How do dinosaurs fit into the Bible?

- VBVM Staff - July 08, 2009

I now believe that evolution is false, especially since death could not exist before Adam’s sin, but what does that say about dinosaurs? Man couldn’t possibly have survived with dinosaurs around, so how do they fit into the Biblical record?  C.B.

Your belief that death could not exist prior to sin entering the world is absolutely true and critically important to understanding Genesis and the rest of the Bible, but your assumptions regarding dinosaurs have probably been influenced more by the opinions of modern science and Hollywood directors rather than the Bible.

First, consider what we mean by the term "dinosaur.” The word itself means terrible lizard, as most people know, but that doesn't get to the real issue. The term dinosaur was a title coined by scientists to describe fossilized remains of certain prehistoric, extinct animals. For example, we generally don't use that term to describe the fossilized remains of extinct monkeys or insects, etc. Nor is the word used to describe more recently extinct animals like the dodo bird or carrier pigeon. Why? What’s so special about a dinosaur fossil?

In reality the title of dinosaur is granted somewhat arbitrarily (and rather sensationally) to describe only certain extinct animals found in the fossil record. There is truly nothing special about a dinosaur when compared to other extinct fossilized animals. Many other animals have become extinct over the course of the earth’s history, yet the overwhelming majority don't receive any special attention nor is the fact they once existed considered a threat to our confidence in the Bible.

So, why do we give so much attention and interest to just one small group of extinct animals called dinosaurs? The answer is that Hollywood and modern science has biased us to think differently about this small group of animals because of the way these institutions have sensationalized them in pictures and movies.

Stop for a moment and ask yourself why you believe dinosaurs are so threatening to humans. Is it because of their size or fierce teeth? Did you know that although a few dinosaurs were very large, the vast majority of dinosaurs weren't large at all. In fact, the average size of all dinosaurs was about the size of a chicken. Furthermore, humans have always lived in the company of large, potentially dangerous creatures.

For example, today's male giraffe is taller than all but a handful of the dinosaurs that ever lived, and the wooly mammoth was twice the size of the modern elephant. The blue whale is still the largest creature to have ever lived on earth, to say nothing of bears, lions, rhinos, and other large, dangerous animals. Living with predators is nothing new for mankind, but the deception of evolution combined with Hollywood’s vivid imagination have led us to assume otherwise.

The Bible teaches that God created all land animals on the same day and that man had dominion over them all (Gen 1). Therefore, before the Fall there were no predator-prey relationships. All creatures were plant-eaters. Men didn't eat animals, animals didn’t eat men, and animals didn’t eat one another, because there was no death prior to the Fall (Rom 5:12).

After Adam lost dominion, God still intended that man and animals subsist on plants alone (since God had not yet changed His instructions given in the garden). In the centuries that followed Adam's Fall, it's reasonable to assume that sinful men began disobeying God's instructions and started to kill animals for food (Gen 6:5). This would have placed the animal kingdom at great risk, since animals had no natural defense to man as yet.

The lack of a predator-pray relationship among animals would have also allowed men to coexist with wild creatures - including dinosaurs - without concern. Ironically, pre-flood ancient man lived around dinosaurs more safely in their day than we coexist around our present day predators. This also explains why so many animals could cohabit for so long on the Ark without becoming food for one another. Finally, this mirrors what the Bible tells us about how the animal kingdom will behave once the curse on the earth is remove: the lion will lie down with the lamb in the new kingdom (Isaiah 11).

After the Flood, things changed. First, God gave men the the right to eat animals (Gen 9:3), and secondly, He placed the fear of men in the animals (Gen 9:2). This established a predator-prey relationship between men and animals: men could hunt and kill animals without sin and the animals received a natural defense to men: fear.