Re: How do dinosours fit into the theory of creation?

Hi Elizabeth,
Thanks for your (very provoking!) question. I'm sure you know that you have opened up one of the fiercest debates in history, the argument between supporters of evolution and supporters of creation theory. So this is a very difficult question to answer in an objective way. First, I thought we'd take a look at creation and evolution theories. Then I'll discuss why the two different groups think about things the way that they do. Then we'll come back to your question about the dinosaurs, and see if we can help you to think about this question and the other issues that it involves. And at the end of the day, this will be a personal issue that you will have to decide upon for yourself.

If you like, there are 2 theories of how all living things came to be upon the earth. Creation theory says that the creation story in the bible is the literal truth-that is, God created the heavens and the earth only a few thousand years ago, populated the earth with all the living things that we see today and then created the first pair of people, Adam and Eve, from whom we are all descended. Evolutionary theory in fact says nothing about how the first living things came to be-it says "we don't know, but we can make a guess". Evolution deals with how all the different species that we see were derived from a common ancestor. But basically, evolutionists believe that the earth is about 4.6 billion years old, that the first living cells were assembled from chemicals maybe 4 billion years ago and that all other species arise from the process of natural selection- that is, because genes mutate naturally, some mutations give an advantage to an organism which is "selected" for by the environment. Over time, organisms are altered by this process until they are distinct (ie they cannot breed with their close neighbours)-this is the definition of a species.

Now, science and religious belief are not necessarily incompatible with one another. Indeed, Charles Darwin himself, who thought up the theory of evolution, was a religious man for much of his life and the worry about how his theory would affect religion made him very sick. But the overwhelming majority of working biological scientists will tell you that creation theory and evolutionary theory are absolutely opposed to one another and share no common ground at all. So you have to ask yourself why the people in each group think the way that they do, and decide whose explanation you prefer.

Religious belief is a very different process from scientific belief. If you ask a creationist why they believe what they do, they will say that it comes from a very deep feeling inside of themselves. They will say that the evidence for their belief is very strong and is all around them, and is so obvious to them in everything they do. But if you ask a scientist why they believe in evolution, they will give you a different answer. They will also say that the evidence is all around them and is obvious, but they will offer you the results of experiments which have led them to that belief. For instance, if you ask why I believe that the earth is about 4.6 billion years old, I'll tell you that we have a good understanding of how radioactive elements decay, we know that they decay at certain rates and we can measure their ratios in rocks and use that process as a clock to date the age of the rock. So scientists have beliefs too, but it's a different belief, based on data from experiments. And I would like to think that if someone came up with good evidence that radioactive dating was wrong, then I would change my belief about the age of rocks. This is why most scientists believe in evolution. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that bears out the theory-far too much to go into here, but I'll tell you about a good website a little later where you can find out more.

OK, back to the dinosaurs. You ask how it is possible that humans were created a day after all the animals, but man never lived with the dinosaurs. I can only say to you that obviously, one of these statements is not true. Either man was around at the same time as the dinosaurs, or he was not. You can either look at the evidence from fossils, the age of the earth and what we know about how fast genes mutate and decide from that, or you can choose to believe that man did live with the dinosaurs. The same goes for your other questions. Is it possible that the earth was created with all the fossils in it? Well, many things are possible, but is it likely? As a scientist your first question should be "how would I design an experiment to show this?" I think most scientists would tell you that you can't design such an experiment! So again, you have to choose what to believe. And how did Adam and Eve's descendants survive what killed the dinosaurs? Well, there are many theories about why the dinosaurs died out-the favourite one is that they had already been in decline due to climatic changes for a long time, but were probably finished off by the impact of a large comet or asteroid on the earth. There is good evidence for a large crater and deposits of material found in meteorites in the rocks from about the time of the last dinosaur fossils. This was not the first such large extinction and often 95% of all species on earth were wiped out. How did people survive, if there were any? You tell me! But bear in mind that the oldest fossils of early people are from rocks about 4 million years old and the dinosaurs died out about 65 million years ago.

I hope this will help you to think about scientific questions, what science is, how we look at evidence and why scientific "belief" is different to religious "belief". I also hope very much that you have access to all of the information that you need to make informed choices. I know that there are areas of the United States where creation theory is promoted in schools and evolutionary theory is almost not taught at all. I believe that this is very wrong, if you are to let people to make up their own minds on these issues. So I want to recommend a very good website to you, it's called the Talk.Origins Archive and it is at http://www.talkorigins.org/. Here is a lot of discussion about both creation and evolution theory. I would also recommend http://149. 152.105.38/Honors/EText/Darwin/DarwinRes.html, where you can read a lot of the writings and work of Charles Darwin, including his Origin of Species work.

good luck with your research!
Neil Saunders