The Creation “Museum” has a new exhibit: Dragons. Really. You see, according to their rules, which is that every word of the Bible has to be literally interpreted (whatever that means), nothing said in the Bible can be incorrect, metaphorical, erroneous, or even ambiguous — it has to be true. Since God told Noah that at least two of every animal were on the Ark, for example, that “every” means that every single kind of animal must have been on the big boat…which is why they insist that dinosaurs must have been aboard. Well, that and because dinosaurs are good marketing.
Similarly, there must have been dragons, because the Bible uses a word that translates as “dragon”. It’s that simple.
Does the Bible mention dragons? Used multiple times in Scripture, the Hebrew word tannin is defined by The Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon as “serpent, dragon, sea-monster.” It likely refers to certain reptiles, including giant marine creatures and serpentine land animals. Though translated several different ways and differing in precise meanings based on context, tannin can denote a dragon and therefore can potentially refer to a dinosaur since all dinosaurs are dragons (though not all dragons are dinosaurs by definition).
If tannin is so vague that it can refer to a serpent as well as a sea-monster, though, and can be conviently post-fit to mean “dinosaur”, it seems to me that there is no necessity to interpret it to mean specifically dragon. But then, my brain doesn’t work like a creationist’s. It says “dragon” in the Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, by God, so there were dragons!
And what’s more, the Bible says they breathed fire, so they were fire-breathing dragons!
The burden against the beasts of the South. Through a land of trouble and anguish, From which came the lioness and lion, The viper and fiery flying serpent, They will carry their riches on the backs of young donkeys, And their treasures on the humps of camels, To a people who shall not profit. (Isaiah 30:6)
Many dragon legends such as what we find outside the Bible could be embellished, but the basic characteristics of dragons can be found in known creatures. Some dragon descriptions fit well with certain dinosaurs. Fossil pterosaurs reveal dragon-like wings. Certain beetles shoot out burning chemicals, so is a fire-breathing dragon really that far-fetched?
Yes. Yes, it really is that far-fetched. The Bible is not a science book.
Bombardier beetles use a small reaction chamber to produce a pressurized blast of peroxides. It’s not “breathing fire”. This is merely the kind of incoherent nonsense you get when you pretend the myths of ancient people are evidence of anything other than that they held certain peculiar beliefs.
Creationist logic now dictates another step: if tannin is a dragon, and dragons breathe fire, and tannin also means “dinosaur”, then dinosaurs breathed fire. Yeah, we’re done here.
Now if the Bible is a mess of incoherence, you should listen to Ken Ham. He was interviewed about his dragon exhibit.
“There are lots of dragon legends because they were real creatures. We believe many of the dinosaurs would fit some of the descriptions of dragons, the land dragons at least. I’ve never seen an exhibit like this anywhere else,” Dr. Ken Ham, president and founder of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum told OneNewsNow.
“We have an animatronics scientist there and other high-tech features like a dragon fly fossil. People will be able to download an app and when you put it over it, then the dragon fly comes out of the fossils and you see it three dimensional.”
Does anyone understand what the heck he’s saying? It’s interesting that his scientists are animatronic — that seems reasonable given their level of intelligence — but what do dragonflies have to do with dragons? What’s high tech about a dragonfly fossil? What is this magic app doing?
Every time I try to understand the mind of a creationist, my brain hurts.