Why Did God Create Dinosaurs?

[Sarah147]

Hello,

I'm looking to the reason('s) why God created dinosaurs. Anyone know what the Saints, theologians, Bible, people, etc. have said or what you think?



Thank you and God bless you!

[Miss Hepburn]

[quote name='JoyfulLife' date='28 July 2010 - 12:05 PM' timestamp='1280336752' post='2149106']
Hello,

I'm looking to the reason('s) why God created dinosaurs. Anyone know what the Saints, theologians, Bible, people, etc. have said or what you think?

[img]http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif[/img]

Thank you and God bless you!
[/quote]

Hi JoyfuLife,
First, I'd like to ask you what you think is the reason.
I believe you know the answer inside you.
But, I've been wrong lots of times before! Ha!
God bless you, too, sis.

[Sarah147]

My own thought is that it gave God some kind of delight. But when I look at how destructive they were and what they could do to people, I have to wonder...

[CatherineM]

It gives us something to research, something to use our minds for. It gives fantasy and delight to children, and allows us to imagine how awesome his creation is.

[Miss Hepburn]

[quote name='JoyfulLife' date='28 July 2010 - 12:57 PM' timestamp='1280339879' post='2149132'] My own thought is that it gave God some kind of delight. But when I look at how destructive they were and what they could do to people, I have to wonder... [/quote]
Wonder is good!
Yes, delight.
Now isn't a shark or a black widow spider destructive?
Look at what they could do to people.
This is fun.

And, yup, awesome.

Edited July 28, 2010 by Miss Hepburn

[kafka]

not sure why God created the dinosaurs, but this is a nice verse from the Psalms presumably about the whales or any large marine creature:

{103:25} This sea is great and its hands are spacious. There are creeping things without number: the small animals with the great.
{103:26} There, the ships will pass by this sea-serpent that you have formed to mock them.

[Lil Red]

Why Did God Create Dinosaurs?

He was having a screw-off day at work.

[kafka]

Well everything God created teaches us something about Himself. And generally animals are created to serve men. Yet these dinosaurs became extinct before Adam and Eve were created, so I like CatherineMs answer:

"It gives us something to research, something to use our minds for. It gives fantasy and delight to children, and allows us to imagine how awesome his creation is."

When I see the dinosaur exhibits at my museum, I think of the immensity of creation, the power of God, the Infinity and Eternity of God. Same with the glaciers and rock formations.

The power and size of the dinosaurs is an expression of God's power and vastness. The fact that they existed so long ago shows the immense, long and subtle unfolding of God's plan for the universe. Their violence is a figure for how God deals with severe evil.

Edited July 29, 2010 by kafka

[Miss Hepburn]

Well, this is my take.
Nothing can truly be understood from a limited, finite human perspective.
Even Jesus said after [b]3[/b] years with his disciples - teaching them privately each night around the campfire looking into the eyes of the greatest Teacher ever to be on this earth, imo --- and some seeing Him as He truly was - Transfigured -[i]There are so many things I want to tell you, but you an not bear them now[/i]...on His last night.
This little brain simply can not comprehend very much.

So how I see the dinosaurs, to stay on topic, is - just as bacteria, amoebas, fish 7 miles below living in darkness, a flower, a
mosquito, a cherubim, a nebula ---all are here as an extension of Himself, the Alpha and the Omega to
...[i]simply experience it All..[/i].
the good, the bad, the ugly - everything infinite and infinitessmal - A to Z, every single thread of this Tapestry called the Universe and
beyond the 3rd Dimension.

Imagine that He is aware of a sparrow flying in a flock in Russia at the same time He is experiencing and maintaining the 10,000 galaxies that hide behind my thumbnail as I reach it towards the the sky; too immense for us to comprehend unless maybe you were Gene Rodenberry.

Why did he create the dinosaurs? - I wonder why he created my neighbor across the street, myself.
[img]http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif[/img] Miss Hepburn

[Ephrem Augustine]

The phenomenon of dinosaurs is something we only recently understand, so the Church would not have a tremendous tradition on the topic, but since the holy Spirit is alive, it may take the Church today to deal with the issue in light of the tradition we already have.

[Luigi]

I knew a guy - fundamentalist Christian, we were friends for a while - who believed in the absolute inerrancy of the Bible. So he believed God created the world in seven days, and that you could total up the ages of all the kings & prophets & stuff to figure out exactly how long ago God created the Earth.

Somebody asked him about the fossil record of the dinosaurs, and didn't that contradict his Biblical timeline. My friend replied that there had never been any dinosaurs - that God put the dinosaur fossils in the earth to test our faith.

The conversation kind of stopped after that.

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Luigi' date='02 August 2010 - 11:51 PM' timestamp='1280811068' post='2151377']
I knew a guy - fundamentalist Christian, we were friends for a while - who believed in the absolute inerrancy of the Bible. So he believed God created the world in seven days, and that you could total up the ages of all the kings & prophets & stuff to figure out exactly how long ago God created the Earth.

Somebody asked him about the fossil record of the dinosaurs, and didn't that contradict his Biblical timeline. My friend replied that there had never been any dinosaurs - that God put the dinosaur fossils in the earth to test our faith.

The conversation kind of stopped after that.
[/quote]
It's possible in theory I suppose, that all the evidence for an old earth was planted........ but I just don't think it's the case.

[kafka]

[quote name='Luigi' date='03 August 2010 - 12:51 AM' timestamp='1280811068' post='2151377']
I knew a guy - fundamentalist Christian, we were friends for a while - who believed in the absolute inerrancy of the Bible. So he believed God created the world in seven days, and that you could total up the ages of all the kings & prophets & stuff to figure out exactly how long ago God created the Earth.

Somebody asked him about the fossil record of the dinosaurs, and didn't that contradict his Biblical timeline. My friend replied that there had never been any dinosaurs - that God put the dinosaur fossils in the earth to test our faith.

The conversation kind of stopped after that.
[/quote]
sheesh. Absurd.

He can still believe in inerrancy, it is infallible Catholic teaching that the Bible is inerrant. What he needs to realize is that the authors directly use figures of speech to express truth.

Although one thing I agree with one can come to a good estimate as to when human history began using the lists from Christ back to Adam in the Gospel of Luke. But the history of the earth did not begin with Adam and Eve. The days are symbolic of long periods of time.

Edited August 3, 2010 by kafka

[Ziggamafu]

Why did God create out of reach solar systems (let alone galaxies) and fantastically crazy events in space? Same reason He created dinos, I suppose. I like Catherine's answer.

Kafka, hasn't it been reasonably proven that records of humanity go back much farther than a literal timeline to Adam would allow? (I don't know the answer to this, but I am under the heavy impression that the answer is yes.)

[kafka]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' date='04 August 2010 - 05:34 PM' timestamp='1280957698' post='2152235']
Kafka, hasn't it been reasonably proven that records of humanity go back much farther than a literal timeline to Adam would allow? (I don't know the answer to this, but I am under the heavy impression that the answer is yes.)
[/quote]
I really dont have all the answers to this question. Basically my opinion is that the highly evolved primates (or homonids) lived, hunted and gathered before the coming of Adam and Eve. These were not human persons, infused with a rational soul.

Taking the geneology from Luke there are 77 generations. One would have to decide an average number of years for each generation in order to calculate. Plus before the flood it seems men lived longer but I still think that the ages of the persons before the flood in the Bible are still figurative and not literal. In any case here is a quote taken from the visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich in a section where she is describing the origins of the Egyptians and all the evil they were involved in:

"I saw these false computations of the pagan priests at the same time that I behel Jesus teaching on the Sabbath at Aruma. Jesus, speaking before the Pharisees of the Call of Abraham and his sojourn in Egypt, exposed the errors of the Egyptian calenar. He told them that the world had now existed 4028 years. When I heard Jesus say this, He was Himself thirty-one years old."

The ancient Egyptians tampered with chronology with the intent of making their royal lines seem more ancient and important. The existence of the world in the above quote I think refers to the beginning of human history not the beginning of the earth.

Edited August 4, 2010 by kafka