{"id":87269,"date":"2025-05-27T12:38:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T17:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/?p=87269"},"modified":"2025-05-27T12:38:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T17:38:08","slug":"should-you-believe-everything-you-are-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/should-you-believe-everything-you-are-told\/","title":{"rendered":"Should You Believe Everything You Are Told?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t<p>by Marty Kessler<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been told repeatedly that the last living dinosaur lived millions of years ago. If that&#8217;s so, I have some questions.<\/p>\n<p>First, why are there accounts of human encounters with dragons (&#8220;dinosaur&#8221; was not coined until 1841) from nearly every ancient culture on the planet? England, Italy, France, Greece, Israel, Nepal, Russia, China, Japan, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Ethiopia, Egypt, Persia, India, Scandinavia, Australia, many Pacific islands, and North and South America all have them, and some have a great many.<\/p>\n<p>And how have so many cultures left us with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.genesispark.com\/exhibits\/evidence\/historical\/ancient\/dinosaur\/\">a vast number of accurate depictions of dinosaurs<\/a>?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How have sauropods been accurately depicted in engravings from 15th-century England, as well as reliefs on a 5,000-year-old cylinder seal from Mesopotamia, and etchings in a cliff in Utah from around 1,000 years ago?<\/li>\n<li>How did an ancient depiction of an Edmontosaurus come to be on a wall of the Grand Canyon?<\/li>\n<li>How did ancient artists in both Nepal and South America know how to sculpt &amp; etch accurate depictions of ceratopsian dinosaurs?<\/li>\n<li>How did a carving of a stegosaurus come to decorate a Cambodian temple 800 years ago?<\/li>\n<li>Who carved accurate reliefs of dinosaurs on an ancient synagogue in the Golan Heights?<\/li>\n<li>How is it that the 2,100-year-old Nile Mosaic at Palestrina depicts hunters attacking a huge dinosaur-like creature they called a &#8220;crocodile-leopard&#8221;?<\/li>\n<li>How did the ancient writer of the Biblical book of Job understand details of the sauropod-like creature he called &#8220;Behemoth&#8221; and another fearful monster called &#8220;Leviathan&#8221;?<\/li>\n<li>How did the ancient artisans of Acambaro, Mexico, know how to fashion hundreds of figurines into images of several types of known dinosaurs?<\/li>\n<li>How did artisans of the ancient Nasca culture leave behind depictions of dinosaurs in statuary, pottery, tapestries, and more?<\/li>\n<li>How did the Ojibwa tribesmen of Ontario, Canada, know how to draw an accurate depiction of an ankylosaurus being attacked by warriors? They called it &#8220;Unktehi&#8221;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>No, don&#8217;t believe everything you are told about dinosaurs being millions of years in the past, especially since that idea runs counter to the extant evidence.<\/p>\n<p>There is much more evidence than this that dinosaurs coexisted with humans, but the most compelling evidence, for those willing to accept it, is God&#8217;s account of creation.<\/p>\n<h2>Resources:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Eric Lyons, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/apologeticspress.org\/did-the-ancients-base-their-dinosaur-drawings-on-fossils-2444\/\">Did the Ancients Base Their Dinosaur Drawings on Fossils?<\/a>&#8221; <em>Apologetics Press<\/em>, 1 April 2008.<\/li>\n<li>Brian Thomas, Ph.D., &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.icr.org\/article\/did-medieval-artists-see-real-dinosaurs\/\">Did Medieval Artists See Real Dinosaurs?<\/a>&#8220;, Acts and Facts, <em>Institute for Creation Research<\/em>, 29 June 2018.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Marty Kessler We&#8217;ve been told repeatedly that the last living dinosaur lived millions of years ago. If that&#8217;s so, I have some questions. First, why are there accounts of human encounters with dragons (&#8220;dinosaur&#8221; was not coined until 1841) from nearly every ancient culture on the planet? England, Italy, France, Greece, Israel, Nepal, Russia,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27],"tags":[302,261,80],"class_list":["post-87269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-creation","tag-dinosaurs","tag-evolution"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":26579,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-bible-and-dinosaurs\/","url_meta":{"origin":87269,"position":0},"title":"The Bible and Dinosaurs","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"October 27, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Don Martin The word dinosaur, as such, is not found in the Bible. We must remember that man has named many of the animals today. The word dinosaur is associated with the Greek \"dino,\" meaning terrible. There are animals named in the Bible concerning which we have no definite\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Article&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Brontosaurus-300x213.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":93547,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/did-dinosaurs-really-exist-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":87269,"position":1},"title":"Did Dinosaurs Really Exist? (Moyer)","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 28, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"by Doy Moyer, Standing On Solid Ground (unpublished) via\u00a0Sentry Magazine, Vol. 20 No. 2, June 1994 Sentry Magazine, Vol. 20 No. 3, September 1994 Some, afraid of the repercussions of evolution, really do question the existence of dinosaurs. However, denying the existence of creatures for which there is substantial evidence\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Article&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1162,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/did-dinosaurs-really-exist\/","url_meta":{"origin":87269,"position":2},"title":"Did dinosaurs really exist? (Hamilton)","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 24, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Did dinosaurs really exist? Answer: The term \"dinosaur\" was ascribed in the 1800s to the fossilized remains of animals that no longer appear to roam the earth. While one term is used, it actually refers to a wide variety of animals. Hence, some difficulty is introduced in trying to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Answer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":21282,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-could-dinosaurs-have-evolved-into-hundreds-of-species-and-then-go-extinct-in-the-few-thousand-years-since-the-flood\/","url_meta":{"origin":87269,"position":3},"title":"How could dinosaurs have evolved into hundreds of species and then go extinct in the few thousand years since the flood?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"December 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: So you believe that two \"dinosaurs\" were on Noah's ark for over a year, left the ark (where there must have been little to no vegetation), multiplied, evolved into hundreds of different kinds of \"dinosaurs,\" lived for thousands of years, side by side with man, went extinct and became\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Answer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":42527,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-do-people-believe-a-text-written-by-uneducated-people-when-science-has-proven-the-bible-to-be-completely-false\/","url_meta":{"origin":87269,"position":4},"title":"Why do people believe a text written by uneducated people when science has proven the Bible to be completely false?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"April 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: There are many scientific discoveries and explanations that prove that the teachings of the Bible are completely false. One for example is dinosaurs, which are proven by radiometric dating to be over 60 million years old. How could this be if the world is only 10,000 years old? When\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Answer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":51212,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-are-evolutionists-so-ignorant\/","url_meta":{"origin":87269,"position":5},"title":"Why are evolutionists so ignorant?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"August 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Hello Jeffrey, I hope all is well! Thanks for always using scriptures! I do have a question: Why are evolutionists so ignorant? I was reading about explanations of how 80 whale fossils ended up in the desert and also how the world's largest shark went extinct due to \"an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Answer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}