If you haven’t noticed, the Internet has been abuzz with the recent release of The Dinosaurs, a limited series on Netflix produced by Steven Spielberg and narrated by Morgan Freeman. With all the excitement surrounding the series, I decided to sit down and watch it with the family. I must admit, the cinematography—though entirely advanced CGI—is breathtaking. From an aesthetic standpoint, the series is marvelously put together: torrential rains carving out the interior of Pangaea, volcanoes erupting across the landscape, snow falling over the northern regions of the continent as sauropods waltz through deep drifts, etc. It has been a long time since I have seen a dinosaur series so impressively executed on a purely visual level.
However, it must also be said that the series functions just as effectively as fiction. I have rarely witnessed such ingenuity and imaginative creativity. Viewers are tasked with contemplating the inconceivable notion of life emerging from non-life and of certain kinds gradually evolving into entirely different kinds. In one particular scene, when reptiles dominate the landscape—specifically the featured species Rhynchosauria and Luperosuchus—Morgan Freeman goes on to explain, as part of the narrative, that an egg is about to hatch containing the first creature of its kind: the first dinosaur—Marasuchus. Most viewers accept this at face value. They suspend their reasoning, their common sense, in order to believe in an otherwise inexplicable event.
There are more questions than answers, such as, where exactly did this first egg originate? Panning out from the frame of a singular egg, we are shown that there were other eggs of the same kind—its siblings. Yet who was the mother? In grand cinematic fashion, the siblings are shown to be wiped out, leaving only a single Marasuchus alive. If it was the only one of its kind, as the narrator puts it, how did it produce offspring upon reaching maturity? What creature gave birth to this supposed first-of-its-kind creature? We are not told. Where is the maternal creature? Again, we are not told. How did this first-of-its-kind organism come to exist? The series provides no explanation. One might almost suppose some sort of magical apparition; at least that would supply an explanation.
Before someone responds simply by invoking “evolution,” it is worth remembering that what is often meant by that term in observable biology is natural selection—a process we do indeed witness today. Yet the claim that genetic mutations can generate entirely new genetic information, producing fundamentally new biological structures, is another matter entirely. What we consistently observe instead is the narrowing or loss of genetic information within populations over successive generations.
Consider, for example, the Mexican blind cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus), a cave-dwelling species whose populations have lost functional eyesight. This represents what geneticists commonly describe as degenerative change: mutations that disable the genes responsible for eye development. Rather than gaining new structures, the organism has lost functional genetic information—an adaptation that may be advantageous in a dark cave environment, yet still a reduction of genetic capacity.
Another example can be seen in the dog kind. Wolves, coyotes, dingoes, and the many domestic breeds we know today belong to the same created kind. The original population of the dog kind likely possessed a large reservoir of genetic variability. Over generations, however, selective breeding and isolation have sorted and reduced that variability, producing breeds with highly specialized traits. Bulldogs, for instance, have lost much of the genetic flexibility present in wolves, which illustrates genetic narrowing rather than the creation of new biological structures.
These are phenomena we can observe, measure, and attest to. What we cannot substantiate through observational science is the spontaneous or gradual addition of entirely new genetic information capable of transforming one fundamental kind of organism into another—for example, a dinosaur into a bird. No empirical evidence demonstrates such a process. For that reason, The Dinosaurs may be appreciated as a visually stunning production, but its evolutionary narrative ultimately belongs in the realm of imaginative storytelling. In that sense, the series deserves recognition not for its scientific rigor, but for its remarkable fictional creativity.
The scene in which torrential downpours carve through the land of Pangaea is rendered with extraordinary detail—forming canyons, rivers, valleys, and basins across the landscape. Watching such a sequence, one cannot help but wonder why skeptics so readily dismiss the possibility of a catastrophic global flood in the days of Noah, one capable of breaking apart Pangaea and carving much of the geological world we observe today. Ironically, the very visuals employed by the series demonstrate how rapidly vast geological formations can be sculpted under the force of immense quantities of water.
To quote Dr. Andrew Snelling:
Catastrophic erosion and sedimentation, would have been […] operating during the Flood. However, many additional factors would have contributed during the Flood to the devastation and reshaping of the earth’s surface and the catastrophic deposition of new sedimentary strata—in particular, the driving rains and the raging streams resulting from them, the volcanic eruptions, and accompanying earthquakes and powerful tsunamis, resulting from the cleaving open of the earth’s crust. Furthermore, later in the Flood there would have been waves and other currents generated by tectonic processes again uplifting land surfaces and deepening the ocean basins.[1]
It was essentially the same “mechanism,” so to speak, yet presented within an evolutionary, naturalistic framework. In the biblical context such catastrophic processes are dismissed as unreasonable or laughable, but within a naturalistic narrative they are treated as entirely credible and scientifically acceptable. Perhaps this reaction stems in part from misunderstandings. Many people assume that Noah’s Flood was merely a localized event, when the biblical text clearly presents it as global. Others imagine a simplistic “bathtub-style” ark, floating precariously with animals awkwardly hanging over the sides—an image popularized by children’s illustrations that function more as caricatures than as serious portrayals of the biblical account.
Whatever the superficial explanations may be, the deeper reason lies beneath them. Scripture teaches that natural man, in his sinful disposition, is inclined to oppose God and resist His truth (Rom. 1:18). Consequently, alternative reconstructions of history are fashioned—narratives that reinterpret the evidence of the created world while suppressing the true account of reality as revealed by God.
I think what I find most fascinating is how many questions the Netflix series simply ignores, leaving viewers to accept its narrative by faith. After all, evolution has become the West’s most sacred dogma—something that cannot be publicly questioned without repercussions to one’s credibility. One is simply expected to accept it, logical fallacies, evidential gaps, and all. In that sense, it functions as fiction presented as truth.
Just to be clear, I am not arguing against natural selection. A dog species with longer, thicker fur will thrive in colder climates far more readily than a short-haired breed like the Chihuahua, which would likely struggle to survive. Christians are not denying common sense. We gladly affirm the veracity of observational and empirical science—what can be measured, tested, and repeated. What we challenge is “secular”[2] historical science, which reconstructs the distant past on the basis of philosophical assumptions rather than direct observation.[3]
For example, the concept of millions of years of biological history is frequently flaunted because naturalists assume that geological processes have always operated at the same rate in the past as they do in the present—an assumption associated with the uniformitarian framework popularized by Charles Lyell. But how can we know that with certainty?[4] The assumption is convenient because it supposedly provides the vast stretches of time required for Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory of common ancestry to unfold. After all, macro-evolution is believed to be too slow to witness in real time. That was Richard Dawkins’ explanation.[5] Yet time alone is not a mechanism.
You could place hundreds, thousands, or even millions of chimpanzees in a room with typewriters, but no amount of time would ever produce Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Time and chance are not creative mechanisms. They do not generate the information required for complex biological systems. Simply adding more time to the equation does not solve the fundamental problem.
Now, before anyone suggests that Christians must be a bunch of loons denying the existence of dinosaurs or the fossil record, let me be clear: neither is true. Dinosaurs once existed. They roamed the earth alongside primeval man, along with many other creatures that are now extinct. The Bible itself refers to extraordinary creatures such as Leviathan (Job 41) and Behemoth (Job 40:15–24), for example, long before the term dinosaur was ever coined. These creatures stand as part of the wondrous handiwork of our Creator God. Consider what Scripture says about Leviathan:
Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook
or press down his tongue with a cord?
Can you put a rope in his nose
or pierce his jaw with a hook?
…
His back is made of rows of shields,
shut up closely as with a seal.
One is so near to another
that no air can come between them.
(Job 41:1, 15–16)
And regarding Behemoth:
Behold, Behemoth, which I made as I made you;
he eats grass like an ox.
Behold, his strength in his loins,
and his power in the muscles of his belly.
He makes his tail stiff like a cedar;
the sinews of his thighs are knit together.
His bones are tubes of bronze,
his limbs like bars of iron.
(Job 40:15–18)
As for their extinction, the biblical framework provides a coherent explanation. The catastrophic Flood in the days of Noah accounts for the fossil record—millions of dead organisms rapidly buried in sedimentary rock layers across the earth, including marine fossils found high on mountaintops. In addition, the difficulty of long-term survival after the Flood—especially for juvenile representatives of many animal kinds that boarded the Ark—combined with dramatic climatic and environmental changes in the post-Flood world, helps explain why so many of these creatures eventually disappeared. Within this framework, dinosaurs fit naturally into the biblical history of created reality rather than standing as relics of an imagined prehistoric world detached from mankind.[6]
All in all, The Dinosaurs is a beautiful cinematic production worth watching for its artistic and creative brilliance. Yet, despite its visual splendor, it ultimately remains a work of fiction. One can only imagine what a truly biblically faithful portrayal of these magnificent creatures might look like on screen—that would indeed be something remarkable to behold.
In the meantime, we should not ignore the “dinosaur in the room.” Darwinian evolution ought not to be accepted uncritically as an unquestionable fact. Its explanatory framework contains numerous gaps and unresolved problems—so many, one might say, that it resembles Swiss cheese. It is surprising that the theory has endured with such cultural authority for so long. Yet perhaps the reason is not so difficult to discern: when there is a persistent determination to suppress the truth of created reality, alternative explanations, however fragile, inevitably fill the void.
[1] Andrew A. Snelling, Earth’s Catastrophic Past: Geology, Creation and the Flood, Vol. 2 (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2014), 475.
[2] Secularism is the belief that life, society, and knowledge can be understood and organized without reference to God.
[3] For more on “observational” and “historical” science, see Answers in Genesis, “Science.” Accessed March 9, 2026, https://answersingenesis.org/science/.
[4] See Donald B. DeYoung, Thousands… Not Billions: Challenging an Icon of Evolution Questioning the Age of the Earth (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2005).
[5] “‘Battle over evolution’ Bill Moyers interviews Richard Dawkins”, Now, December 3, 2004, PBS network. http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript349_full.html#dawkins/.
[6] Jonathan Sarfati, Joel Tay, Titans of the Earth, Sea, and Air (Creation Book Publishers, 2022); Darek Isaacs, Dragons or Dinosaurs? Creation or Evolution? (Bridge-Logos, 2010).