That’s a question I’ve been asked many times over the years by Christians and non-Christians.
Would you be shocked if I answered by saying you don’t?
Now, Christians can & should explain dinosaurs. But the way the question is asked tells me they're not thinking the right way.
To understand why I am claiming questions are being asked the wrong way, we, first of all, need to understand what the bible is & is not. The Bible is not just a guidebook for life. Many Christians seem to have the idea the bible deals with just spiritual & moral things, but when considering topics like dinosaurs & science, they are somehow from the bible.
The Bible is God’s Word. It’s a revelation from God (2 Tim 3:16 states, all Scripture is God-breathed) to us to relay the key information we need to have to be able to build the right way of thinking & therefore understand life & the universe correctly. In other words, the bible is not something we add to our thinking, it is to be the foundation for all of our thinking.
The Bible is the Word of God who is infinite in knowledge & wisdom.
Thus God has revealed to us the knowledge we need to have to build the right worldview so we can then build the correct way of thinking to begin to understand the world & universe we live in.
Only God is infinite, so we will never know everything. This means we can never have all the answers to everything. But when we start with God’s Word, we at least have the ability to obtain a limited, but correct understanding of reality. Everyone has a worldview, a way of thinking. And our worldview just doesn’t come from out of the air! Our worldview is based upon the foundation, the presuppositions we have. And in an ultimate sense, there are only two foundations for our worldview. One either starts with man’s fallible finite word or God’s infallible Word. The foundation you start with then enables one to build a worldview. Think of it like this. Our worldview is like a pair of glasses. We look through those glasses so we can see clearly.
Let me explain further. God’s Word in Genesis 1-11 gives us the key information God has revealed concerning the origin of all the basic entities of life and the universe. This is the revealed history of geology, biology, anthropology, astronomy, etc. This history is the foundation for all doctrine, & for the rest of the bible. It’s also the foundation for our worldview. This means, to understand dinosaurs, one can’t start with man’s interpretation based on man’s word and try to fit this into the bible. We first of all need to build the right way of thinking (our worldview) starting from Genesis 1-11.
Now the word dinosaur was invented in 1841 as a name for particular land animals for which we find their bones fossilized. This means we need a correct understanding of the origin of land animals, why there is death in the world, and why there are fossils all over the world, so we can understand these bones. When we start with God’s Word we know God created all the land animals kinds on Day 6. As dinosaurs were land animals, then what we call dinosaurs today were created on Day 6. They were vegetarian to start with (Genesis 1:30). Because of man’s sin, death & disease entered the world. Animals began eating each other. At the time of Noah, an Ark was built as there was to be a global Flood. Our big picture understanding of Dinosaurs goes like this: Dinosaurs were part of the land animal kinds created. Two of each kind went on the Ark & those that didn’t were killed during the Flood & some became fossils. Animals came out of the Ark after the Flood & over time many kinds became extinct for different reasons.
In other words, we don’t fit dinosaurs into the bible, we use the foundation of the bible to develop the correct worldview to understand dinosaurs. And we need to do that with everything. Genesis 1-11 is the foundation for everything. Make sure you have a truly biblical worldview.
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