What Do You Say When Kids Ask About Dinosaurs?

[Michie]

We cannot know all the ways that God creates, but we can have fun learning science in the light of faith.

Suppose you catechize your children properlyand teach them all about Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and original sin. Suppose you sit on the sofa one Sunday evening, read the Bible with them and explain how God created all of the plants and animals.

On Monday morning, they return to their science classes and learn about fossils and dinosaurs, which have sparked an interest and led them to browse the Internet for more information. It’s not like dinosaurs are taboo or anything. Kids love dinosaurs! Eventually, they ask the obvious question.

“So, Mom, I have been wondering: Did the dinosaurs live before or after Adam and Eve?”

You open your mouth to answer and catch yourself mid-breath, as you consider the path of reasoning. Well, that little question is mighty loaded, isn’t it? You tread carefully.

If the answer is that the dinosaurs lived before Adam and Eve, then it follows that all words and sentences in the first three chapters of Genesis are not to be taken literally. Dinosaurs are believed to have dominated the earth for more than 100 million years, first appearing more than 200 million years ago in the Triassic Period and reigning during the Jurassic Period — until about 60-70 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, when they went extinct.

You can try to cram all of that into six biblical days, but if you say so, your kids are certain to ask further questions about which Bible stories are literal and which are not and how to know the difference. You panic as you picture them asking, “So, Mom, is the Resurrection just a made-up story, too?”

Continued below.

What Do You Say When Kids Ask About Dinosaurs?

We cannot know all the ways that God creates, but we can have fun learning science in the light of faith.

www.ncregister.com

 

[Diamond7]

Suppose you catechize your children properlyand teach them all about Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and original sin.

What is the problem? There is no conflict at all with science. In fact, Science puts a lot of effort into trying to determine how man went from a food gathering to a food producer. There is no conflict between Science and the Bible when it comes to Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, David and so on. These are all real people that lived in the last 6,000 years.

“So, Mom, I have been wondering: Did the dinosaurs live before or after Adam and Eve?”

Yes they did, millions of years before Adam and Eve and the atmosphere was very different then. The sky was pink, not blue. The conditions were much more humid. Today crocodiles and turtles have survived and they love wet conditions. Like dinosaurs they both continue to grow and over time they become very big.

If the answer is that the dinosaurs lived before Adam and Eve, then it follows that all words and sentences in the first three chapters of Genesis are not to be taken literally.

Just chapter one. Everyone deals with that chapter in their own way. I suggest that people look at the fact that we read "God Said" ten times. If there is a conflict it is that it took God a whole week to speak us into existence and He did not do it in an instant. When you plant a seed it takes a while for that seed to grow. In fact the whole Universe started off as a seed that began to grow as the universe expanded.

If I told my wife, lets plant tomatoes, I would not expect them to grow and mature in a week. I may be able to get the seeds to sprout the first week. I personally can not imagine how they will turn out. We are told God can look and see where it is all going. Good that we can trust in HIm for our future, knowing He has it all under control. So there is nothing to worry and nothng to fear.

 

[WarriorAngel]

Genesis

1 In the beginning God created heaven, and earth. 2 And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters.

There is absolutely no discernment of time mentioned.
Furthermore: this does not suppose life did not previously exist and or the former small sun died out.

But of this one thing be not ignorant, my beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
[2 Peter 3:8]

 

[Diamond7]

But of this one thing be not ignorant, my beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

I tend to be a dispensationist. The saber tooth tigers and wholly mamonths died off around 13,000 years ago. That is when the age we live in began. There have been six extinctions followed by a repopulation. Just as there are six days in the first chapter of Genesis. Science and the Bible tend to agree.

 

[WarriorAngel]

A dispensationist takes everything literal.
There are many things in the ethereal world that cannot be defined in the physical/secular world.

Anyway St Peter was giving an explanation/idea that the Lord is not constrained to time.
Not that 1000 years is specific, but an idea that time became necessity vs timelessness that cannot be measured, when the Lord separated humanity from Heaven.

One day [which is not a term in timelessness at all because again a tool to measure time that simply does not exist in eternity] could be millions of years.

The sun He created for the humans like Him [Like Us He said] maybe a new sun. Because the old sun could have burned out?
Or was not pleasing to the new creation.
The 1st verse does not state at all when He created the earth. But it was now empty of life. It was void and empty which is to suggest to the author, where it is now empty, something had previously existed.

And this is how I taught my children.

 

[WarriorAngel]

Oh and obviously the author himself had no knowledge of any previous life.
So to write this, with the openness to former life existing, proves the fact life did exist previously and the one who wrote it was not a scientist nor archeologist.
The first sentence was for the future generations who would find and unearth the very old relics of previous times and lives.