Earlier this week I revealed my childhood love for dinosaurs. And as a kid growing up in a devout Christian home, I also harbored a childhood love for Jesus. Some of my first real spiritual questions came when I wasn't able to fit my beloved dinosaurs into the biblical narrative.
Too bad I didn't have these religious dinosaur pictures to inform me. Because they sure would have made me feel better about things.
The Most Awesome Picture Ever:
This is actually a fine art print available from an artist named Derek Chatwood. But the really sad thing is that, when I first saw it a couple of years ago, I wondered for a long time whether it was real. A long time. Because I would absolutely not be surprised if coloring books like this actually existed from Answers in Genesis or some other such Young Earth creationist organization. (H/T: Josh Hatcher for the reminder)
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The Second Most Awesome Picture Ever
I have no clue about the origin of this one -- if you have any idea let me know -- but it's wonderful. That baby dinosaur looks so content in the arms of Christ! All creatures great and small...including juvenile killing machines from the late Jurassic period.
Anyway, when I'm down in the dumps, I always picture myself as a baby Allosaurus leaning my carnivorous head against the sturdy chest of an anglo Messiah who clearly brushes his long hair. It helps.
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The Ark Must Have Been a-Rockin'
The big Creationist/Young Earth idea explaining dinosaur fossils is that most of them are the result of the biblical flood. But since the Bible says every creature "that lives upon the ground" was represented on the ark -- and because organizations like Answers in Genesis insist that the dinosaurs were still alive at the time of the flood -- they conclude that dinosaurs were on the Ark, too.
So obviously, the biblical ark-boarding scene would have looked just like above. The T.Rex will lie down with the lamb, etc.
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Hi, I'm Man
This isn't specifically a religious picture, but I love it all the same. It's a typical dinosaur-size comparison chart like you'd find in a textbook. These images always compare dinosaurs to the size of an adult male. So you have dinosaur silhouettes situated next to a man-sized silhouette, who, inexplicably, is always waving at the camera.
Trust me: if you are within 12 feet of a line of five different bloodthirsty predators, all of whom are leaning toward you with mouths agape, it would probably serve you well not to stop and wave at the camera.
Unless, of course, you're Jesus. The logical conclusion, then, is that the unspeakably calm blue figure in these illustrations is the Son of God.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Dinosaurs and Jesus
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31 comments:
greatest. post. ever.
brb forwarding link to friends!!!
"Dinosaurs are really big compared to... Jesus smiling at the camera."
Awesome. You should write a book or something.
How come no one ever thinks that those dinosaurs were trained to pose that way? Especially if that's the Son of God there.
Perfect post for a dinosaur lover like me.
I am so happy this post exists. Made my day seeing those pics.
I'd also be very surprised if AIG does NOT have some sort of Jesus riding dinosaurs coloring book.
Apparently to believe in Christianity, you have to believe in the Flintstones too. Jeez.
The average size of a dinosaur was that of a small horse. If you believe the Genesis account of the Flood, the Bible says "2 of every kind"...which would include dinosaurs. Couldn't they have been young, or babies, or perhaps unhatched eggs? Why do you assume that Noah was trying to round up a full-grown T. Rex or Brachiosaurus?
Well, since God tells Noah the creatures "will come to you" I'm guessing eggs are out of the question. Unless they rolled themselves. But that would have been quite a journey from the dinosaur beds of Colorado...or Argentina.
:)
But to be clear, I don't assume a full-sized Brachiosaurus would have been on the ark. Because I don't assume ANY dinosaurs would have been on the ark.
Yikes!! You're totally right about the eggs...I forgot about the " will come to you" part. Belief/unbelief that the Creation story in the Bible is the actual account is the foundation for anyone's views about young/old earth, etc.
Additionally, most people assume that the earth is the same today as it was in Noah's time (climate, placement of continents, vegetation, physical appearance of animals/humans). But the flood was an unbelievably catastrophic event that changed the very landscape of the globe and most of what was in it.
I'm not apt to believe Jesus rode dinosaurs, either...! But I do believe they existed during his time on earth.
@Hutch:
I'm pretty familiar with the Young Earth arguments. I just don't buy them. Gotta make way too many intellectual leaps -- and dismiss way too much science -- for me to buy it.
Interesting...I see it in the exact opposite direction. Oh, well...this is the first time I've read your blog, and I'm pumped about reading some of the other stuff you've written. (BTW, be sure to thank Matthew Paul Turner for linking to you on Twitter.)
Yeah, I'm with Hutch actually. Still, the pictures are classic. The second one is perhaps my favorite Jesus picture ever. I want to get that framed a hang iT on my wall.
-Marshall Jones Jr.
Genesis was not meant to be taken literally. It is an allegory just like every story written around the same time. It was only at the time of the enlightenment, when churches became threatened by Darwin's claims of evolution did christians begin to insist that the book was literal.
And so, it doesn't matter.
Geesh, don't y'all know that dinosaurs are really trash from the future? :)
Love the pictures, especially the messiah with the baby allosaurus. No especially the comment you made about the messiah with the baby allosaurus.
I've read the whole AIG dinosaurs on the ark thing, but never thought about what it would have felt like to walk next to a t-rex on the deck. Scary!
Well done post, thanks for the humor.
I'm with Hutch. I agree that the evidence supports a young earth AND dinos on the ark.
Fun photos just the same.
OMG I am not alone in the world. There are others who know this stuff too!!!
Huzzah!
Loved the pics.
The Dino's Noah took on the arch were probably babies though...still that picture looks better with them as adults.
Much more dramatic.
I'm so glad you tagged this post with awesome, because that is what it was, from start to finish.
I, too, am with Hutch on this one. I lost faith in the science behind dinosaurs (and sadly my love for those creatures) when I learned about the "creation" of the Brontosaurus.
And if the book of Genesis is not literal, then at what point does the Bible actually mean what it says rather than being a cryptic allegory for something else???
I think you'd hit a nerve with the YECs with this post.
Although Tyson's post raised a question that always puzzled me about how non-fundie Christians choose what's allegory vs actual from OT and NT.
- Fastthumbs
Re: the "creation" of the Brontosaurus...do you mean the 75-year mistake in which an Apatosaurus skeleton was given a Camarasaurus head and named a Brontosaurus? I agree that was a big mistake. That should definitely make you lose faith in Brontosaurus, which the entire paleontologist community has. (No one believes "Brontosaurus" ever existed.) But I'm curious: how does that negate the rest of dinosaur science?
Would you let the existence of one religious charlatan -- a pastor who has an adulterous affair, perhaps -- convince you to lose your faith in all of Christianity? Probably not.
(It's funny that I'm now an apologist for dinosaurs.)
As for what's allegory vs. actual, I think it comes down to a realization that the Bible isn't a history book or a textbook. It's the story of God and his relationship to man. So it's possible to believe that the Bible is inspired by God and authoritative when it comes to spiritual/moral matters without it having to be authoritative on matters of science or history. We go to the Bible to inform the ethics of our science, but we don't take our actual geology or astronomy FROM the Bible.
To me this seems obvious. Do you still believe the solar system revolves around the earth, rather than the earth around the sun? Because, scientifically, that's what the Bible teaches, and that's why the Church persecuted Galileo, whose science contradicted the Bible.
Many of the Bible's stories, I think, ARE historically accurate and we can take them literally. But sometimes spiritual truths are better conveyed through storytelling, poetry, metaphor. And the oral tradition -- by which the Bible was passed down from generation to generation -- is a good conduit for those things.
does the Bible teach that the earth is the center of the universe?
It reads that way to me. There's enough flat-earth, geocentric language that the Pope asked Galileo to recant his theories because they opposed the clear teachings of the Bible. Otherwise, I guess we have to conclude all the references to the "corners of the earth" or the "pillars of the earth" or the "foundations of the world" or the "ends of the earth"...are just metaphors?
:)
I guess the big question is, in Joshua 10, why would Joshua command the sun to stand still if it was not thought to rotate around the earth? To be scientifically accurate, he'd have to command the earth to stand still as it rotated the sun. I'm pretty sure this passage is what got the Church so upset over Galileo. Up to that point, everyone (including the biblical writers) thought the earth was the center of the universe.
This is an awesome post. I imagine myself as that dino in the arms of Jehovah!
Thanks for the post. I have seen these pictures before, but post is nevertheless awesome.
This was funny coincidence, since at friday when I first read this, I was in the midst of thinking about the idea that all creatures were herbivorous in the beginning and that in the future "the wolf and the lamb will live together." I mean that it sounds awesome, but why some creatures were created as predators and 100% carnivorous then? Are their predator properties created afterwards? And if so, were they same animals at all? It even makes one think that if carnivores are some lesser kind of animals.
But that picture of baby allosaurus in the lap of Jesus kind of makes that kind of debates pretty ridiculous. Jesus definitely loves all his creation, even juvenile killing machines, no matter what their actual origin is. :D
- Jani aka virne
can I just go ahead and take credit for inspiring this blog post?
This made me laugh, especially the pic of Jesus with the baby raptor.
Do you have a real job? What Godly purpose can this picture serve? It's pure fantasy which must have a place in life or it wouldn't exist but it's lost on me. Take your very obvious talent and use it to show Christ in everyday situations so all of us can know and trust His love.
Thank you,
I've never read your blog before; a friend linked it in her personal blog. Nonetheless, I just have to comment, b'c it is so rare to find a forum where adults are discussing the story of Noah's ark, which I find myself discussing so frequently with my 3-y-o. I love it when I hear people arguing over the logistics of the animals on the ark. To me, the whole point is that it was a miracle; the whole thing was a miracle! So why would the logistics of housing predators and prey, or the large and the small, on a boat be important? Just because you and I have difficulty imagining how it was accomplished does not mean that God had any difficulty making it happen! Ok, I've said my peace. thanks.
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