So am I.
She doesn't believe in dinosaurs.
I do.
Who's right?
Does it even matter?
I'm not picking on my Aunt. I've met other people with similar (and sometimes stranger) ideas.
I found some interesting material on Young Earth Creationism on Wikipedia. Basically, it seems that Young Earth Creationists believe that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and that Biblical history is the only history of the Earth and its inhabitants. The Leviathan and Behemoth and other "monsters" mentioned in the Bible may be dinosaurs or other "prehistoric" animals according to YEC philosophy. People and dinosaurs lived alongside one another like they did in the old caveman movies of the 50's and 60's. Science is flawed in its dating of the fossil record. Instead of skeletons buried over the course of millions of years, some YEC's contend the fossils were created when the animals were buried during the Great Flood. Others even suggest that Noah had dinosaurs with him on the ark. Good luck fitting a couple of Brachiosaurus in something thirty cubits high. Good luck feeding and cleaning up after them for about a year. (I'm assuming that dinosaurs were "unclean" animals and that there were only two of each instead of seven.)
Did Lot's daughters really sleep with their dad to repopulate the family after fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah? It seems an abhorrent thought, doesn't it? Did Abraham and Moses and Methuselah really live as long as the Bible says?
My take on most of the stories in the Old Testament is that they are stories meant to teach us. Could God have made all of those things happen? Absolutely. God can alter or ignore the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. He wrote 'em. However, Jesus often spoke in parables, stories meant to teach, whose meanings are to be applied to our lives. These are stories that could have happened but may or may not have happened. I think that people miss the point in saying they HAD to have happened. We also spend too much time and energy debating whether it happened that way and not enough time doing the other things we ought to do.
God sent Jesus to Earth to save us from ourselves. We as a people have strayed so far from God that we needed His divine discipline or we had become so legalistic in our adherence to religious rules that we were missing the point. God's people were so busy sacrificing their livestock left and right, that they forgot about loving God (and indeed often forsook God for idols) and forgot to be merciful and loving to their neighbors. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for this and other reasons. These were supposedly the most pious adherents to God's laws as revealed to Moses. John the Baptist called them a "brood of vipers."
In OT times, the Mosaic law was the code by which God's people were to live. Problem was, a many people were living by the law, but not loving eachother enough. Still others were way off the chart, worshipping false gods and idols and participating in immoral and even murderous rites. Jesus came to change all that. God wants us to love Him and love each other and lead clean lives free from sin. God wants us to share the Good News about His Son, Jesus, with the world, that all might be have a chance to be saved and come to Him. We are justified by faith in Christ Jesus, not saved by good works. We are to do good works, yes. We are to avoid immorality in all forms. We are to lead good and blameless lives according to God's word. Ultimately, placing our faith and trust and love in God and Jesus is the key.
So whether you believe that the remains of Noah's Ark, that he built when he was 600 years old, are out there waiting to be discovered or that it was all just a great story about God's punishment of the wicked and salvation of the righteous, the important thing is that we recognize the Lord's lesson for us. Did Lot's daughters really sleep with their dad to repopulate the family after fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah? It seems an abhorrent thought, doesn't it? Did Abraham and Moses and Methuselah really live as long as the Bible says? The message matters most.
In my humble opinion, we can believe in the Holy Bible as the God-breathed truth without taking every story literally. The truth is, God made the world, whether in 6 days or 6 billion years. What is 6 billion years to One who always has been and always will be? God made us, either by planning for us to crawl slowly from the primordial ooze into the trees, then going about on all fours, then on two legs, or by starting us out pretty much the way we are now. God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16
Engaging in a lifelong argument about whether every story in the Bible actually happened exactly as written is to succumb to legalism in the same way the Pharisees did. We're missing the point. The stories in the Bible may have happened exactly as described. They may not have. They may have been stories to help people with a simpler understanding of the universe relate. That's probably why God expected animal sacrifices under the Mosaic law. The people understood it. When God felt we were ready, He sent Jesus to do His work on Earth and on the cross, ending the need for continual atonement. By faith in Jesus and His work on the cross, His death and resurrection, we are saved and brought back from our fallen sinful nature into God's grace.
