggests these plant-eating beasts might have cared for their young, scientists reveal.
The dinosaur is named Protoceratops andrewsi, a sheep-size herbivore that lived about 70 million years ago that's known for the frill at the back of its head. Within the nest were infants about 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) long and probably no more than a year old.
https://news.yahoo.com/15-infant-dinosaurs-discovered-crowded-nest-161409482.html
We live in a new golden age of fossil discoveries. It seems that every week a new and dramatic fossil find is revealed. This fossil renaissance can be attributed to the opening up of new fossil sources, particularly China and Mongolia but also South America and to improved technology for retrieving and analyzing fossil remains. One such remarkable fossil find from Mongolia was reported in late 2011.* This find involved 15 complete or nearly complete fossils of juvenile dinosaurs all preserved in what was apparently a large 2-3 foot wide nest. That fossil find is described in a research paper which I have read. The paper: “A nest of Protoceratops andrewsi (Dinosauria, Ornithischia)” by Fastovsky et al. (2011 in the Journal of Paleontology Vol 85:1035-1041) described the evidence that these dinosaurs were juveniles, that they were all likely the same age and thus were of one brood and were all huddled in the same nest.
https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2014/01/31/juvenile-dinosaurs-found-huddling-in-a-nest-a-local-or-global-catastrophe/
In 2011 when I wrote about these fossils I stated that I was sure that within days Answers in Genesis and other creationists would be claiming these fossils as obvious evidence of a global catastrophe. I was absolutely correct and will show you their response at the end. But first let me observe that this obviously this is a case of rapid burial as their is little reason to believe that so many young dinosaurs of the same age would die in the same place and all oriented in the same direction in a nest under anything but unusual circumstances. But rapid burial doesn’t necessitate the jump to global flood. A watery death seems unlikely given that all 15 of these dinosaurs are in one nest, are of the same age (they didn’t just get washed there), and the sand grains of the rock they are embedded have the characteristics of sand dunes found today. A flood, whether placid or violent, would not be expected to result in this kind of preservation.
Irrespective of a watery or sandy death, the presence of a nest with juveniles in it presents a tremendous challenge to the global flood theory of creationists.
https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2014/01/31/juvenile-dinosaurs-found-huddling-in-a-nest-a-local-or-global-catastrophe/
Earth: The Science Behind the Headlines
Making Jurassic Tracks in the Jura
by Naomi Lubick
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
The footprints buried here came to light nearly a decade ago, when construction on the Transjurane Highway, meant to join Switzerland and France, unearthed layer upon layer of fossilized footprints. The Courtedoux tracksite, one of the first track-bearing layers uncovered in 2002, contains imprints made by multiple species of sauropods and tridactyls (three-digit bipeds, some of which are thought to be theropods), including herbivores and carnivores both large and small. Eventually, geologists identified more than 280 trackways, with footprints ranging from several centimeters to about a meter long that number in the thousands.
https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/making-jurassic-tracks-jura
2.
Types Of Sedimentary Rocks
There are two types of sedimentary rocks, referred to as either detritus or chemical.
Detritus Rocks
Detritus sedimentary rocks are formed when rock fragments, debris or sediments accumulate over time and can be either organic or inorganic in makeup. These detrital rocks come together under great pressure, usually over many years. The debris, or matter that form the rocks, can be either organic or inorganic.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/how-are-sedimentary-rocks-formed.html
Stephen Buckley
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