How do you explain dinosaur bones?

mommy3b2c

Sun, Feb 15 2015, 10:18 am

G-d created the world in an adult state. Things weren't created as babies, they were created as already aged. Therefore, old things look a lot older then they actually are. There are those that say the mabul aged everything even more. I don't feel like it's that hard to understand.

bigsis144

Sun, Feb 15 2015, 10:19 am

Dinosaurs existed, they died and their bones got fossilized? That's a pretty reasonable explanation.

The Six Days of Creation contain many metaphors, and G-d doesn't put "hard evidence" of something in the ground just to mess with us or test our beliefs.

marina

Sun, Feb 15 2015, 10:37 am

mommy2b2c wrote:

So there were no dinosaur babies? Ever? How did they reproduce?

And the dinosaurs who were here just looked like they were millions of years old, but really they were days old? But dinosaurs were not millions of years old, they just lived that long ago. This explanation is very confusing to me.

As for Hashem making the earth look older than it is, why would God do that? It's one thing to say He chooses not to make his existence obvious for free will or whatever ( that still doesn't make sense) but it's totally another thing to say God specifically tries to trick people. I mean, Hashem knew, didn't He, that the age of the universe would be one of those things that would contradict the chumash and make people move further from religion, right? Why does He want to do that? Be such a sneaky trickster?

bigsis144

Sun, Feb 15 2015, 10:41 am

mommy2b2c wrote:

It's a trite (and originally X-tian) explanation, true. It's easy to understand, true.

"G-d created the world old" is a non-falsifiable philosophical argument (the Matrix, pretty much) and shouldn't be used in a scientific discussion.

"The Mabul aged things even more" professes to be a scientific argument, but if you're gonna argue in science's court, you better be ready for all the holes science is going to poke in your argument. (Just one example: early strata only contain gymnosperms, and later strata have both gymnosperms and angiosperms. Did the Mabul know to segregate those fossils? Did all the angiosperms migrate to "higher ground" when the Mabul began?)

PinkFridge

Sun, Feb 15 2015, 10:46 am

marina wrote:

Let's say I buy the unsophisticated argument that when G-d created a full born Adam, if he'd cut down a redwood tree he'd find rings even if the tree was only a few days old. (Though I have no problem accepting that the 6 days of creation were more than 144 hours.) Why is this messing with us?
So people can choose to not believe in G-d and find all the evidence they want in the natural world He created. So? If they lived moral, kind lives, it's not like we believe they're destined for eternal damnation or anything. They'll get reward on some level, somewhere. What's the problem?

amother

Sun, Feb 15 2015, 10:48 am

How do you explain they around millions years ago?
So when did the 24 hour day start? The amimals were created after the sun and moon.
If it's an old world, then dinasours never existed? Hashem created a world with old bones? Why?
Do you have any idea how long it takes a bone to become a fossil? They have fossils from thousands of years and much much older. And water has nothing to do with the fossil process.
If someone has a background in this area, how do you explain to them that would make any sense that the world is only thousands years old?

chani8

Sun, Feb 15 2015, 10:57 am

People think that Bereshes was literally 24 hour days??? My chumash states that Ramban notes that we cannot understand the process of creation. So far, science agrees with Ramban. To this day, we don't know exactly what happened. No contradictions. Unless you actually think the day and night were 24 hour periods, which only gan aged kids might believe.

bruriyah

Sun, Feb 15 2015, 10:57 am

Oy.

Bereishis is not meant to be taken literally, as a scientific account of what happened. There is no other intelligent way to understand this if you have even a basic knowledge of science.

Don't let it bother you. There are plenty of things in the chumash that are not literal. G-d doesn't have hand. G-d doesn't get angry because he doesn't have emotions. And the story of creation in Berishis is not a scientific account. End of story.

bruriyah

Sun, Feb 15 2015, 11:01 am

mommy2b2c wrote:

No.

This makes no sense from a philosophical standpoint.

And adding to what Marina said, G-d is not a sneaky trickster who says: "Aha, I will put old fossils in the earth and let's see if you will have enough faith to disbelieve what your eyes, ears, and senses tell you..."

That would be like G-d making it a requirement to be a fool in order to believe He exists.

Ema of 5

Sun, Feb 15 2015, 11:04 am

amother wrote:

How do you explain they around millions years ago?
So when did the 24 hour day start? The amimals were created after the sun and moon.

Time as we know it did not exist until there was someone to keep track of it. The sun and moon are not an issue for me, as dinosaurs could have been around before their creation.

Quote:

If it's an old world, then dinasours never existed? Hashem created a world with old bones? Why?

God created the world the way He did, the way he wanted. Why was man not created until right before the end of the sixth day? Why not to the very beginning, so he could keep track of everything?

Quote:

Do you have any idea how long it takes a bone to become a fossil? They have fossils from thousands of years and much much older. And water has nothing to do with the fossil process.

Again, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years.....those are all HUMAN concepts. We have no idea how time worked before man started keeping track. I learned or read somewhere that each day was it's own time period, so quite possible that dinosaurs existed, from a newborn stage through extinction, during one of those time periods.

Quote:

If someone has a background in this area, how do you explain to them that would make any sense that the world is only thousands years old?

marina

Sun, Feb 15 2015, 11:08 am

PinkFridge wrote:

If you believe that Jews should be practicing orthodoxy, that is a problem. Because the age of the world is certainly one aspect of frumkeit that many secular Jews disagree with and they include that when they discard religion as outdated and unscientific and unsophisticated.

So why would Hashem create a world that essentially encourages people to come to a faulty conclusion- namely that the world is older than it is?

mommy3b2c

Sun, Feb 15 2015, 11:21 am

marina wrote:

The first humans were not babies. Why isn't possible that the first dinosaurs weren't babies?

marina

Sun, Feb 15 2015, 11:26 am

mommy2b2c wrote:

The first humans were not babies. Why isn't possible that the first dinosaurs weren't babies?

Ok, so let's say the first dinosaurs were not babies. Now what? How does the rest of your argument follow? The dinosaurs were actually seconds old but they looked like they were millions of years old?

But no one says dinosaurs were millions of years old, just that they lived that long ago. Each dinosaur's life time was not a million years.

I just don't get the thread of your argument.