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.

Painting of a late Jurassic scene in northern Germany, showing several iguanodons and an adult and a juvenile specimen of the sauropod Europasaurus holgeri. (photo: Gerhard Boeggemann, / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.5)

Suppose you catechize your children properly and 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.

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.

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[Hoping2]

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

Painting of a late Jurassic scene in northern Germany, showing several iguanodons and an adult and a juvenile specimen of the sauropod Europasaurus holgeri. (photo: Gerhard Boeggemann, / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.5)

Suppose you catechize your children properly and 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.

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