Ministry 

Dinosaurs, God and the Joy of Not Really Knowing

One of the most common questions students ask me is why there aren’t any dinosaurs in the Bible. I think the main idea behind their question is what do we trust more: the scientific evidence of bones and fossils of prehistoric creatures or the story of creation as we read it in Genesis 1 of the Bible? 

To be honest, I don’t have a conclusive answer to their question. Both archeological evidence and the Holy Writings of ancient peoples can give us insights into different aspects of the past, and I don’t think we need to debate if one presents a more correct or accurate perspective than the other. Sometimes it’s okay to hold two different ideas in tension, recognizing the benefits of each and that neither are attempting to give us all the answers on their own. 

For example, the Bible is a collection of books, letters and other writings which tell us about God, the character of God, and the relationship God wants to have with us, the earth and all living creatures. While some Christians might disagree with me, I don’t believe it was ever intended to serve as a scientific textbook because that was not the perspective of the ancient peoples who wrote it. They saw the world around them from a particular point of view which is reflected in what they saw and recorded. 

In the same way, while a scientific view of the world might possibly be broader than ancient peoples’ worldviews in some ways, it is still just one point of view. The scientific method of understanding reality, which was more widely adopted in Western culture only about two or three hundred years ago during an era called the Enlightenment, operates on the basis of observable evidence and experimentation. These tools are very useful in a lot of circumstances, but the way scientific theories are tested and refined suggests to me that maybe they aren’t quite as flawless or absolute as sometimes we’d like to think they are. 

As we celebrate National Science Week, I give thanks to God for the marvels of scientific discovery and the ways in which science can make the world and people’s lives better. We can accept that there will always be questions and tensions around the relationship between science and faith, because they both see reality from different points of view and each contributes something important to making the world a better place for all people. 

And personally, I’m looking forward to seeing God in eternity and asking him about those dinosaurs… 

God’s blessings to you and your family, 

Pastor Eugene