Kosh

Agreed... but you can't use that against the
creationists. I think (someone correct me if
I'm wrong) the reason we know the Dinos didn't
eat grass is because there was NO grass in
the while the dinos lived. However, since the
creationists will use this passage to prove
that dinos were alive in the last 6000 years,
and grass was too.... then the passage could
have been talking about a dinos eating grass.

They're wrong, but not for that reason.

Kosh

I thought there was something about that story
that smelled wrong....

Oolon Colluphid

There ya go: the universe began with the Big Burp. The bible and science reconciled!

Oolon

bluefugue

Well, many dinosaurs (i.e. brachiopods) were herbivorous, were they not? So you don't need "pre-fall" mummery to talk about vegetarian dinosaurs. Oolon's point, I gather, is that in the earlier days of dinos there was no grass (in the modern sense) to be eaten; whereas later on, as angiosperms evolved, herbivorous dinosaurs may indeed have dined on them...

In any case, once we take the "tail" out of the description, the passage is worthless as "evidence" of dinosaurs (it would have been damn flimsy anyway!) since it could more parsimoniously be read as describing a hippo. I saw one in the San Diego zoo recently... a damn impressive animal.

theyeti

Hmmm. A few points: dinosaurs did not have navels, penises, or tesiticles. Those are all mammalian traits. Seeing as how creationists usually equate dinos with reptiles, there's not much they can say about this.

theyeti

Oolon Colluphid

Thinking about hippos led me to wondering... why not take the behemoth as simply mythical, like the unicorns, cockatrices and satyrs in Isaiah? Sure, it's not a dinosaur. But I'm not convinced that it's got a lot or relevance to hippos either. Do they have enormous, treetrunk penises?

I just wonder if saying, "it's not a dinosaur, it's a hippo" may not be misguided.

Oolon

bluefugue

Oolon, I think the size has to be taken relatively. A hippo's penis (when erect) probably is pretty huge compared to a human's. And the "like a cedar/pine" reference doesn't, IMHO, refer to size, but rather to stiffness. It stiffens like a pine -- it's the shape and texture of a tree that motivate the metaphor, not the size of it, or so it seems to me.

Of course it could just be some weird creature they made up. But I still suspect it might be a hippo. Just a gut feeling.

Yeti: Reptiles don't have penises? What do they have? Are eggs fertilized outside the body, as with fish? How about birds? What do they have?

I never realized I was so ignorant of non-mammalian anatomy.

Oolon Colluphid

Not that it's much of an argument, but only the lack of navels is that certain, since we know they laid eggs.

But a penis is a pretty obvious piece of equipment for more accurate sperm transmission. Frogs for instance have to take great care in lining up their relevant bits, and I suspect reptiles do too. And we know that one reptile lineage did evolve penises.

Similarly, testicles are just externally located gonads. If dinosaurs were homeotherms (what's the current state of that idea, btw?), they, like mammals, might have found hanging them outside to be a Good Idea (tm).

On the other hand, birds evolved from one family of dinosaurs, so what they don't have is a good guide to that family at least. Hey, why am I trying to defend cretinist stuff!!
<shakes head from reverie>

Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

I was thinking and wondering just that myself.

I think the eggs are fertilised internally, but they have to carefully align their cloacas. I saw a pic the other day of the infamous Cnemidophorus lizards copulating, but all it was was one on top of another, so none the wiser really.
Off to the library to find out.... erm, "'scuse me, have you got a book on fucking lizards?" Nah, maybe not...

Oolon

theyeti

Of course, it probably was mythical. But Biblical literalists and inerrantists aren't going to go for that. Here's an AiG page on <a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/tj_v15n2_behemoth.asp" target="_blank">Could Behemoth have been a dinosaur?</a> In it they give us a good reason why Behemoth couldn't have been mythical:

I don't buy that last part, and the first part is just circular reasoning. But I don't think anyone tried to interpret it as a dinosaur until the fundie creationists came around. To me, this is one of the more hilarious symptoms of their disease.

Oh, spin might enjoy going through that page and pointing out for us any errors in translation. They discuss "tail" in detail, but nowhere do they consider that it was a penis. Oh no, you'll never see such dirty talk on AiG. But hints of it abound; possible translations like "stiff", "delight", "erect". How could one not consider the johnson?

theyeti