Do Dinosaurs Disprove God?

Atheists and agnostics sometimes claim that animal pain disproves God’s existence. Why would a benevolent Creator let His helpless creatures needlessly suffer?

We came across one person who claimed that God couldn’t exist because dinosaurs spent ages ripping each other apart. Human suffering may be redemptive, but animal suffering isn’t. When a T-Rex kills a stegosaurus, it appears that nothing good happens to the dead dinosaur.

Yet, dinosaur violence doesn’t disprove God. Here’s why.

Animals don’t have the same rights as people.
If you give dinosaurs the same rights as yourself, then it does seem that God treated them unfairly. But animals don’t possess human rights. They may have some rights. How many? Nobody agrees on the amount.

Dinosaurs don’t necessarily come out on the negative side.
Even if you have some bad in your life, there is probably plenty of good as well.

It was the same for dinosaurs. In general, they had it good on earth for a very long time and no natural catastrophe or predation negates that fact. A grown stegosaurus who got eaten enjoyed many years of life before its fateful death.

Like all suffering, dinosaur suffering could have led to a greater good.
Young, helpless, carnivorous dinosaurs probably relied on their parents to bring them meat. If they had no meat, they died.

This type of death, and the total extinction of dinosaurs, was brutal. But the human race is grateful that we don’t live in the shadows of the velociraptor and T-Rex.

We don’t know if animals have an afterlife.
Many Catholics assume they don’t, but the Church has never officially settled this question. It’s a real possibility. People have had credible near-death experiences and said they saw their pets in heaven.

If dinosaurs have an afterlife, that more than makes up for their suffering on earth. They may not enjoy the beatific vision, but they’re happy. We know that in heaven all pain and suffering will cease. Anything suffered in life on earth will be minuscule compared to the joy of God’s kingdom.