Bobzammel

One of the arguments from apologetics concerning the possible co-existence of Dinosaurs with man has been the passage in JOB(41, I believe), which describes a creature with a "Cedar trail".
This has often been identified with a Sauropod.

However....

1)Sauropods could not eat grass, as stated in the passage. They ate *from trees*. If they went down that low it would really snap their necks.
And there have been no traces of grass in fossilized Dino dung. In fact, Grass did not evolve until later.

2)The "Tail" is in fact describing-and is more accurately translated as-the creature's penis, which 'stiffens'. This is made even clearer in the next passage, which describes stones, bible-speak in some cases for testicles.

3)Dinosaurs-and many other reptiles-do not possess genitals in the sense we do.

4) Don't you think if there were Dinosaurs in ancient Israel there would be a lot more documentation about them? Surely the Egyptians and Babylonians would have marveled at them, and even attempted to use them as Beasts of Burden.

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

There was that mosaic of a dragon in Babylon...

theyeti

True, but no YEC would accept the fact that grasses and dinos did not coexist. You may as well just point out that humans and dinos didn't exist, which is what they're disagreeing with in the first place.
Yeah, I've heard this before, and it's pretty funny. You'll never convince a YEC of this though (or course you won't convince them of anything, but this one won't even make them blink).
This is probably the best (biblical) argument against it. The best evidence overall is the fossil record and the 200 million (or whatever) year separation between humans and dinos. But YECs reject the geological record and standard dating methods. But dinos are not mentioned at all in historical documents, except for what could be taken as a vauge reference in myth and legend. In reality, the animals described in these myths bear little but superficial resemblance to dinos, and they have many characteristics that are inconsistent with either dinos or any known creature (which is one reason why we consider them myths). In fact, IIRC, the bibile speaks of Behemoth's "navel" which is something that only a mammal would have. That should disprove that its a dino. The real issue is that they're using a vauge reference to something which only sounds like a dino with some highly creative interpretation, and creative interpretation is precisely what the YECs reject as being legitimate bibilical scholarship. If there really were gigantic and dangerous animals like sauropods and velociraptors running around, you can bet that that the ancient Hebrews would have paid quite a lot of attention to them, and would have devoted more than one or two cryptic references to them.

theyeti

{edited to fix VB code - sci}

genemaster

Actually, the K-T boundary was 65 mya. Of course, if you accept birds as highly evolved dinosaurs, then they are with us yet...

{edited to fix VB code - sci}

theyeti

It's like they say, ten million years here, ten million years there... Before long it starts adding up to a long time.

theyeti

[ December 25, 2002: Message edited by: theyeti ]</p>

lpetrich

The common human-dino ancestor was some late-Paleozoic very early reptile ~300 million years ago. To get an idea of what is most closely related to what and what the fossil record is like, I suggest consulting UCB's excellent site.

Take some time and wander through it. There's lots of nice stuff there.

{edited to fix link - sci}