Things have been quiet for a while here at the Daniels’ ranch in the heart of dinosaur country: no reports of T rexes lunching on hikers in Yellowstone Park, no pachyrhinosaur stampedes. Dr. David Ogilvey’s characteristic high-pitched laughter has been absent, too. He’s been in New York City, defending the local fauna from attacks of an unexpected nature: an anti-dinosaur campaign by creationists. Now, I’m personally neutral on the subject but many on both sides get rather worked up over it, so let me tell you what’s been going on.
Professor Edmond Lazarus of the Yorktown Divinity College several weeks ago challenged Dr. Ogilvey to a debate entitled, “Are The Kra Satan’s Demonic Legions?” Dr. O accepted the challenge and the debate was held in a crowded, boisterous hall on the Divinity College’s Upper East Side campus.
Prof. L made his case that the Kra, human-sized dinosaurs returned to Earth after an eon in space, are by their very existence a refutation of the account of creation in the Bible. Worse, the most conciliatory individual among the Kra, their leader Gar himself, was characterized by Professor L as a likely candidate for the Antichrist. This because according to Professor L, Gar leads unwary people astray with his protestations of friendship for humanity.
When Dr. Ogilvey’s turn came to speak, he countered that a 65-million-year-old civilization does nothing to refute the Bible, if (and here’s the big IF) the six days of creation are reconciled by assuming each of God’s days is 750-million years long. Then Dr. O presented a slide, reproduced below, explaining how all the geological eras since the Earth formed can be matched to a day of God’s work.
Even the biblical references to the creation of various plants and animals fall neatly into place on one of six 750-million-year long days, as Dr. O was glad to elaborate for the crowd. They, however, being overwhelmingly of the creationist persuasion, greeted his words with catcalls and chants of “Satan’s spawn! Satan’s spawn!”
In his final remarks, Professor L accused Dr. O of simply dreaming up a likely scheme with the intent of helping Gar mislead a gullible public. In that light, Professor L concluded that perhaps Dr. Ogilvey was the real Antichrist.
Dr. O then concluded that perhaps Professor L was a monkey’s uncle.
What I find most distressing is Dr. Ogilvey’s seventh day, which has just begun and still has almost all of its 750 million years to run. Dr. O’s assertion that this is God’s day of rest is far from comforting. In a time when we could certainly use divine intervention on an almost daily basis, it’s challenging to imagine God dozing and not really paying attention to what we’re up to for the next 749.994 million years! I guess that means we had better get our act together and try to get along with each other on this planet without much intervention from God for quite a little while.
