Talk:Dragons were dinosaurs

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Contents 1 Call for merging, disambiguation or redirecting 2 One of the responses is: 3 Anonymous disputes this: 4 Crazyharp81602's Responses 5 Your Mother Was A T. rex And Other Brain Abuses 6 Responses discussed

Call for merging, disambiguation or redirecting

There are several articles on "Dragons" I think they should be put together or somehow organized. As is it's more inconvenient to find the information one is looking for on dragon related claims and topics here than it needs to be.

This article could also use some clean up to make it sound more professional, and provide more sources.

You think it would be a good idea to make a "Dragons" category, plus possible subcategories for debunking dragon-related claims versus particular kinds of dragons that may be referred to (such as St George's Dragon, the Tarrasque, and Leviathan)?--Mr A. 23:10, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

One of the responses is:

Men never met up with living dinosaurs.

Anonymous disputes this:

This is an unsubstantiated statement. It is very difficult to prove anything from absence of evidence. On the contrary, accounts exist from many cultures and centuries of human encounters with "dragons". Remember that the term "dinosaur" was not coined until the 19th century, so to dismiss such accounts as fanciful just because they refer to mythical dragons as opposed to dinosaurs is naive.

(ADDED by another ANON 6/15/05) This is very interesting, and probes thought. I believe it may be possible for some form of human to have exsited in a time where there were some form of dinosaurs. But what forms could have co-exsisted I do not know. But how far back are we talking about? What period of dinosaurs/humans? And, again refering the to above statement, what evidence is there to support this? I would be very interested to learn more about this.

Crazyharp81602's Responses

This all 100% fail miserably to explain how come there are no traces of dinosaur remains found mixed with human remains.

The word "Dragon" comes from a Greek word "drakon" meaning "snake" or "serpent." No dinosaur ever had bodies that resemble snakes.

The claims of dragons being dinosaurs is a result of direct fabrications made up by the creationists who took the folkloric legends out of text and twisted then to make them look as if these are historical accounts while in fact they're not.

One example of the major differences between dragons and dinosaurs is that dragons have the ability to create storms, have bodies like snakes, breathe fire, have a poisonous breath and a venomous bite, have impenatrable scales with a weak point being either underneath the wing or the underbelly, wings that resembled either bird or bat with long fingers supporting a sheet of skin, serpentine bodies, make people wise when consumed their meat or blood (One story has a hero killing a dragon and consuming it's heart only to find himself hearing birds speaking about a plot made up by his assistant to kill him so he can get his hand on the dragon's horde. The hero thwarted the assistant's plot by killing him and is able to get the gold that he won for himself.), love gold and hordes them, have a taste for young women, and change into different forms. Dinosaurs have none of these things.

Fabrications - Twisting up stories to fit one's won view of it.
Exploitations - Wrongfully Promoting for personal gain.
Distortions - Making deceptive features to delude and deceive.

Crazyharp81602, while I agree that it's a bit of a stretch to equate dinosaurs with dragons, most of what you wrote here isn't really a reply, per se. The first sentence is good, but the etymology of the word "dragon" as well as the legendary characteristics ascribed to them aren't really relevant. If dinosaurs really did exist, say, 1000 years ago, then it would be rather unsurprising that strange mystical legends about breathing fire and virgin fetishes would pop up. Pointing out that these legends have a mythic quality to them, isn't really a response by itself. (although, if you have references for some of these stories, then having a page about legends of dragons organized by culture and region might be interesting).

About the fallacies that you added: fallacies should be put under a ==Fallacies contained in this claim== heading and should come from the list of Fallacies (see the template for more information here or here). If you don't see the fallacy that you're looking for, try asking on the page you're editing or maybe eventually adding it yourself. Other than that, your Sauropod and Tyrannosaurus rex edits are rather impressive (to someone like me who's ignorant of those subjects :), so keep up the good work! TheIncredibleEdibleOompaLoompa 01:20, 8 Jul 2005 (BST)

Your Mother Was A T. rex And Other Brain Abuses

One of the responses claimed that Beowulf faced an ogre, not a dragon. This is a mistake. The user is probably confused because most renditions of the Beowulf story in high school English texts include only the Beowulf vs. Grendel story. There are actually three parts to Beowulf, with Grendel being his first opponent. The second part of the story records a battle between Beowulf and Grendel's mother. The third part tells of how an aging Beowulf gives his life fighting a dragon (of the venom-spitting type, if I remember correctly).

--Suttkus 19:34, 24 May 2006 (BST)

They claimed that Grendel (the ogre, descendant of Cain) was a T. rex, though?--Mr A. 21:10, 24 May 2006 (BST)

I'm sorry, I didn't pay enough attention to the creationist claim itself! Man, that's dumb. Even by creationist standards, that's dumb. Grendel as a T. rex? Sheesh! Does anyone know specifically which creationist source is making that claim? I'll put the response back.

--Suttkus 22:17, 24 May 2006 (BST)

• cough*--Mr A. 02:14, 25 May 2006 (BST)

• cough* indeed. Dear heavens above is that ever stupid. Grendel is a T-rex and Beowulf (part 1) is equivalent to the six-o'clock news! Please! Sheesh, I guess it isn't just the Bible that the creationists can't figure out how to read for context. I'm putting that link down as another source.

--Suttkus 17:43, 25 May 2006 (BST)

Bill Cooper has written a book "After The Flood", which is available online, and Chapter 11 features Grendel as a T. Rex. Unfortunately Bill Cooper has at least a few errors. He derives the name "Grendel" from a word meaning "to roar" (and not from "grind") - however, in Beowulf, Grendel is said to be very quiet, and anyway: we don't know if a T. Rex roared or not! --FreezBee 12:45, 26 May 2006 (BST)

Responses discussed

Disclaimer: I'm not a YEC, but I know some, and I'm not sure they're wrong :)

1. This still does not explain how come there are no remains of dinosaurs found mixed alongside of humans.
   1. I know people who claim that there are human and dinosaur footprints overlapping each other fossilised in the same stone

The footprints they're talking about are probably the Paluxy trails. The residents of the nearby town of Glenrose admitted to alternatively carving dinosaur footprints to resemble vaguely human-shaped prints, and carving human footprints along side of pre-existing dinosaur prints, all done in order to lure tourists.--Mr A. 02:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

1. If the mere existence of widespread tales of fantastical beasts forces us to conclude that they actually existed in human history, then what do we make of fairies, goblins, cyclopses, unicorns, and other even more bizarre mythical beasts (like centaurs, chimaerae or sphinxes), which appear nowhere in the fossil record or in the Bible for that matter?
   1. You've missed the point. Trees appear in myths, and no-one doubts that they're real. (I agree there's more proof for trees than dragons or dinosaurs). The argument runs like this:
      1. YEC: Dinosaurs and humans existed at the same time, within the last 6000 years
      2. Evo: So how come we never hear about them
      3. YEC: We do, but they're called dragons
   2. As far as it goes, it's a possibility, assuming that the dragons = dinosaurs link can be improved

No, you're the one who's missed the point entirely. If people actually did interact with dinosaurs, we would have evidence beyond legends featuring "dragons." Evidence like actual artifacts made from dinosaur products, or pictures that accurately depict people INTERACTING WITH dinosaurs. Nothing has ever turned up. Ever.--Mr A. 02:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

1. The "dragons" of supposedly ancient myth that creationists want to equate with dinosaurs are actually a rather modern creation (late middle ages) with a traceable development as popular myth. Dragons, like all folklore, evolved over time, only entering a relatively fixed form when stories began to be written down. Going back to ancient Greece, dragons are recorded by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History records dragons as very large snakes. Indeed, the word dragon derives from a greek epithet meaning 'snake'. Over time, the image of dragons in myth changes. They adopt more lizard-like features, add bat-wings (which dinosaurs never had), develop first venomous bites, then the ability to spit or drool venom, then steaming venom, then fire. The shift in the image over time, only laterly becoming something which resembles a Hollywood caricature of dinosaurs, clearly reflects a myth, and it's origin as snakes denies creationist claims that they record actual contact with dinosaurs.
   1. This is a typical "evolution of myth" occuring. Let me give you a scenario
      1. Man/men come back from slaying dinosaur, and says "I fought this huge beast, with scales like a snake", and the poet, recalling all his dragon mythology, writes it up as a dragon slaying
      2. Another scenario: poet receives story about dragon slaying, and spices it up with bits of other tales (fire breathing)
   2. My point here is, just because the creatures were mythologised doesn't mean that they couldn't exist

And how does "mythologising" make up for a profound lack of tangible evidence?--Mr A. 02:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

1. The tales St. George and Beowulf are legends with little historical substance. Beowulf is full of magic and other supernatural elements, and many historians are unsure whether St. George referred to a Roman soldier or a Roman governor of ancient Cappadocia (a province in what is now Turkey). To claim them as references, one would have to believe that ancient myth's supporting fairies and pantheons of gods was equally valid.
   1. YECs may make such claims, but such myths do prove one thing -- big scaly monsters were believed to exist at the time. Now sure, these people also believed in fairies, but OTOH, they also believed in trees :).
2. The tales St. George and Beowulf take place after the fall of the Roman empire. If genuine dinosaurs had existed in the age where St. George and Beowulf supposedly lived, they must have existed earlier as well. How could the Romans have missed them? The Romans ruled over large portions of the ancient world and their trade relations and spy networks went even further. They were a sober-minded people who left extensive records of their age and the world they lived in, but mentioned no dragons.
   1. I'm not so sure :). But the cited article doesn't mention belief in them, merely heraldic use. But on the third hand, it's skimpy on detail.
3. If huge, carnivorous dinosaurs had really existed, it would have taken far more than a single hero to defeat them. Beowulf would have been dinosaur fodder in no time, and St. George's horse would have thrown him off at the first sight of a huge predator like a Baryonyx. The only way for the people of the early middle ages to kill a huge dinosaur would have been either to poison it, lure it into a huge pit trap (with sharp spikes at the bottom) or shoot it full of arrows or crossbow bolts at a safe distance (and the archers would have to be skilled, numerous, brave and incredibly disciplined).
   1. Ok, so the monsters were increased in size when given fire-breathing (in the myth-making process). Does that still rule out other dinosaurs? It may rule out the ones mentioned though.

You fail to realize that a) THERE IS NO TANGIBLE, PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF PEOPLE INTERACTING WITH DINOSAURS, b) Creationists wrongly identified Grendel, the Tarrasque, and St George's dragon as being a T. rex, Triceratops, and Baryonyx, respectively, nevermind that T. rexes didn't live in Denmark, Triceratops (or any other ceratopsians) lived in France, and Baryonyx lived in England, not Libya, where St George slew his dragon, c) people not only make up nonexistant creatures all the time, but they also imagine fossil vertebrates as being giants and or dragons, like the way Romans thought mastodon femurs were giant's bones, the way the Chinese would label all of the fossil teeth they ground up for their medicines as "dragon's teeth," or how the people of Prague thought a skull of a woolly rhino was actually that of a legendary dragon that supposedly terrorized their legendary ancestors, and most importantly, d) THERE IS NO TANGIBLE, PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF PEOPLE INTERACTING WITH DINOSAURS.--Mr A. 02:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, just a few thoughts. I haven't read any of the creationist material except on the subject except the ones suggesting that the Biblical Leviathan and Behemoth might be dinosaurs, so I skipped a number of points referring to their material, where I don't have enough information to intelligently comment.

1. Footprints: You probably mean the fake Paluxy River prints still touted by a small minority of creationists (most of them acknowledge the fake). See Human footprints have been found with dinosaur tracks at Paluxy.
2. "Evo: So how come we never hear about them" is a Straw Man. The real counterargument is: "There is no evidence of that, and lots of evidence against it." For example, the lowest strata containing humans are far remote from the highest strata containing dinosaurs. Myths are not evidence.
3. "it's a possibility", "doesn't mean that they couldn't exist" etc.: we are talking of completely different things: We are talking about where the evidence leads. You are talking about what you can imagine to be true when you manoevre around the evidence. I can easily imagine dragons as well as elves, trolls, dwarves, and ents existing in the past. Could be, if they left no fossils. Now what? Do we need to put all of them in the biology books? We don't have to disprove the coexistence of humans and dinos (see Falsifiability), we just have to show that, contrary to what creationists claim, real evidence for it is nonexistent. --tk (t) 19:56, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

More responses by an anonymous. Appears to be standard arguments --Doddy 12:30, 1 April 2007 (BST)

1. However evidence exists were human and dinosaur prints are linked together in the same geologic time frame.

The Paluxy/Glen Rose footprints are hoaxes: they were either dinosaur footprints that have been doctored to look more human like, or they were human footprints that were carved along side of preexisting dinosaur tracks.--Mr A. 15:42, 1 April 2007 (BST)

Furthermore, the "human" footprints, misidentified or counterfeit, don't resemble human footprints, neither in size, nor shape, in the first place. --Fang 23 14:48, 1 April 2007 (BST)

1. Cultures around the world, with no proven contact with one another some how all came up with the same mythical creature with the same exact traits.

The different dragons from different cultures are just that, DIFFERENT. People can and have filled up books listing the infinite differences between heraldic dragons, Mesopotamian progenitor serpents, Chinese dragons, and Quetzalcoatl.--Mr A. 15:42, 1 April 2007 (BST)

Note that this YEC claim also contradicts the bible which young earth creationists claim to interpret literality because the bible doesn’t mention dinosaurs or dragons.--Fang 23 14:22, 1 April 2007 (BST)

1. Finally remains of dinosaurs (including the T. rex) have recently been found at Hells Creek on the Bad Lands of Montana still having the soft tissue remaining inside the non-fossilized bones of the animals, indicating an age of not millions but hundreds of years.

If you actually read the article, which I strongly doubt it, you'd know that the T. rex bones were fossilized, and that the scientist had found iron-ladened chemical residues of blood proteins in the bones, not soft tissue.--Mr A. 15:42, 1 April 2007 (BST)

In fact the oldest T rex fossils aren’t hundreds of years old but are actually closer to 70 million years old.--Fang 23 14:36, 1 April 2007 (BST)