Slifkin's Big Lie

Last night, R. Natan (Nosson) Slifkin spoke in Brooklyn on the subject of "The Terror of Dinosaurs: Confronting the Challenges of Creation, Dinosaurs, and the Age of the Universe." During his speech, he said that everything he was saying can be found in his book. I may be mistaken, but I think I heard something that is not in his book The Science of Torah.

R. Slifkin asked why God created the dinosaurs. What was the point of creating and then destroying them, long before people came onto the scene? Good question! This can, and has, been asked about the vast universe and the extensive ecosystems in far corners of the earth that only experts know even exist.

[WARNING: Spoiler here. Don't read this if you are going to hear R. Slifkin speak on this topic.]

R. Slifkin had an excellent answer about dinoaurs, albeit admitting that we can only speculate about God's reasons for such things. He first pointed out that the various theories about the extinction of dinosaurs, whether through meteors or other catastrophic events, would all be described in contemporary terminology as acts of God. Indeed, I can attest from my insurance training that standard insurance policies would not cover a global destruction caused by a meteor striking the earth.

Just like many empires that rose and fell, the dinosaurs mightily ruled the earth for a long time and, by an act of God, were quickly destroyed. It is He who controls whose reign will rise and whose will fall. The message of humility and mortality from the extinction of the powerful dinosaurs is quite striking, and I thank R. Slifkin for making me aware of this excellent mussar lesson.