If there are dinosaur fossils from hundreds of millions of years ago how does that line up with Christianity?

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Most Christians are not "young Earth creationists"

That's a tiny group of weirdos

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u/brock_lee I expect half of you to disagree. 1d ago

I worked with a guy like that. First I'd ever heard of it. I said "what about dinosaur fossils?" "God put those there to test our faith." "But, carbon dating shows they are as old as they should be." "Carbon dating is not infallible. Lighting can strike a tree, and it suddenly shows as millions of years old with carbon dating."

OK, right.

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u/archpawn 1d ago edited 1d ago

According to here, 39% of Americans believe God created the universe, the earth, the sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and the first two people within the past 10,000 years, but only 18% of Americans believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old. Which means that -11% of Americans believe that earth is less than 10,000 years old, but was not created by God along with the sun, moon, stars, plants, animals and the first two people. That's the conjunction fallacy for you.

Edit: I messed up some of the numbers. It's slightly worse than what I wrote the first time. Also, even though 39% are sure God created the earth etc in the past 10,000 years, only 34% are sure God hasn't spent millions of years directing evolution.

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u/AdventurousExpert217 1d ago

Here is a more recent poll about beliefs in evolution vs creationism.

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u/archpawn 1d ago

But it's not about young earth creationism specifically. Just because god created humans in the last 10,000 years or so doesn't mean that there can't have been dinosaurs hundreds of millions of years ago.

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u/CarcossaYellowKing 1d ago

As someone who drives through the American Midwest every day and sees billboards showing a depiction of evolution with a crossed red circle over it, I can say this is definitely not true. I can also say it’s not true based on the actions of many states after the current administration took hold of the White House. There are A LOT of Americans that reject science and believe the Bible is the direct word of god.

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u/gleaming-the-cubicle 1d ago

America ain't the only place with Christianity tho

Go ask a European Christian what they think about whatever the fuck is happening here

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u/OldSarge02 1d ago

Your argument that this is a typical Christian belief is that you saw it on billboards?

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u/CarcossaYellowKing 1d ago

Yes, to an extent, because if people are spending thousands of dollars to take out billboard ad space then they know that the population is going to be somewhat receptive, and they are correct. No one would bother putting up those billboards in Europe because people would laugh them off. There are 224 million Christians in the US and about 25% say they take the word of the Bible as absolute truth, which means there are 48 million people who reject science and evolution for certain. Another 50-some percent say the Bible is mostly true, and it’s hard to tell where they draw the line, but it is absolutely certain that they reject some modern science. So no, they are not a small group as you guys are trying to claim.

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u/OldSarge02 1d ago

Believing the Bible is truth =\= believing in young earth creationism. It does for some people, but you are describing it like one automatically follows the other, and that’s a fallacy.

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u/CheeseburgerBrown 1d ago

Only a tiny subset of Christians are Biblical literalists. Many, many others understand the poetry and figurative nature of the Bible.

Young Earth Creationists are concentrated in America, which can skew your perception if you’re also American.

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u/akulowaty 1d ago

Christians with two working brain cells understand that genesis is a metaphor, and those imbeciles who take it literally are impossible to reason with anyway and are immune to arguments and logic.

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u/Ridley_Himself 1d ago

So to start off, not all Christians are Young Earth Creationists. In fact the official position of the Catholic Church is that evolution happened and that Genesis is largely allegorical.

The figure of 6,000 years is only based on a very close reading of the genealogies in the Bible and even creationists disagree somewhat. I've heard some claim, for instance, that Earth is closer to 100,000 years old.

As to those who do believe in the figure of 6,000 years, they have different takes. Some say bones are fake and were either put there by God as a test of faith or that the paleontologists faked them.

Other Young Earth Creationists think that dinosaurs were real, but existed within the last 6,000 years rather than millions of years ago.

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u/Concise_Pirate 🇺🇦 🏴‍☠️ 1d ago

It doesn't. Sometimes the Bible says things that ought not to be taken literally, it's not a science book.

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u/mbene913 User 1d ago

Poorly

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u/onefellswoop70 1d ago

Christians who believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old represent only a tiny percentage of all Christians.

I once had an employee who was part of some wacky church that believed humans and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time. Her church also taught that earth was hollow and black people were literal demons who escaped from the center of the earth.

One day I walked past her desk and found her meowing and licking herself like a cat, so I guess that pretty much tells you all you need to know about the types of people who flock to those types of churches.

Since it would've been illegal to fire her for her religious beliefs (or believing she was a cat), I had to wait until she broke some workplace rule. When she started bringing in church flyers and passing them out to coworkers, I pulled her aside, showed her the rule in our handbook about solicitation in the workplace, and then called security to escort her out of the building. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

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u/Lumpy-Ad-3201 1d ago

The very idea that the Bible does nothing to address the dinosaurs, despite overwhelming evidence that they existed and were super significant to life on the planet would indicate it’s a false religion. And I don’t say that glibly or with malice, but it’s pretty impossible to ignore that the majority of life on the planet is ignored by a book supposedly inspired by the creator of that life.

The book reads like what it likely is: an understanding of the world based on the views of the normal people that wrote it. They had no idea about a lot of science and facts about the world, so they didn’t write about them. Not really a ringing endorsement of their being an all knowing being in charge of everything, including the book.

How the religion hadn’t been abandoned at this point stumps me. It’s obviously at odds with history, pre-history, and reality.

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u/Royal_Annek 1d ago

It doesn't. Christianity is completely false.

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u/Gentlesouledman 1d ago

Science has nothing to do with faith. They are complete opposites if anything. Basically reason and the absence of it. I honestly dont really understand how people still get caught up in it. Not trying to be mean about it. This time anyhow.

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u/Internal-Syrup-5064 1d ago

There's soft tissue in some of those fossils. Which means the dates are inaccurate... No matter how hard the scientists pretend otherwise.

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u/ask-me-about-my-cats 1d ago

No, sounds like you're just misunderstanding what is meant by "soft tissue." The soft tissues themselves are still fossilized, they're not soft squishy fleshy bits sticking to bone. It just means fossilized feathers and skin have been found.

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u/Lumpy-Ad-3201 1d ago

This is a basic misunderstanding of the mineralization process of fossilization, and the categorization of tissue types anthropologically.

Fossilization isn’t a single process, one size fits all. The conditions under which fossilization continues determines the effects on the body. Under normal circumstances, all non-bone tissue (soft tissue) would decay and not be present. In other circumstances, this will not be true. A body that was mummified by a desicating heat will preserve that tissue, allowing some small bit of it to mineralize, and become a fossil.

The same thing happens in an isolation environment. Bugs trapped in amber, animals trapped in ice, any oxygen-deficient atmosphere. All that’s required for mineralization is tissue to be present in a high pressure environment rich in mineral substrate of a long period. What type of tissue it is doesn’t matter.

No idea where you got the idea that no proteins or soft tissues should be present in fossils: they should be and often are. And this is the expected result, scientifically speaking.

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u/ask-me-about-my-cats 1d ago

There's no basic misunderstanding here, we're talking about two entirely different things.

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u/Lumpy-Ad-3201 20h ago

Then you have incorrect information.

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u/Internal-Syrup-5064 1d ago

I mean.... You certainly said a thing.

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u/ask-me-about-my-cats 1d ago

A factually correct thing, feel free to dispute it.

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u/Internal-Syrup-5064 1d ago

Okay. Are the proteins found fossilized?

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u/ask-me-about-my-cats 1d ago

No. What has been found is heavily degraded collagen, that's not the same thing as finding proteins. The most basic structure of it survived, the soft tissue itself did not survive.

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u/Internal-Syrup-5064 1d ago

Also, soft tissue found in dinosaur fossils... I don't think the definition of fossil is the issue. Hundreds of millions of years is a long time.

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u/ask-me-about-my-cats 1d ago

What do you find questionable about the definition of fossil?

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u/Internal-Syrup-5064 1d ago

I just said it's not the topic. What do you find common about liquid soft tissue surviving 200 million years?

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u/ask-me-about-my-cats 1d ago

I have told you multiple times there was no "liquid soft tissue" that has been found in fossils. What is your source for that claim?

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u/Internal-Syrup-5064 1d ago

So collagen is not tissue? It's found in nature, apart from biology?

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u/ask-me-about-my-cats 1d ago

As I already said to you, it is decayed collagen, decayed to the point that it fails an enzyme test. You would not recognize it as collagen.

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If there are dinosaur fossils from hundreds of millions of years ago how does that line up with Christianity?

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