Response to Chick 2

A Response to:
“There Go The Dinosaurs!”
www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1…

Oh gee, it looks like there’s a brand new Chick Tract in the world. This time, Chick is taking it upon himself to discuss things related to dinosaurs and how they met their fate. But as usual, he instead produces another piece of inaccurate kitsch.

The tract starts by having some primitive people, most likely people from the Middle Ages, locating, hunting, and killing a dinosaur; they call it a dragon. The dinosaur thought that it’d be safe so long as it made it up to the clouds, but only her head was in the clouds and so she was killed; I find this quite ironic, as Chick himself often seems to have his head in the clouds. Note that one of the people has the exaggerated facial features and attire ascribed to the stereotypical Middle Easterner, yet the scenery appears to be a mountain near a forest. Also, when discussing all the meat that they got, the phrase “36 trips” is Italicized; while this was most likely to emphasize the number of trips they would need to make, simply putting an exclamation mark at the end would have sufficed as the use of Italics there makes it look like he was trying to suggest something.

It then cuts to a shot of a professor in a museum telling several children about dinosaurs. Chick has the professor present the “giant comet hitting the earth” theory as if it were *the* theory behind what happened, when in actuality there are several competing theories. For example, Wikipedia’s article on “Dinosaurs” mentions alternate theories such as multiple smaller impacts and volcanic gasses that caused massive global warming. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur

Chick then alleges that the extinction of the dinosaurs is a “story told by people who don’t trust God.” Chick would do well to check his facts, as the debate between Creationism and Evolution is no longer as black and white as he would have people think. A new middle ground has emerged over the past few years known as Old-Earth Creationism. Old-Earth Creationism holds that while God created the universe, he used methods such as evolution to make it happen; this allows Christians who are aware of science to reconcile their beliefs with their knowledge.

Chick then goes off on a brief retelling of the first parts of Genesis. Adam and Eve were put in the Garden of Eden, but chose to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and so were kicked out. Their son Cain got jealous and killed their other son Abel. Within a few generations, people began to worship idols instead of God. Finally, God chose to cleanse the world and Noah was the only one to listen.

This is where we run into a number of issues. For starters, Chick asserts that dragons were renamed dinosaurs in 1841. This is incorrect. The taxon “Dinosauria” was actually established in 1842; this may seem small, but is evidence of Chick’s sloppy research. But before that, however, people were indeed taking the bones of creatures that were once considered “dragons” and describing them academically. In 1677, a bone was recovered from a limestone quarry, a bone that would later be identified as a Megalosaurus bone; this was the first bone to be formally described. In 1822, geologist Gideon Mantell identified the Iguanodon after noting similarities between the bones in his fossils and modern iguanas. And then in 1824, Reverend (yes – a Reverend!) William Buckland, who taught geology at Oxford, came upon more Megalosaurus bones and described them in a scientific journal, the first such journal publication.

Chick then goes on to assert that some dinosaurs were taken aboard the Ark, and that those who were not were killed in the flood. He also asserts that the flood caused the different world-wide layers of rocks and sediment. However, there is much debate, even within Christian circles, as to how Noah could have fit so many animals in so small a boat; this is without contemplating dinosaurs, mind you, and so they’d only make matters that much worse. Likewise, any first-year geology student could tell you that the evidence points against a single world-wide flood. While Chick can have his faith if he so desires, he must remember that science says otherwise.

Chick also goes on to argue that the plants which were destroyed deprived the world of much of its oxygen; he asserts that without this oxygen, the dinosaurs couldn’t get enough air and so became much slower and easier to catch. There is a very large problem with this theory, as if there was insufficient oxygen to keep the dinosaurs going at full power, humanity would have been affected as well. If one is so inclined, I’d suggest reading H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds, a tale of Martians invading Earth, for a similar principle. When the Martian ships do crash-land on Earth, people think that as Earth’s gravity is much stronger than the perceived gravity on Mars, the Martians will not be able to climb out of the craters they made. What people forgot about was the fact that the Earth’s atmosphere contained a higher percentage of oxygen, which is what they breathed; their invigoration from the extra oxygen allowed them to overcome the extra gravity.

Chick then switches tone here. He has one of the human characters stating that he wanted to see what Earth was like before the flood, to which another human character explains that it was the price of sin. That’s right – Chick actually argues that dinosaurs died out because of the sins of humans! And what’s more, Chick isn’t done. He then changes gears without a clutch and goes right into talking about how as water destroyed the world the first time, fire will destroy it again. He then goes on to briefly discuss the Second Coming and final judgment of humanity, states that Noah’s Ark teaches that God punishes sin but also provides a way out, talks about Jesus’ life and death, how Jesus’ resurrection provides the means for all men to be saved (including a man who is literally saved merely by calling Jesus’ name, something that some Christians find odious as it implies that once a person calls on Jesus they’re saved no matter what else they do in life), then finally discusses faith. One would think that either Chick ran out of dinosaur comments or had issues with his attention span….

…that is, until you get to the third panel from the end, where he says that the fate of the dinosaurs is unimportant. Why? In the final two panels, he says that what is really important is where people will go when they die. If that’s the case, then why did Chick even write this tract? He could have saved the time and effort, as most of his other tracts carry the “where will you go when you die?” message and so repeating it here is redundant. And since he thought the dinosaurs to ultimately be unimportant, then one must question why he even bothered to discuss them in the first place.