Go Go Godzilla!
Posted on 06/23/2014 9:24:28 AM PDT by fishtank
Did Angkor really see a dinosaur?
Jonathan O’Brien and Shaun Doyle
The September 2007 Creation magazine back page feature article ‘Angkor saw a Stegosaur?’ showed a stone carving on a temple of Angkor, Cambodia, (a. 1200 AD), depicting what looks like an artistic impression of a stegosaurian-type dinosaur.1 As such evidence clearly supports the biblical view of dinosaurs, it naturally provoked the ire of vocal atheists. Here are their objections:
“If it is a dinosaur, they carved it from fossils”
The plates along the back of the animal are unlike all the other decorative designs in the temple walls. One objection is that the temple carvers may have carved the stegosaur from nearby fossils. However, it takes a lot of training and skill to accurately reconstruct from fossils what a dinosaur looked like.2 There is no evidence that such was available in Cambodian culture of the time. As one dinosaur researcher has noted, if there are reasonably accurate dinosaur depictions that pre-date modern advances in the science of fossil reconstruction, “then a tremendously powerful case can be made that dinosaurs were being depicted not from the bones, but from real-life encounters.”3
Moreover, no stegosaurian fossils have ever been reported in Cambodia. Therefore fossils are unlikely to have been the basis for the carving on the temple.
(Excerpt) Read more at creation.com ...
Huh what !!!
The explanation is funny:
“The arrangement of spikes originally had no distinct name; the term Thagomizer was coined in 1982 by cartoonist Gary Larson in his The Far Side comic strip, and thereafter became gradually adopted as an informal term within scientific circles, research, and education.”
Go, go.. Godzilla.
Yes, they saw it.
The last one of its kind alive.
Then they ground its plates into powder to use as an aphrodisiac.
From the picture, it seems to me that one could argue that the tail is not completely drawn, especially the part where the thagomizer would be located.
Actually, though those do look more like stegosaur plates, I think the head shape make it look more like an ankylosaurus to me.
Look a squirrel.....
Where was I?
“How does that “clearly support the Biblical view of dinosaurs”? That’s a 3200 year old carving. Creationist dogma says all of the dinosaurs were wiped out in the Great Flood 800 years before this carving was made.”
Creationist dogma? There’s no such thing. Creationists have a variety of opinions, and there is no central authority among them to enshrine anything into “dogma”.
The Bible does not say that dinosaurs all died in the flood. Some creationists may think they did, but certainly not all believe that.
Looks like a stylized lion to me.
Thanks fishtank. There are a lot of “ooparts” like this. The question is, how could they so accurately depict an animal they’d never seen?
Additionally, there are accounts of human interaction with large reptiles that were decimating livestock (and in some cases killing people). Invariably, the people banded together and eliminated the threat. (From ldolphin.org)
The giant reptile at Bures in Suffolk, for example, is known to us from a chronicle of 1405:
‘Close to the town of Bures, near Sudbury, there has lately appeared, to the great hurt of the countryside, a dragon, vast in body, with a crested head, teeth like a saw, and a tail extending to an enormous length. Having slaughtered the shepherd of a flock, it devoured many sheep.’
After an unsuccessful attempt by local archers to kill the beast, due to its impenetrable hide,
‘...in order to destroy him, all the country people around were summoned. But when the dragon saw that he was again to be assailed with arrows, he fled into a marsh or mere and there hid himself among the long reeds, and was no more seen.’
(This chronicle was begun by John de Trokelow and finished by Henry de Blaneford. It was translated and reproduced in the Rolls Series. 1866. IV. ed. H.G. Riley. (cit. Simpson, J., British Dragons., B.T. Batsford Ltd. 1980. p. 60).)
The Bible describes behemoth:
Job 40:15 Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
Job 40:16 Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.
Job 40:17 He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.
A huge animal whose tail is massive like a cedar. Elephant? Nope. Hippo? Nope. Rhino? Nope.
Go Go Godzilla!
That's the only explanation I've ever heard for their extinction.
That’s not a very popular stance with creationists, because it’s difficult to reconcile that with the idea that Noah took representatives of all living terrestrial creatures aboard the Ark with him.
The explanations I've heard is that Noah did not take the "unclean" animals on the Ark with him. Only representatives of some were taken, and those not taken all perished in the flood, becoming extinct.
What other theories do that have to explain the extinction of all the plants and animals that we find only in the fossil record?
Calling them ‘dragons’ instead of ‘dinosaurs’ might be enlightening...
“The explanations I’ve heard is that Noah did not take the “unclean” animals on the Ark with him.”
That’s incorrect, the Bible clearly states that he took both clean and unclean animals aboard the Ark. He just took fewer of the unclean ones. So anyone making that argument is probably not very well informed.
“What other theories do that have to explain the extinction of all the plants and animals that we find only in the fossil record?”
Personally, I think there was a radical change in the environment during the time of the flood, and that many species simply could not adapt. For example, many of the creatures we see that are extinct could not have survived at our current atmospheric pressure. If the pressure was higher before the flood, then dropped afterwards, any species above a certain size would have died very quickly, unless they were completely aquatic, like whales.
Gen 6:11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
Gen 6:12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
Gen 6:13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
(e-Sword:KJV)
There's not shortage of examples of small animals and fish in the fossil records, not to mention plants. What evidence do you have that this is what happened?
Whatever changes occurred would have to be lethal to a wide variety of birds, land and aquatic animals, and plants, except for people and the modern animals we see today. Whatever conditions existed before that had to be suitable to all of them.
What do you think that means? Do you think that animals are included in the words “all flesh”? If so, wouldn’t that interpretation also mean that verse 13 declares that the end had come for the animals?
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