The Bible.

[cap'n spanky]

Where do dinosaurs fit in the whole scheme of things? Did the work experience guy on the ark forget to send the invitations out?

[monty0703]

There is much debate on this. The common belief is that dinosaurs and humankind did not share the same time-period and there is evidence to support this. Others claim that there is evidence to support that dinosaurs are mentioned in the b ible (e.g. when Job wrote of the 'chief' of God's Creation, with a tail like a cedar tree. Some say this was possibly a Brachiosaurus. One theory is that they were on the ark but found the environment to inhospitable afterwards. Another theory is that they were not on the ark in the first place and so the great flood wiped them out.

[woofgang]

In psalms there is a bit that goes roughly"there is the sea and there are the ship and there is that leviathan that thou has made to takr his sport therein" I always imagined that that was a saltwater rely of Nessie

[SFT42]

Another theory (i.e. mine) is that the bible is a pile of pish!

The bible mentions loads of references to modern day animals but not one word of feckin' huge lizards.....if you fancy reading some deluded rantings then here is a page full of 'em http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/dinosaurs.html

[spinchimp]

Monty - there is no "debate" on it. There are misguided people who believe in the literal truth of the bible and refuse to accept the wealth of evidence in support of the true age of the earth and evolutionary theory. Calling their closed minded opinions debate is a misuse of the word.

[TommyC]

Thought I might as well state the other explanation, and at the same time correct the somewhat ill-informed notions of Monty and Spinchimp as to timescale. Firstly, it's true that the Bible doesn't specifically mention dinosaurs by name. It also doesn't mention wildebeest, ring-tailed lemurs, polar bears, kangaroos or ao thousand other animal species, for the simple reason that the Bible is not a natural-history textbook. But wherever it does touch on the contents of the natural world, what it states is demonstrably truthful and accurate. As for the dinosaurs, you really don't have to look far in any decent encyclopedia to discover that the whole of the prehistoric research community worldwide agreed a long time ago that, even according to their own very imperfect calculations of time lapse, the last of the dinosaurs disappeared from the earth at least 200 million years before the earliest evidence of human life...!! So, that means that strange ideas about the dinosaurs on board Noah's ark are, shall we say, a little misleading..?

[monty0703]

TommyC - I'm not ill-informed, just thought I'd mention that some people have other ideas from rational thinking folk. I think that the Bible is a work of fiction and I don't understand it any more than you do why a lot of people take it seriously.

[firefly]

It would difficult for a book which covered a number of years of ancient history to be all true but it would be wrong to think of the Bible as all fiction. It is well-known that dinosaurs did exist at the same time as man so the ark theory (if there was one) wouldn't bear weight.

[xyzzy@bok]

i agree, the ark theory doesn't hold water.

[Spellmaster]

To describe the Bible as a work of fiction is somewhat simplistic. There are elements in it that in all likelihood are fictional (the Creation, for example), but there are other elements in it that are based on genuine historical events, wars, monarchs, etc. In particular, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that much of the New Testament is based on fact, even if it contains interpretations or embroideries that cannot be proved or substantiated. Therefore to call the Bible fictional is no more correct or helpful than to call it factual.

[darklar]

to say the Bible is a work of fiction does seem a little ignorant. For starters, at the time the new testament was written the people wouldnt of had much of a clue regarding the beggining of time. Those that had a theory would certainly have been more educated than the population. And even if someone did get close to the idea of the big bang and evolution: how are you supposed to explain all that to a bunch of illiterate pagan simpletons. The idea behind the story of creation is to tell people that what ever happened...it was cos of the big man upstairs. The whole notion of dinosaurs on the ark is also rediculous... They were extinct long before man had evolved.

[headlesspets]

I'm with eddie izzard on this one.... god created cannabis on the 8th day, smoked the lot (and saw that it was good) then created dinosaurs and put each one in a rock to keep archeologists happy.

[incitatus]

when dinosaur bones were first unearthed,they were taken to be evidence of the biblical flood. People like Robert Owen (who named them dinosaurs) and Gideon MAntel (who correctly assembled the first iguanadon) took it for granted that these were the creatures who did not make it onto the ark. By the same reasoning, landscape formatioj was seen to have occurred at the creation or at the flood, the two great upheavals mentioned in the bible. Things were reinterpreted when it was pointed out that yoou didnt need to invoke any process not currently operating to effect geology, and also when thomas huxley started to champion darwins theory.

[PunkyD20391]

The bible is NOT fiction. Even archeologists have proof of what happened (Which is many things). I personally take it as an insult when people say that the bible is fiction. To me, and many other people, the bible is 100% true. And that's where I stand.