Dinosaurs

[pointer]

The bible infers a date of the earth that is IMPOSSIBLE.

So this is your excuse not to repent?

The Bible says on one page that man was created after plants and animals, and on another that it was the other way round. The Bible is about spiritual truth, not scientific. The Bible contains allegory, not daft 'facts'.

But chase a straw man if you are desperate!

[Gerioke]

Bilderberger

[ted]

And ted, you didn't really say anything, just that you think I'm wrong. You also coupled that by inferring I'm pious, nice touch. Yes, I believe that people are not correct in thinking that Christianity is the truth, I don't deny it. But your insult doesn't do much, you're just dismissing me without addressing the point.

Nah, I wasn't dismissing you at all.

Just a friendly joke, that's all.

Now, onto the matter at hand:

I'm one of those weirdos that subscribes to the possibility that what is recorded in the bible is in no way the entire story of the earth's creation/ formation.

I have no way to prove it, so I simply tuck it away in the middle of my pea-brain.

I think that the earth is older than 6,000 years. How much older is something I have no idea on, but it's older than 6,000 years. I think the Bible recounts, briefly, what applies to us in the Spiritual realm, but I also think there were things going on on the earth's surface much earlier that Adam and Eve. Genesis opens and describes the earth as formless, and then God puts it together as we see it now, but I am open to the possibility that the formlessness was a result of an earlier event. Were the dinosaurs a part of an earlier earth, a part that was destroyed in an earlier event which is not recorded in the Bible? Well, they very well could have been. We can't simply deny hundreds, if not thousands, of fossils, could we?

Another thing that leads me to think that there were things going on before Adam and Eve is the fall of Lucifer. Just when did that event happen? We're not really told as to how it matches up chronologically with other Biblical events, so it leads me to think that it could have happened before the events in the Garden of Eden.

So, in a nutshell, I think that the earth quite possibly could have been populated by creatures well before the events of the beginning of Genesis. Perhaps God felt it was not important enough in our Spiritual walk for us to give it much thought and therefore, it was not recorded for us in Scripture?

Who really knows?

Sorry about the earlier joke, too. It's just been one of those days.

t.

[Gerioke]

Maybe the serpent in the garden was the last dinosaur.

[Arjuous]

And ted, you didn't really say anything, just that you think I'm wrong. You also coupled that by inferring I'm pious, nice touch. Yes, I believe that people are not correct in thinking that Christianity is the truth, I don't deny it. But your insult doesn't do much, you're just dismissing me without addressing the point.

Nah, I wasn't dismissing you at all.

Just a friendly joke, that's all.

Now, onto the matter at hand:

I'm one of those weirdos that subscribes to the possibility that what is recorded in the bible is in no way the entire story of the earth's creation/ formation.

I have no way to prove it, so I simply tuck it away in the middle of my pea-brain.

I think that the earth is older than 6,000 years. How much older is something I have no idea on, but it's older than 6,000 years. I think the Bible recounts, briefly, what applies to us in the Spiritual realm, but I also think there were things going on on the earth's surface much earlier that Adam and Eve. Genesis opens and describes the earth as formless, and then God puts it together as we see it now, but I am open to the possibility that the formlessness was a result of an earlier event. Were the dinosaurs a part of an earlier earth, a part that was destroyed in an earlier event which is not recorded in the Bible? Well, they very well could have been. We can't simply deny hundreds, if not thousands, of fossils, could we?

Another thing that leads me to think that there were things going on before Adam and Eve is the fall of Lucifer. Just when did that event happen? We're not really told as to how it matches up chronologically with other Biblical events, so it leads me to think that it could have happened before the events in the Garden of Eden.

So, in a nutshell, I think that the earth quite possibly could have been populated by creatures well before the events of the beginning of Genesis. Perhaps God felt it was not important enough in our Spiritual walk for us to give it much thought and therefore, it was not recorded for us in Scripture?

Who really knows?

Sorry about the earlier joke, too. It's just been one of those days.

t.

No worries about the joke, amigo, I just didn't want people to think I am somehow pious.

You make an interesting point, but it doesn't really hold water. If the bible is infallible, it is without flaw. Allegory is "a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one." Allegory is not fact. Saying that the bible is an allegory and that the bible is fact is, indeed, contradictory.

[Arjuous]

The bible infers a date of the earth that is IMPOSSIBLE.

So this is your excuse not to repent?

The Bible says on one page that man was created after plants and animals, and on another that it was the other way round. The Bible is about spiritual truth, not scientific. The Bible contains allegory, not daft 'facts'.

But chase a straw man if you are desperate!

My excuse not to repent? No, it's one of MANY reasons why I don't believe the bible was written by God. Repenting is something that happens after accepting Christianity as your doctrine of faith, I simply don't accept the doctrine.

And the bible is either one or the other. If it's fact to you, then you should read about it's inconsistencies and why they rationally disprove the bible. If you don't think the bible is fact, but rather allegory, then you're disagreeing with the statement that was always at the top of, at least my, church bulletin, which said "We believe the bible to be the inerrant, infallible, and inspired word of God". But its either one or the other, fact or allegory, you can't tapdance around it.

[ted]

Hmmm, saying that is is one or the other certainly would raise questions, but what about the idea that it contains both allegory and historical fact? We certainly use colorful descriptions in our everyday use of words, but we also deal with hard fact, as well, true enough?

Perhaps it can contain both and still retain it's truth? Sometimes there is allegory and sometimes it records hard fact. It seems like a plausible possibility.

To another note: The Bible being infallible has nothing to do with what God chose to put in there. There is no way to conclude that the Bible records every last piece of historical fact concerning the human race, nor the creation of the earth. It's just not in there. We do have a picture of what God wants us to know, however.

So then, are we to conclude that the Bible is fallible because it doesn't give an account of whether Moses laced his left sandal before his right one each morning, or were some things just not important enough for us to make a decision about Jesus to be placed within the pages of Scripture? The Bible does not describe the color of Mary's eyes, but she had them none the less.

See what I mean?

Sometimes, people want to take what the Bible does not give us and make conclusions that it is fallible because it fails to, in their eyes, describe all that they have questions about. It can't be read as such. When we read it like that, we actually dare God to prove Himself to our satisfaction.

Don't get me wrong; I certainly have many unanswered questions rolling around in the hollows of my head. I would like to know certain things, too. for one, I'd like to know exactly what Joseph's coat of colors looked like. Also, I'd like God to let me know about that dinosaur thing, too. But, I trust in that all things will be revealed in due time, too.

Here's another little ditty: God keeps secrets! Yup, says so in Deu 29:29 (it's in my sig line at the bottom of my posts if you want to read it). So, based on that verse, there are some things in which He will keep secret from us. I had a hard time with that for a while. After all, why wouldn't God put all things in front of me to erase any doubt in my mind?

It wasn't until I decided to simply take Him at His revealed word that I could reconcile certain things.

In that trust comes the growth, I guess.

I would say that there are many things missing within the Bible's pages, but what is in there is truth, every last bit of it, and exactly what God wants us to consider when we have questions concerning our Salvation. That said, the Bible, in no way, contains every little bit of information we may have questions about, either. It's simply not written to be a Book of Facts in the style of a divine encyclopedia.

Have a great day and may God help you with your questions where I (or we) fail to do so!

t.

[secondeve]

I didn't say dinosaurs never existed. I don't think that at all. I actually believe dinosaurs and man coexisted.

Sorry, had to leap in when I saw this. We have dinousaur skeletons which have been carbon-dated to be millions of years old. If the Earth is only thousands of years old, this isn't possible, and there is no plausible explanation as to why God would age these remains so much.

Think about the logistics of men living at the same time as dinnosaurs in a Biblical context. We know from the skeletons how big some of these creatures were. Now, suppose the Bible is right, and they lived alongside Adam and Eve and the first humans. Think about how easy it would be for something like a brontosaur to trample us, or for a stegosaurus to gore us, or for a giganteanosaurus, T-rex, Allosaur or velociraptor to eat us. What could we possibly have fought off the dinosaurs with, when our best weapons were wood and sticks? How could we have lived as nomads if they roamed around, threatening us? Wouldn't they have eaten our domesticated animals? It would have been impossible to guard against them; we would have died out. If we had lived alongside them, there would be more mentions of them: we would have had to gear life to avoiding or surviving them - and yet, the only Biblical passages which could possibly refer to them, about leviathon and behemoth, don't suggest that these were common occurences. My belief is that, the same as every ancient culture had talk of monsters - perhaps based originally off dinosaur bones found by accident, too large to belong to anything but a monster or demon - the Israelites did, too. Nothing more.

[RustyAngeL]

I don't know much about dinosaurs but I do know there is a reason God separated man and these creatures by several million years. Most of these animals were fierce meat eaters, several thousands of pounds and could make mince meat out of a city bus let alone a human. I just got through watching Jurassic Park again and I'm glad I didn't have one in my back yard.

[pointer]

The bible infers a date of the earth that is IMPOSSIBLE.

So this is your excuse not to repent?

The Bible says on one page that man was created after plants and animals, and on another that it was the other way round. The Bible is about spiritual truth, not scientific. The Bible contains allegory, not daft 'facts'.

But chase a straw man if you are desperate!

But its either one or the other, fact or allegory

Just so as to make a nice easy target for atheists?