The National Geographic Society over the decades has consistently held closely to the secular perspective in its treatments of history and science. This is seen in all articles in National Geographic publications by its devotion to deep time and macroevolution. Articles on dinosaurs in particular rely heavily on the telling of stories that appeal to our human appetites for mystery and adventure. Great effort is placed on splendid (fictional) paintings with imaginative details of things discussed in the dinosaur stories. These starting points in the Nat Geo articles mean that truth can be, and often is, sacrificed. In my opinion, most National Geographic stories about dinosaurs are aimed at the readership level of the fourteen-year-old child. Unfortunately, most children of that age have not yet learned the importance of critical thinking and tend to believe everything they read. Nat Geo knows this fact and so fantastic dinosaur stories of this type are the usual result.
In 2024 Nat Geo published a book with the title, Dinosaurs—A New Look at the Prehistoric Icons.* I am writing this article as number one in a series on the various parts of this Nat Geo book. My article #1 will cover the chapter in the book called “Reimagining Dinosaurs.” This particular article is in large part a reissue of an article by Michael Greshko that was published in National Geographic magazine in its October 2020 issue.
In all secular dinosaur stories, the assumption of deep time is foremost. What is not ever explained is that the deep time is a foundational assumption and not a historical or scientific fact. The geological timeline was developed based on assumed jumps of one kind of life to the next evolved kind. Various guesses about how long these jumps might take then are added up to get the millions of years. Of course, no one has ever witnessed any of these assumed evolutionary jumps either in the present or in the fossils in the rock record. The ages of sedimentary rocks are then determined by the artificial predesigned order of the fossils in the geological timeline. This timeline and the principle of uniformitarianism are taken totally on faith by evolutionists. It is not science! I wonder if secularists realize how true it is that they really are just “imagining dinosaurs.”
All of this faith results in enormous amounts of fantastic stories. One example in the “Reimagining Dinosaurs” article is the statement, “the feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx could flap its wings in a way that enabled self-powered flight” (page 15). This is really interesting because a large number of evolutionists believe that Archaeopteryx was a non-flying bird, not a dinosaur. I have written elsewhere on this website and in my book Fossils: Description & Interpretation that this animal did not have skeletal features that would allow it to fly. And to be consistent with their paradigm evolutionists should not call Archaeopteryx “the first bird” since other true birds have been found in sediments dated older (i.e. found deeper) by other evolutionists.
Image on page 16 of Nat Geo Dinosaurs**
**Caption for Nat Geo Image on page 16: “A 3-D digital model of the ‘first bird,’ Archaeopteryx, appears to pop out of its stony tomb thanks to x-ray scanning and photogrammetry. The plumage on its wings is based on actual fossil feathers.”
Look closely at the image of Archaeopteryx above and its caption. This image was inserted as an example of the great advances in technology that have facilitated the “reimagining” of dinosaurs. Like a Jurassic Park movie, the skeleton looks like it is popping out of the slab of stone in which it was fossilized. That image requires new technology alright—movie industry technology. But is there any new paleontological information gained from this technology? The answer is no. In reality the plumage on its wings is based on what are thought to be actual fossil imprints of feathers not on actual fossil feathers. This particular information about the imprints was interpreted from the fossil 160 years ago. The floating feather to the left of the skeleton I assume is meant to represent the one and only feather thought to have come from an Archaeopteryx specimen, but no one knows if there was any actual connection between that feather and the ten or so specimens so far discovered for the animal. Therefore, the image which is intended to convince the reader about great technological advancements in paleontology actually does no such thing! Instead, it serves to severely distort the truth.
Another story that results from evolutionary faith is expressed in the quote: “Modern gecko embryos also have prototeeth [like those found in dinosaur embryos] despite the fact that geckos’ and dinosaurs’ last common ancestors lived more than a quarter billion years ago” (page 17). This is a secular faith statement, not science.
On page 19 of the article are statements about the color of extinct dinosaur skin and feathers based on huge amounts of speculation. The paragraph about the many examples of soft dinosaur tissues that have been discovered by evolutionists (and creationists) is another case on point. “Ever since, Mary Schweitzer and a growing cohort of scientists have asked how such substances could persist—and what we could learn from them” (same page). What is never mentioned in Nat Geo is that these scientists never ask the most important questions of how could these soft tissues possibly last 65 million years knowing what is known about longevity of similar tissues today, and could dinosaur fossils only be thousands of years old, not millions? Again, this shows that they are blinded by their atheistic presuppositions from considering anything other than their deep-time dogma. This is religion not science.
While secular paleontology has progressed due to technological advances in imaging and computer processing, it is severely hampered by its lack of open-mindedness regarding what these tools are really revealing. In addition to the soft tissue findings, radiocarbon dating shouts that these dinosaur fossils cannot be millions of years old. The abundance of living fossils also belies the evolutionary stories at each juncture.
When you tell them all this, they will not listen to you; when you call to them, they will not answer. Therefore, say to them, “This is the nation that has not obeyed the LORD its God or responded to correction. Truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips. (Jeremiah 7:27-28 NIV)
J.D. Mitchell
*Dinosaurs—A New Look at the Prehistoric Icons, National Geographic Partners, LLC, Meredith Operations Corporation, New York, NY publisher, 2024.
