Dinosaurs & Dragon Legends

The Angkor Wat Stegosaur

According to Genesis 6:19-22, Noah was told to bring two of every kind of animal, male and female, into the Ark. So if dinosaurs were alive at the time of Noah’s world-wide Flood, he would have taken two of every kind of dinosaur with him into the Ark. There are a lot of dinosaur names, but only about 55 kinds of dinosaurs [eg. sauropods, ceratopsians, anklyosaurs, etc].

But how do we know that dinosaurs were alive at the time of the Flood? Because we have their fossils.

The fossil record is a record of death, suffering, disease, cancer and thorns. [That’s right: There are thorn fossils. There are also fossils of animals, including dinosaurs, that show evidence of cancer and tumors.] The Bible says that all of those things, especially death, were the result of Adam’s sin. So if the Bible is God’s True History, these fossils and the rock layers they’re contained in were formed after Adam sinned, the only event that could have formed these fossils and rock layers in so short a time is Noah’s world-wide Flood. Remember: Rock layers like those we see at the Grand Canyon can either be made by a little bit of water over a loooooong time OR by a LOT of water over a little bit of time!

If Noah’s Flood formed the fossils, then the fossils show us what animals were alive at the time of the Flood. As the sediment [mud and dirt] rich waters of the Flood buried the animals, they became fossils. Dinosaurs fossils show us that dinos were alive at the time of Noah, before the Flood took the ones that weren’t aboard the Ark. So Noah would have brought two of every kind of animal that was alive at the time into the Ark. Including dinosaurs.

Some Christians think of dinosaurs as conclusive evidence of evolution and billions of years. Some have even denied they ever existed because they seem to contradict the Creation revelation. They’re surprised to find that dinosaurs arementioned in the Bible.

Job chapter 40 mentions a creature called behemoth. Behemoth is described as eating grass like an ox, as having bones like bars of iron and as strong as brass, as having a tail like a cedar tree. Creationist Bible scholars believe this is a description of a sauropod like Brachiosaurus or Apatosaurus. Some Bible commentaries tell us that this creature was a hippo or an elephant, but who ever saw an elephant with a tail like a cedar tree?! It’s important to note that Job 40:15 begins God’s commentary on this creature “Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee..” This is a clear reference to the Biblical fact that God made man and all land animals on Day 6. Which means that dinosaurs and man lived at the same time! Adam named them. Originally herbivores, they were effected by the Fall.

The Bible contains other references to dinosaurs. Of course, they’re not called dinosaurs in the Holy Scriptures. The word “dinosaur” wasn’t coined until 1842 by Sir Richard Owen. Before that time, they were called dragons. Fossils were seen as evidence of Noah’s Flood.

The Bible mentions dinosaurs by the word dragons several times, notably in Psalm 91:13 and the water-dwelling dragons of Isaiah 27:1. Genesis 1:21 mentions the “great sea monsters” that God created on Day 5. Job 41 mentions Leviathan, a monstrous seadwelling creature that could apparently breathe fire.

Dinosaur fossils are a testimony to God’s judgment and the world-wide flood, but some dinosaurs survived aboard the Ark. Some question whether they could have fit in the Ark. Most dinosaurs were the size of sheep. It also would make sense for God to send younger animals, since the Ark’s voyage took over a year. Also, God sent only 2 of each unclean land vertebrate to the Ark. Again, there are many dinosaur names, but only about 55 different kinds of dinosaurs. The Ark was big enough to contain 522 standard US railroad stock cars!

Evolutionists claim dinosaurs and man are separated by millions of years. Yet there are dragon legends the world over, like the apocryphal Bel & the Dragon, St. George and others. An Irishman described a possible stegosaur, “a beast having iron nails on its tail,” hundreds of years before such fossils were uncovered. Petroglyphs all over the world, like those made by American Indians and found at Angkor Wat, testify to the co-existence of man and dinosaurs as the Bible says.

 

Why Bigfoot Isn’t the Missing Link

There’s no such thing as a missing link, unless we’re talking about synapses that ought to be firing somewhere inside that tiny grey area which presumably exists somewhere deep within a Darwinist’s thick skull!

“What about cavemen?” It’s one of the most common questions asked of creation speakers. There are two short answers.

[A] Yes, men have lived in caves. After Babel, man dispersed each according to his new language. Some lived in caves during the Ice Age that followed the Deluge. Some Flood legends even mention people living in caves as they traveled to their eventual homeland.

[B] If by “cave man” you really mean ape-man, they’ve never existed outside of textbook illustrations, museum exhibits and the fertile imaginations of evolutionists [& Hollywood!]

The Missing Link as described by Haeckel

Ernst Haeckel, the self-same promoter of those fudged embryo drawings that were supposed to demonstrate that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” was among the first to describe the proposed ape-man:

“The form of their skull was probably very long, with slanting teeth; their hair woolly; the color of their skin dark; … The hair covering…was probably thicker…; their arms comparatively longer and stronger; their legs, on the other hand, knock-kneed, shorter and thinner, with entirely under-developed calves; their walk but half-erect” [Haeckel, 1868, In McCown & Kennedy, 1972, p. 143]

Since then, they’ve set out to find what they expect. Despite evolution hopes and claims, all ape-men have been true apes, true humans, mistakes or outright frauds! A few examples should suffice to illustrate this point.

Eoanthropus [the “Dawn Man”], who appeared in textbooks for decades, is better known as a deliberate hoax, Piltdown Man. Shamefully, someone put a human skull and an ape jaw together, filed down the ape teeth to make them seem more human and stained the whole forgery to make it appear ancient.

Hesperopithecus [“Western Ape”], better known as Nebraska Man, was used famously as evidence in the Scopes Monkey Trial. Though Clarence Darrow and his expert witness affirmed that an entire race of men had lived in Nebraska a million years prior, the entire evidence for his existence was a single tooth. And not even a man’s tooth, as it was later found, but rather a peccary [an extinct pig]!

Similarly, Ramapithecus was only bits of jaw and teeth; though hailed as a missing link between man and ape, he’s now recognized as an extinct ape. Austrolopithecus, more famously known as “Lucy,” has some “human-like” features, but is mostly apish. Charles Oxnard has classified it as a unique form of extinct ape with no direct lineage to man.

At one time, Cro-magnon Man and Neandertals were hailed as ape-men, but DNA evidence and comparisons of cranial capacity have confirmed that they were simply men. Homo erectus also turned out to be fully human, though of a smaller brain size and stature.

We could go further down the list of proposed ape-men candidates, but in the end we still find that apes are apes. Men are men. If Bigfoot is ever found, it will be one or the other. Christian author, Frank Peretti has suggested such a solution in his fiction work, Monster, which I highly reccomend.

But to clarify, if Bigfoot is ever found, it will certainly be found to be one of the following two possibilities:

1. A species of relict or unknown primate. Gigantopithecus has been suggested by some cryptozoologists, though the fragmentary nature of these fossils [essentially jawbones and teeth] makes this purest speculation. Nevertheless, some large species of unidentified relict ape or orangutan remains a viable possibility. The cryptid ape option Frank Peretti explored in Monster. [Gripping. Read it if you get the chance.] Incidentally, Bigfoot [technically being indigenous only to North America, though the term is often used generically to include Yeti, Yowie and other primate cryptids] is sometimes refered to as a Nape [“North American Ape”]].

2. They could be degenerated wild men, but fully human. Neandertal comes to mind. Neandertal is usually pictured as a knuckle-dragging missing link, but as mentioned already even evolutionary scientists have recanted this and now admit that Neandertal stood upright and was a man and no ape or missing link. In fact, Neandertal was every bit as smart as we are, if their skull size is any indication.

Admittedly, I lean toward the relict ape hypothesis, but some form of degenerated man especially Neandertal man also presents an intriguing and satisfying solution. Interestingly, Nick Saint in his book Fossils That Speak Out has suggested that comparisons of their respective skulls reveal Aborigines as probable living Neandertaloids. It is noted that the Aborigines of Australia did not fish or make fire when Europeans first came across them in Tasmania, so much so that they were considered to be a lost Stone Age people by evolutionists. Sadly, it’s been documented that an evolutionary belief that the Aborigines were the “missing link” resulted in perhaps 10,000 human remains were shipped to British museums as specimens. Much of these specimens were the work of grave robbers, but “fresh” specimens were obtained by simple murder – all in an insane attempt to build a case of their being the missing link. Edward Ramsay, curator of the Australian Museum [Sydney], even published a booklet for the museum, explaining how to rob graves for specimens and how to plug bullet holes in “fresh” allegedly sub-human specimens. All in the name of Darwin, whose theory is inherently racist, suggesting that some ethnicities are more or less evolved than others, though evos downplay this obvious and damning inference of the evolutionary paradigm. And of course Aborigines turned out to be another failed missing link candidate after all. Archaeologists have inferred that they were catching and eating fish until some time before white men arrived, but had lost that knowledge recently. It is also acknowledged [and demonstrated] that Aborigines do not lack mental aptitude when compared to other ethnicities when given comparable education, but are simply culturally degenerated.

But Bigfoot [nor any other primate cryptid] will most certainly never be found to be the so-called missing link, for no such thing exists or ever has!

-Sirius Knott

Bigfoot, Enkidu & Esau

Now Bigfoot is just not something Christians usually tackle.

I recall reading an article in the Charleston Daily Mail, quoting a Bigfoot hunter prior to a big hunt staged in West Virginia:

“One man in Jackson County, he just kept telling me, “I’m a religious person. I just don’t believe in this stuff, but I’m telling you, I saw it.” I try to explain that it shouldn’t have any affect on their religion and these sorts of things, that it’s not something that’s out of this world. It’s an animal. It’s just a separate species and there’s no hocus pocus to it.”

I think those comments rather summarize the way most Christians feel about it. They don’t know what to think. They suspect that Bigfoot might turn out to be the missing link and they don’t want to consider evidence for evolution. Or they think of it in the same category as leprechauns, fairies and Cerberus. Some even suspect that they’re simply demonic.

But there are other possibilities.

Bigfoot is called many names the world over: Sasquatch, Yeren, Yeti… There have been sighting in almost every corner of the globe. They’re refered to as beasts, wildmen and giants. Most accounts note that they have reddish brown or black fur. They live in remote locations, far from man. They leave prints, but no carcasses. What is a Creationist to think?

There are several possibilities:

1. A species of relict or unknown primate. Gigantopithecus has been suggested by many. Christian novelist Frank Peretti explored this option in his fictional work, Monster. [Gripping. Read it if you get the chance.] So it’s possible that they are just some form of unidentified ape or orangutan.

And before we go ANY further, I think the Bluff creek film should be called the Bunk Creek film, for the record.

2. They could be wild men, but fully human. Neanderthal comes to mind. Neanderthal is usally pictured as a knuckle-dragging missing link, but even evolutionary scientists have recanted this and now admit that Neanderthal stood upright and was a man and no ape or missing link. In fact, Neanderthal was every bit as smart as we are, if their skull size is any indication.

I’m reminded of the biblical account of Jacob and Esau. Esau was described as a hairy man with red hair. It’s possible he was simply a hairy man. It’s also possible that he was ethnically a Neanderthal. Wrap your mind around this: If Neanderthal is fully human, given his specific bone characteristics, if he were alive today, we would simply think of him as a specific ethnic type, much as we readily recognize someone of Asian, African or Caucasian descent today. Now what if that ethnic type was also covered in red hair. It might be a bit of a stretch, except that some ethnicities are extremely hairy and others are nearly hairless. And some ethnicities [Irish for example] favor red or black hair [no, I’m not calling the Irish Neaderthals. I’m making a point about how hair color is an ethnic trait.]

Anyway, what if Esau was of Neanderthal ethnicity?

Consider also Enkidu of the Gilgamesh epic. A red-haired, hairy wild man. So wild that nature is not really afraid of him, until he spends time with other men [specifically a woman] and growing wise, the animals begin to fear him. In time, he grows more and more learned in the ways of men. The Creationist theory, if we were assuming the Neaderthalid scenario, is that some of Noah’s children’s offspring degenerated into wild men. The Gilgamesh epic would then be an account of how one was redeemed from the wild and re-educated in the ways of his contemporaries. We have an analogous situation with Australian Aborigines, who have degenerated to a “primitive” state but nonetheless, as an ethnicity, still possess the intellectual potential to become college professors — and some have!

In any case, Esau’s children or kindred could be still further degenerated today and might avoid modern man for fear of him.

That’s one theory anyhow.

–Sirius Knott

Creation Cryptozoology

Draco Aethiopicus : The Fiery Flying Serpent of the Bible?

Coined by John E Wall of Manitoba in 1983, the word “cryptid” refers to an animal of interest to cryptozoology. Cryptozoology, according to Bernard Heuvelmann [the “Father of Cryptozoology”] is “The scientific study of hidden animals, i.e., of still unknown animal forms about which only testimonial and circumstanstial evidence is availbable, or material evidence considered insufficient by some!” While Heuvelmann would have us exclude out-of-place animals and paranormal apparitions, cryptozoologists and cryptozoology fans have not exactly respected his wishes.

The more famous cryptids are Bigfoot, the Yeti [or Abominable Snowman], Nessie [and other lake monsters], the Krakken, the Chupacabra, relict dinosaurs, Thunderbirds and fellow native West Virginian, the Mothman of Point Pleasant. Aliens are often mentioned by cryptid hunters, but UFOlogy isn’t technically within the realm of cryptozoology. Neither are ghosts, angels or demons.

I bring this up because I believe a Creationist ought to be able to offer a reasonable, Biblically consistent explanation for these strange creatures and phenonomena. The Bible mentions giants, angels, devils, a dinosaurid called behemoth, a dragonish creature named Leviathan and dragons themselves. Of course, it says nothing of bird men, hairy hominids [other than Esau!], aliens or dinosaurs. Yet a Biblical worldview ought to be able to account for these oddities.

I believe it can. In fact, I believe it can explain things outside the realm of pure cryptozoology like aliens and ghosts. I believe that we can at least come up with answers that are consistent with both the facts and a Biblical worldview. The beauty of cryptids is that once they are proven or disproven [the usual way a cryptid theory is disproven is the case of mistaken identity; for example, I believe the Mothman was nothing more than a great horned owl] is that they’re no longer cryptids, though they once were. Cryptozoology is a discipline with an eye for a solution.

It is interesting that in all the works I’ve seen on Cryptozoology, I can find none that view this field of scientific inquiry from a Creationist standpoint*. Christians tend to avoid these matters. Aliens, spooks, Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monsters and dragons are subject discussed by nutjobs on the fringe. Religion, they feel, should be concerned with more serious theological and social matters, not with chasing after fairy tales and urban legends. But if the church is the pillar and ground of truth, shouldn’t we have something to say about this. Our shoulder shrugging silence nearly suggests that we have no interest because we have to answers, that we’re avoiding the conversation because it might make us look silly or might associate us with the real wackos and yahoos.

But I cannot abide such cowardice! God has made foolishness of the wisdom of this age! If I but trust in Him, the answers will come to me.

-Rev Tony Breeden

*Note: Since this article was originally written on June 30, 2008, at least one book on Cryptozoolofy from a Creationist POV has been published: ‘Biblical Cryptozoology: Revealed Cryptids of the Bible’  by Dale Stuckwish

Little Green Men & the Biblical Creationist Author (via Johnny Came Home)

The concept cover for the book I'm writing, Johnny Came Home, has a silver screen flying saucer on it. The saucer has just crash landed and skidded to a stop at the front steps of the local church, Soul's Harbor. That'll preach, I guarantee you. It got me thinking about extraterrestrials. Aliens. Little green [or grey] men. Are we really alone? Or might there be intelligent life somewhere across the universe? I should mention right up front that … Read More

via Johnny Came Home

Emela-Ntouka, the “Killer of Elephants”

The cryptid known as Emela-Ntouka [a Ligala word meaning “Killer of Elephants” or “Water-Elephant” should excite a Creationist’s interests, specifically because of its similarity to a creature described in Job 40:15-24, more famously refered to as Behemoth.

Hailing from the Likoula swamp region of the republic of the Congo, it also goes by the names, aseka-moke, ngamba-namae and emia-ntouka. It’s descibed as being the size of an elephant or larger, hairless, brown to gray in coloring. Heavy legs support the body from beneath. It leaves three-toed [or clawed] prints. A singular horn located on the front of its head resembles an elephant’s ivory tusk. Though it eats plants, it is known to become violent. Natives claim that they kill elephants, water buffalo and other animals with its horn weapon. A December 1954 article of Mammalia cites senior game inspector Lucien Blencou as noting that Emela-Ntouka was known to disembowel elephants and that one specimen had been killed in the Likoula swamp around 1934 [20 years prior to the article] but had not been scientifically described.

Radical explanations of this cryptid include speculation that they are relict ceratopsians like Monoclonius or Centrosaurus. Conservative explanations, like those offered by Loren Coleman, suggest that it’s an unkknown semi-aquatic rhinocerous…. WITH A TAIL LIKE A CROCODILE!

Oh, did I leave out that teensy bit of information? I suspect you know where I’m going with this.

The Bible describes a similar creature in Job called Behemoth which matches the description of Emela-Ntouka well, except for the mention of the horn. [The lack of a mention of a horn in the Biblical account doesn’t mean they are necessarily different animals or even that the biblical Behemoth did not have a horn!] Many Bibles contain marginal notes explaining that behemoth was probably a rhinocerous, water buffalo, elephant or even a hippopotamus. Unfortunately, Behemoth’s tail is described as being “like a cedar” [compare to Emela-Ntouka’s tail as being “like a crocodile”]. Now, take a look at the wimpy, rope-like tail of a water buffalo, a rhino, an elephant, even a hippo. Pathetic. Try to reconcile those cord-like things to the image of a creature with a tail like a cedar or a crocodile. You can’t.

But what about a relict dinosaur? That has possibilities. The word “dinosaur” doesn’t appear in the Bible, of course, because that word wasn’t coined until Sir Richard Owens first used it in 1842. Prior to that, folks called the creatures we now call dinosaurs by such names as monsters and dragons.

Now, it is interesting that the secluded Congo and the Bible both yield descriptive sketches of essentially the same animal. An animal that is hard not to see as anything but a dinosaur. That such a cryptid should be described in accordance with the biblical account adds credence to the YEC view that dinosaurs and man have co-existed in the past [even if man has now driven dinosaurs to the point of extinction].

Creation Cryptids (via DefendingGenesis.org)

Coined by John E Wall of Manitoba in 1983, the word "cryptid" refers to an animal of interest to cryptozoology. Cryptozoology, according to Bernard Heuvelmann [the "Father of Cryptozoology"] is "The scientific study of hidden animals, i.e., of still unknown animal forms about which only testimonial and circumstanstial evidence is availbable, or material evidence considered insufficient by some!" While Heuvelmann would have us exclude out-of-place … Read More

via DefendingGenesis.org

Creation Cryptids: The Mothman or When Cryptids Prove False (via DefendingGenesis.org)

–Creation Cryptids: Mothman The Mothman of Point[less] Pleasant, West Virginia, is sort of a weird cousin of mine. That is, one legend has it that the Mothman was spawned by the curse that Chief Cornstalk placed upon Point Pleasant as the white men he was trying to save betrayed and then murdered him [and his son]. And I'm distantly related to Chief Cornstalk, so there you go. Now, a lot of misinformation has spread about what really occurred, t … Read More

via DefendingGenesis.org