Does Jesus love dinosaurs? No metaphysical question haunted my childhood more than this one. Raised by my mother in her own caring and compassionate understanding of Christianity, I desperately wanted to believe that Jesus – wherever he sat enthroned in heaven – shared my passion for stegosaurs and iguanodontids. Yet I had my doubts.
From an early age, I had struggled to fathom how a loving God could possibly have passed a death sentence on creatures as magnificent as dinosaurs. At an age when I only had to look at a cow to wish it were a Triceratops, it filled me with a sombre sense of the sheer immensity of time, and the impermanence of living things on the face of the planet, to know that the placid fields which stretched behind my house had once been a Jurassic swamp.
How was my understanding of this to be combined with what I was simultaneously being taught in Sunday School: that God had created the heavens and earth in six days, that he had fashioned every living creature, “every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air”, only a short time before fashioning humans; and that all of them had co-existed? How did dinosaurs fit into this narrative?
At Sunday School, our illustrated children’s Bible showed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden alongside a Brachiosaurus. That no human being had ever seen a sauropod – a source of the intensest grief to me – seemed not to worry my teacher one little bit. When I asked her how Adam could possibly have lived alongside dinosaurs, bearing in mind that they had all died out 65 million years ago, she shrugged the question aside. The older I got, the more the question niggled. God, speaking to Job from the whirlwind, had told him of drawing Leviathan with a hook, and with a cord pressing down his tongue.
But I found this hard to square with what I knew of ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs. The reaches of time seemed too icily immense for the life and death of a single human being two thousand years ago possibly to have had the cosmic significance claimed for it by Christianity. Why should Homo sapiens be granted a status denied ammonites? Why, if God existed, had he allowed so many species to evolve, to flourish, and then utterly to disappear? Why, if he were merciful and good, had he permitted an asteroid to smash into the side of the planet, making the flesh on the bones of dinosaurs burst into flame, the Mesozoic seas boil, and darkness cover the face of the earth? Increasingly, the hope offered by the Christian story, that there was an order and a purpose to humanity’s existence, felt like something that was slipping my grasp.
I was hardly the first to tread this path, of course.
Dinosaurs had played a notable and glamorous role in the Victorian crisis of faith. To Edward Drinker Cope, a Quaker from Philadelphia whose genius as a palaeontologist served to revolutionise the understanding of prehistory, they were literally the stuff of nightmares. In 1876, fossil-prospecting in the badlands of Montana, where the bones of dinosaurs stretched for miles in an immense and uncharted graveyard, the monsters he had been excavating by day would come to visit him in his sleep, “tossing him into the air, kicking him, trampling him down”.
Every evening, before retiring for the night, he would hold prayer meetings and readings from the Bible – but still the dinosaurs kept haunting his dreams. The immensity of geological time; the cycles of evolution; the brutal finality of extinction: all, when he contemplated them, served to corrode his faith. Bones entombed in rock seemed to mock the reassurance provided by the Christian message of the Resurrection. In 1877, a year after he had lain amid the fossil beds of Montana, Cope resigned from the Society of Friends.
Yet without Christianity, it is unlikely that dinosaurs would ever have been identified as prehistoric creatures many millions of years old, that Cope would ever gone prospecting for their fossils, and that I, as a child, would ever have known the first thing about sauropods. In truth, fathoming the deep past of the earth was an ambition that had always come naturally to Christians. “Of old,” the Psalmist had written in praise of the Creator, “You founded the earth, and the heavens – Your handiwork. They will perish and You will yet stand. They will all wear away like a garment.”
Here, in this vision of a world that had both a beginning and a history, linear and irreversible, lay an understanding of time in decisive contrast to that of most peoples in antiquity. To read Genesis was to know that it did not go round in endless cycles.
Unsurprisingly, then, scholars of the Bible had repeatedly sought to map out a chronology that might reach back before humans. “We must not suppose,” Luther had declared, “that the appearance of the world is the same today as it was before sin.” Increasingly, though, enthusiasts for what by the late 18th century had come to be termed ‘geology’ were founding their investigations, not on Genesis, but directly on their study of God’s creation: rocks, and fossils, and the very contours of the earth.
It was among the clergy that this had grown to become a particular obsession. In 1650, when James Ussher, the Archbishop of Armagh and one of the most brilliant scholars of his day, sought to establish a global chronology, his exclusive reliance on written records – and in particular on the Bible – led him to identify the date of the Creation as 4004 BC.
In 1822, when William Buckland, another clergyman, published a paper demonstrating that life on earth, let alone the deposition of rocks, was infinitely older than Noah’s Flood, it was his dating of the fossils he had found in a Yorkshire cave that enabled him to demonstrate his point. Two years later, he wrote the first full account of a dinosaur. In 1840, he argued that great gouges across the landscape of Scotland bore witness to an ancient – and decidedly unbiblical – Ice Age. Buckland, a noted eccentric with a taste for eating his way through every kind of animal, from bluebottles to porpoises, saw not the slightest contradiction between serving as Dean of Westminster and lecturing on geology at Oxford.
Nor did most Christians. Although some, clinging to a literal interpretation of Genesis, refused to accept that the earth’s history might stretch back immeasurable distances before man, the vast majority felt only awe before a Creator capable of working on such a prodigious scale.
Palaeontology, then, bred as it was of the biblical understanding of time, served to buttress as well as shake the foundations of Christian belief. If Cope ended up losing his faith, then many palaeontologists did not. Today, Bob Bakker – perhaps the most celebrated of all living palaeontologists, whose theories have proven as influential as anyone’s on the way that dinosaurs have come to be understood – sees no contradiction between his work as a scientist and his preaching as a Pentecostal minister. When he declares the discovery of the Mesozoic to have been “the proud legacy of evangelicals who searched for the truth in the pages of Scripture and the chapters written in stone,” he is not wrong.
Does Jesus love dinosaurs? It remains a question I am unqualified to answer – but certainly, without Christianity, we would have lacked the understanding of time that enables us today to know that such wondrous and extraordinary creatures as dinosaurs ever existed.
Tom Holland’s Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind is published by Little, Brown
Tom Holland is a writer, popular historian and cricketer. He is not an actor. His most recent book is PAX
holland_tom 
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeIf I were a betting man, which I’m not, I wouldn’t like to place a bet on things, in South Africa, improving anytime soon.
My recent thoughts are that SA probably resembles post Roman Britain, it’s got the infrastructure, it’s probably got a smattering of educated ‘native’ people , who in theory, know how it all works, but ultimately it isn’t enough, the fledgling state/society lacks the cultural sophistication to pick up where the previous culture (for all it’s faults) left off.
Try “ever”.
Democracy does not “work” anywhere. It could never work.
However, it will degenerate even faster among people with recent hunter-gatherer ancestry, than among the descendants of northern Europeans that invented and perfected it.
It is degenerating in America, too; this degeneration was always inevitable. It is inherent in the nature of popular government. The more “popular” (democratic) the government, and the more incapable the constituents, the faster this out-of-balance wheel spins, until it flies apart.
Your thesis, under these “race-realist” euphemisms, is that democracy is stupid but is even stupider in a country of blacks?
And that is perfectly true. Democracy is based on liberalism, which few believe in, especially those who aren’t of northwest European ancestry and male. Liberalism and leftism (universalist equitarianism) and tribalism have been in conflict since liberalism was invented, and it has just about been defeated.
First things first, free and fair elections were held without significant violence and with a wide range of options available.
The next best option would be for the ANC to enter a coalition with the DA, thus representing a significant proportion of the electorate. Sadly this won’t happen.
the worst option is an ANC led coalition with the racist, Marxist, far left kleptocracy, this is far more likely and should presage the break up of the rainbow nation, which was always largely illusionary.
My father said it would take 25 years, he was wrong on that as SA limps on, but its integrity as a functioning state is hanging by a thread.
I remember speaking to friends in Zim back in the 90s about voting for Mugabe, their justification was “better the devil you know”. Which is fine, until the devil turns out to be, well, the devil.
Between the ANC, EFF and MKP, South Africa is about to pick its poison.
To the extent that “democracy” everywhere is a charade, the South Africans are miming it pretty well.
However, it ought to be obvious what monster is lurking behind the curtain. The veil will be thrown off shortly.
“My father said it would take 25 years, he was wrong on that as SA limps on”
As Adam Smith once said, “There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
This kinf of abtract wishfull thinking usually leads to a shitty future.
Kinda almost by definition, democracy is capable of redefining itself. I don’t think we’ve seen that ye, much, in the world; we have seen changes in voting system and in decentralisation/secession/regionalisation. And we haven’t talked about the role of the AU in perhaps managing some forms of change.
So I think we have to give more time and patience to the process, and admit that we don’t have much in the way of good precedents or believable advice, but we have to encourage the long and tedious process of talking, negotiation, and not just step back. It’s not interference, it’s just humanity.
This was the best and richest country in Africa. Now look at it.
Viva universalism!
Hatred of hierarchy, especially any race-based hierarchy, doomed South Africa, as it has doomed America. The fact that one “experiment” blows up faster than the other is a quantitative, not a qualitative difference.
Enlighten me. Would you, yourself, be in the upper caste of your ideal “race-based hierarchy”?
Great piece, but KZN is not the most fought over patch. The prize for South Africa’s most fought over patch goes to the Eastern Cape frontier area, around the Fish River, which saw 9 Frontier Wars in the 19th century.
(28) How the Elections Broke Our Ideologies – by Angus Douglas (substack.com) Not sure you are allowed to do this, but here is a supporting article to this brilliant piece by Pottinger.
If nothing else, SA should be applauded for running a free election and having a ruling party that accepts defeat. A good example for some of its fellow BRICS nations.
Yes, I suppose as long as there is voting, there is “democracy.” And “democracy” is all we really care about.
They hold elections in North Korea too, you know. That the deception is more apparent in places like North Korea than in the United States should not deceive the perspicacious among us — if there yet are any among us.
Are you seriously suggesting South Africa’s election was a sham? Why then didn’t the ANC win? A peaceful election where the ruling party accepts not winning a majority? And it is a sham?
I am wondering why so few comments. Then it struck me- we are waking up from a very deep and bad dream, starting to smell the coffee. I am left without words..
42 Million could register as voters, only 27 million did of which 17 million casted a vote.. 40% of the possible voters have enough trust and confidence in democracy to cast a vote- the rest stayed home. It took 30 years of ANC rule to cause major destruction to the hope many possible voters had that democracy will improve their lives. This is also reflected in the number of voters that jumped ship to the MKP.
The Multi Party Coalition (MPC) what Brian refer to as the Liberals (?) could only get 31% of the votes. Same as previous election. The deck of the Titanic is re-arranged.
The very, very confused ANC and their completely incapable leadership- has one of two roads to take- the high road (forgive the pun) option where ANC ( moderates) joins up with MPC to form a Government of National Unity- verse2 or the low road option where ANC (not so moderates) teams up with the MKP and EFF to destroy what is left… In neither of these choices will the ANC continue to exists in its current form. They have truly sien hulle gatte.
The fantastic news however is that the ANC members that do not make the list of the first 73 members for Parlement are 79 Bheki Cele, 83 Thandi Modise and 86 Naledi Pandor.. chaos at Shell House!
The idea that democracy could have ever worked in a place like South Africa is preposterous.
It is as preposterous as America’s nation-building in Iraq or Afghanistan, which was also always doomed.
The seminal mistake of progressives and other universalist types since the beginning has been to insist upon, without evidence, the tabula rasa view of humanity that suggests all social constructs are purely social and have nothing to do with biology.
This ridiculous view, that a continent that (below the Sahara) never invented the wheel and cannot build structures taller than two stories are “just the same as us” since we are all “one humanity,” and that therefore, with proper inculcation, “democracy” or anything else created by White northern Europeans could work just as well with the African indigenous, is the cause of all SA’s troubles.
Apartheid was the only way to keep order. There will eventually be genocides in South Africa, and the blood will be on the hands of the universalists that would prefer disorder to hierarchy.
Are you serious? This reads like a parody.
You may be interested to know that on almost every measure, South Africa improved by leaps and bounds on measures like GDP, life expectancy, and crime, immediately after the demise of apartheid. Life expectancy was then hit by HIV/AIDS after 2000 and that is partly what was Mbeki’s downfall – his failure to embrace ARVs. SA now has the largest ARV programme in the world.
The country managed to get Zuma out of the Presidency without significant violence and within a decade – i.e. democratically. He is currently facing prosecution for his arms deal crimes, which he has been able to keep at bay with the Stalingrad tactics of his (white) lawyer. Zuma’s state capture was aided and abetted by companies like Bain and Mckinsey and a family from India (the Guptas) were the masterminds.
Apartheid the only way to keep order? I despair.
A superb article, A very tragic situation.
But I would say that the architect of the ANC’s decline was Mbeki. Zuma should have been in the dock with Shaik. And then both of them could have served their time together
The unfortunate truth is democracy as we like to imagine it, only works where there’s a diversity of political opinions against a background of a common ethnic / religious population.
It doesn’t work where the voters are naturally split across tribal, ethnic or religious lines.
It doesn’t work in Northern Ireland, It doesn’t work in Zimbabwe and no doubt countless other nations I’m less knowledgeable about.
It doesn’t work where one group of voters can never win an election.
South Africa has always been tribal, it would be ironic if it’s ultimate fate was to disintegrate into tribal countries in a form of modern day apartheid!
That South Africa is a disaster of a nation and deteriorating comes as zero surprise. The Continent’s destruction commenced with the independence of Ghana in 1957. Since then the formula for destruction has been implemented with remorseless progress, ending with the release of South Africa from its colonial shackles.
Article needs a bit of spell-checking
Pottinger says: “mixed-race people deserted the traditional parties to support “brown” and “first nation” parties”
This is totally incorrect. There is no way the DA could have won the Western Cape with 55% of the vote without strong support from this community, who make up 60% of the population there.
In addition, they are the majority in the Northern Cape, where the ANC got 49% and the DA 21% – both traditional parties.
As to the secessionist angle, explicitly secessionist parties were on the ballot paper and received poor support in both Western Cape and KZN.
Election results have always swung wildly in KZN, and IFP-ANC coalitions are common.
The National Freedom Party (NFP), an offshoot of the IFP, with a single seat (IFP+ANC+DA = 40 seats, MK+EFF = 39 seats, NFP=1 seat), will determine whether there is stalemate.
What seems most likely in KZN is an IFP-led government, and that Pappas of the DA will have a role in it. However, this is closely tied to what happens at national level, and also in Gauteng, where ANC+DA = majority but ANC+EFF does not.
The parties are likely negotiating all these together.
A good piece but serious errors, especially the ‘analysis’ of the Coloured vote which in fact substantially supported DA in Western Cape and ANC and DA in Northern Cape.
Socialist and redistributive voters trumped free market ones two-to-one.
That is the problem, not just with South Africa, but with Africa generally. The continent is not going to move ahead unless it abandons socialism.