The question over whether human beings ever saw a living dinosaur with their own two eyes has been a longstanding controversy. While many questions can have a variety of answers to choose from, the question of whether dinosaurs were ever contemporaries with humans has only two possible answers. Either humans did experience living with dinosaurs or they did not.
Most scientists and educators are convinced that dinosaurs roamed the earth millions of years before humans made their entrance. They say “primitive” dinosaurs originated 230 million years then evolved into many species. They also say that mysteriously about 65 million years ago all dinosaurs disappeared from existence. Orthodox paleontologists believe that Homo sapiens did not evolve until 130,000–100,000 years ago. So that leaves almost 65 million years between the last dinosaur and the first human.
The designation of an animal as a “dinosaur” happened in 1842 when the English paleontologist Richard Owen invented the term. The first dinosaur fossils were discovered in 1815 by Oxford professor William Buckland. Today we have around thirty million fossil dinosaur bones, which have been assigned to 700 species. Many full skeletons have been discovered. As an example, paleontologists have discovered 32 skeletons of the most popular dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus rex.
As far as we know, all 700 species are now extinct. That is indeed a mystery, but an even more troubling mystery for paleontologists is the abrupt appearance of the first dinosaurs in the fossil record. Each of the three major groups [Thecodonts, Saurischians, and Ornithischians] enters the fossil record as fully developed representatives of their group. Neo-Darwinian evolution demands that there must have been a vast number of intermediate fossils that evolved from their supposed common ancestor “primitive” dinosaur. The fossil record is devoid of the vast number of supposed intermediate ancestors.
Of course any rational person, whether Biblical Naturalist or Scientific Naturalist, is going to learn as much as they can about nature by studying the life around them. Empirical investigation does not require much “faith.”
Those of us who believe in an all-powerful Creator God also base our understanding of nature on religious faith. It may just be me, but I think that believing God not only created single cells but also dinosaurs and humans requires much less faith. It must be awfully difficult to be a religious Methodological Naturalist and have to summon the faith to believe things happened that you know are statistically impossible by purely natural causes! It must also be difficult to be a religious Scientific Naturalist and summon the faith to believe natural evolutionary events produced dinosaurs and humans when you know that producing organisms with so much complexity by blind, undirected mistakes in copying DNA is statistically impossible!
Most “Biblical Naturalists” believe that dinosaurs and humans did live as contemporaries and they interacted with each other. Why do they have such a different understanding of dinosaurs from “Orthodox scientists”?
Perhaps subscribers to “Orthodox Science” have been examining the question through a different paradigm from their “Biblical Naturalist” brothers. In the absence of a supernatural “interference” from a Creator, there is the problem of time. Any informed person understands that, if life arose by the seemingly impossible series for fortunate natural events from chemicals to “primitive” living cells, billions of years would have been necessary. “Methodological Naturalism” requires huge spans of time. Many scientists like Carl Sagan and Frances Crick (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA) believed that earth’s history of four billion years would not have been enough time for living cells to have evolved from non-living precursor chemicals. This forced them to invent the ludicrous “panspermia” hypothesis—the idea that “seeds” of life exist in the Universe and were deposited here from outer space.
Informed people also realize that the evolution from the first self-replicating cell to dinosaurs and humans is a story of overcoming insurmountable naturalistic barriers. It must require a high degree of faith in nature devoid of any supernatural Creator to be a “Methodological Naturalism” believer. Of course any rational person is going to learn as much as they can about nature by studying the life around them.
Let us look next at the Biblical account of creation and see how humans and dinosaurs fit into that picture. A major consideration in defining our paradigm about earth’s history is how much weight we give to science and to Scripture. Which do we assign as the base from which we proceed? If there seems to be a conflict, to which do we defer? Scientific Naturalism gives no place to the Bible in interpreting the past. Biblical Naturalists use the Bible as their basis for understanding the past. Of course, many people operate from variations between these two extremes.
The Biblical Naturalism paradigm allows the belief that the Bible, as it was originally written, contained no errors. Should Genesis be interpreted as mythological tales rather than literal history? I am absolutely convinced there is no rational reason to interpret any of Genesis as mythological tales.
So what does the Bible tell us about humans and terrestrial dinosaurs? Read Genesis 1:24-25. Terrestrial dinosaurs were created on creation day 6.Well, what else happened on the sixth day? Read Genesis 1:26, 27, and chapter 3. Humans were created on the same day as dinosaurs. So what does honest common sense dictate? Humans and dinosaurs were contemporaries. But did the humans have any contact with dinosaurs? Read Genesis 2:19-20. Naming the dinosaurs is good evidence that Adam was in the presence of dinosaurs! One famous claim is the fossil footprints of humans and dinosaurs together near the Paluxy River in Texas. I believe there is sufficient controversy with this evidence that we should not use it as positive evidence for humans and dinosaurs walking together. I believe more credible evidence comes from paintings produced by artists who lived centuries before the first dinosaur fossils where discovered. Those ancient artists produced art that is remarkably similar to what modern artists paint when they illustrate what dinosaurs looked like. The difference is that modern people base their pictures on dinosaur fossils while ancient people observed the creatures with their own two eyes or got their information from other people who saw the dinosaurs. There is an excellent website where you can view the artworks for yourself—
http://www.genesispark.org/genpark/ancient/ancient.htm.
The Biblical account in chapters 40 and 41 of Job is the report of God to Job about the leviathan and the behemoth. The context requires that both animals are as familiar to Job as the other animals God described in Job 38 and 39. It is clear to me that the behemoth is a huge dinosaur like an Apatosaurus and the fierce leviathan was like a Tyrannosaurus.
The dragons of folk tales from cultures around the world have a close resemblance to dinosaurs. These stories, although fiction, were developed centuries before any scientist had brought to light the existence of these huge and sometimes dangerous dinosaurs. How did the originators of the folk tales know about such creatures if they never saw them? The thought that these legends grew and were embellished with time is certainly likely. On the other hand, ancient illustrated animals are unlike any modern animal but remarkably similar to how artists from the 19th century onward have depicted dinosaurs. The models for modern artists were the actual dinosaur fossils that were discovered centuries before the first dragon artists produced their art. I believe the models for “pioneers” of dragon art were dinosaurs they had observed.
The evidence is clear. What is not clear is how one will bend his interpretation to fit his preferred worldview. One can understand why some say it takes more faith to be an atheist or evolutionist. How much blind faith does your worldview require?
Bob Harsh is a biology teacher at Greater Atlanta Christian School in Norcross, Georgia. He holds a Masters of Science in Biology and has been a biology educator since 1968.
