Q3. How Did Dinosaurs Enter the Ark?

Many of us must have read Science books or watched the movie Jurassic Park, and seen pictures of these awfully gigantic creatures known as dinosaurs.

Scientific evidence indicate that these massive animals existed at one stage in time in history.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that science and the Bible should not contradict each other.  If anything, science should support the Bible.

If that is the case, why is it that the Bible doesn't talk about dinosaurs?  And given their enormous size, how did they get onto Noah's ark?

Let me answer the 2nd part of the question first, i.e. how did dinosaurs enter the Ark?

For that, we have to first correct some of our own wrong impressions that have formed over the years.

Please do not capsize!

Sometime in August 2007, my then-cell group attended a talk by Creation Ministries International that was held in my church.

During that talk, the speaker told us that one of the reasons why people do not believe the Genesis account (such as creation, Noah's flood, etc) is because they have seen pictures of Noah's Ark drawn in cartoon form.

Usually, the Ark is no larger than a bathtub, with giraffes' heads sticking out from it, and appears so unstable that it can topple at any time, what less withstand a huge catastrophic flood.

Now, this is more like it.  Huge and stable.

Somehow, such wrong impressions can consciously or unconsciously discredit the Bible and relegate its accounts to mere fairytales or fables, and cause people not to believe the truth that can set them free.

Well, the truth of the matter is that the Ark that Noah built was very, very huge and very, very stable. It was the size of 81 five-room HDB flats (27 flats X 3 storeys high).

The giraffes' head did not need to protrude from the top, and there was sufficient room for the dinosaurs, hippos, elephants, as well as hundreds of other animals.

Panoramic photo of Ark replica located at Noah's Ark Resort, Hong Kong.

To truly appreciate how massive the Ark really was, I highly recommend that anyone going to Hong Kong make a trip to Noah's Ark Resort.  It has a full-size replica of the Ark built to biblical proportions.  My family went there in November last year, and it was a truly eye-opening experience for me.  A panoramic photo which I took is shown above.

Gen 6:19-20 says

19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 
20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.

From the above verses, we see that God had commanded Noah to take pairs of each kind of animal onboard.  Note that He said "kind", which means just a pair of rodents, a pair of felines, a pair of canines, a pair of bovines, a pair of equines, and so on.  

The next time we take the MRT, just take a look around and you will find not just Chinese, Malays and Indians but also Filipinos, Thais, Koreans and even Caucasians.  We speak different languages, embrace different cultures, and look very different from one another.  Yet, if we took a step back and ponder, we will realise that every single one of these people are all related to us through Noah and 3 his sons!

If we are able to comprehend and accept that all of us humans descended from the 8 humans on the Ark, then we should likewise also be able to concede that the pair of rodents Noah brought onto the ark would be the ancestors of my niece's pet hamster, my pet chinchilla, that rat you see scurrying in the nearby rubbish dump, and the squirrels that frequent McRitchie Reservoir.

The pair of felines onboard Noah's Ark would be the ancestors of the pet cats my sister keeps, that lion in the Singapore Zoo, and the cheetahs and tigers you see on Animal Planet.

The first pair of canines would be the ancestors of the pet dogs in my colleagues' house, as well as the wolves, foxes, and jackals that roam out in the wild.

So too, are buffaloes, zebras and yaks descendants of that pair of bovines, while zebras, hippos and donkeys are descendants of that pair of equines.

Let me digress here, but it is times like this that make me appreciate the Chinese language.

For example, rodents have the "鼠" character, hence
squirrel = 松鼠
chinchilla = 灰鼠
hamster = 仓鼠
guinea pig = 豚鼠

Bovines have the "牛" character, hence
rhino = 犀牛
buffalo = 水牛
bison = 野牛
yak = 牦牛

With that in mind, it would thus be entirely possible to fit all the required animals and birds on the Ark.

Note also that nowhere is it mentioned in the Bible that it was a requirement for Noah to bring on board adult animals.  Hence, a pair of juvenile dinosaurs would have sufficed, small enough to fit into the Ark.  After the waters had subsided, the animals would have come of age, left the ark and procreated, including the pair of dinosaurs.

Afternote: A brother asked how come there was a dove and a raven on board the Ark.  Thanks for your question, bro!  For this, let's look at Gen 7:2-3:

2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth

The extra pairs of clean animals were meant for sacrificial purposes ("Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it." Gen 8: 20).

Furthermore, Noah was asked to become an omnivore after he got off the Ark ("Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything." Gen 9:3)

In Gen 1:6-8, we read that the atmosphere was surrounded by a firmament, and this probably kept the climate cool throughout the day (see Gen 3:8 where we read that "God was walking in the garden in the cool of the day").  This would have been ideal for animals such as the dinosaurs to live relatively free from harm.  After all, before the fall, death was an alien concept to God's creation.  It was because of man's original sin that death came about.

In Gen 7:11, we read that "the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened".  Water covered the entire earth, so God had to tilt the earth in order for the excess water to gather at the poles.  This tilting of the earth also resulted in the 4 seasons, and animals that could not adapt to the severe change in environment would gradually become extinct.  That may explain why we do not see dinosaurs anymore.

Now let's get back to answering the 1st part of the question, which is why did the Bible not mention anything about dinosaurs.

For that we have to understand that the term "dinosauria" only came about in 1842.  It was coined by scientist Richard Owen to describe what he considered to be "fearfully great reptiles".

The book of Job, which dates back to 2,000 B.C., mentions creatures such as "behemoth" and "leviathan" in chapters 40 and 41 respectively.  Just because that scientist chose to come up with the word "dinosaur" does not necessary mean that he was not referring to the same creature.  After all, many scientists are atheists who do not acknowledge that there is a creator God, and the lesser they make reference to the Bible, the better they think they will be.

So there you have it.  Dinosaurs entered the Ark as young creatures, and just a pair of its kind (from which other dinosaurs could come forth) would have sufficed to re-populate the earth.

Next up: Q4. Are there aliens in outer space?

Q2. Where Did Adam and Eve's Grandchildren Come From?

OK, let's get down to answering the 1st of the tough questions mentioned in the introductory post, which is "Where did Adam and Eve's grandchildren come from?"

Mom's way of explaining to us the facts of life.

Sometime in the late 1970s, my mom brought my 3 sisters and I into her room one evening, and showed us a book with cartoon illustrations entitled, "Where Did I Come From?"

Basically, that was her way of teaching us about the birds and the bees.

Afternote: I just checked and found that the book is available on Amazon!

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-Come-Peter-Mayle/dp/0818402539

Now with the advent of the Internet, we as parents do not need to bring up this topic because our kids find out about it online or via their peers.

Anyway, back to those days of growing up.  It was impressed upon me that science and the Bible were supposed to be kept separate, and never the twain shall meet. For example, science tells us that the universe came into being via a big bang millions of years ago; the Bible describes how God created everything in 6 days, just over 6,000 years ago, in 4,004 B.C.  Science tells us that we evolved from monkeys; the Bible tells us that we are all descendants of Adam and Eve.

After learning from that book my mom showed me about how humans procreate, and also being told that incest is a crime (even till today), I had a burning question but did not dare to ask anyone about it...

Given that Adam and Eve were the original and only pair of humans on earth, their sons Cain, Abel and Seth, and other children must have come forth from them. No problem with that. But what about the next generation, ie. their grandkids? How did they come about?

There was only one logical answer -- that Adam and Eve's children must have procreated among themselves!  I quickly perished that thought and asked the Lord to forgive me for even harbouring it.

In recent years, I have come to realise that science and the Bible should support each other, or rather, science should support the Bible.  If that is to be so, we should not and cannot run away from tough and difficult questions, but rather seek the answers out fervently so that we can have a settled peace of mind.

For the answer to this (and all other burning questions for that matter), we have to go back to Genesis, in particular chapter 3, whereby Adam and Eve had just partaken of the forbidden fruit, and God kick-started His redemption plan by declaring to Adam, Eve and the devil that a day will come when Jesus (as Eve's seed) would defeat the devil.

If you were the devil, what would you do upon hearing this? Try your utmost to prevent the prophesy from coming to pass!

And so we see him going to work on this straightaway.  In just the next chapter, Gen 4, we read the famous story about the very first murder -- where Cain killed his brother Abel.  When the devil saw that God had accepted Abel's sacrifice and rejected Cain's, he must have mistaken Abel to be the promised one, and thus inspired Cain to kill Abel.

This view is supported in the New Testament, where John, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, recorded in 1 John 3:12 "Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother..."

Thankfully, God was always at least one step ahead of the devil, because Adam and Eve produced another son, Seth (Gen 4:25), and it was through this son that the line continued.

We read in Gen 5:4, "After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters".  Adam's sons and daughters would have had to marry one another in order to have children. In particular, his sons Cain and Seth would have had to marry either their sister or niece.

Before one gets nauseated, do remember that God had commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. Also back then, the only command that God told man *not* to do was to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  It was thus perfectly acceptable for a person to marry his own sister, or cousin, or niece, because the effect of the fall would take time to manifest in terms of genetic abnormalities. Hence, we find that Abraham married his half-sister Sarah, while Jacob married his cousins Leah and Rachel.

For that matter, after the flood (which took place in 2,348 B.C.), Noah's grandsons had to marry his granddaughters since everyone else besides his family had perished. It was only many generations later years during the time of Moses (circa 1,450 B.C.) that God said specifically that one could not have sexual relations with his sister (Lev 18:9). By then, the effect of the fall would have been of significance, and marrying a close relative would increase the chances of duplicating a particular gene mutation (which is the medical grounds upon which secular societies forbid incestuous relationships).

So there you have it.  Adam and Eve's grandchildren came as a result of their children marrying among themselves.  And so did Noah's grandchildren, from whom all of us are descendants of.

And it was part of God's command to be fruitful and multiply, and also steps taken towards fulfilling that first prophesy whereby one day, Jesus would come in human form to redeem mankind back to God.

Afternote:  A sister sent me the following link, 
"Who Was Cain's Wife?", 
Thanks Pearly!