What Are Dinosaurs?

[gw120]

I'm asking religious people this, what the hell are dinosaurs? How are you going to maintain the idea of creationism and explain what dinosaur's fossils are? You can't do it. Please someone tell me. :confused:

[DEEJ85]

Just remember not all Christians (and/or other religious people) are creationists.

[gw120]

Alot are though, not all, but alot.

[Chris]

Dinosaurs got left behind by the ark. Along with dragons, unicorns, and 2-headed dogs.

[gallo]

Quote by: gw120 I'm asking religious people this, what the hell are dinosaurs?

The response from religious people seems to be a bit sparse, so far. I do agree with DEEJ85 that not all "religious people" are creationists, in this country, an alarming number are, including our President who has shown himself to be scientifically illiterate on more than one occasion. I call you attention to an Newsweek poll that agrees with numerous other polls from several sources.

Nearly half (48 percent) of the public rejects the scientific theory of evolution; one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact. Seventy-three percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.

What the article doesn't point out is that creationists tend to be less educated, rural, less affluent, and female. And yet our President has an MBA from Harvard Business School. Go figure. Well, it's just a statistic. Just as the fact that about 95% of college graduates with degrees in science reject creationism.

As for the question about what dinosaurs were, the most popular answer that I have encountered is that they were "big lizards" or "big reptiles", answers that demonstrate a failure to learn before speaking. They weren't lizards by any stretch and they were reptiles in the same way that humans are apes. Some creationists even claim that dinosaurs were on the mythological ark (Ken Ham, Mr. Kent Hovind, Mr. Carl Baugh). For some reason, the creationist god then allowed them to immediately die off.

[Technosoul]

You forgot that Satan is the master of deception and he will do anything to make Christians loose faith, even by planting fake evidence such as those Dinosaur bones in the earth. It is just something to designed to test the faith of those who believe in God's word.

This was the answer I got when posing that question to my true-believer friends.

[gallo]

Quote by: Technosoul You forgot that Satan is the master of deception and he will do anything to make Christians loose faith, even by planting fake evidence such as those Dinosaur bones in the earth. It is just something to designed to test the faith of those who believe in God's word. This was the answer I got when posing that question to my true-believer friends.

Thank you for reminding me of that. I have also received that answer on occasion. Worse, they also claim that their god planted the evidence of dinosaurs. Funny how they don't see it as deceptive for a god to plant misleading evidence of things that never were with the intent to mislead in order to test faith. Those who follow this god's convincing evidence are lost forever, while those who reject reality and rely on belief in mythology are saved. This is supposed to be a god of truth.

What kind of god is that?

[DEEJ85]

I am a Christian.

But I also cannot deny Evolution (it makes too much sense), In fact I understood the concept far better then many of my classmates (who I assume many were not christians) and I had to explain it to them.
some people call it just a "theory" which it is. but we also have the "theory" of gravity, which most people do not deny is true.

the two beliefs are not mutually exclusive

[gallo]

Quote by: DEEJ85 I am a Christian. But I also cannot deny Evolution (it makes too much sense), In fact I understood the concept far better then many of my classmates (who I assume many were not christians) and I had to explain it to them.

I presume that the reason is that you paid attention in your biology class and they didn't.

Quote by: DEEJ85 some people call it just a "theory" which it is.

Certainly true. But it is a scientific theory, which means that it is as sure a thing as we can logically arrive at. It doesn't mean "wild ass guess", which is what people who call it "just a theory" mean. In science, the word has a much more restrictive meaning.

Quote by: DEEJ85 but we also have the "theory" of gravity, which most people do not deny is true.

Actually, the theory of gravity is much less developed and secure than the theory of evolution. We pretty much know the major mechanisms of evolution and how they operate. The only debate among biological scientists is about details. In the case of gravity, no body has the slightest idea why. It is, essentially, mathematical constructs that describe observations.

Quote by: DEEJ85 the two beliefs are not mutually exclusive

Well, the OP was actually about creationism. The claims of creationists are, in fact, mutually exclusive with science.

[Technosoul]

The thing is that the Dinosaurs have little to do with the conflict which is about the human evolution from pre-human animals rather then as something especally crafted by a God as related in the story of Adam and Eve. Animals the Bible said "are created after their own kind" (meaning from what was before) but only humans were created in the image of the gods of E-den.
With three explainations. Molded out of clay and breathed upon to have life and a soul. From dust to dust. And that they "became like (in the image of) after eating from the tree of knowledge between good and evil.

The big question which remains unanswered is how the whole mammal speicies of diversity evolved out of the speices of Dinosaurs and other reptiles? It is nearly impossible to mate one speices with another and get results via natural reproduction. The transformaiton between dinosaur and mammal had to happen in a fairly compact time frame according to fosil records and one might wonder how they re-created their self so quickly and for what environmental reason (cause and effect)? We can be certian at this stage of discovery that there are as many holes to be filled in concerning evolution as there are holes in the Holy Book version. Now we can stand firm in our faith about one holy theory or anther holy story version, but fact is that no one can debate real evidence into exsistence and such evidence would be mandatory for making a case for truism. We can shoot both them birds out of the sky but we cannot prove that ether bird can fly.

[gallo]

Quote by: Technosoul The thing is that the Dinosaurs have little to do with the conflict which is about the human evolution from pre-human animals rather then as something especally crafted by a God as related in the story of Adam and Eve.

That may be true, but dinosaurs is the topic of the thread so that is what was being discussed.

Quote by: Technosoul The big question which remains unanswered is how the whole mammal speicies of diversity evolved out of the speices of Dinosaurs and other reptiles?

But "mammal" isn't a species. Mammal is a taxonomic group called a class. Under that comes order, family, genus, and then species. Moreover, no one thinks that mammals evolved from any dinosaur. Mammals are synapsids whereas dinosaurs were diapsids.

Quote by: Technosoul It is nearly impossible to mate one speices with another and get results via natural reproduction.

Do you think that it might be because that is the definition of species?

Quote by: Technosoul The transformaiton between dinosaur and mammal had to happen in a fairly compact time frame according to fosil records and one might wonder how they re-created their self so quickly and for what environmental reason (cause and effect)?

I guess when you consider that mammals didn't evolve from dinosaurs and you think that 160 million years is a "fairly compact time frame." There is actually quite a nice series of fossils that leads from synapsids (~360 mya), therapsids (~320 mya), cynodonts (~250 mya) to the first true mammals (~200 mya). None of those are dinosaurs that evolved about 230 mya from the diapsid lineage.

Quote by: Technosoul We can be certian at this stage of discovery that there are as many holes to be filled in concerning evolution as there are holes in the Holy Book version.

Actually, the holes in science are more about details than about major trends. And there are no holes in creationism because they have all the answers in the mythology.

Quote by: Technosoul Now we can stand firm in our faith about one holy theory or anther holy story version, but fact is that no one can debate real evidence into exsistence and such evidence would be mandatory for making a case for truism. We can shoot both them birds out of the sky but we cannot prove that ether bird can fly.

I have no idea what that means.

[arielmessenger]

as God's method for evolving Itself out of material Creation. :)

[atheist]

someone i was talking to (of christian belief) once said that they believed that dinosaurs lived/existed, then went extinct, within one of the seven days that god built the earth. then they mentioned a great amount of time elapsing between then, and when adam was created, to explain the 1342423432 million years differences between species.

[ZNFYRH]

Chris,

If you happen to watch Fantasia 2000, there is a segment done with Noah's Ark. As all the animals are getting on the boat, off to the side are a phoenix, a dragon, and a unicorn laughing at all the other animals for being scared of the comic flood.

DEEJ85,

Excellent point about not all Christians being Creationists.

[5010]

According to this creationism site, dinosaurs and people coexisted, but of course ther ancients wouldn't use the word 'dinosaur' because it wasn't coined yet. The book of Job speaks of a behemoth. Also they mentioned that a laser mass spectrometer aging method used on dinosaur bones from America and Russia indicated they were only 25,000 years old. They also point out evidence of scientific deception.

So it seems to me they accept the claim that dinosaurs existed, but reject the time of their existence claimed by mainstream science.

[tinybear]

The behemoth might just be an elephant. :)

[5010]

Quote by: tinybear The behemoth might just be an elephant. :)

Especially considering that 'his nose pierceth through snares'...

[Technosoul]

Quote by: gallo That may be true, but dinosaurs is the topic of the thread so that is what was being discussed. But "mammal" isn't a species. Mammal is a taxonomic group called a class. Under that comes order, family, genus, and then species. Moreover, no one thinks that mammals evolved from any dinosaur. Mammals are synapsids whereas dinosaurs were diapsids. Do you think that it might be because that is the definition of species? I guess when you consider that mammals didn't evolve from dinosaurs and you think that 160 million years is a "fairly compact time frame." There is actually quite a nice series of fossils that leads from synapsids (~360 mya), therapsids (~320 mya), cynodonts (~250 mya) to the first true mammals (~200 mya). None of those are dinosaurs that evolved about 230 mya from the diapsid lineage. Actually, the holes in science are more about details than about major trends. And there are no holes in creationism because they have all the answers in the mythology. I have no idea what that means.

Greetings Gallo.

One of the most apparent things we might observe in fosil remains would be the "big switch" between a lot of cold blooded animals (Dinos) and a lot of warm blooded animals (mammals). And so we would ask if evolution played a role in that switch or some other factor?

Now science has proposed a number of fairly current ideas (note I am avoiding the word theory) that might effect the answer to that question.

They have some fosils of rodents that are very old and an idea that mammals evolved from those rodents. They have speculated that some Dinosaurs were in fact warm blooded and somewhat intelligent because nesting sites where infant dinosaurs were being feed and taken care of after hatching, much like some of our modern birds will do. It was speculated that some dinosaurs were warm blooded so they could hatch eggs, rather then depending on the warmth of the sun as do turtles, etc.

I am not an expert but my impression of evolution is that all creatures evolved from ocean creatures that evolved from micro organisms, basically, from fish and what not into frogs and salamanders, and on to lizards, birds, furry animals, and aliens (oops, drop the last speicies.. just kidding). In other words we should see a connection of developement happening that details the slow transformations - somehow, from one thing to another thing. Of course we can toss in worms and insects, and plants which followed a simular line of transformations.

If furry animals did not evolve from reptiles then what did they evolve from that would be somewhat close to creatures of an pre-exsisting era. RE: sealife or life that lives on the shores and also in the waters.

Now apes look a lot like humans. However many creatures have a lot in common. Such as two eyes, two ears, one mouth, and four "arms" that can be used for feet, hands, flippers, wings, and so forth. And the internal workings are simular for a wide range of creatures.

So what did the synapsids evolve from?

[5010]

I thought some dinosaurs were warm blooded.

As for furry friends, this article reports:

Hair, and also feathers, are ectodermal structures containing keratin that probably evolved from keratinised epidermal scales in a common ancestor of mammals and reptiles. Fish scales on the other hand do not contain keratin. They are mineralised dermal elements that possibly contain dentine- and enamel-derived proteins.

and

TNF signalling in scale and tooth development is consistent with the idea that teeth evolved from fish dermal armour