Feature image: An allosaurus menaces a stegosaurus in this display from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Source

Thunder lizards, giants, dragons of Earth’s past.

Dinosaurs have captivated the world for over a hundred years, fascinating both young and old alike. Gazing upon these bones, many find themselves transported to a wonderful, exotic world far different from our own – a world where, for one brief moment, the reality of science and the excitement of fantasy coexist.

For some, however, the feelings are quite different.

In the Christian community, dinosaurs are often a source of stress and worry – a puzzle piece that can’t quite be placed. Some choose to ignore it. Others, feeling their faith under attack, put themselves through worrisome mental gymnastics to avoid the problem.

I know these feelings well. Despite being very interested in dinosaurs from an early age, there was a period of four or five years where I really didn’t know what to do with them. After all, the Bible says that God created the Earth in a mere six days. How could I make sense of these Mesozoic reptiles if there wasn’t a Mesozoic Era for them to live in?

The lack of answers was very disheartening.

But it doesn’t need to be that way! In fact, I’m about to tell you the top 3 reasons why the existence of dinosaurs should not be keeping you up at night:

#1. The Bible never says that dinosaurs didn’t exist

A lot of distress seems to come from the fact that the Bible never talks about dinosaurs. After all, surely it would mention something so important, right?

Actually, dinosaurs weren’t nearly as important as we tend to think they were. Even according to evolutionary science, dinosaurs were only a slightly above average blip in the long history of life on Earth.

From a biblical perspective, dinosaurs were really not all that different from any other animal. It is therefore a bit strange that, while grown men have literally written books lamenting that the Bible never calls Tyrannosaurus rex by name, nobody seems all that alarmed that it also never mentions giraffes.

Simply put, the Bible is not a zoology textbook, so it should not worry us when it doesn’t mention a particular set of animals.

#2 Except that it does mention them . . . kind of

No, the Bible never uses the word “dinosaur,” nor would we expect it to. The word dinosaur did not exist until 1842, when it was coined by Sir Richard Owen, the British naturalist.

But that doesn’t mean that the Bible couldn’t use other language to describe these terrible lizards.

Consider the following:

Behold now, Behemoth, which I made as well as you;
He eats grass like an ox.
Behold now, his strength in his loins
And his power in the muscles of his belly.
He bends his tail like a cedar;
The sinews of his thighs are knit together.
His bones are tubes of bronze;
His limbs are like bars of iron.

He is the first of the ways of God;
Let his maker bring near his sword.

Job 40:15-19

This passage from the book of Job mentions the behemoth, a large animal that, while unfamiliar to us, would have been familiar to Job.

What was behemoth? Nobody can know for sure, although that hasn’t stopped people from guessing.

Many commentaries and Bible footnotes claim that behemoth was an elephant or a hippo. While there is some sense to this, it overlooks the description of behemoth’s tail as “bending like a cedar.”

Though the elephant’s tail at least bends, neither’s movement could really be compared to the swaying of a great tree.

Others suggest that behemoth may have been some kind of large, herbivorous dinosaur – usually a sauropod (see Behemoth – What Was It for more information).

While other options may still exist, the description in Job 40 does match that of a large dinosaur (large bones, powerful muscles, a long, stiff tail, etc.) and it certainly raises some interesting possibilities.

#3 Dinosaurs are not the Theory of Evolution

This, I believe, is where the real problem lies.

In my experience, it seems that people are not so much concerned over dinosaurs themselves so much as over what dinosaurs have come to represent: an alternate history where God does not exist.

Dinosaurs give such a vivid and factual air to the secular mythology that many see them as inseperably linked. As said before, however, dinosaurs are animals just like any other. They are no more synonymous with evolutionary theory than finches or peppered moths.

Unfortunately, this leaves us rather close to where we started. If the evolutionary story of dinosaurs is wrong, how, then, are we supposed to make sense of them?

This is why Orchard of Life Science puts such importance on the subject of natural history – the “story” of nature and life on Earth.

It is fine and good to understand that dinosaurs do not prove the Theory of Evolution, but until someone understands how they do fit into the history of life, they are almost worse of than when they started. It is, in some ways, the intellectual equivalent of Matt 12:43-45:

“Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.”

Matt 12:43-45

One may do away with false teaching, but until it is replaced with sound knowledge, that person is left weakened – vulnerable to strange ideas. It is even possible to unwittingly slip back into old habits of thought, if one is not careful.

If you are one of the many Christians struggling with the subject of dinosaurs, we recommend that you take a look at the materials in our Natural History section, especially our Interactive Timeline, which presents a walkthrough of the story of life from Creation to the present day.

All of our resources are based on the most up-to-date research from creation scientists around the world and are taught from a distinctly biblical worldview. We pray that they may be a blessing to you.