S/o dinosaurs | Imamother

preciousmommy

Mon, Aug 22 2022, 10:32 pm

I don’t know exactly what the true story with dinosaurs is, but I definitely don’t follow the entire narrative I’m being fed. The timeline is definitely off. So I take everything the scientists say with a grain of salt. How can you believe they have every detail right?

Marathon

Mon, Aug 22 2022, 10:41 pm

It's not that we don't believe they ever existed it's that they use dinosaurs to prove the world is millions of years old and we don't believe in that
Also some say that dinosaurs werent saved from the mabul not bcz they were too big but bcz they were creatures created from unworldly mating like a giraffe mated with a snake and then that animal mated with a rhino...

#BestBubby

Mon, Aug 22 2022, 11:00 pm

from aish.com

The Torah itself may hint to dinosaurs, as it says: "And God created the giant Tanin" (Genesis 1:21). What is a Tanin? In Exodus 7:10, when Moses throws down his staff before Pharaoh, it turns into a "Tanin," translated as a "snake." Thus a Tanin is in the reptile family. They are also the only creatures in the creation account referred to as "giant," and indeed, reptiles were the largest creatures ever to walk the earth.

What happened to these creatures? The Talmud (Baba Batra 74b) reports that God caused the extinction of the giant Tanin soon after their creation, because had the Tanin been fruitful and multiplied, the world would not have been able to endure before them.

Ema of 5

Mon, Aug 22 2022, 11:10 pm

I learned that dinosaurs were real, but one of two things happened to them. Either they were created and destroyed during one of the days of creation, which were themselves longer than 24 hours, or they were destroyed in the mabul, and the heat of the water caused their bones to age greatly. My son is beyond obsessed with dinosaurs, and I and my husband have no issue with it.

srbmom

Mon, Aug 22 2022, 11:41 pm

Quote:

It's not that we don't believe they ever existed it's that they use dinosaurs to prove the world is millions of years old and we don't believe in that

This is your take. But there are people that "say" dinosaurs never existed at all. I have definitely heard this claim before

chestnut

Mon, Aug 22 2022, 11:52 pm

#BestBubby wrote:

I still would not buy any dinosaur toys. I associate dinosaurs with evolution.

Congrats on following exactly what you've been fed by some.
How such connection became ingrained in some is an interesting phenomenon. It's totally fine to differentiate between dinosaurs existing but not proving anything about the age of Earth.

effess

Tue, Aug 23 2022, 12:48 am

Another Torah view to think about-
Just as the world was created as a ready product, not an infant world, with mature trees, Adam being an adult etc…the fossils were in the ground placed by Hashem himself.
The reasons why Hashem would do that are numerous and if you are interested I can look for a more comprehensive write up with sources.
And as mentioned above, they were destroyed at the mabul.

Elfrida

Tue, Aug 23 2022, 1:16 am

#BestBubby wrote:

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Just to complicate matters, current scientific thinking is that dinosaurs were not reptiles, and the closest living relative today is birds. Of course, that is just as likely to change as any other scientific theory.

Ema of 5

Tue, Aug 23 2022, 8:25 am

rainbow dash wrote:

I remember reading a book by a frum scientist. Unfortunately I don't remember his name. He claims the yes they were real. That they were created as one of the worlds hashem made then destroyed

I could be wrong, but I believe it was in Gerald Schroeder’s book, genesis and the Big Bang, which proves that the world was created in 6 days but took millions of years to develop.
To the person who said that everything in the world was created ready, is it possible that “ready” only happened when humans were created? Meaning that all that time before, everything was developing and by the time humans came around, on the 6th “day” everything was ready.

Aylat

Tue, Aug 23 2022, 8:29 am

Ema of 4 wrote:

To the person who said that everything in the world was created ready, is it possible that “ready” only happened when humans were created? Meaning that all that time before, everything was developing and by the time humans came around, on the 6th “day” everything was ready.

The year count of 5782 is only from the creation of humans. Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of the first Yom Shishi. Whether or not the 5 preceding days were 24 hour periods or something different is a matter of dispute. (They certainly weren't measured by the rising and setting of the sun, which was only created on Day 4.)

IOW, the scientific view that the universe is billions of years old is not necessarily incompatible with בראשית. Archaeology and (I've forgotten the name of the discipline - the study of prehistory/ancient history) which go back further than 5782 years may pose a contradiction.

Aylat

Tue, Aug 23 2022, 8:34 am

Elfrida wrote:

Just to complicate matters, current scientific thinking is that dinosaurs were not reptiles, and the closest living relative today is birds. Of course, that is just as likely to change as any other scientific theory.

Dinosaurs with feathers! (or more likely, proto-feathers) All the cartoons - and museums - have to be updated 😉

PS anyone read Keeper of the Lost Cities? Only popular fiction I know of with dinosaur feathers.

Ema of 5

Tue, Aug 23 2022, 8:38 am

Aylat wrote:

Did the raptors have feathers? I always thought there were both kinds of dinosaurs- reptile looking birds, and actual reptiles.

watergirl

Tue, Aug 23 2022, 8:45 am

Aylat wrote:

My kids are OBSESSED with the KOTLC series and I already preordered the next book for the November release date Smile

I believe dinosaurs and Torah go hand in hand nicely. The same HKBH who created the world yesh m'ayin, Who split the yam suf, who made the eye ball; a lens so sophisticated, NASA can not replicate - that SAME Hashem can also create these animals, and when they died, put their bones in the ground and make them look like they are billions of years old. He can do whatever he wants with them.

I believe there are many Torahdig ways to explain these dinosaurs. There is no doubt they existed - we have the proof. Their age, when they appeared on the earth, how/why they died out is the unknown and as far as I am concerned, when Moshiach comes we will learn the answers to these and many other questions.

I once went on a date with a guy at a natural history museum and there was a very large, impressive, and famous display of dinosaur skeletons. The guy insisted they were just big dogs. I could not imagine myself with someone who was so sure of his very black and white view of science, as for me, it really goes hand in hand with Torah very nicely.

Gerald Schroeder explained one possibility, and other rabbonim have done so as well.

octopus

Tue, Aug 23 2022, 8:53 am

Aylat wrote:

Exactly. The age of the universe and the age of man are two separate counts. Thank you for writing. We have no idea how much a Divine day is. Totally out of my league but einsteins theory of relativity is that the closer you are to the sun time moves faster I think. So with the amount of energy used in creation (big bang) that could amount to a lot of human years. But could just be one day for Hashem. We have no idea how Hashem measures time. Tehilim in davening says "davar tziva l'elef dor." There are no 1000 generations between creation of man and giving of the Torah. If you do the calculation it's very close to the age the scientists have for the universe.