Dragons and Unicorns

A lot of mocking follows where the bible believer goes these days. People attack the biblical pastor, biblical student, and biblical political figure with little discrimination. The reasons are varied and yet with all that variety one thing shines true; under a hint of scrutiny the reasons are steeped in confusion (often strengthened by emotion), not based in truth. Over the years I have developed a keen eye for interpretations, presuppositions, and other assumptions and it is wonderful, in a way, to be able to see the mistakes people make in reasoning. Still, I imagine if the people who reject the bibles account really knew that the bible held accounts of unicorns and dragons (some that breathe fire) they would all the more attack it under the assumption that such creatures are mythical because they were raised in a world that believed so.

To these mockers I imagine that Hollywood movies and special effects would flood their minds as they chuckled at the bible believer. Yet all the Christian needs to do is ask, “why not?” They might say that such animals are impossible or mythical, but the Christian could say “why” again. Point of fact, the Narwhal (uni-horned white whale), which has a single elegant horn on its head and the bombardier beetle which can squirt a chemical concoction from its backside which is both stinky and explosively hot. So it is fair that the bible believer asks why these creatures (large lizard creatures and uni-horned horses) which are spoken of in scripture are assumed mythical. Is it because they truly couldn’t have existed or because the unbeliever automatically rejected the scriptural account on baseless reaction from rebellion? It is a fair and provocative question.

In reality, a trustworthy eye-witness account such as the bible is not to be assumed as false without reasoning, even by the staunch unbeliever. In reality, animals such as the “electric eel” do not show signs of their special shocking gift in their bones so why would a fire breathing dinosaur? In reality, dinosaurs (“dragons”) walked with men from the beginning. And the possibility of a single horned horse is more than possible. Truly, our world is filled with wondrous things, but we must be careful to keep our assumptions and our facts separate.