Despite our best efforts to interest our Theresa in the arts and humanities, her predilections are increasingly gravitating towards the natural sciences. (She was obsessed with Barbies for a grand total of two days. Then back to the sciences.) Although she has a bit of a fear of insects, she is nevertheless fascinated by them, especially their life cycles, from egg to larva to pupa to adult. But her greatest love right now is dinosaurs. We initially discovered this three Christmases ago during a trip to the Royal Ontario Museum. When we visited the dinosaur exhibits, she took delight at what we were seeing, even at age four.
Earlier this month, during a trip out of town, I picked up for Theresa an inexpensive package of 21 small coloured plastic dinosaurs, including stegosaurus, diplodocus, parasaurolophus, dimetrodon and tyrannosaurus rex, among others. They were a big hit. She has now learnt all their names and is interested in finding out everything she can about the different types of dinosaurs that once lived aeons ago. Accordingly, we've been reading books on the subject.
Not surprisingly perhaps, all of them presuppose the validity of macroevolution, assuming that the various dinosaur species developed out of earlier forms and that their descendants may be found among contemporary reptiles and perhaps even among birds and mammals. I will admit that I've gone back and forth on the issue. In my youth I tended to think that macroevolution probably did occur. I suppose I would have adhered to something like theistic evolution, even if I found some of its implications problematic.
In more recent years, however, I've become more doubtful about this, since I find it difficult to envision a mechanism which would allow millions of years of accumulated small mutations to enable inert tissue to see or feel or taste. Of what possible use to a creature is 95 percent of an eye aeons away from actually experiencing sight? Would not natural selection have eliminated this redundant appendage somewhere along the way? Nevertheless, I also admit that I am far from an expert in any of this, so I do have to plead a measure of agnosticism on the issue. What I do not doubt, however, is that God created the heavens and the earth and everything therein.
This is where I run into problems with all the dinosaur books we've looked at thus far. None of them take seriously God's creative intention in bringing dinosaurs into being. To be honest, I'm not altogether certain how the believing Christian should deal with the dinosaurs. It appears that God created a whole series of creatures which once populated the earth and then allowed them to die off some 65 million years ago. Can we celebrate God's creation in these creatures whom we now know only by their remains? Can we affirm that God once pronounced them good and then decided that their time on earth was over? This is undoubtedly something Nancy and I will need to explore further, given Theresa's interests. Book or website suggestions would be welcome.
By the way, am I the only nonpaleontologist who thought that the sequel to Jurassic Park ought to have been called Cretaceous Park? And is a female of the species tyrannosaurus rex a tyrannosaura regina? Just a couple of questions from a novice.
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