Community Magazine October 2019

52 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE Sage Advice from Rabbi Avigdor Miller, zt”l STRAIGHT TALK How does the age of the cavemen and the dinosaurs fit in with the Torah? Question and Answer supplied by TorasAvigdor.org. (TAPE #490). Answer is taken directly from the words of Rabbi Avigdor Miller, zt”l. However, it has been slightly edited to allow for easier reading. How does the age of the computers fit in with the Torah? Is there any contradiction between them? Of course not. Just like computers are contemporary with us, so were dinosaurs contemporary with cavemen. And, the fact is, the dinosaurs are quite recent. If you want, you can buy a video – or you can rent it (I know where it can be procured) – which will show you photographed footsteps, fossilized footsteps of a waddling dinosaur on a rock, and together with his footsteps are footsteps of a man. Human footsteps! Which means that the dinosaur was contemporary with man. Now that doesn’t fit according to the timetables of the evolutionists, but it’s proven, so what can you do? Now, the cavemen? There’s no problem there at all, because there are cavemen even today. In North Africa, even 50 years ago, when Nachum Slouschz was traveling in North Africa, he found Jews living in caves in parts of North Africa. There was a place in the mountains where caves were available and didn’t cost any rent. So, hundreds and hundreds of Jews lived in caves. What does that mean, what does that prove? They’re putting on  tefillin  in the caves and eating matzah  on Pesach in the caves and reading “ Beresheet barah Elokim ” (the first verse in the Torah) in the caves. So, a caveman means nothing. The subject of dinosaurs puts a thrill in little boys who are taught evolution. But you need to know that dinosaurs are just the same as cavemen. They are a recent phenomenon. They went out of existence as soon as the Mabul (Flood) took place. A great many of the huge lizards of antiquity that were not able to survive the flood were all destroyed. And that’s proven by the fact that you find dinosaur graveyards. Huge masses of dinosaur bones are jammed together in certain places as if they were buried together. And that could only be due to a catastrophe. They didn’t come and decide to bury themselves together. It’s not like Montefiore Cemetery where every person applies for a grave. No! It was a catastrophe that swept them away suddenly. When the Mabul came, great changes occurred in the weather. Monumental changes took place. When so much water is subtracted from the sea’s surface, there’s a monumental change in the climate. And in certain places, the dinosaurs were immediately overwhelmed. They were frozen. You find thousands of mastodon skeletons in Siberia, in huge cemeteries, huge graveyards, where they are all buried together – because there was a big catastrophe that engulfed them suddenly. Therefore, the dinosaurs, the cavemen, and whatever else you have, are no contradiction to anything that we learn in the Torah.