So, I haven't had much chance to write this up until now, but here it is.

[b][u]Discussion 3: Dinosaurs: How do They Fit?[/u][/b]

We've all gone to the museum and seen dinosaur fossils at some point in our lives, right? Those big, mean, nasty creatures with fangs sharper than your pocketknife. Well, maybe some of them weren't quite so vicious, but I believe I have some degree of an explanation.

A scientist would have you believe that fossils formed over a long period of time, having taken years and years of sediment to compress them into the fossils that they are. However, if you've ever buried a pet in your backyard, then accidentally dug up where it once was, you know that it decays far too quickly for any such thing as a fossil to form from it. So how do they form? It would have to be a very rapid compression of layers of sediment falling on top of creatures and burying them alive. This is not supported by any evidence given by an asteroid colliding with the earth and sending up a massive dust cloud. The only debris such as that that has ever formed anything close to a fossil was when Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii. Unfortunately, even those results, as close as they were, did not form legitimate fossils. Mere casts were left behind of people buried in the soot and debris. Sorry, but asteroids don't cut it.

See, we've all read the story of Noah; we know about the flood, that he took animals on the ark in pairs (1 pair of all unclean animals and 7 pairs of all clean animals), that between the waters of the sky and the vast expanses of water beneath the earth's crust, the earth was completely covered in water, destroying all life left on its surface. To add to this, water is the only force capable of displacing so much sediment so quickly so as to bury creatures alive and form fossils. You've probably heard of fossils of water-dwelling creatures being found on mountains and in deserts, right? Then people try to explain it away as, "Oh, about a million years ago, this used to be a lake." I'm sorry, but the world's only been around for about 6,000 years. Add to that, a desert or a mountain is not going to have been a lake. It just doesn't happen that way. The only [i]plausible[/i] explanation for those fossils is the flood described in the Book of Genesis.

So you say: "How do dinosaurs fit in here?" I'm getting to that soon enough. [url=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+6%3A2-4&version=NKJV;HCSB;NLT]Genesis 6:2-4[/url] says that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and took them as wives, also describing that their offspring were powerful men known as the Nephilim. If it is saying that the "sons of God" saw that the "daughters of men" were beautiful, then only one explanation remains: the sons of God were God's angels, but not just any angels, as normal angels would not commit sexual immorality with daughters of men. No, these would be fallen angels, who followed Satan.

These Nephilim would have been people such as giants, and other breeds of powerful men, bred by Satan for destruction. Notice how I said "bred", not "created". If Satan was capable of breeding powerful men, would he not have also been capable of breeding powerful destructive animals such as dinosaurs? Then you start to think about how the non-violent dinosaurs fit into the equation. This is actually quite simple. The appetites of the herbivores would have been enormous. They would have easily been capable of consuming tons of vegetation, destroying the resources of the ancient people, while the carnivores would terrorize mankind by consuming the people themselves. Then when we consider that Noah and his family were the last righteous people on earth at that time, perhaps it was not because of a falling away of mankind completely, but perhaps many of the righteous were destroyed by Satan's concoctions.

The dinosaurs being bred by Satan also gives an explanation as to why they wouldn't have been on the ark, as even the unclean animals created by God were allowed a place on the ark, yet the Nephilim were not allowed with Noah and his family. Similarly, I think these villainous dinosaurs would have been in a category with the Nephilim: Destroyed with water under God's wrath. As water is the most powerful force of erosion, a flood across the whole earth could have displaced as much sediment as entire mountains to bury these creatures alive with as much pressure as the bottom of the ocean (which is basically what is required to form a fossil), leaving us with their remains. This would also give an explanation for some dinosaur fossils being incomplete, as the force of rushing water could very easily have ripped them apart (Sorry for the graphic terminology, but it gets the point across). Thus, given the factors of the flood, we see that there was no Jurassic era or any other such period of time when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Just what God has given us in His Word . . . and a little bit of reading between the lines and using some evidence given in our world.

Anyway, I think that's about it. I hope this all makes sense, but it is, after all, just a theory. However, this is the best explanation I can give concerning the question too many people have: "How do dinosaurs fit into the Bible?" Enjoy, and God bless! :)