Distant light Part 2 - Dinosaurs and Humans, living together

A responder on my Facebook page, after reading the first post about God's supposed lies, said,

"The Bible does mention dinosaurs."

Let's address that in detail.

First, the Bible makes several mentions to a "Leviathan."  They are as follows (all verses from NIV):

• Job 3:8
  May those who curse days curse that day    those who are ready to rouse Leviathan.
  (For context, Job 3:1 says, "After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth" and then provides his curses.  Job 3:8 is one of his curses.)
• Job 41 (all of it is a description of the Leviathan.  It starts with this, in 41:1)
  Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook
      or tie down its tongue with a rope?
• Psalm 74:14
  It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan
      and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert.
• Psalm 104:25-26
  There is the sea, vast and spacious,
      teeming with creatures beyond number—
      living things both large and small.
  There the ships go to and fro,
      and Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.
• Isaiah 27:1 (Chapter titled: "Deliverance of Israel")In that day,the LORD will punish with his sword—
      his fierce, great and powerful sword—
  Leviathan the gliding serpent,
      Leviathan the coiling serpent;
  he will slay the monster of the sea.

So here's a brief summary of the attributes of the Leviathan:

1. It is a creature of the sea, as denoted in Job 41:1 and 31-32, Psalm 104:26, and Isaiah 27:1.  
2. It "glides" and "coils" as per Isaiah 27:1.
3. It has limbs as per Job 41:12.
4. It has "strength and its graceful form" as per Job 41:12.
5. It has a "double coat of armor" as per Job 41:13.
6. Its mouth is "ringed about with fearsome teeth" as per Job 41:14.
7. "Its back has rows of shields
       tightly sealed together
   each is so close to the next
       that no air can pass between.
   They are joined fast to one another;
       they cling together and cannot be parted" (Job 41:15-17).
8. "Its snorting throws out flashes of light" (Job 41:18a).
9. "Flames stream from its mouth;
       sparks of fire shoot out." (Job 41:19).
10. "Smoke pours from its nostrils" (Job 41:20a).
11. "Its breath sets coals ablaze,
        and flames dart from its mouth" (Job 41:21).
12. "Strength resides in its neck" (Job 41:22a).
13. "The folds of its flesh are tightly joined" (Job 41:23a).
14. "Its chest is hard as rock," (Job 41:24a).
15. It's impenetrable to all weapons at the very beginning of the iron age* (Job 41:25-29)
    *if this exhaustive mathematical calculation is correct in assuming that it chronicles events from 1280-1270 B.C., then it would be taking place at the beginning of the iron age.
16. "Its undersides are jagged potsherds," (Job 41:30a).
17. It leaves "a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge" (Job 41:30b).
    A threshing sledge is a board covered with spikes or shards so that when dragged across cereal grains, it good remove the cereal from the straw.  Note that I list this verse separately from the one above it because it's indicating that not only is this a creature that lives mostly in the sea, it also comes out of the sea, at least on muddy areas

Now, nothing in the dinosaur world conforms to that in any way.  Some people might claim it's talking about real dragons (that can't fly), but since we've never found anything remotely dragonesque, that seems unlikely.  Nothing in all of known creation breathes fire, of course.  If we assume the fire and light descriptions are more talking about its teeth and red tongue, then the rest of it we can actually draw a creature from.

Firstly, it has to be a sea creature.  It moves quite well in the sea, according to Job, Isaiah, and whoever wrote that particular Psalm that described it as "frolic[king]."  Historically, people have seen it in many different ways.  In 1865, Gustave Doré saw it as a giant sea-snake:

"Destruction of Leviathan". Gustave Doré, 1865

In Liber Floridus, from the turn of the 12th century, Leviathan looked something like this (pictured with the anti-christ riding atop it): 

By Lambert- Liber Floridus (1120) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

And in William Blake's late-18th century depiction, it was the creature at the bottom:

William Blake [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

None of which are very dinosaur-like.  For the creature to be able to glide through the water as described in Isaiah, it needs to be relatively fish-like or serpent-like, as in these drawings.  Since it has limbs, the closest to the Biblical description would be the middle drawing, which looks like a giant crocodile with a very long tail and wings.  Wings, again, aren't mentioned anywhere in the description, so they're unnecessary, as are giant tusks and horns.  

And of course, feathers aren't depicted in the Bible account.

You see, dinosaurs were feathered.  Our depictions of them in movies and museums are totally inaccurate.  

Wired.com shows an artist's rendering of what the feathered T-Rex might have looked like

So it's patently impossible for the Leviathan to be describing a dinosaur.  It mentions scales, and dinosaurs weren't scaled.  It's amphibious, so the best thing we could go with is a prehistoric amphibian, like Mastodonsaurus.  

But here's the next problem - let's just say that Mastodonsaurus is the leviathan of the Bible, and managing to live at the same time as Job - whence all the other dinosaurs?  

We know that dinosaur tracks have been found in Israel, belonging to a dinosaur called Elaphrosaurus:

By FunkMonk (Michael B. H.) (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

This thing was big.  Head to tail, it would be 20 feet long.  But besides the Leviathan, there is no record of any type of "dinosaur" or other giant creature in the Bible.  Ergo - how come people running in terror from this beastie didn't record it in Scripture?

Lastly, let's have a little bit of a logical fleshing out of something that was said in the video: that the fossil record is out of whack because of the flood.

Let's be really clear about that.

Assuming they're entirely correct, which I disagree with but I'll accept for this one simple argument, then how is it that the fossil record after the flood... isn't?

You see, leviathan is mentioned, as I said, in Psalms, Isaiah, and Job.  Psalms and Isaiah were clearly written after any such flood, as any reading of the Bible would tend to indicate.  As the Answers In Genesis folks but the date of the flood as 4362 years ago, and the writer I quoted above had Job written 3,284 years ago, give or take a few years, Job was also likely written after any such theoretical flood.

Thus, everything that occurred after the flood should continue to follow normal geological processes, regardless of what happened before it.  This means that there's no excuse for dinosaur fossils and human fossils to not be found right next to each other (especially when one of the creatures had us over for lunch, if you catch my meaning).  

But we have lots and lots of dinosaur poop.  There's never been the slightest trace of anything remotely resembling a human in it.  We have lots and lots of dinosaur fossils and human fossils, but never from the same place.  Layers of dirt would have been laid down at a steady rate after the flood, so those fossils buried in dirt would have no excuse not to be protected equally.  

It just doesn't happen.  That's because the idea of dinosaurs living at the same time as humans is preposterous.

Nope, not even Mastodonsaurus.

Try again.

Distant light, dinosaur bones, and the fully-formed Earth

Why do we believe that the Bible is telling us the truth?

It's not because the Bible tells us it does - that'd be circular logic: the Bible is true because the Bible is true.

Rather, it's because we already believe the Bible is true that we're willing to accept what it says about itself.  Why do we believe the Bible is true?  Because we accept the idea that God is true and that the Bible is His message to us about how to be restored to life with Him.

What necessarily follows, then, is that we believe the Bible is true because we believe that A: God is real; B: God does not lie; and C: God wants us to know Him.

If that's true - and it's necessarily true for an inerrant Bible, for if we argue against those premises, we have to admit the possibility that the Bible is lying to us - then whence came dinosaurs?

I used to believe this: God, when He created the heavens and the Earth, also created the dinosaur bones and distant light to try to trip us up, to make us doubt Him and what He has said about Creation.

That argument is not consistent with a God who does not lie and desires us to know Him. 

Because in that argument, God is the creator of two records - the Bible, and the physical reality (universe and planet).  We can "read" both, if we are literate in the languages they were written in.  One is true, the other is a lie - but both were written by God.

So isn't it true that accepting the science about the world is claiming that God is lying in the Bible?

No.  Remember that the Bible never claims itself to be inerrant, only God-breathed.  If we accept that it can be flawed - that is, that God did not write it Himself but through flawed intermediaries who took occasional shortcuts,  then we can still accept that God is always truthful and that the Bible is His way of teaching us about certain aspects of Him - namely, His love and grace.  If the Bible is, as my pastors told me so long ago, God's love-letter to humanity, why would we assume a love-letter is scientifically accurate?  There's no point to.  But it can still provide us insights about His love, if we're open to those insights.

There's also a way to read it, if you prefer, to say that the Bible is literally written word-for-word by God, and that, as with my love-letter argument above, God took shortcuts rather than attempting to explain everything to an ancient peoples who couldn't have possibly understood it.  If God had told them that the world is billions of years old, they would've laughed at Him, because they couldn't read the world, couldn't understand the things they looked at, and sought answers for them in inappropriate places (such as other gods).

Thus, you can't argue that God created distant light or hid supposedly-ancient dinosaur bones and still argue that God loves us and wants us to know Him - but you can argue (and I threw that out there if you want to take it) that as ancient people were bad at reading the physical world, we are still.  It's a fair argument, but good luck proving the science wrong.  You'll have to engage science where it lives for that.