Dinosaurs by Design

by Duane T. Gish

Everyone wants to know about dinosaurs! Dinosaurs by Design takes you into the exciting world of dinosaurs to find out what they were really like. Discover how fossils are formed, dug up, and assembled for museums. Travel with the dinosaurs as they board Noah’s ark and then enter the strange new world after the flood. Find out what happened to the dinosaurs and if there are any alive today. Join us on an exciting adventure to learn more about these magnificent creatures that God designed and created.

Genres: Science, Dinosaurs, Childrens, Nonfiction, Christian, Picture Books, Creation Science

88 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1992

About the author

Duane Tolbert Gish is an American biochemist and a prominent member of the creationist movement. Gish is a former vice-president of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) and the author of numerous publications on the subject of scientific creationism. Gish has been called "creationism's T.H. Huxley" for the way he "relished the confrontations" of formal debates with prominent evolutionists, usually held on university campuses."

He holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.

He spent 18 years in biochemical and biomedical research at Cornell University Medical College, the Virus Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley, and The Upjohn Company, Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is the author or co-author of numerous technical articles in his field and a well-known author and lecturer on creation/evolution.

Reviews

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

A shout-out to all parents of dinosaur-loving boys: this is a great non-evolutionary book about dinosaurs. The author is knowledgeable, but easy to read; blurbs about different 'saurs are a manageable length; and (this seems small but) I love that some of the dinosaurs are drawn to be beautiful and majestic, instead of as the frightening and repulsive creatures so often imagined with pen and paper. There's a brief explanation of the problems with evolutionary theory, and a neat overview of the fossil-finding process. My son was riveted.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

literally the most hilarious book i have ever read.

[Cathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this educational book on the scientific research of dinosaurs. This book tells the history of dinosaur fossils and provides good information about the fall, the flood, and the ice age.

[Max · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book does not disprove evolution, and just makes creationism look silly. In addition, it says that "evolutionists" think that the grand canyon was eroded away, while creationists "know" that it was really originally made of several natural dams that God broke away. What does that have to do with Dinosaurs?!

[Amanda Jayne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have this book in my RE classroom (with a massive disclaimer stuck on the inside cover) as an example of creationist beliefs when we do the religion/science debate.

It was worth buying for the laughs. Dr Gish’s interpretation of the scientific method is a joke and some of the illustrations are bizarre.

[Victoria robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even if dinosaurs scare you, this book is top of the "must read" list. It proves the theory of evoulution completely insane!!
Find out how dinos truly lived, ate, and where created. Of course us christians already know that............

[LB · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely heinous.

[Eric Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another of the dozens of dinosaur books I read while in grade school. Basic book designed more for young children; done very well. It has a lot of general information about dinosaurs (how they were discovered, what we know about their lifestyle, etc.), plus coverage of a few of the most well known dinosaurs (Triceratops, T. Rex, Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, etc.), with a few pages per kind. Personally I would have wished the author had covered more species/kinds of dinosaurs but he did a great job with the ones he included. He also did an excellent job discussing the absurdities of evolution. For example, there's no survival-advantage to having a back half that's one quarter tail/three quarters legs or that's half tail/half legs.

[Lucinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the art in this

[Madaud · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hohoho, this is about as realistic as telling your kid dinosaurs walked with man. Oh, wait, that's exactly what you're doing.
So I will give this an emoji: ಠ_ಠ

[Viviane Elbee]

This book says humans co-existed with dinosaurs and dinosaurs were on Noah’s ark. It’s not really for young kids because it has a lot of words and pages. Did not finish it.

[cloudxen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is probably iconic to those of us who spend an absolute shit load of time on Paleo entertainment areas (Dino Diego, EDGE) etc. I’m sure if you’re here, you fall into two groups: dinoshitposting or Creationism. I’m sure my review is gonna tell you where I stand. This book is an absolute hoot of outdated beliefs, both for creationism as a “science”, but also for paleontological thoughts of the time. Of course this is just Christian propaganda masquerading as a young kids book about dinosaurs, and it makes no attempts to disguise that once you open the cover. However, the artwork is fucking bang on fantastic, and there are some pieces that just go way too hard for their own good, including the fire breathing parasaurolophus and the Deinonychus eating a Gazelle while Cane kills Abel, absolutely stunning stuff. The baryonx fighting a medieval knight is also fucking hilarious. The only reason this got 2 stars is because the artwork is god damned good.

[Steven Yoder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dinosaurs by Design is a study of dinosaurs and other creatures from a creationist perspective. Gish makes a good argument that dinosaurs could never have simply evolved nor could some of them have evolved into birds. He gives a detailed description of many different types of dinosaurs along with references to dinosaurs in the Bible such as in Job chapters 40 and 41 which describes a huge animal called Behemoth that fits the description of an Apatosaurus. He also describes a massive sea creature called Leviathan. He shows how dragons used to be the word for dinosaurs and that many cultures recorded seeing them well into the time after Jesus. Gish also details many of the flood myths from around the world that sound suspiciously similar to the Noahic Flood. This book is a good introduction for any person curious about dinosaurs and how they died out.

[Neh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent for children and biblically faithful. Thoroughly.

If you'd like a bit upper-level treatment, I recommend "Titans - of the land, sea, and air" by Sarfati (PhD) and Tay. The team of chemist and biologist/theologian get a lot of new information.

[Lina Bya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great creation point of view on dinosaurs

[Troy Nevitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a non-dinosaur person, this was okay. I didn't get drawn in much. But the illustrations were nice.

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know this book is geared more towards children but unfortunately there are no creationist dinosaur guides for adults out there (most of the latter are written by evolutionists).