"Dragons or Dinosaurs"

Creation or Evolution

statue in Slovenia

book review - I was amazed when I read “Dragons or Dinosaurs” - stay tuned

1st, an unrelated topic…

solar flares -Wonder why the northern lights were so good this year? This from ‘live science’…

photo of northern lights behind Crown Point, Oregon this March. Crown Point overlooks the western end of the Columbia Gorge scenic area - only a short distance from our home

“Solar flares can also bring geomagnetic storms — major disturbances of Earth's magnetosphere caused by solar wind or CMEs. For instance, on March 24, a "stealth" CME hit Earth without warning and triggered the most powerful geomagnetic storm in more than six years, which created vast auroras, or northern lights, that were visible in more than 30 U.S. states. An overall increase in the number of geomagnetic storms this year has also caused the temperature in the thermosphere — the second-highest layer of Earth's atmosphere ― to reach a 20-year peak.”    BTW, Interesting that solar flares influence earth temps much more than CO2, and they’re cyclical. Cyclical global warming has been around since before the Vikings colonized Greenland.

one more commentary that I couldn’t resist including today, from Irina Slav’s substack:

“…we appear to be in grave danger of something else that climate change causes: inflation. None other than the president of the European Central Bank — the same president of the European Central Bank who last year basically admitted she had no idea where that inflation came from and dismissed it as transitory — said the following: “Climate change affects inflation and inflation is the beast that all central bankers, whether they wear a green jacket or not, want to tame and discipline.” Can you hear the hissing of the whip already? From transitory to a beast in under a year. Talk about a rude awakening. Yet the successful solution of any problem begins with identifying its cause and Madame Lagarde has done just that. It’s climate change. Yes, she put it delicately, using “affect” rather than “cause” but it’s clear enough that the effect of climate change on inflation she talks about is not of the positive kind and the nature of that effect must be causal because what other kind of effect could climate change have on anything, if you think about it?” (Irina often has her tongue in her cheek) read whole article

now, two little stories as a lead-in…the 2nd one is true

the death of logic

There once was a man who was sure he was dead. His family and friends were concerned about his sanity, so they insisted he see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist told him that he could prove he was alive, because dead men don’t bleed. So the psychiatrist pricked the man’s finger, and it bled. The patient was amazed, and said “Whad’ya know, dead men do bleed!” talk about bias!

Paleontologist Dr. Mary Schweitzer was examining the bones of a T-Rex dinosaur and much to her surprise, found red blood cells inside the bones. The experts in paleontology are now saying “whad’ya know, red blood cells do last for 68 million years!” Of course, common sense says this is impossible, just like dead men bleeding. Organic matter decays quickly. But forget common sense when you’re biased to the point of a conviction that is not-to-be-questioned. The clear indication is that those dinosaur bones hadn’t been dead very long. Think about that. If the evolutionary time scale is wrong, and the fossils were not formed millions of years ago (Noah’s global flood can explain the formation of fossils about 4300 yrs ago), then the whole theory of evolution is impossible. What’s the only alternative? Created by God. Whad’ya know!

contemporaries of dinosaurs are found today

Many plants and animals that were thought to be extinct have been found living today. One famous example is the coelacanth.

Another is the Wollemi Pine.

The seeds from the Wollemi have now been successfully grown and you can even order the seedlings to plant in your own yard!

See my previous post on Living Fossils, “Surprise! Everything is a Living Fossil”

well kept secret

We don’t see any dinosaurs living today, but a well-kept secret is how much evidence exists that dinosaurs were around until fairly recent times. By fairly recent, I mean as recent as a few thousands; not millions of years, which I will explain later. The obvious questions arises – if many things that were thought to be extinct millions of years ago are still living today, isn’t it possible that dinosaurs too were living until recently? A second obvious question is – if so many plants and animals haven’t changed at all in ‘millions of years’, where does that leave the theory of evolution, which says things are continually changing/evolving? And a corollary to that is – Could the millions of years time scale be completely bogus? Which would completely obliterate the theory of evolution.

But first we need to set up some groundwork.

Recommended: “Dragons or Dinosaurs” “Creation or Evolution?”  by Darek Isaacs

I’ll use DoD for the book title, and I don’t mean the dept. of defense

the word didn’t exist

The word “dinosaur” (terrible lizard) wasn’t coined until the 1841 by Richard Owen (p.15, DoD) so when the bible was translated into English in the 1600s, the word didn’t exist. The word “dragon” was used, which we get from the Greek “drakon”, referring to large, constricting snake-like reptiles, with poisonous spit and sometimes fiery breath. Stories of dragons are as recent as 500 years ago (p.15, DoD.)

western culture bias

Here’s another interesting story of bias. The KJV (King James Version, 1611), the word “dragon” appears 22 times in the Old Testament, (p.172, DoD) as translated from the Hebrew tanniyn. Newer translations only use the word “dragon” if the context is symbolical, like in Revelation, because modern translators don’t believe dragons were real. That’s the bias, even in well meaning Christian translators.

the evidence is overwhelming

But the dragon legends weren’t mythical; dragons were real. Take an honest look at the vast amount of convincing evidence. These themes are detailed in DoD…

Dragon stories, thought to be legends, are found all over the world, in every culture.

1.      Many of the details in the stories are similar.

2.      Historians Josephus, Herodotus, Pliny, and explorer Marco Polo all confirm eye witness accounts of dragons. Herodotus wrote of a flying serpent in Arabia “The form of the serpent is like that of the water snake, but he has wings without feathers, and as like as possible to the wings of a bat.” (p.35, DoD) Marco Polo described “huge serpents, 10 paces in length, and 10 spans in the girt of the body. At the forepart, near the head, they have 2 short legs, having 3 claws like those of a tiger, …the jaws are wide enough to swallow a man, the teeth are large…”(p.36, DoD)

3.      Some of the dragons described were huge.

4.      Huge bones of what we today call dinosaurs weren’t known until the 1800s.

5.      Hundreds of depictions of dragons, in the form of petroglyphs, cave art, statues, and figurines, were made before the 1800s.

outlines enhanced for better visibility - petroglyph at Natural Bridges Nat. Monument

brass engraving of dinosaurs on border of Bishop Richard Bell’s tomb, died 1496 AD

6.      Biblical confirmation in Job’s detailed descriptions of Behemoth, a land dinosaur, and Leviathon, a gigantic sea reptile monster, ch. 40 and 41. God asked Job to “consider” these creatures, as if Job was familiar with them! Incidentally, Job is considered by most bible scholars to be the oldest book in the bible. Job also has more references to ice and snow than any other bible book, which makes me think Job lived during the ice age that occurred right after the flood of Noah.

So we have 6 different types of testimony: oral, historical, pictorial, actual bones, and biblical description. Read the DoD book and you’ll be amazed.

look at the whole picture

Darek Isaacs, author of Dragons or Dinosaurs, makes the point that scientists who specialize in their own narrow field may not be aware of evidence from other fields. For example, paleontologists probably don’t read Herodotus or Marco Polo or the Book of Job, or study cave art or petroglyphs or ancient legends from cultures all over the world. But when you look at the whole picture, the massive amount of evidence is hard to ignore. Dragons really existed! No doubt some of the legends were exaggerations. But there must be a foundation of truth that started all these stories.

3 universals

There are 3 oral traditions that are universal to all ancient cultures: a creation account, a flood account, and dragon stories. In each case, there is good reason to believe that these traditions trace back to actual history. It’s also understandable that the different accounts would vary in detail from the original event, through the recall of so many cultures and ancient civilizations. But why are these 3 traditions so universal unless there is a true beginning event in each case? The bible is the only book that covers the very beginnings of everything, and it tells us in very plain language that God created the world and everything in it, including life itself, and that there was a global flood, and that there were huge creatures which we now call dinosaurs living at the same time as man.

Praise the Lord! He is our maker and provider and Savior.

My Two Cents is published every Thursday, plus an occasional shorter midweek blurb.

Bev and I, 10 yrs ago with kids for our 50th anniversary - you can tell we had a good time! Next week will probably be a short one because all our kids are coming for our 60th anniversary…