Any true Biblical scholar knows that the legendary monster Leviathan is a serpentine fish monster of Jewish folklore that lives in the sea with impenetrable, illuminating armored scales covering its entire body, illuminating eyes, and multiple heads, about 7 of them, jutting from one end of its long, snaky body. Yet, creationists like Andrew Lamb and Duane Gish, still continue to use their imaginations and pretend that Leviathan is what Leviathan isn't and make up one outrageously, preposterous nonsense about them after another. They've been doing this ever since the 1970s' when they begin telling stupid lies about dinosaurs starting with Dinosaurs Those Terrible Lizards, The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible, What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs, and going onward with Dinosaurs by Design, a rehash of Dinosaurs Those Terrible Lizards, The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved, Dinosaurs of Eden, Dragons of the deep: Ocean monsters past and present, Dinosaurs Unleashed: The True story of Dinosaurs and Humans, A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs and the Theory of Evolution, and so on.
Everything creationists claim about dinosaurs is all the result of taking scores of creative liberties as they rewrite and fabricate Biblical, folkloric, and historical literature, building up a dogma from an alleged vision made by the founder of Seventh Day Adventist cult Ellen G. White to what it is today.
This is one of the best examples of creationists taking creative liberties in making Leviathan into what it's not. The article entitled, Was Leviathan a Parasaurolophus? (Answer: No! Absolutely not!), address an issue a gullible 11 year old brings up when he asks,
"Dear Creation people,
I read your book Dinosaurs by Design and after reading about the leviathan, I looked it up in the Bible. I read it and I have a few objections to it being a Parasaurolophus. No. 1: it's a herbivore (which might not be very significant,) No. 2: Job probably lived in Mesopotamia: all remains of it were found in North America, and No. 3: My Dad's Bible called it a crocodile but crocs can't breathe fire. I'd like you to write back and tell me your opinion on this.
Sincerely,
Matthew age 11?
So how would creationists answer that? Simple: Get stupid. Which is what Lamb does to answer the boy's question.
In the first segment entitled Ideas and Identity, Lamb gives out some various, laughable suggestions imagined up by creationists over the years to describe what Leviathan really were such as Tyrannosaurus Rex (Nope! He lived on land and had neither armor nor multiple heads.), Kronosaurus, and Liopleurodon, (Wrong again! None of these aquatic Mesozoic reptiles had armor, serpentine bodies, and multiple heads), but here Lamb claims that the Leviathan was a Sarcosuchus, a large crocodile that lived 110 million years ago in what is now the Sahara Desert in Africa. Unlike the Nile Crocodile, Sarcosuchus, a large prehistoric version of a gharial, never saw humans, but Lamb is making it as if it has.
Here Lamb claims,
"Sarcosuchus had an unusual bulbous cavity at the end of its snout that could conceivably have been used for mixing fire-generating chemicals. This is discussed in the Sarcosuchus chapter of Dragons of the Deep by Carl Wieland, as well as in a Journal of Creation article by another author, who had came to the same conclusion independently."
This laugh-out-loud claim is all make believe. There is no way can the bulla (which is exactly what the bulbous cavity is called) be used as a fire breathing tool. Besides, the bulla cavity probably functions the same way the ghara cavity functions in male gharials. The ghara is found only in male gharials which use this kind of feature to produce vocalized sounds to attract females during mating season (Imagine what will it be like to hear the very loud bellowing calls of a male Sarcosuchus as he uses his bulla to attract females during mating season back in its day.). And these crocs, like all crocs, don't breathe fire at all. So the LOL claim made up by Wieland simply just doesn't work at all.
Then in the next segment entitled Bones and Behavior, relying on an out of context quote taken from a 2003 issue of National Geographic magazine, Lamb backslides back into the old fashioned views of how hadrosaurs, especially Parasaurolophus, lived and states that the ideal of a land living Parasaurolophus could be wrong (Never mind the fact that it has no armor plating, no sharp teeth in its jaws, no fiery breath, and no multiple heads. Never mind the fact that it has very narrow, compact toes, blunt, hoof-like nails, a flat, stiffened tail, many rows of about 2,000 rigged, chewing teeth in its jaws, narrow, compact bodies, hunched back, and fleshy pads on its hands used for 4-legged walking.) and gives out what he claims to be [sic] eyewitness accounts made of live hadrosaurs living in swamps as told in an old 1845 Australian newspaper. The claim is completely false. What he's really doing is giving out fabricated versions of alleged reports given by explorers and natives who claimed to have seen a mammalian monster known as the bunyip that is describe to be a either a man-like or seal-like creature with either fur, feathers, scales, tusks, flippers, horse like tail, head of a bird or a dog, a long neck, etc. depending on which version of the story is told by those claiming to seen the creature. Although the creature is considered a myth nowadays, some scientists believed that the legend of the creature came from ancient sightings of a large extinct Australian mammal known as Diprotodon, the world's largest marsupial that became extinct about 20,000 years ago. Definitely not a Hadrosaur.
He then says,
"Ultimately. observations and records are the only sure means of determining the behaviour of animals, just as reliable historical records (and the Bible is a supremely reliable historical record) are the only sure means of determining what really happened in the past."
Obviously, he never gets it in his head that even reliable historical observations and accounts can and do get distorted and misused on many occasions for the purpose of making money and fooling people into believing in things that are not there. This is exactly what creationists do - make up false observations and phony accounts to fool people into believing in things that are not true. And using God's word, which they elevated into a God-form themselves as a [sic] "supremely reliable historical record" of a scenario that doesn't exist, is the worst form of sacrilege ever done to any Bible, let alone any other sacred text known.
He then says,
"Dinosaurs by Design includes a picture of a duck-billed dinosaur in shallow water, on page 38, and a picture of a fire-breathing Parasaurolophus in shallow water on page 82. On page 82 the author discusses fire-breathing Leviathan and suggests that Parasaurolophus may have breathed fire. However, he does not actually say that he thinks Leviathan was Parasaurolophus. He seems to just be giving Parasaurolophus as an example of a creature with skeletal apparatus that could conceivably have been used for producing fire."
And as you can see here, the LOL portrayal of Parasaurolophus using its crest as a fire breathing apparatus is pure 100% make believe.
In this next segment, Teeth and Tucker, Lamb tries to critique the notion of sharp teeth = meat eater concept (never mind the blunt teeth doesn't necessary mean plant-eater) by showing off some animal oddities. There's no doubt that there are factual accounts of herbivores going after live prey including cows, sheep, and hippos as well as factual accounts of lions, dogs, and cats eating vegetarian food (never mind the health problems these animals face as they're suffering through either protein or mineral deficiency.). Still that doesn't make any difference nor prove anything to what creationists claim about animal diets. Carnivory is not a curse, but a blessing. God created carnivores to maintain a very healthy ecosystem and prevent plants from becoming extinct, prevent land from being overun by ravenous herbivores, and prevent diseases from spreading throughout the area.
Yet, creationists continues to insist that carnivory is part of a "post-fall cursed world" while being at a loss for words to explain why did God gave animals features and abilities to eat meat if He wanted them to eat only plants. In a creationist's eyes, Genesis 1:30-31 implies that God has commanded animals and man to eat only plants. Problem is there is nothing in the 2 verses that give us any implications of them being a commandment from God. Instead, the two verses clearly tells us that God only gave His creation plants as food to make sure they will have plenty of food to eat while living happily in the Garden of Eden. There is nothing in the 2 verses that says anything against carnivory. The real first commandments given from God to His creation comes from in Genesis 1:22 and 1:29 where God told everyone to "be fruitful and multiply" and in Genesis 2:16-17 where God told man that he must not eat the fruit coming from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil or else he will die.
Food for thought: If there was no death occurring before the Fall and God did not want death to ruin His Creation, then why bother planting the Tree of Life in the first place?
If God wanted animals to not eat meat, He would've just give them all the features that help them to eat plants and nothing else. But He didn't. The vegetarianism according to the creationists are all made up by taking Genesis 1:30-31 and Isaiah 11:6-7 and 65:25 seriously while throwing out the verses in the Bible that clearly make references to God condoning, even instigating carnivory on tons of occasions. In many parts of the Bible, there are scores of verses that tells of God planning to either destroy His enemies or punish His rebellious people by sending their way wild animals, including lions, wolves, and bears, to devour them. That happened one time just after the Assyrians deported the Israelites and resettled them to Samaria after God punished Israel for their sins by sending the Assyrians to conquer them. Even David finds it good to praise God for providing meat for the lions to eat as well as Jeremiah finding no problems in describing how God will treat his rebellious people in the near future if they don't change their ways.
It is apparent that creationists would misrepresent certain animals for their own warped ends while turning a blind eye to the fact that there are better ways to tell what kind of foods an animal eats other than just looking at their teeth. In the next segment, Lamb tries to prove that you can't just look at an animal's teeth to determine its diet by showing some examples of various exotic types of herbivorous and omnivorous animals that bore sharp teeth in their jaws, including the kinkajou, a nocturnal animal once thought to be just a carnivore.
According to the kinkajou article, Roland Kays, a zoologist and researcher in mammals, tried to catch a kinkajou for research by baiting the traps with chicken meat. When that didn't work, Kays replace the chicken bait with bananas, the kinkajou's favorite fruit, and this time, the kinkajou went right on in and was caught for study.
The kinkajou (which eats almost anything including bugs, nectar, eggs, and fruit.), like the fruit bat, didn't just have sharp teeth, which are not as thick and powerful as the sharp teeth of a lion, it also has molars and biting teeth to help chew their food. The sharp teeth in the middle of the 2 sets are called canines. They are use to fight back when threatened and to intimidate rivals during mating season and engage in fights over territory. Sharp teeth isn't just used to tear up food you know. What Lamb and all other creationists promote simply just comes to show that creationists are without doubt no experts in animal dentistry.
The kinkajou is in fact an omnivorous animal and so is the palm nut vulture and the kea. Creationists would try to use these along with other omnivores, vegetarian relatives to known meat-eaters, and vegetarian bats to meaninglessly prove that just because an animal has sharp teeth or beaks doesn't mean it eats only meat. As mentioned before, It really makes no difference. Rather just because an animal has only blunt teeth or beaks doesn't mean it eats only vegetation. This is proven in the factual accounts of sheep, cows, and horses turning carnivorous possibly due to them suffering from mineral deficiency and certain prehistoric reptiles like Placodus feasting on shellfish even though they only had rounded, blunt teeth.
Seriously, if teeth is not a valid way to determine the diet of the animal, their digestive stomach will along with their eyes, their legs, their senses of smell, sight, and hearing. Something creationists don't want anyone to know about lest they lose even the 11 year old child to reality.
Next, in the final segment entitled Life and Location, Lamb, tries to prove that just because a fossil is found in one area doesn't mean it lived in that area (Never mind the claim's failure to explain why do we find certain fossils of plants and animals exclusively in one area of the world and none elsewhere.) by defending the creationists' interpretation Genesis 1:9 to mean one sea and one continent in all the world and claims,
At CMI we think that prior to the Flood there may have been a single continent (the single sea of Genesis 1:9 implies a single continent) and that it was during the global upheaval of the Flood that the present configuration of continents came into being..
All the imaginations of the creationists who pretend that there was one huge continent that rapidly split apart in a year's time to form the 7 continents we see today while ignoring the problems associated with this fallacy as explained here.
According to their imaginary scenario, the Flood destroys the pre-flood world as told in 2 Peter 3:6 and buried it under many kilometers of sediment now turned to rock. Yet this imaginary scenario is not without problems. If there was a Flood according to the creationists, then the fossil record would be nothing like what we see today. The Flood won't bury anything, it would all wash everything away, leaving behind little or no trace of anything in the ground. If the Flood did form fossils, then the fossil record would all be filled with plants, animals, living and extinct, and humans all jumbled together in just one large layer. But that's not what we see today. Instead, we see evidences of fossilized remains of extinct animals and plants that lived separately in multiple periods of time that have been laid down by everything but Noah's Flood over a period of millions of years. No remains of modern animals and humans have been found among the trilobites, Dimetrodon, the dinosaurs, and especially Uintatheriums. Despite what creationists claim, the term "world" in the verse don't necessary mean the whole planet.
Finally Lamb concludes this article by saying,
"During the first few post-Flood centuries, as the animals spread out from the Mountains of Ararat where the Ark landed (Genesis 8:4) populations of every kind of animal could well have developed on every continent (with the possible exception of Australia, see Ice Age box). Perhaps it was only later that climate changes, hunting, etc. caused some kinds to go extinct on some continents while surviving on others, leading to the distinctively different regional faunas of today."
It would have been a monstrously an overcrowded place if that was the case. If there ever was such a Flood as told by creationists, the Mountains of Ararat would also have been completely littered with dead bodies of starved, eaten, or poisoned animals that never made it pass the region, not even to Australia. In reality, if the young earth is true, they would've left the ark only to get killed by either each other, accidents, or find nothing for them to eat and drink other than what Noah feeds and waters them with. And that would eventually run out as well, leaving everyone to die of either water poisoning or starvation; the Flood would mix both fresh and saltwater together, making it acidic and unfit for anyone to drink from it and kill off all plants and fruits - seeds and all - even if they're not alive and rendered into [sic] floating vegetarian mats for all bugs to survive on; the violent Flood would've torn the mats apart and destroy them along with all the bugs.
He then went on,
It's not at all reasonable because it does not answer the question to why do we find fossils of Parasaurolophus only in North America and fossils of Sarcosuchus in the Sahara regions of Africa and nowhere else. If what Lamb claims it's so, then where are their fossils? Where could we find fossil remains of Parasaurolophus and Sarcosuchus at in the Middle East? If the answer is nowhere, then you speak the truth. Fossils of both these Mesozoic animals are nowhere to be found in The Middle East.
In the end he says,
"After the Flood, many of the places that are now deserts were green and lush, still waterlogged from the Flood, and still enjoying high rainfall due to the warm post-Flood seas (warmer seas cause more evaporation which causes more precipitation, and the seas were warm due to volcanic activity associated with the breaking open of the fountains of the deep during the Flood). Although only some animals can survive in Iraq (Mesopotamia) now, due to the hot dry climate, in the lush conditions of the first millennium or two after the Flood probably all kinds of creatures could have thrived there."
It would all be a completely overcrowded, hostile area literally. All the lush, green, waterlogged areas will be completely reduced to a scorching desert with no ice age occurring if that was the case. As mentioned before in my past essays, everything will be anything BUT green, lush, and waterlogged. It would be totally a literal Hell on Earth with mass populations of animals and people of all types overcrowding one small spot in the world with diseases, overgrazing, disputes, mass killings and dyings, and wars wage on and on for spaces, food (if any) and water (if any that's clean) running rampart within the next thousand year or two. Then how will the Bible be played out then, if Lamb says is the case? Not good at all. And didn't the Bible say that everything was completely dry when the Flood ended (Genesis 8:14)? If so, then it looks like what we have here is another example of creationists being at odds with the Bible despite their constant babbling about them being strict followers of God's Word.
The pre-flood world would also be a literal Hell on earth, too as explain here. All of the warm water evaporations, volcanic eruptions, and "fountains of the deep" opening would render the whole planet into another Venus, a hot, hellish, uninhabitable planet where everything completely burns up, including plants and animals. By then, everything will all be wasted away, all thanks to a very cruel God who creates and destroys everything within a very short time span.
