Why would god have just put dinosaurs on earth ? So there was just random dinosaurs roaming the earth for thousands of years and then a meteor hit earth and they all went extinct?? What was the point in that? I want to believe that god is real but, there’s so many things that doesn’t make sense to me
So personally I don’t believe that God just placed dinosaurs here. There are different views within Christianity about the age of the earth and the processes God was involved in and what all he did.
When it comes to Genesis there are a few different ways that people interpret it. Some see Genesis 1-11 and believe that it’s meant to be read literally and some believe it’s meant to be read metaphorically. Here are a few of those approaches.
1. Young earth creationism. They approach the Bible in a way that is the least supported by Biblical Scholarship and science. They don’t use what is called contextual analysis to understand the stories. Contextual analysis means being objective about literary interpretation and considering things like genre, literary tropes, cultural norms and the purpose to a story. Instead they read it in a fashion called plain text reading. They read an English translation and make it fit into their modern worldview. There are dozens and dozens of reasons why that fails. They think the earth is 6-10,000 years old or so and was made in 6 days and that within the first thousand years or so dinosaurs were made and died out in a flood and then the survivors in the ark died shortly after getting off.
2. Is old earth creationism. This approach is a bit more diverse. In this camp some believe that animals evolved but not humans, and some think humans evolved too. Some think there are two types of humans. Those that evolved and those that God specifically made supernaturally (Adam and Eve ) and so on. This stance can be a bit more supported by science, history and biblical scholarship but it can also be just as anti scientific as the previous with strange leaps being made in theology. But one standard view is that the days in Genesis 1 means ages and that those ages span millions of years. That dinosaurs still evolved and that eventually they died off. But some of the strangeness is that they take the 6 points of creation literally but not the day and night. This runs into problems issues such as the order of creation according to the days don’t match the order we find in the fossil record.
It says fruit trees developed before fish and before land animal. But angiosperms ( flowering plants ) evolved after fish, and even after dinosaurs. The earliest plants was green algae. This moved to land most likely as lichen type species and became club mosses, which became ferns and their allies ( spore bearing )which became cone bearing ( gymnosperms ) and lastly fruit bearing (angiosperms ). After animals like birds and bats came after ground animals. Though insects predated tetrapods.
The third stance is one called Evolutionary Creationism. They approach genesis as overwhelmingly not literal. They tend to have interpretations that best match not only what biblical scholarship lands on overwhelmingly, but also most closely matches what fits with reality and therefore is supported by science. They know that Genesis is not meant to be read literally. That Genesis 1 and 2 are actually types of ancient genres of poetry. That much of it is a sort of reimagining of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Since they know it’s written as a myth, they don’t have to use the lens of concordism to read the Bible but uses what is called accomondationism. They believe that all life evolved from a common ancestor. They believe that Adam and Eve are characters, not people. They believe that when Jesus mentions them he’s thinking of the characters, not literal people also just like if we say someone is Hercules strong we don’t necessarily mean to imply Hercules is a real person. They believe that God through the Holy Spirit intervened throughout the evolutionary process to help bring about his vision. There is another group within this that does not believe God was intervening with creation and tend to go by Christian Naturalist ( which is what I am ).
So I think that perhaps you understand a little bit about the theory of evolution. That maybe you are a little bit convinced it may be true but that you can’t make it fit with what the Bible says. I was at that point in my life too 15-20 years ago and so had millions of others. What’s important to remember is that the Bible is not necessarily the same as your interpretation of the Bible. That your battle may not be with science and the Bible itself, but with your understanding of science versus your interpretation of genesis which leads to those conflicts dinosaurs and there roles. It often takes a few years of serious biblical reflection and interpretation to work out your own thoughts. It’s called a paradigm shift because you will begin to shift how you read the Bible. But you can do it. The opposite of faith is atheism, but the opposite of young earth/old earth creationism is not atheism. Their opposite is evolutionary creationism and Christian naturalism which both are still part of faith and the opposite of atheism. Atheists don’t own the theory of evolution. Hundreds of millions of Christians accept evolution and out of roughly 8,000,000 globally, 20-40% of those are people with faith and many of those are Christians. A million or so scientists are Christians who believe in God and Jesus and read the Bible. But out of that million, only about 10,000 believe in YECism. It’s about 0.5% of those are young earthers out of the Christians and that means 0.09% of those in total are YECers.
Here are a few podcast episodes that touches up on this by biblical scholars.
1. These are the four parts of “ The Bible for Normal People “ hosted by Pete Enns and Jared Byass.
A tale as old as time…Pete is ruining the book of Genesis! Pete lovingly dissects Genesis 1-4 and the biblical story of “how things began.”
thebiblefornormalpeople.com
Pete dives into Genesis 5-11 by examining the complexities of the genealogies and the flood narrative, identifying source criticism, and more.
thebiblefornormalpeople.com
Pete dives into the story of Abraham in Genesis, exploring his importance as a pivotal figure in the Bible and detailing his journey.
thebiblefornormalpeople.com
Pete dives into the sibling soap opera of Jacob and Esau, explaining how it parallels Israel’s political squabbles much later on.
thebiblefornormalpeople.com
2. Most of the Biologos episodes. Biologos was founded by a Christian who is also a scientist. His name is Francis Collins and he wrote “ The Language of God “ which is what the Biologos podcast is called. He lead the human genome project and was the NIH director. But there are a few good episodes to consider .
Discussing interpretation with biblical scholar John Walton and exploring the answers his work offers.
biologos.org
Janet Kellogg Ray shares her journey of reconciling her faith with the science of evolution and discusses the challenges of science denial.
biologos.org
This is resources by the Tim Mackie of “ The Bible Project. “
Gain a better understanding of the book of Genesis in the Bible. Dive into the book's story and explore related videos, podcasts, and more from BibleProject™.
bibleproject.com
For the science part here are some podcasts covering the actual evolutionary history of dinosaurs by scientists.
I suggest starting with the oldest posts and working forward.
The Common Descent Podcast.
Posts about Dinosaurs written by commondescentpc
commondescentpodcast.com
Recovering Evangelicals Podcast.
Exploring the tensions between Christianity and the 21st century
lukejjanssen.wordpress.com
That link has books, the podcast and so on.
If you like to read I suggest books by J Richard Middleton, John Walton, Jared Byass, Pete/Peter Enns, Jim Stump and work by Tim Mackie. All of those are Christians.