Dragons = Dinosaurs?

[francesco]

my hardcore catholic acquaintances have the book called "untold secret of planets earth: dire dragons" 

http://www.amazon.com/Untold-Secrets-Planet-Earth-Dragons/dp/0986882119

 

The author said that dragon is dinosaurs or inspired by dinosaurs 

basically the book provide some artefacts with dinosaurs objects/pictures as the proof that dinosaurs lived side by side with human, which of course supporting the young earth and creationism

 

and sadly my acquaintances started to talk about how evolution is wrong bla bla bla (which I will write in the rant section)

 

any thoughts why the evidences in this book could be wrong?

[Ravenstar]

http://creationtruthministries.org

 

Here's the author for ya  

 

nuff said.

[francesco]

http://creationtruthministries.org

 

Here's the author for ya

 

nuff said.

I don't think it is really helpfull to attack the author, i prefer to attack the evidences

They are hardcore catholic, the reasoning and counter evidences need to be very good

[mymistake]

I'm confident that 65 million years is enough.

[RogueScholar]

Another problem is related to the pesky and unimportant detail known as evidence. Unfortunately, the evidence is pretty clear:

 

Doing rough estimations, "modern" humans with formal writing have been around on the order of tens of thousands of years. The last of the big dinosaurs (could be mistaken for a dragon I suppose) were ghosted around the order of tens of millions of years ago. Therefore, this book is off in it's predictions by about three orders of magnitude or so. This is not a trivial problem.

 

For perspective, imagine I have a hypothesis that predicts the circumference of the Earth is about 20.5 million miles. The measured circumference of the earth is about 25 thousand miles with 25 million being approximately the circumference of the Sun. So, my hypothesis is off by a couple of orders of magnitude. Therefore, this book's predictions are off by more than the difference of circumference between the Earth and the Sun.

 

There is close enough for government work and then there's disastrously wrong...

[TheRedneckProfessor]

Where's Kent Hovind when you need him?

[pawn]

The author denies mountains of evidence for biological evolution that happened over many millions of years. The author ignores the mountains of evidence that dinosaurs lived and went extinct Millions of years ago... The author is retarded when it comes to basic science.

[WarriorPoet]

 

Where's Kent Hovind when you need him?

 

He is in prison for tax evasion. 

 

Having conjugal visits from Kirk Cameron.

 

Wait...

 

Kent Hovind, Kirk Cameron and Ken Ham...

 

Kent, Kirk and Ken

 

KKK, why did it take so long for me to see that?

[francesco]

 

The author denies mountains of evidence for biological evolution that happened over many millions of years. The author ignores the mountains of evidence that dinosaurs lived and went extinct Millions of years ago... The author is retarded when it comes to basic science.

well, I really want to say that to my colleagues but they already dismissed evolution (surprise surprise) just because bible said so

at the end, I'm start to think that it is not really worth it to hang around with them

[Ravenstar]

I wasn't necessarily attacking the author.. I was pointing out that he's a creationist (and they have a history of LYING) - with a degree in theology.

 

He is not a palaeontologist, a geologist, an archaeologist, a biologist or any other kind of scientist that could actually write about something so significant. Plus if he is right, where's his paper and subsequent nomination for a Nobel prize?

 

I suggest that he is highly biased and wrote this book for a select audience - the scientifically illiterate. I don't have the book to read and criticize, neither does Amazon. (hehe) However, I do have a degree in history and I can say, for sure, that people did NOT live with dinosaurs. There's NO evidence that they did. NONE.

 

One of the earliest pieces of historical art is the Palette of Narmer, no dinosaurs though there are mythological beasts on it, and concurrent works show no evidence of dinosaurs (unless you consider sphinxes dinosaurs). Writing started about 4500 BC... maybe 5000 BC, if you push it. Dinosaurs are found in strata at LEAST 65 MILLION years old. That's a difference of 64,993,000 years. There's no dinosaurs in the Lascaux caves in France (sp) either, and they date back about 20,000 to 40,000 years, though they depict Cave Bears (now extinct) and other animals like mammoth, aurochs, deer and lions or leopards. 

 

If you take the start of modern humans (archaic) you have another 200,000 to maybe 300,000 years you can add to the 7000

 

But really? The math is pretty clear. I'm sorry, it's ridiculous.

 

Another thing, the larger dinosaurs needed a much higher oxygen atmosphere, which they had and we don't because the make-up of our atmosphere has changed. They would suffocate in our modern (geologically) air.

 

And we are crunchy and good with ketchup. A meat-eating dinosaur makes a lion pride look like a basket of kittens. It's doubtful we would have survived the age of dinosaurs. Most, if not all mammals that did live with dinosaurs were very small (to avoid being noticed, I'm sure, and probably burrowing, or canopy animals, most likely nocturnal)

 

Then there are the myriad of life forms that existed between dinosaurs and the modern era. Mammal-like reptiles, megafauna... saber tooth's, meat eating killer sheep (no, really), tiny little horses.. well, not quite horses yet, mammoths and mastodons, humungous deadly sloths, etc... check out the animals of the Eocene.

 

I would believe that ancient peoples found dinosaur fossils and thought they were dragon bones, but I've yet to see any evidence that the timeline for evolution is wrong in any significant way.

 

and why don't we ever hear about monsters like this baby?.. now that is scary.    http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Gastornis

[francesco]

I wasn't necessarily attacking the author.. I was pointing out that he's a creationist (and they have a history of LYING) - with a degree in theology.

 

He is not a palaeontologist, a geologist, an archaeologist, a biologist or any other kind of scientist that could actually write about something so significant. Plus if he is right, where's his paper and subsequent nomination for a Nobel prize?

 

I suggest that he is highly biased and wrote this book for a select audience - the scientifically illiterate. I don't have the book to read and criticize, neither does Amazon. (hehe) However, I do have a degree in history and I can say, for sure, that people did NOT live with dinosaurs. There's NO evidence that they did. NONE.

 

One of the earliest pieces of historical art is the Palette of Narmer, no dinosaurs though there are mythological beasts on it, and concurrent works show no evidence of dinosaurs (unless you consider sphinxes dinosaurs). Writing started about 4500 BC... maybe 5000 BC, if you push it. Dinosaurs are found in strata at LEAST 65 MILLION years old. That's a difference of 64,993,000 years. There's no dinosaurs in the Lascaux caves in France (sp) either, and they date back about 20,000 to 40,000 years, though they depict Cave Bears (now extinct) and other animals like mammoth, aurochs, deer and lions or leopards. 

 

If you take the start of modern humans (archaic) you have another 200,000 to maybe 300,000 years you can add to the 7000

 

But really? The math is pretty clear. I'm sorry, it's ridiculous.

 

Another thing, the larger dinosaurs needed a much higher oxygen atmosphere, which they had and we don't because the make-up of our atmosphere has changed. They would suffocate in our modern (geologically) air.

 

And we are crunchy and good with ketchup. A meat-eating dinosaur makes a lion pride look like a basket of kittens. It's doubtful we would have survived the age of dinosaurs. Most, if not all mammals that did live with dinosaurs were very small (to avoid being noticed, I'm sure, and probably burrowing, or canopy animals, most likely nocturnal)

 

Then there are the myriad of life forms that existed between dinosaurs and the modern era. Mammal-like reptiles, megafauna... saber tooth's, meat eating killer sheep (no, really), tiny little horses.. well, not quite horses yet, mammoths and mastodons, humungous deadly sloths, etc... check out the animals of the Eocene.

 

I would believe that ancient peoples found dinosaur fossils and thought they were dragon bones, but I've yet to see any evidence that the timeline for evolution is wrong in any significant way.

 

and why don't we ever hear about monsters like this baby?.. now that is scary.    http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Gastornis

Thank you very much for pointing out about the author, I will use it if they talk about this again to me (chance is they are not going to)

 

and that's also my explanation to them before I walked out

that impossible for human to survive with only spear against raptors or t-rex  

and that dinosaurs is a successful product of evolution, they managed to conquer the earth for millions years (comparing to thousand years for human) and the only thing that makes them extinct was something from outside the earth

[♦ Fuego ♦]

"I would believe that ancient peoples found dinosaur fossils and thought they were dragon bones"

 

That was my conclusion/guess also. They would likely be found all over the earth, so places as disparate as China and Britain both have stories about dragons.

[mymistake]

Ancient people finding bones would think they were from monsters.  However I don't see why they would know the bones came from a reptile.  Old paintings of dragons from the Medieval period look a lot like snakes.  I suspect that the European concept of dragon was inspired mostly by the Bible and a bit by snakes.  Eastern dragons are mostly snakes that fly.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

The time distance aside, I think we can be fairly confident, that the writers of the Bible... well... we'll start from the beginning:

 

Which dragons are to be dinosaurs? This detail is important.

 

We know what a european and chinese dragon look like, because we still draw them. Though this isn't what the Bible would nor could mean by dragon. However, biblical, or at least old testament dragons, might look like babylonian dragons, but we don't know.

 

Luckily for us, the babylonians drew pictures of their dragons...

 

Fairly typical of what seems like all dragons worldwide, this beast has an obvious mixture of features. Even if you ignore the obvious feline frontpaws, look at this "reptile" with its cat-tail and cat-posture. It's inherently a hybrid of reptilian and mammilian predatory features. It's fairly typical of dragons, but would be grossly out of place amongst dinosaurs. For instance, what's with the tail?

 

To make things interesting, the backpaws are that of a bird-of-prey, and the head and tongue are serpentine. Serpentine and hawkish features also typical of dragons. Just thought I'd add this in there.

[Thought2Much]

A meat-eating dinosaur makes a lion pride look like a basket of kittens.

 

The rest of your post was also very good, but this was my favorite line.

[creative]

my hardcore catholic acquaintances have the book called "untold secret of planets earth: dire dragons" 

http://www.amazon.com/Untold-Secrets-Planet-Earth-Dragons/dp/0986882119

 

The author said that dragon is dinosaurs or inspired by dinosaurs 

basically the book provide some artefacts with dinosaurs objects/pictures as the proof that dinosaurs lived side by side with human, which of course supporting the young earth and creationism

 

and sadly my acquaintances started to talk about how evolution is wrong bla bla bla (which I will write in the rant section)

 

any thoughts why the evidences in this book could be wrong?

Daddy, daddy can me and molly go play with rex

Oke honey.

---- 2 min later ----

Aaaaaa daddy daddy!

Whats wrong honey?

Rex ate molly.

O crap.

 

What do we learn from this?

Don't play with dragons

[florduh]

They are hardcore catholic, the reasoning and counter evidences need to be very good 

 

 

There are none that are good enough to sway the willfully ignorant and blindly superstitious. Walk away.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

 

Where's Kent Hovind when you need him?

 

He is in prison for tax evasion. 

 

 

Yes, which is what gives my question its irony.

[ExCBooster]

I thought I'd add on the subject of the sirrush, that, dinosaurs aside, "dragons" have changed a heck of a lot, iconographically, over the years, and didn't start out as what modern people assume a dragon is. Nice overview on Bogleech. In the earliest texts, what usually gets translated into modern English as "dragon" is either some sort of affront-to-nature monstrosity, like Echidna, or Typhon, or is really just a super-big snake. The image we all see, of a scaled, four-legged, bat-winged, horned, fire-breathing, princess-kidnapping, gold-hoarding (and maybe it can talk) monster is an emphatically modern one. All of those paintings in the Bogleech article are from this earliest era when the iconography of the dragon was just being crystallized, a process that arguably didn't end until J. R. R. Tolkien and Smaug.

 

We even apply the title "dragon" in English to things that don't bear much resemblance to this archetype, in anything other than a coat of scales. Like the Chinese lung - these are mostly benevolent creatures of the air and waterways, responsible for weather, floods, seafaring safety, and the bounty of the harvest.

 

So, nevermind whether or not "dragons" were dinosaurs. (Dinosaurs, aside from birds, haven't been around for 65 Million years, as mymistake points out) "Dragons" are a modern phenomenon. No older than maybe 600 years, generously.

[Ravenstar]

The time distance aside, I think we can be fairly confident, that the writers of the Bible... well... we'll start from the beginning:

 

Which dragons are to be dinosaurs? This detail is important.

 

We know what a european and chinese dragon look like, because we still draw them. Though this isn't what the Bible would nor could mean by dragon. However, biblical, or at least old testament dragons, might look like babylonian dragons, but we don't know.

 

Luckily for us, the babylonians drew pictures of their dragons...

 

Fairly typical of what seems like all dragons worldwide, this beast has an obvious mixture of features. Even if you ignore the obvious feline frontpaws, look at this "reptile" with its cat-tail and cat-posture. It's inherently a hybrid of reptilian and mammilian predatory features. It's fairly typical of dragons, but would be grossly out of place amongst dinosaurs. For instance, what's with the tail?

 

To make things interesting, the backpaws are that of a bird-of-prey, and the head and tongue are serpentine. Serpentine and hawkish features also typical of dragons. Just thought I'd add this in there.

Maybe it's a snake... chimeras are quite common in ancient art.

 

The point being that the essence or attributes of these creatures are what is important. Ishtar/Innanna is frequently depicted with the feet of a bird of prey, or a lion. This creature above looks like the ancestor of the griffon.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

I thought I'd add on the subject of the sirrush, that, dinosaurs aside, "dragons" have changed a heck of a lot, iconographically, over the years, and didn't start out as what modern people assume a dragon is. Nice overview on Bogleech. In the earliest texts, what usually gets translated into modern English as "dragon" is either some sort of affront-to-nature monstrosity, like Echidna, or Typhon, or is really just a super-big snake. The image we all see, of a scaled, four-legged, bat-winged, horned, fire-breathing, princess-kidnapping, gold-hoarding (and maybe it can talk) monster is an emphatically modern one. All of those paintings in the Bogleech article are from this earliest era when the iconography of the dragon was just being crystallized, a process that arguably didn't end until J. R. R. Tolkien and Smaug.

 

We even apply the title "dragon" in English to things that don't bear much resemblance to this archetype, in anything other than a coat of scales. Like the Chinese lung - these are mostly benevolent creatures of the air and waterways, responsible for weather, floods, seafaring safety, and the bounty of the harvest.

 

So, nevermind whether or not "dragons" were dinosaurs. (Dinosaurs, aside from birds, haven't been around for 65 Million years, as mymistake points out) "Dragons" are a modern phenomenon. No older than maybe 600 years, generously.

I disagree that they're purely modern, no myth truly lasts more than a generation unchanged. The same myth has been around quite a while, though its constantly evolving. The dragon always is what is both revered and feared. By "the dragon is", I mean "the dragon is the things people find scary and look on at with awe" as well as the dragon itself being the object of fear and awe.

 

 

 

The time distance aside, I think we can be fairly confident, that the writers of the Bible... well... we'll start from the beginning:

 

Which dragons are to be dinosaurs? This detail is important.

 

We know what a european and chinese dragon look like, because we still draw them. Though this isn't what the Bible would nor could mean by dragon. However, biblical, or at least old testament dragons, might look like babylonian dragons, but we don't know.

 

Luckily for us, the babylonians drew pictures of their dragons...

 

Fairly typical of what seems like all dragons worldwide, this beast has an obvious mixture of features. Even if you ignore the obvious feline frontpaws, look at this "reptile" with its cat-tail and cat-posture. It's inherently a hybrid of reptilian and mammilian predatory features. It's fairly typical of dragons, but would be grossly out of place amongst dinosaurs. For instance, what's with the tail?

 

To make things interesting, the backpaws are that of a bird-of-prey, and the head and tongue are serpentine. Serpentine and hawkish features also typical of dragons. Just thought I'd add this in there.

Maybe it's a snake... chimeras are quite common in ancient art.

 

The point being that the essence or attributes of these creatures are what is important. Ishtar/Innanna is frequently depicted with the feet of a bird of prey, or a lion. This creature above looks like the ancestor of the griffon.

 

Yes, this is true. The essence and the attributes they have are the important part. As for Inanna, its strange because those are demonic attributes to the sumerians, but that was because the goddess, like the dragons of today, had to transcend the boundaries of good and evil, to conquer evil and create good in the world.

[Ravenstar]

Like Kali in her incarnation as the destroyer.. cool

[francesco]

 

They are hardcore catholic, the reasoning and counter evidences need to be very good 

 

There are none that are good enough to sway the willfully ignorant and blindly superstitious. Walk away.

I actually agree after seeing them again talking about the same shitty stuff again and again

And the leader now keep writting bible verses in his facebook account

 

Sometimes i want to write

And when you write the wall, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to post bible verse in the facebook wall to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their like in full

Lol