What do creationists say about dinosaurs

The creationist piece attempted to argue that these new discoveries helped support the idea that these pterosaurs were made by a creator. Oddly enough, I was left rather unconvinced, not least because of the obvious mangling of some fairly simple and very well-known history that contradicts the arguments presented in some delightfully ironic ways.

For a long time, pterosaurs were regarded as rather inept fliers and little more than unusual gliding reptiles, but this view has been overturned with more modern studies. Now, you see, there are a fair few issues here. Indeed, early researchers had considered pterosaurs might be marsupials and amphibians, or perhaps swimming animals Wellnhofer, before most settled on flying reptiles. Pterosaur enthusiasts will know this place well, as almost all of the well-preserved pterosaurs known at that time came from the same Jurassic age rocks, so the oldest-known birds and oldest-known pterosaurs were largely contemporaries as far as the Victorians were concerned the first Triassic pterosaurs were not identified until the s.

This theory would have been well known to those working on these animals at the time. Sir Richard Owen, grandfather of the natural history museum in London and brilliant anatomist worked on the first specimen of Archaeopteryx Owen, and described a number of pterosaur specimens, so would have been well aware that many pterosaurs came from the same beds as this early bird.

Owen was a staunch opponent of Darwin and his ideas Cadbury, , yet it was Owen who most influenced the early ideas about dinosaurs, and indeed pterosaurs, as reptile-like and not especially agile or able locomotors.

Although Owen, Buckland, and many other early naturalists were Christians and also creationists though that term then as today covers a multitude of positions , their consideration that pterosaurs were created rather than evolved had little bearing on their interpretations of pterosaur biology.

It was more to do with the simple observation that these animals were reptiles. Since at that time the understanding of reptilian animals was that they needed heat to get moving and suffered in the cold, the assumption was that pterosaurs would have been gliders at best and incapable of prolonged bird-like activity Wellnhofer, Oddly enough, the one early vocal dissenter to this view at the time considered pterosaurs to be the ancestors of birds a position we now know is incorrect and hence pushed for a theory of active flight Seeley, Collectively, then, the few simple lines of text quoted above from the creationist essay effectively misrepresent the timing of pterosaur discoveries, who was working on them, their then known age relative to birds, the scientific ideas of the time and how these aligned.

All of this information is freely available, much of it is in multiple books on pterosaurs Wellnhofer, , early dinosaur discoveries Cadbury, , and online sources like Pterosaur. Now, of course, creationism as a concept fails utterly in the face of the most basic of sciences, and of course our understanding of things changes over time as new evidence appears and new techniques are brought to bear on finds and theories.

But it is especially galling that our modern understanding of pterosaurs, brought about entirely by formal scientific research, has been taken as correct position by a twenty-first-century creationist, and then used to attack outdated ideas as being obviously incorrect. That does not imply that there can be no religious understanding of those phenomena, for theology answers the why questions whereas science answers the how questions.

Hence, even though as followers of Jesus we understand that God created all life, including the first life on Earth, this compliments rather than replaces or invalidates the scientific goal of a scientific accounting for the development of the first life on Earth.

In addition, this gap in scientific understanding does not invalidate the remainder of evolutionary thought. The idea is that there is diversity in species, not enough food to go around, and that some organisms do better because they have a more favorable gene pool for their particular environment.

Darwin suggested this process of natural selection resulted in the creation of new forms of life from previous ones. Another fundamental evolutionary concept is that all life, from bacteria to sequoia trees to spiders to grizzly bears to mosquitoes and to humans, developed from a single source.

Recent developments in molecular biology have been used to support the proposal that all of life is connected through a common genetic language shared by all living things. Biogeography is the study of patterns of species distribution across geographical areas and through geological time.

Modern scientists use biogeographic research to support the idea of common descent. Before the advent of molecular biology, fossils had been studied for at least 2.

Putting together coherent and supportable conclusions from the fossil record is a challenge, because fossils represent only a very small proportion of all the organisms that have ever lived. Fossils only form under specific conditions. Since decomposition is a requirement for environments to remain healthy, fossilization represents a deviation from normal natural processes. Paleontologists conclude that the fossil record provides a strong hint for the idea of the relatedness of all life on Earth.

But how complete is the fossil record? The answer given by biologists, Christian or not, is that fossil data shows a clear picture of how creation took place among developing lineages, for example, from dinosaur to modern robin, fish to amphibian, land animals to whale, etc. And more and more such evidence continues to be found in other transitions.

In addition to the missing link question, other questions have been raised about the fossil record. What about punctuated equilibrium? Recently the concept of common ancestry has received a strong piece of supportive evidence from applications of molecular biology to a wide variety of life forms.

The evidence has come from studies of the genetic code in the human genome project. Among the significant results from the human genome work it was discovered that all humans worldwide are Population geneticists conclude that all members of the human species descended from a common set of 10, initiators some , to , years ago. Furthermore, genome study of other organisms gives support for the idea that all life—humans and all other living things—share a common ancestor. Question: Are the laws of nature such that biological evolution is limited to small changes in species?

Or is it possible that gradual increases in biological complexity can result in the formation of complicated parts of an organism or even a new species? Examples have been observed where living organisms show the ability to self-organize, and there are biological examples where genetic evidence indicates that complexity has developed in an organism.

The development of the cosmos and formation of the Earth is understood on the basis of natural processes accounted for by physics, chemistry, and geology. There is no evidence so far that biological development from simple to complex structures or even new structures that self-organize cannot be also understood in terms of natural processes. The following are a sample of questions that have been posed regarding the scientific status of evolutionary theory, along with brief responses.

The second law of thermodynamics states that in a closed system disorder always increases or under ideal conditions stays the same. This is true. But the Earth is not a closed system since it receives energy from the sun. This results in the possibility of life and the development of more and more complex life on Earth. We Earth-dwellers are fortunate because of this. But this time span is not too short for the process of evolution. The causes of the Cambrian explosion remain a topic of investigation and discussion.

Yes, this is possible. The key idea is self-organization and is understood in terms of a fairly recent development in the physics of thermodynamics, that of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. The question of how complex biological structures could be the result of natural processes has been investigated, and the assembly or development of several such structures can be understood in terms of these scientific principles. A case can now be made that evolution is a process that leads to a defined result, that evolution is convergent, and that the development of sentient creative life was inevitable.

Christian evolutionary biologists refer to this as evolutionary creation. Hence, contrary to certain atheistic biologists, other biologists maintain that evolution is not to be associated with blind random chance. The development of the first life on Earth is and was highly improbable, and scientists still cannot satisfactorily account for its beginning.

Christians will rightly say that God created the first life and, in fact, all life. And God through Christ continues to actively uphold the universe. For the Christian who accepts evolutionary science, the implication is that God has been and continues to be involved in the entire process of evolution.

But the issue here is that scientists want to account for the first life in terms of science, and that has as yet not been accomplished. To be sure, there is more work to be done. Yet almost all biological scientists find the evidence in support of the contemporary scientific theory of evolution quite compelling. In a sense these scientists say that they could hardly ask for a more convincing test and striking confirmation of a scientific theory.

Virtually all scientists conduct evolutionary-related research within the contemporary scientific evolutionary paradigm. This is true whether they are Christians—followers of Jesus—or non-Christians. Evolutionary theory is the starting point for all, for at this time there is no other scientific game in town that challenges evolution. I suspect this is behind the bad news in the latest Gallup poll on origins. Clearly, we need new strategies for engaging churches in conversation about science and Scripture.

Read more here. So, how does this leave the Christian believer in terms of relating evolutionary science to Christian faith? Can there be peace? Let me suggest a modest peace plan. Science done properly is agnostic regarding meta-science. Its methods are naturalistic—that is, science asks how in terms of laboratory investigations. Its data are numbers and diagrams. It cannot address the why questions of theology. Influenced by Plato and Aristotle, Greek astronomers were mostly concerned with the nature of the heavenly bodies, the causes of their movements, and their influence on human beings.

Classical Greek astronomy reached its apex in Ptolemy of Alexandria A. His Almagest was filled with geometry, charts, graphs, models, calculations and tables. Ptolemy also included the longitude, latitude and magnitude of over a thousand stars within their constellations.

With a fixed Earth at the center, the other shells were occupied by the moon, the sun, and the five known planets. Beyond these seven shells was an additional shell embedded with the stars.

The eight crystal shells carrying everything in the known universe orbited in perfect harmony around the unmovable Earth. When the Roman empire fell, Greek thought including Greek science was lost to the Western Christian world for centuries. Fortunately, classical Greek astronomical knowledge was absorbed into Islamic scientific culture.

In the early Middle Ages, wars and conquests between the West and the Islamic world exposed the Christian West to long-lost classical works like the Almagest.

Early European universities, starved for real scientific insight, enthusiastically consumed the works of Ptolemy. Of course, the Ptolemy model of the universe is now obsolete, but in its day, it was the best science using the best instruments, observations and mathematics. For the first time in fledgling European university centers, works of astronomy rose to the prestige and rank held by works of medicine and theology.

The academic delight, however, was short-lived. By the 13th century, European academia was in turmoil over Ptolemaic astronomy. The solution was easy: Genesis is literal, so the model must be changed.

Two additional spherical shells were invented in the Middle Ages to bring the model into line with the wording of the Genesis creation account.

New instruments, better observations and new data soon replaced the Earth-centered Ptolemaic model with a sun-centered model. But this would not be the last time a forced fit between science and Genesis was attempted. In the decade before Darwin published, French and British paleontologists and geologists were making remarkable geologic discoveries. Everyone knew rock formations of different kinds had their own unique assemblages of fossils.

This observation was made independently and many times over by geologists all over Europe. In order to avoid any evolutionary ideas, many geologists and paleontologists including the notable French scientist Baron Georges Cuvier crammed multiple, separate creations into the one Genesis creation account.

Before long, 27 separate creation events were stuffed into Genesis in order to preserve a literal reading and avoid any association with evidence for evolution or an ancient Earth.