DINOSAUR DISCUSSION 7
Making Chocolate
Where did the dinosaurs come from?
Were they part of the creation?
Were they bred by the antediluvians?
Audience: Young Earth Christians
I remember quite some years ago when we tried to make some chocolate at home my wife and I spent quite a bit of time trying to find a book about it.
But to the dinosaurs…
While doing some studies about the dinosaurs I checked to see if I was on track and what other Christians were saying. With minor exceptions the general view appeared to be that God had created the dinosaurs and there was a bit of a division if any were on Noah’s ark or not.
Some Christians writing that they were and they died out later in the early centuries from various causes. Just died out, or hunted and killed, and so on. One fascinating theory advocated by some Christians even suggests there could still be some alive hiding in the deepest jungles somewhere and all we have to do is find them!
Others taking the view that they weren’t on the ark for various reasons and so met there demise that way.
In the end it took me back to my story about trying to make home made chocolate.
It was very frustrating. We would search for some book or booklet and then track a copy down if possible.
But it always ended the same way.
Finally when we were able to hold a copy in our hands and excitedly we turned to the opening pages to see how we could make our own home made chocolate.
At last we would be able to make some chocolate and not have to depend on buying chocolate from the local stores. Though we weren’t going to stop doing that. Just that we also would now have a home made alternative.
Excitedly we would gaze at that opening page of instructions.
And there it was. And all the books we found were the same and said pretty much the same thing, if even perhaps slightly worded a little differently.
And just what was this marvellous opening instruction that would finally put us on the track to making our own home made chocolate?
All the books said the same thing.
The opening instructions were…
“Melt the block”
Melt the block?
We didn’t want to melt any block!
We wanted to make our own!
And so this brings me to this crazy dinosaur situation which seems to have permeated the bulk of Christianity with some very small minor exceptions.
Excitedly I’d start looking at another Christian dinosaur video or study. And again with very small minor exceptions they all started the same way. Didn’t matter the source, Christian group, or whoever, each presentation or study usually started the same way.
Again with similar wording if not identical…
“God created the animals so he made the dinosaurs at the same time” or similar.
Conclusion? God made the dinosaurs so they must have been on Noah’s ark or died in the Flood.
And that’s the track I continually found. [with very minor exceptions]
And as I said I have found it very frustrating. Because I had come at the dinosaurs from a completely different direction. And following that direction I had come to very different conclusions.
And I have wondered why, why, why can’t all these Christian groups see this?
They all have started with an assumption.
I had decided to start with not an assumption, but what we have.
Do we have living dinosaurs? You can’t go to a zoo and look at a growling T Rex.
What do we have? Fossils.
All these Christian groups have started with a growling T Rex. In the Garden of Eden.
But the reality is that what we currently have is T Rex fossils in the ground. They are rocks. Not a living creature.
Here’s a quote I found:
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains, or traces of remains, of ancient organisms. Fossils are not the remains of the organism itself! They are rocks.
A fossil can preserve an entire organism or just part of one. Bones, shells, feathers, and leaves can all become fossils.
Fossils can be very large or very small. Microfossils are only visible with a microscope. Bacteria and pollen are microfossils. Macrofossils can be several meters long and weigh several tons. Macrofossils can be petrified trees or dinosaur bones.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240425044356/https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/fossil/
And this is what we currently have. Dinosaur fossils in the ground. Which are rocks. So if we want to get back to the living dinosaurs this is where we start.
NOT in the Garden of Eden.
So how did we get all these dinosaur fossils? The current Christian belief is that all or most of the dinosaurs perished in the Flood, those buried eventually becoming fossils. There is some debate on how long it took for their bones to become fossilized and if there was enough time for this since the Flood.
The general view of fossilization is that “This process can take thousands or even millions of years.”[1]
However, a study has concluded that “Lab-made fossils cram 1000s of years into 24 hours”[1]
But that’s an extreme under laboratory conditions. We can however confidently assume thousands of years. Low enough to be since the Flood?
And though it’s a bone of contention [or a fossil?] Young Earth Christians have cheekily dated some dinosaur fossils using radiocarbon dating to get low ages and claim they fit the Flood timeline.
But this may not matter anyhow. The deposition of dinosaurs in the geologic column rules out these layers being deposited at the Flood. Everything is in the wrong spot. All the dinosaurs appear in the Mesozoic layers roughly in the middle, instead of heavy dinosaurs in the bottom layers and small light ones in the top layers.
Then there are problems with dinosaur nests, eggs, year-old-young in the nests, and dinosaur tracks. All of which could not have been laid at the time of the Flood. See Discussion 2 and 5 for more details.
So if the geologic column could not have been laid at the time of the Flood, then when? Not before if it hadn’t rained. Taking us back to the Creation. But that is an impossibility also. Then these layers were not laid down at all at any time but came into existence some other way. They must have come into existence looking pretty much what they look like nowa, with all the fossils already in them.
a. excepting for some upheaval from the Flood activity.
In other words, they are a complete fabrication.b Which means the dinosaur fossils are also a complete fabrication. All of them. They came into existence as fossils in the rock layers and NEVER existed as living breathing creatures at any time in the past.
b. Note there is an alternative model but it is a mixture of sedimentation and fabrication. See Discussion 6. With this alternative model, the dinosaurs still don’t make it.
So there it is. Let that sink in. The fossils of dinosaurs found in the Mesozoic rock layers never existed as living breathing creatures at any time in the past. Period.
And I am completely stumped why none of these Christian groups can see it.
Instead they talk on about dinosaurs either being on Noah’s ark or perishing in the Flood. Or hiding in the deepest jungles somewhere. And so on. Go figure. I can’t.
REFERENCES
1.
The most common way an animal such as a dinosaur fossilises is called petrification. These are the key steps:
1. The animal dies.
2. Soft parts of the animal's body, including skin and muscles, start to rot away. Scavengers may come and eat some of the remains.
3. Before the body disappears completely, it is buried by sediment - usually mud, sand or silt. Often at this point only the bones and teeth remain.
4. Many more layers of sediment build up on top. This puts a lot of weight and pressure onto the layers below, squashing them. Eventually, they turn into sedimentary rock.
5. While this is happening, water seeps into the bones and teeth, turning them to stone as it leaves behind minerals.
This process can take thousands or even millions of years.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-are-fossils-formed.html
[Natural History Museum, London]
Lab-made fossils cram 1000s of years into 24 hours
By Ben Coxworth
July 25, 2018
In an effort to better understand how the fossilization process affects various types of biological materials, scientists at Britain's University of Bristol developed a lab-based process in which fresh specimens such as bird feathers, lizard limbs, and leaves can be converted into "synthetic" fossils within approximately one day.
Using a hydraulic press, the items are first packed into clay tablets about the diameter of a dime. Each tablet is then placed in a sealed metal tube, which gets heated to over 410 ºF (210 ºC) while also being subjected to 3,500 psi (241 bar) of pressure. After around 24 hours of this treatment, the tablets are cracked open to reveal their now-fossilized contents.
https://newatlas.com/lab-made-fossils/55619/
Stephen Buckley
E-mail: snoaktrua [at] duck.com
Last revised: 8 Jun 2025.
Constructed: 19 Feb 2025.
Companion pages
Page design/construction Stephen Buckley 2024,2025.
Snoaktrua