On God Part XII- Dinosaurs and the Literal Bible

Why doesn’t the Bible ever talk about Dinosaurs? It might seem like the type of question a five-year-old asks but this 33-year-old would also like to know. If you think this question is of little relevance, well, keep reading.

I hear all the time about how the Bible goes back to the beginning of time. Genesis tells us the story of creation. As a good American, you can believe the creation story is true because the Bible says it’s true. Case closed.

But the Bible doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens in and around secular history. Sometimes it’s hard to make secular history and biblical history line up. Case in point, dinosaurs.

So what about the dinosaurs?!

If you’re a non-believer the answer to why the dinosaurs don’t enter into the biblical narrative is because they died out around 65 million years before biblical times started. Sounds plausible.

However, many Christians believe the idea that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago is hilarious since the Bible clearly goes through the generations from Adam—first human; arrived on the scene during the formation of the actual world—all the way to Jesus. We know Jesus lived around 2,000 years ago. Therefore, there’s really no room for the Earth to be much older than around seven thousand years old.

That’s all fine and great.

Then in 1677 Robert Plate discovered the first dinosaur bone but it wasn’t correctly identified until the early 1800s. So now young Earth Christians are forced to deal with the question of what’s really going on with the whole dinosaur thing.

Except, a lot of them don’t deal with that question at all. “What’s going on with the dinosaurs?” is sectioned off in a different part of the brain. The Bible is in the faith realm. Dinosaurs are a fun archaeological thing. The two need not ever cross paths.

But can the two live harmoniously with each other?

The Three Dinosaur Options

As far as I can see, there are three possibilities to explain the dinosaurs. I’m sure there are other theories, these three just necessitate the least amount of mental gymnastics.

Option one: Dinosaurs are made up.

They just don’t exist. It might be the devil playing a trick on us or maybe science is up to more of its fuckery. Either way, dinosaurs aren’t real things that really walked the Earth.

If this is the case—and all the other reasons a young Earth is improbable also turn out to be false—then it’s totally plausible that the Earth really IS as young as the Bible seems to indicate that it is.

I find this option pretty unlikely. You have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to get to the point where you can say with a straight face that Satan planted dinosaurs in the ground in order to lead us astray.

To their credit, most Christians don’t seem to have a problem with dinosaurs existing. But, I wonder how much of that has to do with them never wrestling with what it means for their faith if dinosaurs really did exist.

Option two: Dinosaurs lived during Biblical times, the Bible just didn’t mention them.

Maybe the Earth really is only around 7,000 years old AND ALSO dinosaurs are real. For this to be true, dinosaurs would have been around during biblical times, the authors of the Bible just happened to not mention them.

If this were the case then, man, I’d love to be a fly on the wall when the authors were telling people not to braid their hair while a T-rex was rampaging through the village. Sorry, T-rex, you just weren’t interesting enough to make it into the final text.

For this to be true, not only would biblical authors have to have all agreed to not mention the enormous reptiles creating havoc all around them, but every other historical author would have had to do the same.

Also, how did they fit the dinosaurs on the Ark? If you thought it was tough getting the air temperature adjusted to allow polar bears and rhinos to exist on the same boat imagine trying to fit a brachiosaurus between them.

This option seems even more far-fetched than option one.

Option 2-b:Since it seems incredibly implausible, even by biblical standards, that dinosaurs were on the Ark maybe that's when they all died. Dinosaurs existed until the flood of Noah, at which point they all died. 

Many believers hold this as their 'get out of jail free' card. Ha, dinosaurs DID exist and the Bible is still true. Flood of Noah. Boom. 

Except, what about all the aquatic dinosaurs? If this is how the land dinosaurs all died you'd expect the aquatic dinosaurs to have survived the flood. 

If the aquatic dinosaurs were unable to survive the flood then how did so many modern sea creatures survive?

Of course if the flood really happened you'd expect to see whale carcasus in, say, Nebraska, being trapped inland when the waters recedeeded but that's neither here nor there.

Okay. So assuming dinosaurs and humans didn’t exist at the same time, and assuming dinosaurs aren’t a trick of the devil/scientific community, that leaves only option three.

Option Three: Dinosaurs existed before biblical times.

Now, listen. I realize this is the only answer that makes any logical sense. Dinosaurs most likely existed before humans. To the non-believer, this is not only obvious but also not even a big deal.

For believers, though, something has to give. If dinosaurs existed before humans then the creation story of Genesis is false insofar as it doesn’t actually portray the beginning of time. Which, is kind of a big part of the story.

Options one and two are so ridiculous they hardly warrant mentioning. Except, a lot of people just don’t believe option three.

If the story of Genesis isn’t totally accurate then it opens a whole can of worms. Maybe other parts of the Bible aren’t factually true either. If THAT’S true then maybe women should be allowed to speak in church (1 Corinthians 14:34) and the gays can even get married.

See why this matters?

The Bible is a liferaft that helps people navigate this weird existence known as life. But, it also has some questionable teachings.

If people want to dictate policy based on the Bible then the Bible should probably line up with common sense. If it doesn’t, then I want to know why. Maybe there’s a fourth option that I’m not thinking about, but it seems to me that these are the only three options. Either, dinosaurs never existed, they existed during biblical times, or they existed before biblical times.

Pick your poison. The only option that doesn’t raise a red flag to the validity of the Bible is option one, dinosaurs never existed. Any other option creates chaos for a biblical literalist.

If the Bible is true, explain dinosaurs. There seems to be no way of believing in both dinosaurs and a literal Bible unless we just completely let go of any pretense of reason.

If it’s divinely inspired then the entire thing should line up with secular history. But, it doesn’t. So how can it be written by God? If it isn’t written by God then maybe we should stop letting it dictate our political policies.

So, what do you think? Is the existence of dinosaurs incompatible with the Bible being divinely inspired? Which option is most likely true?

If you enjoyed this article please share it because the On God series is my favorite thing to write about but people are weird about sharing articles that openly question the Bible.

Here are a few more articles while you’re here.

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