Would the pre-historic dinosaurs be the source of the world’s oil reserves?

Question

Hi Gramps,

My understanding is that our Heavenly Father is a God of order. He knew what our needs would be one day while creating the earth. Dinosaurs were created…lived for a set amount of years and then died off. This is because of the orderly nature of God. He knew we would be using/needing oil one day to further civilization. Hence…the dinosaurs died…after sitting under the earth for many eons…they turned into oil. Am I oversimplifying the situation? Thanks so much for sharing your love of the gospel with all of us!

Don

Answer

Dear Don,

The “fossil fuel” concept, that the earth’s oil reserves come from hydrocarbons originating as living plant and animal matter, is about as silly as the notion of a geocentric universe. Some academician made the assumption of that connection and somehow got it published, and it has since been accepted as a scientific “truth” without much further ado. I would love to have asked the perpetrator of this fantasy how many animals would have had to have lived and died in the north polar regions to account for all the oil that is found there? He could well have answered that the earth’s rotational axis has not always been as it is now, and he would have been be right. But if the poles were one time tropical, the tropics were one time polar, and we still have the near eastern oil fields to account for.

A much more plausible explanation for the VAST oil reserves in the earth would be the explanation proposed by Dr. Immanual Velikovsky, in his Worlds in Collision, Doubleday & Co. Inc. Garden City, New York, 1950. Velikovsky cites evidence that the planet Venus entered the solar system as a comet about 1550 B.C., with an initial erratic orbit. He proposed that Venus has a heavy hydrocarbon atmosphere and made several near-earth passes, during which there was a transfer of the heavy hydrocarbon material from Venus to the earth. I could site the numerous evidences to support his thesis, but it would seem more appropriate, if you are interested, to check out his book from the public library and read the entire account.

Gramps