Dinosaurs | Imamother

amother ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 12:30 am

As a little kid, in a religious school, we were never, ever taught about dinosaurs. Actually, the head Rav of my school would not permit their name to ever be mentioned- we didn't even learn about them in relation to the theories now (like the one "we don't know how long the first day was etc etc).
Anyway, now DC is in school and is studying the theory of evolution (he is in public school). Are dinaosaurs taught nowadays in your childs school? Were they taught to you if you went to a frum school?

what is the "proper" way to explain dinosaurs?

theoneandonly ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:33 am

I remember a teacher in my Bais Yaakov elementary school telling us how when she was pregnant and they did an ultrasound, the doctor told her her baby would weigh X pounds but really the baby was born weighing Y pounds. So if when the doctors had the whole baby to work with they got the weight wrong, kal v'chomer when they just have dinosaur bones they're probably getting the size wrong! I thought that was completely weird and nonsensical even then, because the whole baby is there but in the uterus so it's not visible and therefore much harder to tell the weight, whereas with dinosaur bones they have the actual bones and can actually see how big the dinosaur must have been. And thinking about it now, I'm really not sure what the teacher was trying to get at.

Explanations I have heard about dinosaurs/age of universe/etc throughout my Bais Yaakov career:
--as you mentioned, days of creation could have been much longer than an actual day. There's a pasuk in Tehilim (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) "ki eleph shanim b'eynecha k'yom"--1,000 years are in Your eyes as 1 day. "1000 years" in this context can just mean a very long time, meaning the 6 days of creation were much longer than actually 6 days.
--I think the main explanation I heard that I liked the most regarding dinosaurs has to do with the mabul. We know that the people living before the mabul were giants (Og Melech Habashan--survived the mabul by grabbing onto the teiva and he was a giant)(not sure if all people then were giants or just Og was, but even if it was just Og, this proof still works). Anyway, people were more gigantic then, so maybe lizards/other life forms were also more gigantic then, and the dinosaur bones that scientists found are really bones of these giant lizards. I also heard that maybe the mabul affected the earth etc and "aged" it in a way which is why the carbon dating shows things as billions of years old when they actually aren't.

I hope these were somewhat helpful to you. I guess if you have any other questions I can try to answer them but I don't know much more beyond what I wrote here.

wispalover ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:45 am

DrMom wrote:

I don't really see why dinosaurs are inherently problematic.

The whole business of how long ago they lived and the geological age of the Earth may be problematic, depending on your hashkafa, etc., but why would dinosaurs themselves present a problem?

I honestly don't remember learning about dinosaurs in school- I went to a modern elementary school with some more charedi-leaning Rav's and they did not allow talk of dinosaurs either... To them, dinosaurs simply never existed even when faced with historical proof. I would like to go back there now and question him- I wonder if his beliefs are still the same.

Similarly in High School- never, ever learnt about dinosaurs (a BY school with not such BY kids). They used to rip pages out of textbooks for anything that had to do with s#x, dinosaurs, reproductive organs... It was crazy.

OP- what do you mean by "how to teach"?

MrsDash ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:45 am

I remember as a kid I would get very upset when my teachers claimed that dinosaurs were mythical creatures, or that they couldn't possibly have lived millions of years ago. I'd think how can they attempt to teach me about religion, which is purely belief-based, and then deny something that is a scientific fact? There are plenty of God fearing scientists out there who know that dinosaurs existed, and it wasn't when humans were around either.

mo5 ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:55 am

MrsDash wrote:

How is dinosaurs scientific FACT? Especially the specific details.
Like many things, the further back in time the less accurate the understanding. Extrapolation vs observation.
Do the scientist KNOW that dinosaurs existed? Or based on x and y, there is a high probability ..
So why would it upset you?
I personally go by the shitta that maaseh bereishis is literal and literal days, but it is not one of the ikrei emunah to believe so. (Other things like Torah misinai are, believing in Moshe and neviim etc) either way Hashem created it all- dinosaurs or no dinosaurs.

As to OP and what to tell a 4yead old. You can simply say that bones have been found and some people (paleontologists ) think that they are from these animals. But we don't really know exactly how they looked and lived and what they are and when they lived.

↑ wispalover ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 6:12 am

mo5 wrote:

I am not bashing, genuinely curious- do you, personally, believe in dinosaurs?

↑ DrMom ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 6:36 am

mo5 wrote:

And the explanation you have for all those thousands of skeletons is...?

Sorry, I simply don't understand this shitta of denying the obvious interpretation of overwhelming physical evidence.

Again, why is it in any way threatening to Judaism to say that dinosaurs existed? What Torah principle does is violate? Why fabricate absurd and roundabout explanations before applying Occam's Razor?

↑ wispalover ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 6:46 am

DrMom wrote:

Some people believe H' planted them there for us to find for some reason. (I know my SIL tells her kids that, and they are not allowed to have anything to do with dinosaurs)

Ema of 5 ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 7:21 am

Why can't one just tell their kids that lots and lots of bones have been found and no one knows when they are from because no one was alive back then? Why must people be SO adamant that they didn't exist if we don't even know?

Since I'm not, nor have I ever been, so into dinosaurs, what I don't get is how they have all this information about them....what they ate, how they behaved, if they were predators....

yogabird ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 7:24 am

Midrashim are chock-full of depictions of mammoth creatures that shook up the entire world when they moved (the leviathan) did not fit inside the teivah (the re'em) and reached to the tops of the houses during makas arov, so I don't have a problem believing that certain very large creatures once existed but are no more.

But aside from the controversy regarding their age, scientists use a lot of "poetic license" to construct the skeletons from scattered bones and decide what their supposed dinosaurs looked like on the outside, what they ate, etc, and the entire theory of what the world was like when they were around may not even be all that scientific, upon closer inspection.

Last edited by yogabird on Thu, Jan 16 2014, 8:22 am; edited 1 time in total

↑ MrsDash ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 7:40 am

eema of 3 wrote:

They have foot prints, and nests of the type of foods they gathered, and much more amazing scientific discoveries. Why is it so hard to believe that God created such magnificent creatures? It's the science of the world that made me become religious in the first place. Smile

↑ Ema of 5 ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 7:43 am

MrsDash wrote:

I actually do believe that dinosaurs existed. I was just curious how they can know all of his stuff.