Dinosaurs are a headache for biblical literalists. Since
religion has no rational basis, you have to build your base of
believers by indoctrinating children at a young age. And because
children are fascinated by dinosaurs and can’t seem to get
enough of them, you need to work them into the story somehow.
The fact that dinosaurs existed at one time and are now extinct
is an unquestioned fact and must be faced. The catch is that
dinosaurs are not mentioned in the Bible. It is no good for
creationist adults to deny their existence the way they deny
other inconvenient scientific facts because even the most
trusting and naïve child is going to balk at such a
counterfactual statement. Young Earth creationists cannot accept
the most common scientific explanation of dinosaur extinction as
a result of an asteroid collision with the Earth 65 million
years ago that changed the climate, because that explanation is
too deeply integrated into an old Earth model in which dinosaurs
lived long before humans. Biblical literali