It sounds like you're talking about Genesis 1 as to the "detail about how it happened at all". Am I reading you right?

If so, Genesis 1 is not about material creation but about how God ordered the cosmos and world to function. If we read the text in the mindset and worldview of the ancient Near Eastern cultures, we read something different than if we read it with the eyes of the European Enlightenment and our modern Western worldview.

When you look at Gn. 1.3-5 ("Day 1"), you clearly that it's not talking about what physicists call "light" (particle/wave), but rather the separation of light and darkness and the sequence of light and darkness into day and night—which is how the light and dark function: to give us time. God ordered the world to function in time with a repeating sequence of day and night, evening and morning. Genesis 1 is not how the world came about, but how God ordered it to function. In Day 3 the dry land functions to bring forth vegetation for our environmental balance as well as our food supply. In Day 4 the heavenly bodies function to regulate the seasons. In Day 6 humans function to rule the earth and subdue it.

So we're not getting details about how it all happened. Instead, we're getting details of how God ordered the cosmos to function as His temple and as His dwelling place, where He could establish a relationship with the people He created and loves. We're not being told anything about chronology, the age of the earth, dinosaurs, the beginning of humanity, or any of that stuff. That stuff is the realm of science. Instead the Bible is telling us the WHY—something science doesn't and can't tell us.

The origin and evolutionary progress of flora and fauna is not of concern to the biblical writers. Their point is that God created everything (other texts), that God ordered the cosmos and the earth to function as His temple, and then it starts the story of how God revealed Himself through what He created and ordered. The Bible doesn't comment on how much time all of this took or of what processes were used.

Then why go into detail about how it happened at all?

The Bible is the story of God's self-revelation, not the scientific and paleontological history of Earth. The origin and evolutionary progress of dinosaurs, as well as wolves and whales, is not of concern to the biblical writers. Their point is that God created everything, and then it starts the story of how God revealed himself through what he created. It is of no concern of how much time and how much nature happened before human beings.

If that was the case, then the bible should have said something along those lines. It should have said, "I made a bunch of crap before Adam and Eve." It doesn't though. Sometimes people twist the wording to mean that. Days = eons or something. Seems like if they meant for us to believe it then the story should align a bit better with the evidence.

I do. We seem to have come on the scene about 200,000 years ago, give or take thousands of years (depending on which scientific model you accept, and what you consider to be homo sapien). As of now we are the predominant life force on the planet (both to Earth advantage and demise). According to the Bible, there will not be a time when homo sapiens are no more while the Earth continues on its trajectory. According to the Bible, homo sapiens are the last phase of history, and we will continue until the end of the Earth (because God will come to judge the living and the dead and we will enter eternity).

But for now, humans are definitely part of the environmental picture, and responsible for many life forms on the planet. We are diverse as a species and yet genetically related. So, yes, we are part of the ebb and flow of nature and diversity.

Do you consider humans part of the ebb and flow of nature and diversity?

You're right, of course. What I meant was that it was during the era (and more) when dinosaurs roamed the earth that there was so much plant life, and that the earth had a different environmental structure. My point was that possibly this long era of hundreds of millions of years was not just wasted time or God's misjudgment, but that those historic eras have actually achieved a purpose, at least for our culture for however long they last.

My last sentence, also, considers that they were just part of the ebb and flow of nature and diversity.

> I heard an interesting presentation once claiming that God created millions of years of dinosaurs to establish the vast reservoirs of fossil fuels that our society needs to function.

Fossil Fuels aren't made up of dinosaurs. Fossil fuels comes from bacterial blooms. Dinosaurs aren't even the coal that we have. that's plants from ancient jungles and forests.

Dinosaurs just fell in tar pits and their bones were fossilized and preserved there which is why we know they existed...

Thanks for that. It is something I wonder over in quiet moments.

I heard an interesting presentation once claiming that God created millions of years of dinosaurs to establish the vast reservoirs of fossil fuels that our society needs to function. I'm still pondering what I think of that, but I had never heard it before and thought I'd pass it on to you for consideration.

From another perspective, I would guess God created them as part of the diversity of nature. Things come and go in the progress of time.