Dinosaurs - Part 2

{Please read Dinosaurs – Part 1 before this one. Thanks.}

So if the “Literal Bible” and the “Liberal Bible” approaches aren’t very good, what is the better approach? Somewhere in the middle? A compromise? Not really. I don’t think it is wise or necessary to compromise scientific methodology, and I’m definitely not in favour of compromising the integrity of the Bible. To help you understand this third approach, I need that Canadian quarter I mentioned last time. Imagine you and I are sitting across the table from each other enjoying a cup of coffee. I pull out a quarter and hold it up between us so I’m looking at the back and you are looking at the front.

I ask you to describe what you see. The conversation might go something like this.

“I see a small circular object, it’s shiny with some raised lettering and a head embossed on the surface.”

I would of course agree with you and say that we are definitely looking at the same thing. Then I would ask you to describe the head in more detail.

“Well, it looks like a moose or maybe an elk, I can’t really tell the difference.”

I start laughing and wonder what the waitress put in your coffee, because it’s definitely not a moose or an elk, but a very regal looking woman. This is when you suggest my vision is faulty and insist it is definitely an animal not a person. So we start raising our voices, calling each other rude names and pounding the table until the waitress walks by, rolls her eyes at us, and flips the quarter over so you can see what I was looking at and I can see what you were looking at.

We then realize our mistake, apologize to each other and wonder why we got mad at each other. While we knew we were looking at the same object, and we agreed on almost everything we saw, we felt the minor differences were worth fighting over. And why did we see something different? Simply put, we were looking at the same object from a slightly different perspective. Now this is a simple example, and one that the waitress could solve very easy by simply turning the coin over, but I hope it gives you an idea of where I’m going.

When we view the miracle of Creation through the perspective of the Bible, it has the appearance of a relatively short event, but there are very few details. In my opinion, the Creation event is the single most incredible miracle ever performed by God (out of nothing He created everything), yet the Bible spends a relatively short time describing it. Perhaps it’s because the Creation of the universe is not the most important message of the Bible. (If you want to know the most important message of the Bible, you’ll need to read it on your own then come and talk to me in person about it.)

When we view the miracle of Creation through the perspective of science, it has the appearance of a very long event that took place a long time ago. There are lots of details, lots of ‘after the fact’ evidence, lots of theories (many that have been proven wrong or refined many times), lots of assumptions, but no firsthand accounts. No matter what science may say, all we will ever have regarding the origins of the universe and the creation of life are a set of theories that fit with observations we make today. We can’t observe the event first hand. We can’t re-create the conditions that existed prior to Creation in a laboratory and make another universe. We can’t conduct experiments to watch single celled organisms evolve into a fish – even the theory of evolution tells us this would take millions of years. But this is how science works. You observe evidence, develop a theory, then test the theory as much as you can. As long as you have no evidence that contradicts the theory, the theory stands and is accepted.

We should expect differences in these two perspectives – just like looking at two sides of the same coin. We should be slow to tell either side that what they observe is “wrong” if it if seems to contradict what we observe. Some of those differences might be resolved by finding the correct way to read a Bible passage (like the verses describing the movement of the sun being in contradiction with Galileo’s observations), others might be resolved through advances in science. But many differences will remain unresolved. I’m not expecting some breakthrough anytime soon that will show us how this all fits neatly together. We need to feel comfortable saying that we don’t know how they fit together and not be quick to make absolute statements that the science is wrong, especially if we have not fully researched and understand exactly what the science says (even many scientists don’t understand exactly what the science says or doesn’t say).

The great thing about science is that for the most part, it complements what the Bible tells us about our Creator. The Bible account of creation is pretty short on details. But when you add to that some of what science tells us, the miracle of creation becomes much larger, much deeper, much more “impossible” – it starts to add a sense of scope to how powerful our God must be. He didn’t create a single planet with a fabric sky with small dots for stars and larger ones for the sun and moon. He created a universe so big, so vast, so varied – it boggles our mind.

He didn’t create a few hundred or a few thousand different kinds of life – He created millions of types of life and we are still finding new ones in places where we didn’t think it possible for life to exist (the depths of the oceans near volcanic heat vents, under the polar ice caps, deep in rocks).

When you bring God into science, suddenly there is purpose and meaning for everything. The big bang was not a random event. Life didn’t just happen due to blind luck. I am not here simply to pass on my genes to the next generation. There is something beyond what we can observe in this reality – something much greater than we can imagine.

So what is a good response to someone who asks you how dinosaurs fit in with the Bible? Basically, my suggestion is to acknowledge that dinosaurs existed but there are differences between the scientific account of creation and the Biblical account of creation. We don’t know if or when those differences will ever be resolved, but we need to keep moving forward with both scientific exploration and understanding what the Bible tells us. We need to cooperate, not quarrel about who is right and who is wrong. We need to be willing to look at the miracle of creation from both sides, so it enriches our understanding of who we are and who God is.

Or you can pull a quarter out of your pocket and say – “take a look at this coin and tell me what you see”.

Questions and Comments?

1. Was the coin illustration useful? Can you think of other examples where changing our perspective changes what we see?
2. Are you willing to engage people in productive conversations about science and scripture, or will you still avoid them?

Jac

Dinosaurs - Part 1

I was asked to do a post on dinosaurs and how they fit in with the Bible. This is a great topic suggestion since it is something that most Christians will wrestle with from time to time. It’s also a great topic since it automatically leads to discussions about the age of the earth, the sequence of evolution, and ultimately how ought we to read the creation story in Genesis.

To start, we need to acknowledge that dinosaurs once existed on earth. There is an overwhelming amount of fossil evidence that makes it foolish for us to think otherwise. To put things in perspective, there are over 1000 different species of dinosaurs that have been discovered and named. One of the largest collections of dinosaur fossils discovered is near Drumheller, Alberta in place called Dinosaur Valley. If you are ever in that area, you should plan to make a stop at the Royal Tyrell Museum.

So since they did exist, when did they exist? This is where many Christians start to squirm a bit in their seats. The common scientific claim is that dinosaurs roamed the earth about 230 million years ago, and died out after a massive meteor hit the earth about 65 million years ago (see the Sept 20, 2010 posting called Asteroid Collision). And when people date the age of the earth using the Bible, they typically come up with 6500 years. So something doesn’t add up.

A second troubling claim of science is that dinosaurs died out long before man appeared on the planet, around 100,000 years ago. That’s a huge gap of time that we can’t fit anywhere in the 6 day creation week.

So how do we reconcile these differences? That’s the BIG question isn’t it? God has revealed His truth in the Bible, but He has also revealed His truth in His Creation. They seem to be out of alignment – how do we bring them together?

I have found that there are three typical approaches that people take to this reconciliation. The first one is what I’ll refer to as the “Literal Bible” – people start with the position that the Genesis account of creation in 6 days of 24 hours each is irrefutable. This implies that dinosaurs were created during that week, and existed at the same time as humans. So, the dating methods used for determining when dinosaurs existed must be wrong. The fact that no dinosaur fossils have be found near human bones (or other mammal bones) is strictly a coincidence. There are oblique references to large animals found in the Bible (see Job 40:15-24 for a description of the behemoth, or Psalm 104:25,26 for the leviathan), and many attribute these to dinosaurs. Organizations such as Answers in Genesis have gone to great lengths to make science fit into the “literal Bible”. I applaud their efforts and their desire to provide alternative explanations for scientific evidence that fits into Biblical accounts. This works for many people, but not for me. I find they can alienate people in the scientific community by criticizing their work and dismissing what most scientists accept as factual information regarding things like the age of the earth. I also fear they may be making the same mistake the church made with Galileo regarding the scientific discovery that the sun does not orbit the earth but the earth orbits the sun. The church threatened Galileo with expulsion unless he recanted. Over 400 years later, the church admitted the scientific evidence was overwhelming and finally issued an apology. They accepted that the Biblical verses they originally felt were in contradiction with science were poetic and metaphorical, not scientific. But that event was one of the pivotal moments that started the breakdown in the relationship between the church and science. If we want to reach out to the scientific community and let them know that they can believe in God and still be scientists, I don’t think telling them that their basic assumptions are all wrong is a good starting point.

The second typical approach is at the other extreme end of the spectrum in what I’ll refer to as the “Liberal Bible” – people start with the position that science is essentially correct and that the creation account in Genesis is not meant to be taken literally. They use science to guide how the Bible ought to be read. If there appears to be a contradiction between science and a Bible verse, we shouldn’t take that Bible verse literally. So when the science tells us that the earth is billions of years old and formed over millions of years, this means the creation story in Genesis shouldn’t be taken literally. They argue that the creation story is presented in a format that gives us a pattern for how we should live our lives – work six days then have a day of rest. It’s not meant to be a play-by-play account of the process God used to create the universe. Basically, this group takes the opposite approach to the “literal Bible” group. Instead of making science fit into the Bible, they make Biblical accounts fit in with scientific evidence. Most of the people in this camp accept the earth is billions of years old, life started with single celled organisms and evolved into all other life forms we have today (including humans) over millions of years, a global flood never occurred (only a regional flood affecting a limited area), and dinosaurs died millions of years before humans were created. Many Christians are not comfortable with this approach since it allows science to direct how we should read the Bible, and in their eyes, it diminishes the mystery and power of God. There is the fear that as science continues to advance, the Bible becomes less relevant. Overall, this approach works better with people who have a scientific background, but doesn’t often build bridges with people who have traditional views about the inerrancy of the Bible.

So if these two extreme approaches don’t work for you, what approach can we take? That will be covered in the next post and here’s a hint – a Canadian quarter makes an appearance.

Questions and Comments?

1. Have you had conversations with people about dinosaurs and the Bible? How did that go?
2. Have you checked out Answers in Genesis or similar websites? What do you think of their approach?

Jac

Asteroid Collision

{Note: This post is #11 in a series of 12 where I review what Scientific American magazine has called the “12 Events That Will Change Everything”. See previous posts “Fusion Energy”, “Pacific Earthquake”, “Cloning of a Human”, “Machine Intelligence”, “Superconductors”, “Creation of Life”, “Nuclear Exchange”, “Extra Terrestrial Intelligence”, “Extra Dimensions”, “Polar Meltdown” and “False Dichotomy” for more information.}

The Event: A large asteroid will hit planet Earth and the impact will cause worldwide devastation – including the possible extinction of most of the life on the planet.


The Impact: The amount of devastation will depend on how big the asteroid is and where it lands. Every day our planet is hit with small space objects (less than 10m in diameter) but most of these break up and/or burn up in our atmosphere turning into dust and ash, and don’t cause any damage. About once a year, a larger object enters the atmosphere but they almost always explode into small pieces (due to the rapid heating caused by friction with the air) and only a few are ever located. But on rare occasions, a large object will make it all the way to our surface and it will either explode in the air or hit the ground or water.

In 1908, a large explosion leveled a forest in Russia. The most plausible explanation is that a comet measuring 10 to 20 meters in diameter exploded in the air about 5 to 10 km above the ground. The explosion would have been about 1000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The area affected was over 2000 square kilometers and over 80 million trees were knocked over. Photos taken 20 years after the event show trees knocked down in a pattern suggesting a central explosion.


Elsewhere on our planet are the distinctive craters left when one of these objects actually make it to the ground. Here is a photo of one in Arizona. It measures 1100m wide and is 200m deep. Scientists estimate that this crater was created by a meteor measuring about 30m wide and weighing 100,000 tons.


One of the theories regarding the extinction of the dinosaurs is that a massive meteor hit the earth on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico (stay tuned for a series of posts about dinosaurs in a few weeks). The meteor has been estimated to be 10km in diameter, and created a crater more than 180km in diameter - most of which is under water. The impact would have created a megatsunami (a wave over 1000 feet high) and sent debris so high into the air it would have blocked sunlight and completely changed the global climate.


The Science: The development of telescopes over the past century has allowed us to see farther into space, but they have also allowed us to see smaller objects such as comets. We now understand that some of these comets have settled into orbits that are consistent and therefore predictable (such as the famous Halley’s comet which enters our solar system every 75 years). We also know that many space objects are unpredictable and the gravitational pull of the sun and other planets can change their trajectory so they could end up hitting earth. Between the planets Mars and Jupiter is a large collection of asteroids referred to as the asteroid belt. Most of the time, these asteroids orbit the sun in a stable orbit, but sometimes they collide with each other and pieces may have enough energy to leave the stable orbit and head towards the sun – which means they could get close to earth.


If you have ever looked at our moon with a telescope, you will have seen that the surface has many craters which are the result of meteor impacts. Since the moon does not have an atmosphere, or water, or active volcanoes, the surface doesn’t change so we have a good view of all the impact craters.


God has given us some built in protection against meteors. Our planet has an atmosphere surrounding it, which is a 100km thick layer of various gases held in place by gravity. While we tend to think of air as something with no mass, a strong wind will quickly remind us that air can do damage. As any object moves through our atmosphere, the air causes friction which creates heat. The faster an object moves, the more heat is produced. So when a meteor enters the earth’s atmosphere, it heats up very quickly. This rapid heating usually results in the meteor breaking into smaller pieces, which break into even smaller pieces, and many of these simply burn up and become fine dust. Maybe you have seen this for yourself watching the night sky – we call them shooting stars or falling stars.


Jac’s Analysis: In 1998, two movies were released about the possibility of a big comet heading towards earth. Deep Impact and Armageddon are reasonably accurate in their scientific explanation regarding how might react to a potential “earth killer” comet. In Deep Impact, one of the large fragments of the comet hits the ocean and creates a megatsunami. There is much devastation, but mankind survives. Outside of the world of fiction, spotting and tracking “near earth objects” or neos is on-going and so far, they haven’t found any objects heading our way that we need to worry about for the next century or so. We know from looking at the moon and different locations on earth, that big objects have been in our neighbourhood in the past, and will likely visit us sometime in the future. But based on the sheer volume of space (really, really big) and the relative small size of earth (pretty small), the odds of a large space object hitting us are truly astronomical.

Our Reaction? This event is unlikely, I don’t think we need to lose sleep over it. We need to trust that our God will continue to hold us in His hands and prevent this event from happening, or equip us to deal with it if it does.

Questions and comments?

1. Have you seen craters on the moon through a telescope? Have you seen “shooting stars”?
2. If you have watched Deep Impact or Armaggedon, do you think we are capable of deflecting a comet on a collision course with earth?

Next week we look at the final event – a deadly pandemic.

Jac