Well, here we go! Another creationist book to debunk and it's right here beside me — Dragons of the Deep: Ocean Monsters Past and Present (Master Books, 2005) by Carl Wieland who broke away from AiG due to struggles over wealth and power. A truce is made between them at this time, but I doubt it will last. It's not really a dinosaur book, but simply a book all about sea animals past and present along with descriptions of them. This book also contains needless attacks on evolution and other forms of young earth crap just like in all creationist literature that feature outright lies, heartless bigotry, and senseless hatred toward all those who oppose their young earth views, Christian and non-Christian.
Cover description
The front cover of the book only has images of Plesiosaurs swimming about and a plesiosaur skull and neck bones on the lower right hand corner of the cover, while the back cover asks the following question, "Can the stories of sea dragons be true?" Answer: It all depends on what kind of "sea dragons" one talks about. If it's all about stories of ships being attacked by giant squids and we find actual giant squids both living and dead that confirms the notions of giant squids being the real deal, you may say that such stories like that is true while other stories are just simply all made up with no valid evidence supporting it. Whether based on factual encounters or simply all made up, folkloric tales about sea monsters are often times told in an exaggerated way to provide entertainment to the listeners when there was no TV, no newspaper, no radios, and no internet back then. Most people, at that time, just couldn't read or write, so they had to make due with stories told through word of mouth that change over time. Even written stories change over time as well, with one person writing about an incident only to have another person write a different version of the same incident that greatly contradicts the original version of the tale. The second writer would change and distort the whole story around to make it fit into his perspective of the story, getting it to the point of not telling whether the story is true or false. Creationists are like such people. They have a knack of distorting mythology and folklore by rewriting, distorting, ripping them out of context, twisting the stories to fit in with their young earth beliefs. Wieland is such a creationist who wrote this book, describe the monsters in the book, and distort the stories to fit his young earth beliefs as we will see here.
Introduction
Page 4 contains the intro to the book, entitled The Dragons of The Sea in which the beginning of the paragraph claims,
"Mention huge awesome creatures roaming our planet and most people think of dinosaurs that live mostly on the land. Fearsome giants like T.rex [Tyrannosaurus rex] and plant-eating earth shakers like Brachiosaurus are gone now, recalled only in the dragon stories of many cultures."
All dragon stories recall nothing like that. What Wieland claims is the result of dragon stories being fabricated and distorted by creationists who did that to fit them into their young earth dogma, never mind the fact that dragons in the tales are described to have serpentine bodies, fiery and poison breaths, horde gold, and have the ability to create storms.
Also in the young earth dogma is the fallacy about all Creation being cursed just after Adam ate the apple. Wieland mentions this next, claiming that since it brought on "death, disease, and bloodshed" to a once [sic] perfect world, some of the creatures are no longer with us.
Here's the definition of a perfect world through the eyes of a creationist: A baby, sickly, happy-go-lucky, teddy bear picnic where all animals and people live in harmony, munching plants out of existence, buttering up on one another as seen in some old kiddie cartoon. Never mind the fact that if there's no death, all animals would be bald (hair is made up of dead cells), plants and worms would get nothing to eat (they feed on dead and decaying matter), chewed up food goes in one hole and out the other without being broke down by bacteria and give out nutrients to the body, starving it (Digestion and fermentation is a form of decay.), and sharp claws and teeth would be wasted. And right below is the definition of a Fallen World through the eyes of a creationist: A worldwide, never ending Venatio!
Man vs Beast, Beast vs Beast! Never mind the fact that when God created everything, He created germs, bacteria, chemicals, good things, evil things, scary things, destructive things, docile things, all things with no exception, including the things that instigate death, disease, and bloodshed. The very three things God ordains Himself so many times to further Him and His people's agenda. God is everything. He is The God of War as well as The God of Peace. He is The God of Hate as well as The God of Love. He is The God who created Evil, Chaos, and Calamity as well as The God who created Good, Order, and Control. He is The God who created carnivores as well as herbivores and omnivores. He is everything! No exceptions to it.
Next in the Intro, Wieland claims,
"The bones of such extinct animals (and sometimes bits of skin and flesh) along with many other creatures that are still with us today, are found buried and preserved in huge layers of rock."
Try IMPRINTS of skin and flesh, Wieland! Soft tissues don't fossilize but they sometimes do leave imprints in the rocks that gives us the idea of what their skin and their innards are like. And finding such fossils are monstrously rare.
Like all creationists, Wieland believes that the rock layers are really mud or sand covering the land by Noah's flood. As shown especially in Ken Ham's crackhouse (creation "museum"), the flood is portrayed as a one-time, fast-acting, process. First, a huge tremors and volcanic eruptions occur, breaking up every bit of land, creating turbidity currents that destroys everything. Even the most delicate of marine life, including coral, while releasing geysers of water and lava all over the already devastated land. Then a hurricane-style rainstorm occurs that lasted 40 days and 40 nights, filling up the whole area (forests, towns, and all) with water while at the same time, the area gets peppered with meteor showers so much that the Earth begins to tilt on its axis while all parts of the globe gets smothered with volcanic ash falls, lava flows, and mudslides (Had God be given himself the chance, He would've destroyed all of Earth the same way Krypton is destroyed in the Superman series.). Never mind the fact that the Flood passage tells nothing of meteors, volcanoes, and earthquakes happening at that time. It just rain. Nothing more. Never mind the fact that there's no meteor craters found anywhere in the Middle East and that the mentioning of volcanoes, earthquakes, and meteors are the products of the creationists' imagination to explain the natural disasters that actually occurred in separate periods of time spanning over millions of years.
Once the whole area is covered with water polluted with drowned and battered bodies of people and animals that have failed to flee to higher ground, tore-up vegetation, volcanic debris, burning ash, and meteor debris floating about after 40 days of pummeling rain and debris, a huge massive wave of water, mud, and debris quickly comes by at approximately 200 MPH and cover up everything except those who are able fled to higher ground to try to rebuild their lifestyle and the animals to try to eat, mate, and reproduce as quickly as possible, only the whole process to start all over again and again for 150 days until everything, including the very tops of the mountains and hills filled with people and animals that have fled to the top highest peak, are completely covered in water and debris. It's just like building a huge lasagna filled with people and animals that were given no chances at all to rebuild their lifestyles, eat, mate, and reproduce let alone flee to higher ground after being buried by a fast moving wall of polluted water filled with scores of debris. Then another earthquake occurs and the mountains rapidly push up from the depths instead of the waters going down to reveal the mountaintops. Then the water goes down and disappears to reveal a huge global deserts filled with impassible mountains formed by the violent flood. That's what creationists want you to believe it happened 4,500 years ago, never mind the passages of the Bible that greatly contradicts such a scenario such as the fact that during the 40 days and 40 nights it rained, ALL life on land died (Genesis 7:21-23) and after it rained for 40 days, the waters went straight down, not up, revealing the peaks of mountains that were previously covered in water by the Flood (Genesis 8:1-5) along the way. Not a single earthquake has ever happened. If young earth is true and everything happened exactly what creationists claimed it happened, then how would God protect the ark and all its passengers inside without resorting to empty, miraculous "angels protected them" explanations?
This scenario is filled with flaws and mistakes as explained in so many sites like this one and my past articles (Here, and here) so many times before. If young earth is true, all life, past and present, should be found in all layers from top to bottom, including remnants of cities, towns, and farmland with animals and people of all types found in and around it. But none have been found and never will be found. There should also be multiple instances of modern plants and animals found alongside extinct plants and animals in all rock layers as well, but none has ever been found either.
Next, Wieland claims that while most people are aware of Plesiosaurs and Ichthyosaurs, a very few people, however have heard of Kronosaurus and Mosasaurus (Never mind the mass majority of dinosaur fanatics like me who are most aware of these Mesozoic sea creatures) along with the other sea creatures both living and extinct. Never mind the vast majority of Paleontologists, Zoologists, and other naturalists who are all well aware of such animals and how all these animals are closely related to modern animals of today, species-wise.
Job's Dinosaurs that isn't
The next segment on page 5 is the infamous Monsters of the Bible where in every literature creationists have made, they are still ruling Behemoth and Leviathan found in Job 40 and 41 as dinosaurs. The reason they deliberately did this is because this is their only way they can fit dinosaurs into their young earth beliefs while at the same time shun out references to the bull Behemoth's erotic ways and fish Leviathan's coiling serpentine body, fiery breath, and illuminating eyes and scales, features dinosaurs <i>don't have</i>.
Their one and only "proof" they have to make a feeble case for Behemoth being a sauropod dinosaur is none other than the tail. In their eyes, the hippo and the elephant's tail are puny in comparison to the big, thick, wide tails of sauropod dinosaurs which to them are as thick, tall, and long as a cedar tree. Actually the real reason they want to "tail" to mean a large, thick sauropod tail is to avoid having to deal with the embarrassment of telling small children that the tail passage of Job Chapter 40 actually refers to the monster's erotic behavior. When it comes to dealing with children, creationists had to water-down the meanings of the passage to make them as child-friendly as possible. Especially since the passage about the monster's erotic behavior would, in their eyes, frightened, traumatize, gross out, embarrass, and pervert the minds of children. So to make it more child friendly to the point of using them to convince children to follow their ways, they twist the meaning of the passage around to make them as if Behemoth was a dinosaur with a big chunky tail like a tree while it's not.
As for Leviathan, creationists are highly aware of how terrifying and uncontrollable the animal is with impenetrable armor, a fiery breath, and its ability to churn up the water in his wake. After all, in their eyes, if the Bible is true, then Leviathan must be a true animal that breaths out hot gases and liquid that produce fire the same way the bombardier beetle does when it shoots out hot liquid from its abdomen to drive its enemies away…or so they thought. To make the fire breathing concept look real, creationists add the Bombardier Beetle to the mix. In their reasoning, if what the beetle shoots out from its abdomen is real, then it must be real for animals like Kronosaurus, Parsaurolophus, and Sarcosuchus to have such features that helps them to produce hot, fiery chemicals inside their bodies for defense and display purposes….or so the assume idiotically while being in denial of the fact that they themselves imagined up this crank as part of their fairy tale scheme to make fictional monsters appear to be real in a deceptive way. And constantly using the beetle's hot liquid to justify something that's crank and imaginary just won't work.
The Real Behemoth and Leviathan
Both Behemoth and Leviathan are really in fact monsters of Jewish folklore. Behemoth or Behemot is a mammalian monster in form of a bull ox. Leviathan is a fish monster in form of a coiling serpentine fish with eyes and scales that glow and illuminate from many miles around. Both Behemoth and Leviathan are also 2 parts of the Triune Beasts of Jewish Folklore. The Bull monster Behemoth lives in a mountain range made up of the Yabul Stream flowing from Eden or Paradise and a thousand hills that provided him with plenty of grass to feed on as reference to the midrash supplement to Psalm 50:10. Leviathan makes his home in the Mediterranean, where when he gets hungry, he churns up the waters with his hot breath to make them boil. And the bird monster Ziz makes his home in the sky where the spreading of his wingspan is known to block the sun. Ziz resembles the mythical griffin, while Leviathan resembles the serpentine fish, and Behemoth resembles a raging bull ox. According to midrash recording traditions supplement to Genesis 1:21 and 1:24, God created 2 Leviathans, male and female and one Ziz on the 5th day of Creation Week. The next day, God created 2 Behemoths, both male and female. But realizing these 2 monsters, Behemoth and Leviathan, could produce offspring that would destroy the whole world, God killed off the females and place the males into 2 different locations each, where they will remain until the End Times come and both Behemoth and Leviathan would rise up from their places and battle one another to the death, with Behemoth interlocking Leviathan with his horns while Leviathan flails back with his fins until God intervenes and kill both monsters along with Ziz and use their remains and their meat to provide His people in the New Heaven and New Earth with luxurious meals, jewelry, tent skins and wall coverings to decorate Jerusalem's protective wall.
Behemoth is known as the King of all mammals and the Chief of God's Ways while Leviathan is the King of all fish and Ziz is the King of all birds in the air. All three supernatural animals are the only animals man cannot control and can only be controlled and killed off by the One who created them in the first place — God.
These 3 supernatural beasts can never be dinosaurs left over from Noah's Flood. For none of them resemble dinosaurs in every way, nor can they be killed off by man. Neither can they explain why are there no dinosaur remains found alongside human remains anywhere on earth even if they are what creationists falsely claim they were.
Monsters found in the book
Pages 6-9 talks about Mosasaurus, a marine reptile that lived between 70 and 65 million years ago. Despite what the pages claim about the Mosasaurus having articulated jaws that allows it to swallow its prey whole, Mosasaurus, unlike other earlier Mosasaur species, has a mandible that is so much tightly articulated that it can only allow Mosasaurus to tear up its prey into bite size pieces before swallowing it. Note on page 8 there is a crank claim about the fossils being "rediscovered" in the late 1700s'. In their recent literature, creationists would make up crank claims about prehistoric animals being rediscovered after they've been long forgotten since the end of the Flood which is their way of explaining why don't we find valid, credible accounts of people encountering these animals in any form of archaeological evidence, including art and literature. They claim that people were around when these prehistoric animals were alive out of ignorance of the complete lack of human and prehistoric monster remains alongside one another in the fossil record. This is what Wieland assumes when he uses Mark 10:6 to further his idiot claim. That verse is taken out of context. When you read the whole chapter of Mark 10:1-12 in full context, you will find that Jesus is really answering the Pharisees' trick question about divorce. It has nothing to do with prehistoric animals whatsoever. Still that doesn't stop Wieland from wishful thinking and assume that ancient people, especially fisherman and native people, knew about Mosasaurs and made many live sightings of them coming up to the surface to breathe before they were officially discovered by the Europeans in the 1700s'. This crank is not without flaws and errors. Why are there no fossils of Mosasaurs found above the Mesozoic strata? Why do the ancient people have no recollections of any kind of seeing such animals alive? If the ancient people knew about them, they would only knew them through their fossilized remains, not live ones.
To justify this crank claim, Wieland tries to make a point by stating that even though human and whale remains have not been found alongside coelacanth remains, the coelacanth have been know to be found alive and living alongside humans and whales in remote areas of the world today. Thus, if it is possible for a coelacanth be found alive and living with humans despite finding no fossils of humans, whales, and coelacanth together, then it is possible to find Mosasaurs alive and living alongside humans, too — IF Mosasaurs are a part of The Lazarus Taxon.
The Lazarus Taxon is a special taxon that only includes animals that once live at on point in time, only to disappear from the fossil record, and reappear at a later time. The coelacanth is such an animal. The coelacanth is a fish that supposed to be extinct 70 million years ago. But in the 1930s', one individual made a sensational discovery of a live and living coelacanth living off the coast of South Africa near the Chalumna River. But this coelacanth is the modern species Latimeria chalumnae. The species Latmeria is the only species alive today. All the rest is extinct. For the Mosasaurs along with Plesiosaurs, Pliosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, whales, and humans to be part of the Lazarus Taxon, you have to have them appear in a certain layer in the fossil record, disappear in the fossil record, only to turn up at a much later time. But this is not the case here. No human remains has ever been found below the Quaternary Strata (Humans first appeared about 4 million years ago) and no whale remains has ever been found below the Paleogene strata (Whales first appeared about 50 million years ago), and no remains of Plesiosaur, mosasaur, and ichthyosaur remains has ever been found above the Mesozoic strata (They went to extinction along with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago) and no plesiosaur, mosasaur, and other Mesozoic marine reptiles has ever been found alive in every part of the world today. Thus, the Mesozoic marine reptiles, whales, and humans are not of The Lazarus Taxon.
Continued Next Post…
