What is the relevance of this discussion? Is it important if lions eat only meat for the consistency of the book of Genesis? It is important and shows that the book of Genesis is wrong when asserting that God had created all animals after their kinds and at the same time that all animals were destined to eat only vegetation after their creation. If animals had been created in kinds on the sixth day of creation as the book of Genesis states, it would have been impossible for some of them to eat only plants. This is an incorrect assertion and it couldn’t have been inspired by God. Much information given by the book of Genesis is incredible, irrational and false and its falsifiability can be demonstrated by simple facts. The existence of predator animals destined to eat plants after their creation is an example of false and absurd information found in the Bible.

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Nothing can be further from the truth than the proclamation that God would have created two very different types of animals but attributed them the same kind of food. Why would He have created in this way? There is one answer, which could explain this dilemma. Not God but nature generated animals and their way of feeding. This rather lengthy quotation is necessary to understand better the differences between herbivore and carnivore animals and the need for an evolutionary explanation in order to give sense to the existence of nature on Earth.

“All animals have teeth that are adapted to eating certain types of food. For instance, herbivores, because they are plant eaters, have strong and flat molars that are made for grinding leaves and small or non-existent canine teeth. Carnivores, the meat eaters of the animal world, have very defined canine teeth for tearing at meat, combined with a sometimes limited number of molars. Omnivores, because they eat both meat and plants, have a combination of sharp front teeth and molars for grinding. Herbivores have teeth that are highly specialized for eating plants. Herbivore incisors are sharp for tearing plants, but they may not be present on both the upper and lower jaw. Carnivores have a set of teeth that are very different from herbivores’. This makes sense, because they also have a different diet. A carnivore will use its teeth to kill a prey item before eating it. The sharp incisors and pointed canine teeth are perfectly designed for both incapacitating and eating a meal.”[12]

The biblical description of how animals were created and of how they behave is only a fabrication. According to the book of Genesis all animals had been created by God on the fifth and sixth days of creation. He wouldn’t have created the animals organised in particular kinds only to enable them to evolve into other kinds of animals different from what He had created. If the animals were created only as a transitory stage of evolution God’s creation couldn’t be considered as having ended in six days as the book of Genesis says. God also declared the creation of animals as being good. “Good” in the context of the creation stories from the Bible can be considered to mean also complete or finished.

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 Did God create species in transit or in evolution or complete, non-evolving animal species? If the former situation is the case what was the initial form in which animal species had been created? In my opinion, the book of Genesis tells us clearly that God would have create stable species which couldn’t have been transformed into others even if they would have suffered some adaptations, such as the colour of the coat.

“24 And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.’ And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1; 24-25 NRSV)

The text is clear in asserting that wild animals and cattle are two different kinds of animals. The adjective “good” when applied to carnivorous animals would have meant their extraordinary ability to kill their pray and for herbivores their biological structure which enables them to eat plants. If all animals were herbivores there isn’t any reason why God would have changed something which had been declared “good” from the beginning of creation. Animals which were good on the sixth day weren’t good anymore after the Flood. If the Flood was a real event God would have recreated or created anew the entirety of nature on Earth after the extreme devastation caused by the waters, but the Bible speaks only about the change of dietary habits.

If God created carnivore animals on the sixth day He generated extraordinary biological creatures able to kill in an efficient way:

“Carnivores can be told by their enlarged canine teeth, by the presence of three pairs of incisors in each jaw (with rare exceptions), and by the shape of their molar teeth. In humans and in many other mammals, the molars are flattened and are used for grinding food. In most carnivores (except for bears and pinnipeds), the last premolar of the upper jaw and first molar of the lower jaw are sharp and bladelike, and slide past each other like the blades of scissors when the animal chews. These modified molars are known as carnassial teeth. Molars farther back in the jaw are usually either missing or highly reduced. These features are adaptive for a carnivorous diet, to tear and cut meat; note that bears, which are almost all omnivorous, have re-evolved crushing molar teeth.”[13]

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There are many other differences between herbivores and carnivores in relation to their digestive tracts, saliva, stomach size, stomach structure, intestine and liver. All these differences show that it is absurd to think God would have created carnivorous animals and allotted them to eat the food which is specific for the nourishment of herbivores. The evolution of the animals followed a long process of adaptation to the environment and natural selection, and didn’t happened suddenly, with some species of evolved herbivores becoming carnivores from one day to another after the Flood. The book of Genesis is undoubtedly wrong when assuming that God would have created all animal species on Earth according to their kinds, and that He assigned for carnivores the same food as for herbivores.

Carnivores which eat only green plants is a proposition which is as absurd as daylight happening without the sun. Herbivores which became carnivores after Adam and Eve’s Fall or after the Flood by suddenly changing their dietary habits is also an idea which shows that the book of Genesis isn’t inspired by God but is the product of human ignorance. The biological differences between herbivores and carnivores are very important but all this information wasn’t known by the authors of the book of Genesis. Here are more such differences:

“Herbivores have long digestive tracts because it takes a long time to absorb nutrients from the plant material which they eat. They also have a large caecum which helps, along with enzymes, breakdown the plant material and cellulose. Carnivores have shorter digestive tracts as they can obtain nutrients from the meat they consume more quickly. They have a relatively small caecum as their diet only consists of small amounts of plant material. A carnivore’s saliva does not contain digestive enzymes. Herbivores saliva is alkaline, containing carbohydrate digestive enzymes. Stomachs differ greatly between carnivores and herbivores. Carnivores have greatly enlarged stomachs which encompass between 60 and 70 percent of their entire digestive tracts, while herbivores have much smaller stomachs as they generally are required to process smaller amounts of food.”[14]

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 Very important also are the processes which happen in the stomachs of herbivores and carnivores, which differentiate them greatly and make them dependent on a certain kind of food and not another. It is impossible to accept that such different animals would have eaten the same kind of food until the Flood.

God through evolution didn’t create animal species isolated, but all plants and animals are linked in trophic levels or food chains. Each food chain ends with a top predator, an animal with no natural enemies like an alligator, hawk, or polar bear.[15]

God through evolution and contrary to what the book of Genesis affirms would have created an ecosystem in which plants and animals play their role and help each other to survive and not only as parallel series of biological beings. Many living creatures are a source of food for other living creatures, either animals or plants. Without this food chain the survival of so many species would be impossible. All living creatures accomplish a certain role in the process of sustaining the ecosystem. For example, herbivores eat plants and fruits and after that they spread the seeds at a long distance.

Carnivores eat herbivores and in this way they find the nutrition they need. If the herbivores multiply too much through lack of enemies they can create an important imbalance by destroying the vegetation. For this reason God, through nature, also generated carnivores which limit the number of herbivores and ensure the survival of vegetation. The book of Genesis implies that this ecosystem didn’t exist before the Flood, when all animals and also humans ate only plants. This was not a sustainable ecosystem.

For example, if one tries to imagine the herbivore dinosaurs and the huge quantity of plants eaten by them and also their multiplication without limits, one can understand why a limit to their multiplication was necessary. Carnivores kept the number of herbivores under control and allowed the survival of plants, and in this way the continuation of life on Earth. The eating of plants by all animals is nonsense and if one tries to extend that image to fish, birds, and animals of the sea, one can see clearly that this is an absurdity.

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 This is another serious reason the stories of creation from Genesis are unacceptable. They present a world based exclusively on the consumption of plants without trophic levels but such an environment would have been unbalanced and self-destructive. Nature works different than the book of Genesis presents.

“Charles Elton, an Oxford ecologist, first conceptualized food webs in the 1920s, speculating that wolf removal would unleash hordes of deer. These insights gave rise to the 1960s “green world” hypothesis, which held that plants prevail because predators hold herbivores in check. Profound food chain effects — caused by adding or removing top species — are now known as “trophic cascades.” In a classic 1966 experiment, biologist Robert Paine removed the purple seastar, Pisaster ochraceus — a voracious mussel-feeder — from an area of coastline in Washington state. Their predator gone, mussels sprouted like corn in Kansas, crowding out algae, chitons, and limpets, replacing biodiversity with monoculture.”[16]

In the last period of time, more and more data are accumulating only to show how important predators are for the equilibrium of an ecosystem. But Schmitz, who grew up north of Toronto where wolf-hunting was a way of life, thinks the process is underway:

“Piece by piece, it’s taken 20 years to accumulate the evidence, and the culmination is in that Science paper — that the world is driven by predators as well as nutrients. We have to pay attention to their health and well-being if we want a healthy ecosystem. Simply eliminating them because we want more prey or because we don’t think they’re important is very misguided.”[17]

An ecosystem without predators is an absurdity and the Bible clearly maintains this idea when it says that all animals had to eat only vegetation after their creation. Such an idea shows that the writers of the book of Genesis didn’t understand what an ecosystem was and how it functioned.

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 This is not God’s work because the level of knowledge contained by the texts isn’t very advanced but it is really low.

What could have replaced the existence of the ecosystem until the Flood? Because the narratives of creation from the book of Genesis are incredibly naïve and absurd, people have to invent all kinds of scenarios in which God is imagined to intervene in the world in the most incredible ways. For example, someone could say that God replaced the ecosystem by killing a number of herbivore animals systematically. If God had done such a thing He wouldn’t have had any reason to complain about the level of violence in the world before the Flood because that violence would have been committed by Him, not by human beings or by animals.

“12 And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. 13 And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth.” (Genesis 6; 12 NRSV)

The complaint is false in every way. It is false if God created carnivorous animals on the sixth day. It is also false if God needed to systematically kill some herbivorous animals in order to reduce their number because in this case the only one who would have committed violence would have been He.

Without predators nature cannot exist in lack of vegetation. The image of a world in which humankind and animals would have eaten only plants and in which the ecosystem would have been absent is the image of an idealised world which doesn’t have anything to do with the real world. Such an image has to be rejected strongly as authentic history and if anyone thinks that it can be used for a religious purpose in order to indicate a peaceful God who doesn’t like suffering, that is his or her problem. The need for the ecosystem shows clearly that God didn’t create nature in the way described by the book of Genesis, but the world has evolved from less developed biological beings to superior ones. Life took all possible turns trying all possibilities in the process of evolution and in this way a balanced ecosystem on Earth appeared. Top predators are the key to ecosystem survival:

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“Constant predation of the top consumers prevents a population from growing larger than the system can support. Removing a top predator can often alter the gentle balance of an entire ecosystem. Here’s an example of what can happen: When an area floods permanently and creates a series of islands, not all the islands have enough resources to support top predators. Top consumers are left to gobble up nutrients and experience a reproductive boom. The boom is felt throughout the system, though, as the booming species out-competes others, potentially driving the lesser species to extinction and reducing biodiversity.”[18]

The oceans are populated with many predators, which don’t eat green plants, as the book of Genesis maintains. Did God create herbivorous sharks which after the Fall of man became predators? It is not agreed amongst biblical commentators when some animals became predators. Some creationists maintain that animals become predators after the Fall of man, but others, taking into account that before the Flood meat consumption was prohibited, have to admit that predators came only when the consumption of meat was allowed. Again, to endow animals with all characteristics for eating meat but to give them plants as food is nonsense.

How did God create the animal species? It is possible for animal species to change their attributes and become other species? Is in this case God’s creation modified by nature? Does nature co-create new species by changing the kinds established by God? Did God create animals to change or to remain the same? According to the Bible animals were created according with their kinds. What does that mean? Did God create all species of animals on the fifth and sixth day or did new species appear after the end of the creation week? If God created all animals in the creation week and the creation was at its end after the sixth day, as the book of Genesis claims, on what grounds can one maintain that the creation would have continued and new species such as the carnivore ones would have been created after that period of time? The biblical text announces:

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. 2 And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.” (Genesis 2; 1-3 NRSV)

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The narrative of the book of Genesis, concerning the creation of animals, contradicts all empirical observation anyone can make. Did a herbivore lion transform into a carnivore one? If the answer is positive this transformation amounts to the creation of a new kind of animal, but all kinds would have been created in the period of six days of creation. A herbivore lion would be a very different species from the carnivore lion that we know. In point of fact, such a lion would not be a lion at all but some other animal, and if the former was created by God the latter was created by nature therefore the book of Genesis is wrong when describing the creation of all land animals on the sixth day.

Some Christians believe that we can accept modifications in the structure of species or kinds, as the book of Genesis identifies them. The same biblical commentators consider that the so-called fixity of the species, as Darwin perceived the Bible to be saying, is not taught in Scripture. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t even widely taught in the Church before the eighteenth century. Sylvia Baker quoted by Don Steward writes in “Bone of Contention”:

“The idea that species cannot change was certainly not an article of the church before the eighteenth century. It was then considered quite in accord with the Bible to believe that they could change, though not in the direction of greater complexity. It was not until the eighteenth century that the view became widespread that species cannot change, that they are fixed or immutable. The man responsible for promoting it was Linnaeus, who is famous as the first man to introduce systematics to biology. He maintained that species as he had defined them represented the kind of the Bible and therefore could not be changed. This view became widely accepted, insisted on, and carried to absurd limits. (Slyvia Baker, Bone of Contention, Revised edition, Sunnybank, Queensland, Australia, Evangelical Press: 1976, p. 7).”[19]

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There is a big difference between species and varieties inside certain species. There are varieties inside species but a tomato cannot become a watermelon, as John Klotz maintains. It doesn’t matter how many varieties of tomatoes there are, they still remain tomatoes and not something else. Nevertheless, herbivore lions and carnivore lions wouldn’t be two varieties of the same species but two very different species. The idea is that a herbivore lion isn’t a lion but an animal about which we don’t know anything. John Klotz again quoted by Don Stewart comments:

“We also need to recognize that the language of the Bible is the commonsense, everyday language of our newspapers. This language does not change; technical scientific language does change . . . . We may have new species of tomatoes, but they are still the same kind. There may be changes within the species, yet tomatoes have not developed into cantaloupes or watermelons. There may also have been changes within the dog kind, but these have not developed into lions or bears (John Klotz, Studies in Creation, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1985, p. 76).”[20]

The modifications entailed by the transformation of a herbivore animal into a carnivore animal cannot be considered by any standards to be a modification within the same species. Everything is different, from the morphological structure of the animal to its behaviour. To take the example of tomatoes, this time tomatoes will not be tomatoes anymore, but a kind of watermelon. Don Stewart concludes that some modifications within the limit of a species are acceptable by the standards of the Bible but not the evolution of species from one to another:

“Hence, what Darwin discovered was not contradictory to what the Bible has to say about kinds. The Bible teaches “the fixity of the species” in that each biblical kind can only reproduce within certain fixed boundaries. Change within a kind, however, is consistent with biblical teaching. Today, whenever kinds are crossed, the offspring is always sterile. For example, a donkey and a horse produce a sterile mule. A lion crossed with a tiger produces a sterile liger. Charles Darwin saw this problem and wrote in The Origin of Species.”[21]

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Creationists admit changes but not from a biblical kind, to another, but within the limits of a certain kind. Nevertheless, herbivorous and carnivorous animals are different kinds and not varieties of the same ones. Don Stewart extended his conclusion with the following observation:

“The Bible allows for change or variations within plants and animals. Change is evidence for microevolution or selection. What creationists are denying is the existence of any evidence for macroevolution. They reject the procedure of using evidence for microevolution as confirming the theory of macroevolution. Unfortunately, a great many people believe that evidence for microevolution proves macroevolution. This is by no means the case. Furthermore, the Bible limits the amount of change which can happen. Cats cannot mate with dogs, pigs with apes, etc. This limitation is exactly what we find in our world. Hence, the Bible is certainly not unscientific when it says that kinds of plants and animals are limited in the degree in which they can change.”[22]

If this is true it means that the transformation of a herbivorous animal into a carnivore was impossible because they are different kinds. This transformation entails macroevolution at its highest level. By limiting the amount of change that can happen and at the same time maintaining that a fundamental transformation was necessary, given by the way in which animals feed, this shows that the Bible is certainly unscientific. Some commentators contradict the Bible when trying to defend its concepts. The Bible implies that some herbivorous animals would have been transformed into carnivores after the Flood in spite that all kinds of animals would have been created on the sixth day. That means that some kinds of animals would have become other kinds, and also signifies that some kinds of animals such as carnivores wouldn’t have been created by God. This of course questions the entire account of the creation in the Bible.

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This conclusion isn’t similar to the one accepted by very important commentators of the Bible who had an important influence on their generations. The problem isn’t only that the book of Genesis is wrong but also that many apologists of the Bible fundament their dogmatic conclusions on the literal interpretation of the narratives of creation contained by it. John Calvin, the well-known reformer, commented on his notes on Genesis 1; 24:

“I say, moreover, it is sufficient for the purpose of signifying the same thing, (1) that Moses declares animals were created ‘according to their species:’ for this distribution carried with it something stable. It may even hence be inferred, that the offspring of animals was included. For to what purpose do distinct species exist, unless that individuals, by their several kinds, may be multiplied?”[23]

Prior to the Latin Vulgate Basil, a renowned theologian and father of the Church, discussed species as the biblical kind. In the late 1600s Matthew Henry uses species as kinds. He affirmed that there would be no new “species” created after creation week was completed. The point is that species originally meant biblical kinds from the Bible.[24]

Today the discussion is about definitions. What does “a kind” mean? “Kind” means a certain identity beyond which animals cannot change. There are many species of dogs but all of them are dogs, not cats. That what-ness that makes an animal what it is represents a kind. Kinds are different in their essential characteristics. At the same time the morphological traits of herbivores are essentially different from that of carnivores and these biological traits surely signify the particularities of kinds. In other words, herbivorous animals are different kinds than carnivore animals because both have a different identity beyond which animals cannot change.

If God created herbivore lions, which would be understandable if they really had to eat only green plants, He wouldn’t have created carnivore lions, which appeared only late after the creation week. In this case, the facts show us that the creation didn’t end in six days as the book of Genesis says, and many animal species have appeared in existence through evolution if they weren’t the result of God’s creation.

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   This is an argument which validates the theory of evolution against creationism but doesn’t exclude God’s existence. It dismisses the way in which the book of Genesis accounts for the creation of the animal world and strengthens the theory of the evolution of the species as the real explanation of the origin of the nature. Moreover, it is more sensible to believe that herbivores and carnivores evolved together during a long period of time in the context of the ecosystems of the earth than to believe that all animals were once herbivores, both because the latter proposition is contradicted by the findings of sciences and because of the way in which the Bible describes their creation. Sciences discovered that the existence of carnivorous dinosaurs occurred long before the existence of human beings on Earth.

Nevertheless, this observation changes drastically the Christian theology regarding the explanation of death in the world. If we take into consideration that God would have created also all viruses and bacteria within the creation week and before the creation of humankind we can understand that even the source of so many illnesses would be His creation. An earthly Paradise before Adam and Eve’s Fall is an absurdity in the presence of numerous deadly viruses and bacteria.

It would be wrong to cling to a theological explanation which is invalidated both by an analysis of the coherence of the biblical texts and by scientific research, and it is better to modify our theological views regarding the way in which the world came into existence, accepting all rational consequences our findings bring.

The earth would have been a paradise if after their creation all animals including birds ate only green plants and didn’t eat each other. This wasn’t the case and besides many land and marine carnivores, there were many birds on Earth which were also carnivorous:

“There are about 10,000 living species of birds and the cross the spectrum from meat eater to purely plant eater. The carnivores eat only meat, usually small animals and other smaller birds. Species of birds that are carnivores include owls, eagles, hawks and falcons. The omnivores eat both meat and plants, but the meat is more likely to be from small insects and worms. Species of omnivorous birds include, chickens, robins and ostriches.

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The herbivore eats only plants, but for birds this usually means fruits, berries, nuts and seeds. Herbivorous birds include cockatoos, macaws and parakeets. Different bird species have differently shaped beaks because each species has evolved a beak design that suits its diet and lifestyle. Beaks function somewhat as human tools do, and they help the birds to access food. While some birds have beaks suited for a variety of foods, most possess beaks that display some level of specialization. For example, many birds have evolved short, stout beaks for cracking open nuts and seeds.”[25]

Eating meat is a widespread dietary habit, hence is found in plants, marine animals, birds and land animals. The biblical account, according to which there was a time when animals had eaten only plants, is wrong and brings theology to false conclusions.

There are many contradictions in the biblical narratives of creation. The origin of the birds is given in a contradictory way in the book of Genesis:

“20 And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.’ 21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1; 20-21 NRSV)

“19 So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.” (Genesis 2; 19 NRSV)

 Comparing these texts one can see that in the first one the birds came out directly from the air. In the second one in Genesis 2, God formed every bird of the air out of the ground. The manner of creating animals is different between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. In Genesis 1 God said: “Let the waters bring forth” and “Let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky” but in Genesis 2 “out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air”. This is an obvious contradiction. It is not the same story.

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In the first one it was not God directly but the waters and earth, at His command, which produced the animals. In the second one, God formed out of the ground every animal of the field and every bird of the air. There are two different and contradictory stories of creation of animals in the Bible. It is impossible that both were inspired by God. More likely none of them have a divine source.

Were the animals created immortal at the moment of their creation? Did they die because of Adam’s Fall? It is a very unlikely hypothesis. All plants and animals were endowed by God, according to the book of Genesis, with the ability to multiply. If death wasn’t a limit for this multiplication, at a certain moment in time the earth and waters would have been overcrowded by so many plants and animals living forever. Death was a regulator of the excess in multiplication and in fact death is a biological apparatus for evolution also. Without death evolution is not possible, because the new and better adaptations cannot come into place unless they replace the old ones. God would never have created living beings immortal with the ability to multiply in a limited space, as Earth is. Plants were surely not immortal if they were to be eaten by animals. It is not written in the Bible that God created animals to be immortal, so the entrance of death into creation only after Adam and Eve’s Fall is an incorrect doctrine. The following quotation refers to animal mortality:

“It is unknown whether pre-fall immortality affected just humans or all organisms on earth. Animal immortality is argued by some due to the fact that animals were not given as food at the creation. Likewise, God’s own description of the created world was in terms of “very good”, which to many is contradictory to the suffering which frequents death. On the other hand, the possibility of immortal animals is immediately rejected by others because accidental death occurs on a regular basis for many small organisms today. For example insects are killed frequently under foot, or swallowed by accident. However, under examination such distinctions between humans, and other creatures do not hold-up. Accidental deaths are similarly likely for humans as almost any other organism. There may be no generalized scenario that would cause the death of another organism that could not also happen to humans.

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Any natural incident that could kill a bug, could also certainly kill a human. Humans are one of the most environmentally fragile of all organisms on earth, but the exoskeleton possessed by the average insect can handle several hundred times its’ weight, and the fossil record is filled with animals which upon chance contact could crush humans as easily as we do bugs today.”[26]

The book of Genesis doesn’t speak about immortality on Earth before the Fall. The assumption for immortality is based on the kind of food which would have been allocated for human beings and animals, but that information is nonsensical. One reason is the presence of carnivores which had to kill other animals in order to feed themselves. Another reason was the presence of the tree of life as a condition of getting immortality. To that we can add also another reason which is a very reduced lifespan of some insects.

“Despite being prolific, with over two and a half thousand known species scattered across the globe, the Mayfly depends on quantity, rather than quality of life for their survival on earth. These aquatic insects have the shortest lifespan known, with their life expectancy ranging from just a half an hour to one day, depending on their species. In fact, their sole purpose in life is to hatch, and reproduce.”[27]

Living only few hours, some insects would have died naturally before the creation of humankind and their alleged Fall. In this way death would have entered into the creation before Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God, and it wouldn’t have been triggered by the attitude of the human beings.

To the first three arguments invoked already another one pleads also against the existence of immortality at the beginning of creation. Accidental death of insects and other animals would have also been a cause of death before the alleged Fall of man. If we imagine blue whales, when open their mouths they swallow around 220 tons of water in a single full mouth. When they did that before the creation of humankind they surely also swallowed numerous living beings:

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“Blue whales are the largest animals ever known to have lived on Earth. These magnificent marine mammals rule the oceans at up to 100 feet (30 meters) long and upwards of 200 tons (181 metric tons). Their tongues alone can weigh as much as an elephant. Their hearts, as much as an automobile. Blue whales reach these mind-boggling dimensions on a diet composed nearly exclusively of tiny shrimplike animals called krill. During certain times of the year, a single adult blue whale consumes about 4 tons (3.6 metric tons) of krill a day.”[28]

 Can anyone imagine blue whales eating only green plants? Such an image is so absurd that by itself it disqualifies the veracity of the text of the book of Genesis, and also the declaration of the N.T. that death had entered in the world through Adam and Eve’s sins.

Another example can be Spironosaurus:

“Spinosaurus was the biggest of all the carnivorous dinosaurs, larger than Tyrannosaurus and Giganotosaurus. It lived during part of the Cretaceous period, about 112 million to 97 million years ago, roaming the swamps of North Africa… Spinosaurus ate mainly fish and that was deduced not only after its skull but also studying it chemically.”[29]

Spinosaurus’ huge size is a motif to imagine that it could have killed small insects or small animals accidentally only by its movement from one place to another. The same is available for other large animals. Spinosaurus would have done such accidental killings before Adam and Eve’s Fall also. The death in creation before Adam and Eve’s sins changes everything in the Christian theology.

If man wasn’t immortal before the alleged Fall, needing the tree of life in order to become immortal, animals were also mortal. It is absurd to think that humans were mortal but animals were immortal. If humans were mortal, animals were also mortal, and they all needed the tree of life in order to become immortal. Again, the point is that death was not introduced in the creation by human sin as Apostle Paul maintained.

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“12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— 13 sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law.” Romans 5; 12-13 NRSV)

Paul was wrong because God’s creation presupposes death, which is a natural thing. If death is considered to be the payment for sin and God’s creation implies death in its very nature, sin also is in the fabric of things created by God. There isn’t any reason to see the human species that morally decayed following Adam and Eve’s alleged disobedience to God. because those sins never happened and death is a natural thing introduced into the creation by Him, not by humans’ Fall. There isn’t any reason to be ashamed any more that we are human beings with ancestors who were disobedient and consequently they died, because they would have died anyway because they were mortal.

What would have happened if the animals were immortal, and also other forms of life, for example viruses, would have lived forever and at the same time they would have multiplied unbridled? It isn’t clear from the book of Genesis if only human beings would have been called to immortality or all living creatures. If Adam and Eve were obedient to God and if they had lived forever, what would have happened with the other living beings unaffected by the Fall? Let’s us imagine the following scenario. Adam and Eve were obedient to God; death wouldn’t have entered into the creation as Apostle Paul said and all animals would have been immortal also. No reason for God to call the end of the world if humankind were all in accordance with Him. Nevertheless, the earth has a limited extension and if multiplication hadn’t stopped the planet would have been spatially insufficient for so many beings. In the end, God would have needed to impose a ban on multiplication which is strange because the human beings and animals are endowed for multiplication and they were asked by God from the beginning to multiply. The recommendation for the multiplication of biological beings given by God in Genesis chapter 1 and death entering into the creation only after Adam and Eve’s sins, is another contradiction of the book of Genesis, in the context of life on Earth.

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    If by sin we understand violence and destruction, there never was a time on Earth without sins from the moment the first predators appeared on our planet. This apparition was anterior to the creation of humankind, according to the book of Genesis. If by sin we have to understand disobedience to God we have to notice that in reality humankind didn’t appear on Earth through Adam and Eve because they are legendary, not real personages. The first humanoids would have acted according to their nature, being violent and killing prey, which would have assured their survival.

Sin didn’t come into the world through one man and death didn’t come into the world through sin, but death came into the world through God’s creation. Adam and Eve, two mythological personages, never sinned if they never existed on Earth but human beings sinned from their first apparition on Earth because sin is written in human nature. The problem with many Christian doctrines is that their premises are wrong and they cannot be right if their premises aren’t right.

If Paul’s premise was wrong the entire theology based on the principle of death coming as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s Fall must also be defective. At the same time immortality is possible and God can give it to the elect. For the natural world death is natural, it is not a punishment for sin. Immortality is possible through Christ even if the two first human beings, Adam and Eve, never had existed on Earth.

There are biblical texts which refer to the future immortality of the animals.

“19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” (Romans 8; 19-21 NRSV)

That would mean nature would have been created as a kind of paradise, but this image doesn’t correspond to data from reality. For the future, the Bible describes a very idealistic picture about the relationships between animals and that is a sort of comeback to the initial idealised world.

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“6 The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11; 6-9 NRSV)

 The same problem arises. The lion doesn’t eat straw like the ox because it is a predator animal, a carnivore, not a herbivore. It is important because if the text in Isaiah wanted to transmit something it cannot, nevertheless, be taken as the real image of a future reality. This earthly heaven is an idealisation of nature, no more and no less, and this idealisation was used in the book of Genesis also, where it is written that all animals have eaten green plants. If the lion eats straw it is not a lion any more, but a sort of ox. In order to be described as a lion an animal must be a predator, and even if it is raised by man in a zoo or on special farms, the lion will eat meat and no straw. It will be friendlier with humans, accustomed to them, but it will not change its way of feeding. A herbivore lion wouldn’t have any of the features which give identity to the animal which we describe as lion, hence a herbivore lion would be a contradiction.

Another behaviour coming from a natural instinct and which contradicts the paradisiac image of nature before an alleged Fall of humankind is sexual cannibalism. This sexual cannibalism of some animals has nothing to do with the Garden of Eden or with man disobedience; it is a development of nature.

“Sexual cannibalism became a hot topic of debate among biologists in 1984. Scientists from Cornell and the University of Texas at Austin proposed that it evolved because the males of some species could get an evolutionary advantage from being eaten. Their bodies could nourish the mothers of their offspring, raising the odds that those offspring would successfully hatch and grow up to produce their own offspring, thus carrying on the father’s genes.”[30]

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Bees also display carnivorous behaviour and most likely they always did that:

“Bees can be ruthless relatives. Bumblebee queens eat their offspring’s eggs, and honeybee workers make meals of their siblings’ eggs. But this ritual, gruesome by human standards, makes a bee family more productive. Although worker bees are usually unable to mate, as females they can lay unfertilized eggs that emerge as males, if given the chance. The same applies to wasps and ants. But many don’t survive. Workers are prone to eating their siblings’ eggs—an act scientists call “policing”—when their mother queen mates with multiple males. In these species, including the honeybee, most workers are half-sisters, and more related to their brothers (sons of the queen) than nephews (sons of other workers). Half-sisters show no mercy, devouring their nephews.”[31]

This type of behaviour supports a theory by William Hamilton according to which closely related animals cooperate but more distant or unrelated animals tend to be hostile to one another. Genetically, close relatives are considered to be more valuable carrying similar genes.[32]

Who did create this type of behaviour? Was it God or nature? According to the texts of the book of Genesis, God created a paradisiac world in which humankind and animals would have eaten only plants, and that would have determined the avoidance of sufferings in the world. At the same time, nature isn’t structured in that way and never was, and we can see that from the manner in which it functions. The insects which eat eggs as well as the products of plants are not determined to behave like that by humankind, but by their organisation. Even if Adam and Eve had existed on Earth their disobedience to God couldn’t have influenced the comportment of bees.

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At the same time the division of all living beings only into plants and animals, which is made by the book of Genesis, is incomplete. The book of Genesis divides all living beings into plants and animals but there are beings which are neither plants nor animals. Are bacteria plants or animals? This is a question which the following quotation answers well:

“Bacteria are tiny living beings (microorganisms) - they are neither plants nor animals - they belong to a group all by themselves. Bacteria are tiny single-cell microorganisms, usually a few micrometers in length that normally exist together in millions. A gram of soil typically contains about 40 million bacterial cells. A milliliter of fresh water usually holds about one million bacterial cells.”[33]

The description given by the book of Genesis in connection with the creation of animals is extremely simplistic and for this reason lacks any informational value. For example, bacteria aren’t included in the process of creation in any way but their existence isn’t unimportant.

“Bacteria consist of only a single cell, but don’t let their small size and seeming simplicity fool you. They’re an amazingly complex and fascinating group of creatures. Bacteria have been found that can live in temperatures above the boiling point and in cold that would freeze your blood. They “eat” everything from sugar and starch to sunlight, sulfur and iron.”[34]

A suitable classification of living beings includes five or six kingdoms of such beings. In the past, all living things were classified into two kingdoms, plants and animals, but not anymore. The point is that the book of Genesis separated the biological world, beside human beings, into plant and animals. The problem is that some biological entities are neither plants nor animals but the authors of the book of Genesis didn’t know that. There isn’t any indication in the texts of the Bible about things which weren’t known in the common knowledge of that time. The book of Genesis didn’t give us any revelation which discloses the secrets of nature.

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 The real knowledge of nature came through scientific research, not by the revelation of the book of Genesis.

“Animals included every living thing that moved, ate, and grew to a certain size and stopped growing. Plants included every living thing that did not move or eat and that continued to grow throughout life. It became very difficult to group some living things into one or the other, so early in the past century the two kingdoms were expanded into five kingdoms: Protista (the single-celled eukaryotes); Fungi (fungus and related organisms); Plantae (the plants); Animalia (the animals); Monera (the prokaryotes). Many biologists now recognize six distinct kingdoms, dividing Monera into the Eubacteria and Archeobacteria.”[35]

Did God create bad viruses which are responsible for so many diseases? Not having a real solution to this question, many creationists repeat somehow the pattern used in relation to herbivore and carnivore animals. God created good viruses but after Adam and Eve’s Fall viruses became bad, causing diseases which can kill people. Here is an extract from such an opinion, signed by Dr. Jean Lightner:

“Given our current knowledge of viruses, it is quite reasonable to believe that disease-causing viruses are descended from viruses that were once not harmful. It has been suggested that they have played an important role in maintaining life on Earth—somewhat similar to the way bacteria do.”[36]

 There isn’t any reason to believe that all viruses would have been inoffensive at the beginning of their creation and in time they became dangerous. It is true that viruses can mutate and can become extremely dangerous but this information would have been known by God when He created them. The viruses which are supposed in the context of the book of Genesis that would have been created by God, were in any case potentially harmful for humankind.

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It is also true that using the most advanced results of scientific research some viruses can be used as a tool against dangerous bacteria which are hard to cure with antibiotics. Nevertheless, in order for some viruses to become useful for humankind an important scientific effort took place for a long period of time. Only in our days, viruses can be used to do some good, but for millennia they killed countless human beings indiscriminately. Did God create killing viruses with the idea that after thousands of years a very developed human science would use them to destroy bacteria, another biological being created by Him? A positive answer is somehow strange. In my opinion, the existence of viruses wasn’t a moral decision taken by God, it is the product of the evolution of nature.

If God created viruses only as a good thing, how could all viruses have become bad on their own? Viruses were never good and bad, they are a kind of entity which evolves like anything else, and adapts to conditions, but they can be incredibly bad for human lives.

In relation to bacteria, many of them are useful to humankind but not all. That some bacteria and viruses remained good and other bacteria and viruses became bad after Adam and Eve’s Fall is a theory which cannot in any way be validated by reality if it doesn’t present with clarity the criterion on which these differences would have been possible. To use a moral criterion, Adam and Eve’s Fall, for the evolution of viruses and bacteria is nonsensical.

Are the viruses plants or animals? The question is very important because the book of Genesis tells us that God would have created only plants and animals beside human beings as biological entities. But if not God, what could the origin of viruses have been? In the context of the book of Genesis only God could have created viruses because He is the only Creator.

What is bacteria and what is a virus? This quotation explains it in a clear way:

“Bacteria are single-celled, prokaryotic microorganisms that exist in abundance in both living hosts and in all areas of the planet (e.g., soil, water). By their nature, they can be either “good” (beneficial) or “bad” (harmful) for the health of plants, humans, and other animals that come into contact with them. A virus is acellular (has no cell structure) and requires a living host to survive; it causes illness in its host, which causes an immuneresponse. Bacteria are alive, while scientists are not yet sure if viruses are living or nonliving; in general, they are considered to be nonliving.”[37]

It is true that the book of Genesis is not a scientific book but if taken literally is able to distort reality and create a false image of how nature came to be. This is important because human beings are a part of nature, and if one misrepresents human origin one cannot understand many other things about human existence.

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We can only hope that the narratives regarding the apparition of animals on Earth are much more coherent. Let’s check on that also:

“20 And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.’ 21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’ 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. 24 And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.’ And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1; 20-25 NRSV)

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 The text doesn’t account for the animals which live in freshwater but only for the animals from the seas. This is another omission in the description of creation by the book of Genesis. There are also other observations which are solid reasons to reject the idea that these texts are the result of an inspiration from God.

The texts are telling us that God created from the beginning three main branches of land, animals, cattle, creeping things, and wild animals. For the writers of the book of Genesis, it is obvious that cattle were not the same as wild cattle because if they were they would have been included in the same category. At the same time, domesticated cattle were initially the same species as wild cattle. Cattle were in the beginnings wild animals, but in the intention of the author of this text of Genesis, all domesticated cattle, big and small, would have been created already domesticated by God, they wouldn’t have been wild animals submitted to a process of domestication by humankind.

How about domesticated dogs or poultry which are not cattle and which are mentioned under the category of wild animals? Either all domestic animals come from wild animals of the same kinds and had been submitted to a similar process of domestication by man, cattle included, or all domestic animals had been created domesticated from the beginning by God, dogs or poultry as well. This is an inconsistency. There isn’t any reason why some domestic animals would have been created already domesticated and other domestic animals would have been created initially wild. We know that all domestic animals were domesticated from wild animals by man, they weren’t created domestic by God.

The problem is that Genesis says that from all domestic animals existent on Earth God created only cattle to be domestic, all others being domesticated by man. Taking into consideration their utility for human beings, other domestic animals, for example, horses or poultry, were as important as cattle for human life, hence they would have been created domestic by God as well if He had created some animals already domesticated.

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In point of fact, the text refers to domesticated animals which are cattle and to wild cattle as being two separate kinds of animals created by God. Domesticated cattle and wild cattle aren’t two different categories of species of animals; the former derive from the wild cattle by domestication. The Bible is again wrong when it presents the same kinds of animals as being different kinds.

Human beings were destined, from the beginning, to eat plants, vegetables, and fruits, and not products coming from cattle. Why keep cattle if they were not used for human consumption? Cattle need human work and effort in order to be raised. If humans ate only plants this effort was useless. After their creation, human beings were destined to eat only green plants and no  animal products such as milk, eggs, or meat. If big cattle were used only for work and not for food why would small cattle like sheep or goats have been kept knowing that they cannot work? According to the book of Genesis God created all domestic cattle from the beginning, not just ones which could have been used for work. Actually, not God, but man transformed animals through domestication and that was a process guided by the evolution of human societies.

Even if cattle were not used for food, but only for work, the idea that some animals were genetically created as domestic animals and others as wild animals, like different species or categories, is strange. From the point of view of genetics, domestic animals in the same species are identical to wild animals and it is hard to believe that God created some individual animals already domesticated as far as domestication is linked with behaviour induced in animals by humankind. The book of Genesis tells us that God created kinds of domestic animals, but domestication of animals focuses on individuals, not on entire kinds of animals, hence there are wild cattle and also domestic cattle. For every domestic animal a correspondent in a wild animal can be found. Wild cattle are larger members of a scientific grouping that also includes antelope, goats, and sheep.[1]

There wasn’t any reason for God to create domestic sheep in a world where they were purposeless. 

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    Throwing cattle alreadyd omesticated into a wild world even before the creation of humankind probably wasn’t God’s intention, but that would have happened if the story of the creation is exact. Again, we are confronted with a reversed order of creation and that is sheep before sheep keepers. Domestic cattle without human beings to take care of them couldn’t have been a real possibility. We have to take into consideration that the first human beings were placed by God in the Garden of Eden to till the ground and not to be sheep keepers.

Domesticated sheep and goats before the creation of humankind would have been victims of the carnivorous wild animals. If animals were created in pairs being destined to multiply, one pair of all domestic animals would have been eaten by the carnivorous animals created at the same time. Even the principle of creation of animals in pairs maintained by the book of Genesis is senseless, because in such a situation the carnivorous animals would have destroyed the only two existing herbivorous animals of each kind, bringing them to extinction. The same situation is also described after the Flood when two of all kinds of herbivorous animals would have descended from Noah’s ark together with carnivorous animals. Only after the Flood was the consumption of meat allowed by God, according to the book of Genesis. In reality, there always were carnivorous animals which ate meat, if all animals had been created by God as the book of Genesis states.

Did God create cattle only to become the object of sacrifices for religious rituals? In this case animals for sacrifices would have been created even before Adam and Eve’s sins, but sacrifices were set in place in order to redeem sins. Did God know that Adam and Eve would have needed animal sacrifice for the forgiveness of their sins even before their Fall? If cattle which couldn’t have been eaten by humankind before the Flood, and some which couldn’t have been used for work, had been created only for religious sacrifices, God would have known for sure even before the creation of humankind that Adam and Eve would become sinners. Humankind didn’t stand a chance; they were doomed from the beginning to fail. What would that say about God? He had known beforehand that Adam and Eve would disobey Him but He created them in spite of the unending human suffering and death which would have been determined by their unavoidable sins.

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The idea of free will becomes a joke if God knew before the creation of human beings that they surely would fall from grace. The creation for religious sacrifices of sheep and goats before humankind would be a sign that Adam and Eve had been doomed to fail before their creation.

The creation of some animals already domesticated is another contradiction from the book of Genesis. Domestication came through a long process of adaptation of some animals to human activities. Domestication is not genetically born but is a set of characteristics of an animal’s comportment. In other words, biologically, animals don’t separate each other in domestic and wild. They have the same genes if they are from the same species. Domestication is a way of treating and training the animals and is not a natural determination. For domestication two factors are needed and not only one. Those two factors are animals and human beings who care for them. Even a cat or a dog will become wild again, if it is left in the wilderness without the presence of man.

How could some animals already be domesticated, from the beginning of their existence on Earth, in the absence of humans? To me, that is very unlikely because domestic animals, cattle included, need a lot of care and attention from their keepers, but they would have been created before the creation of humankind according to Genesis chapter 1. At the same time it probably was impossible for humankind to take care of all domestic animals on Earth while they were living in the Garden of Eden. A domestic animal which is not cared for becomes wild and this would have been the case of the cattle created by God on the sixth day before the creation of humankind.

In order for the picture to be complete we are informed by the book of Genesis that even if human beings weren’t allowed to eat meat until the Flood they killed animals as an offering to God.

“3 In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.” (Genesis 4; 3-5 NRSV)

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“Fat portions” is an expression which brings about the idea of food. Why did they kill animals if they didn’t eat them? They could kill animals for their skins but wild animals would have been an easier source and they wouldn’t have needed to raise them in numerous flocks. Nevertheless, the text speaks about “fat portions” of the firstlings. Abel offered meat to God and not skin. It is hard to understand why Abel used meat as an offering to God if he didn’t eat meat. If the main product of his flock wasn’t meat but skins, why did he offer meat? What made him believe that God would “consume” meat symbolically if he didn’t do it? What interest could have God found in animal meat, an object which was prohibited for human and animal consumption? Moreover, in the O.T., a part of the flesh of an animal which was sacrificed was usually eaten by the priests. In the N.T. also, Jesus, who was the Lamb of God, symbolically asked His disciples to eat His flesh and to drink His blood. The eating of the meat of the sacrificed animals was a kind of transposition of the sinners in the situation of the animals, but the eating of animal flesh wouldn’t have been permitted before the Flood hence the entire symbolism of the sacrifice was in doubt. It is rather more probable that the sacrifices made by Abel and Cain are pure invention introduced in the texts of the Scripture only after animal sacrifices became usual for the Jewish people.

In the book of Genesis, God appreciated Abel’s offering even if consummation of meat was prohibited at the time and even if He spoke negatively about the violence in the world. This is a contradiction because killing animals would have contributed to a violent world even if those killings had a religious purpose. Even if God didn’t accept violence He was, nevertheless, more open to Abel’s animal sacrifice than to Cain’s non-violent offering. The proper sacrifice would have been the one made by Cain because he would have sacrificed the only product acceptable for food, which was plants.

Only after the Flood were human beings allowed to eat meat, but Abel would have sacrificed an animal before the Flood and offered to God the “fat portions” from it. Abel didn’t see meat as something unclean which must be avoided but as something worthy to be offered to God. In the real world, this doesn’t make sense. Sacrifices were a kind of food for God and He couldn’t “have eaten” a food which was prohibited to humankind if He didn’t want to give a bad example to human beings, in respect to violence and killings.

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“6 Say to the rebellious house,* to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: O house of Israel, let there be an end to all your abominations 7 in admitting foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, to be in my sanctuary, profaning my temple when you offer to me my food, the fat and the blood. You* have broken my covenant with all your abominations.” (Ezekiel 44; 6-7 NRSV)

In Ezekiel God speaks about His food but before the Flood meat was an unacceptable kind of food. How could God have accepted animal meat as food if He didn’t allow it for consumption? The story of Cain and Abel is pure fantasy and probably was demanded by the need of the writers to base the rituals of sacrifices on a much older foundation. In this regard, the book of Genesis contains a contradiction between the prohibition of eating meat before the Flood and bringing meat as a sacrifice to God by Abel.

Another exaggeration of the book of Genesis is the domination of human beings on the animal world. The fear and dread of humans doesn’t rest “on every animal of the earth and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground and on all the fish of the sea”. They weren’t “delivered into the hands” of humans, contrary to what the book of Genesis says. Are lions, leopards, or other land predators fearful of human beings? In the wilderness, they attack humans when they have the occasion to do so. Are sharks fearful of man? The predator animals including sharks use human beings as food when they find the occasion to do that.

“2 The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. 3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.” (Genesis 9; 2-3 NRSV)

Another strange aspect of the creation of animals is the creation by God of abhorrent animals. Those animals wouldn’t have been needed for the completion of an ecosystem because such biological structure doesn’t have any place in the context of the biblical narratives.

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After all, in the book of Genesis all animals would have been herbivores. This is the biblical text:

3 You shall not eat any abhorrent thing. 4 These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, 5 the deer, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and the mountain-sheep. 6 Any animal that divides the hoof and has the hoof cloven in two, and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat. 7 Yet of those that chew the cud or have the hoof cloven you shall not eat these: the camel, the hare, and the rock-badger, because they chew the cud but do not divide the hoof; they are unclean for you. 8 And the pig, because it divides the hoof but does not chew the cud, is unclean for you. You shall not eat their meat, and you shall not touch their carcasses. (Deuteronomy 14; 3-8 NRSV)

Why did God create things which are abhorrent? It is much more understandable to believe that they were not created directly by God, but they are a by-product of the evolution of nature. The contradiction is that God said all that He created was good, but in Deuteronomy some animals created by Him are considered to be abhorrent things.

According to the book of Genesis the first shepherd on Earth was Abel:

“2 Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground.” (Genesis 4: 2 NRSV)

In many versions of the Bible cattle is translated as livestock. For example, in the New International Version, New Living Translation, English Standard Version, Holman Christian Standard Bible, International Standard Version, and World English Bible, we find this understanding. At the same time, sheep and other cattle needed a shepherd; they couldn’t be without human guidance. At least 18 years had to pass before the domestic animals would have got a shepherd, until Abel would have been able to take care of them. Domestic animals, the cattle without shepherds, cannot be a correct statement because they were domesticated to be under the supervision of human beings. If no humans took care of domestic animals they would become wild, taking care of themselves, and only then if they hadn’t been entirely destroyed by predators.

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   Abel would have had to domesticate some animals again in order to become a shepherd, if all domestic cattle created by God weren’t alive any more. In this way, the creation of cattle by God would have been purposeless if this narrative was real.

Why would the work division between cultivators of land and shepherds have become necessary immediately after Adam’s Fall? Abel was a bachelor, having as a family his father, mother, and brother. He didn’t need an entire flock only for his clothes and his family garments. Cain had to work the land but Abel raised animals. Abel couldn’t have given animals for work to Cain because he raised sheep, not big cattle, as he was a shepherd. In that particular context sheep were useful only for skin but what happened to their meat after the killing? Abel offered some of their meat to God. He would have thrown the rest of the meat at the bin. He had offered to God what he normally threw in the bin. How many skins were needed for the garments of five people? Not enough to justify the keeping of a herd of animals. The proportion between the very small population on Earth at that time and the need for keeping a herd of animals in order to respond to the needs of that small population is not right.

Would it be reasonable to believe that Abel and Cain were separated by their occupations in two main divisions of human activities instead of working as a family together with their father and mother, taking care of their entire work? Humans always associated in groups – they didn’t work and live as isolated individuals. If they were working as a group there isn’t enough grounds to believe that Abel and Cain would have initiated the first big division of work of humankind as the book of Genesis seems to declare. Those divisions started when entire families would have become dedicated to one activity more than to another. In one small family of four or so people the presence of two branches of human activities, well defined therefore relatively separated, with only one member of the family to be responsible for it, is something illogical.

The book of Genesis tells us that all animals had been destined to eat vegetation, but we know that some animals are predators, they eat only meat. From the way in which animals are constructed we can see that some of them are built to be predators and others are structured to defend themselves from such predators.

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    For example, were hedgehogs created by God? If the answer is yes, why did He create them with the potential to defend themselves against other animals if at the moment of their creation there wouldn’t have been any danger for them from predators because all animals were herbivores? If all animals were assigned for vegetal consumption what animal would have been interested in attacking a hedgehog as prey? No human would have attacked them either. No vegetarian animals would have eaten hedgehogs. However, hedgehogs are prepared to face a predator attack just because in the real world predators were always present. In the world of herbivores, described by the book of Genesis, such a natural protection wasn’t needed therefore wouldn’t have been created by God. If God had created the hedgehogs as they are He did that knowing that the created world contained predators from the beginning.

“Large owls, including the Eurasian eagle owl, commonly feed on hedgehogs. Several members of the Canidae family, including wild and domestic dogs, foxes, and jackals, may attack and eat a hedgehog. Indian gray mongooses are known predators of at least one species of hedgehog, the Indian hedgehog. Mustelidae, the family that includes ferrets and weasels, are known predators of hedgehogs.”[2]

Even if hedgehogs have such armour they often fall prey to many predators, but nevertheless they can protect themselves against others. There wasn’t any reason for God to create such sophisticated defence for so many animals if no predators could attack them and eat them. There are many defence systems against predators which tell us that such predators did always exist.

“Throughout millions of years of evolution, animals have evolved numerous ways of defending themselves against predators. Obviously, being able to flee a predator is the choice of many prey animals we can consider. However, there are some often overlooked but interesting methods of defense which involve deception and chemistry. These include using toxic chemicals, camouflage and mimicry.”[3]

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This protection is real and can have only two causes. Either they were created by God or by nature through evolution. Which is more likely? If God had allocated only the green plants as animal food until Noah’s Flood, theoretically there shouldn’t have been predators from the moment of creation until the Flood. If there were no predators no mechanisms against predators were needed. Notwithstanding, these mechanisms exist, which means that either God created animals with them and the Bible is wrong about the nature of food allocated to all animals and human beings, or they were not created by God but by nature.

Evolution tells us that predators evolved at the same time as herbivores and in connection with one another. Taking that into consideration one should notice that creationism doesn’t have a good answer for why the animals were equipped against predators, despite a lack of this kind of animal. The mechanisms of defence against predators are not only small adaptations to the environment, but they are involved in the structural constitutions of the animals concerned, defining what kinds of animals they are.

The reference to predators or carnivores includes plants, birds, land animals and marine animals. Who created them if all animals had to eat only green plants from the moment of their creation until the Flood, according to the book of Genesis? This is a big contradiction of the Bible. God would have created predators but would have allotted them vegetation as food. If God didn’t create predators but they evolved from herbivores after the Flood, that means new species were created through evolution, other than ones that were created by God.

Creation of animals had been done by God within the limits of kinds or species. However, an animal which is structured as herbivore, if it is transformed into a carnivore it becomes a member of a new species. Either God created all species of land animals on the sixth day as they are today, or many species evolved from what God created that day and became other species. If they evolved to be other species nature is also a creator beside God the Creator. Regarding animals’ existence on Earth, creation without evolution doesn’t make any sense.

The biological differences between herbivores and carnivores are huge. 

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    The dentition, the form of the maxillaries, the stomach, the size of the body, the whole structure is adapted, in the case of herbivores, in order to allow them to eat vegetation, and the same is also valid for carnivores, which eat meat. In spite of that, the narrative concerning the creation of animals, from Genesis, affirms that God created all animals to eat vegetation, and not meat, but this cannot be right, because today we have carnivore animals, which don’t eat vegetation, and on the other hand we have on Earth herbivorous animals which are not endowed to eat meat, so they cannot become carnivorous.

Even if sometimes herbivorous animals can accidentally eat a small quantity of meat, this cannot be their main source of nutrition and the differences between them and carnivorous animals remain determinant. Some herbivores can occasionally eat insects or carcases of death animals but this doesn’t change their main way of feeding. Herbivores aren’t endowed for the killing of other animals. The most important difference between herbivores and carnivores is that they occupy different places in the food chains; the former are prey and the latter are predators. There are also omnivore animals, which eat plants and meat as well, but the problem in relation with the book of Genesis is mainly the existence of the predators commencing in the sixth day of the creation.[4]

In the sea and on land God created animals which can be described as monsters or beasts:

“21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1; 21 NRSV)

“25 God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1; 25 NRSV)

This kind of description is contradictory from the point of view of feeding only on plants, food ascribed to all animals immediately after their creation. 

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    Sea monsters don’t eat green plants. Blue whales eat mostly krill. Fin whales eat krill, copepods, squid, and a variety of small schooling fish. Humpback whales, Bryde’s whales, and Minke whales prey mostly on krill and small schooling fish. Sharks, another kind of marine monster, surely don’t eat green plants. Sharks primarily feed on smaller fish but some species prey upon seals, sea lions, and other marine mammals.[5] When God had created animals He ascribed them plants for food. Why would He have endowed some animals with the biological characteristics specific for eating plants and other animals with some very different characteristics proper for meat consumption, if from the creation until the Flood all animals ate vegetation? It is not important when the switch from eating plants to eating meat was really made, because in any case for a long period of time all animals ate plants according to the book of Genesis. The biblical text maintains that the licence for eating meat was done after the Flood. Before the Flood lions, panthers, wolves, hyenas, sharks and many other predators were condemned to eat green plants which was different to the kind of food for which they had been built.

Why would God have created two very different kinds of animals, knowing that for a rather long period of time all had to eat only vegetation? Why wouldn’t He have created only herbivores if He allocated only green plants as food for animals? Did God count on evolution of the species to such a degree that He planned for some herbivores to become carnivores? How and when was the switch made? Let’s consider for a moment that only after the Flood consumption of animal meat was allowed as the book of Genesis says. All animals were herbivores until the Flood. After the Flood, some herbivores would have evolved from what they were to develop strong jaws, another type of stomach and so on. Such an evolution, if possible, would have taken many millions of years. Let’s imagine that from a deer, through evolution emerged a hyena. It is very unlikely. The hyena has its ancestors in other similar animals, extinct in our days, but not necessarily in some herbivorous animals. In any case, the hyena is different to any herbivorous animal. If we believe that all vegetation would have disappeared after the Flood then all animals would have had to become carnivores, not only a number of them.

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If it is true that God finished His creation in six days, He would have created herbivores and carnivores from the beginning if He created animals according to their kinds. Herbivores and carnivores are two very different kinds of animals; they don’t switch suddenly from one to the other. If He created only herbivores but some of them became carnivores, through a process of transformation, after the Flood, this implies a profound and complex evolution. Six thousand years of animal evolution, even less if we consider the Flood, cannot explain such a transformation. Either God didn’t create animals according to their kinds as they are today and many of them are the product of evolution, or He created carnivores on the sixth day, giving them vegetation to eat, but that is absurd. Rather God created herbivores and carnivores from the beginnings through evolution and the book of Genesis is wrong in asserting that all animals were created at the same time on the sixth day and all ate green plants for a while. Evolution of species took a long period of time and wasn’t restricted to the time allocated by the book of Genesis for the creation of animals.

To eat only vegetation, for carnivores is impossible. They are not adapted for this way of feeding, for rumination of the cud, food regurgitated from the first stomach to the mouth and chewed again. The entire body structure of carnivores is constructed in such a way as to enable them to be predators, but such predators cannot feed with plants as their main food. There isn’t any rational reason why God would have created carnivores on the sixth day if they had to eat only vegetation. God created all animals after their kind and a kind means there are some important characteristics which give to a certain species its identity. Predators eat mainly meat and that is a radical difference from herbivores which eat plants.

Carnivores don’t come directly from herbivores which would have preyed on other animals after the Flood, because herbivores don’t prey on other animals. Were the plants scarce after the Flood? Even so, herbivores couldn’t hunt, kill, and eat another animal because they weren’t equipped with the biological tools for this purpose. The predators, according to the book of Genesis, ate meat immediately after the Flood and not only after a very long period of time – hundreds of thousands of years. God, as the book of Genesis presupposes, had created from the beginning, herbivores and carnivores, when He created every species with their own characteristics on the sixth day of creation.

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 Small adaptations would probably be accepted by the creationists but not a profound structural modification of the animal.

Let’s say for the moment that all animals were herbivores until the Flood as their allotted food required them to be. What happened after that event? Who “told” animals that they must eat meat? What particular reason pushed the animals to quit vegetation as a food and to start eating meat? We know from the book of Genesis that after the Flood, humans were allowed to eat meat; was this authorisation given for the animals too? How was this authorisation transmitted to them and in what way would it have become effective if genetically there wasn’t any change? Is it possible that so many animals became predators after the Flood, following a decree from God? That change would have equated with a new creation similar to the one from the sixth day. The animals obviously don’t have consciousness and it is impossible that animal species would have been persuaded by God to change their behaviour. God has difficulties in convincing human beings to change their comportment but convincing an animal to change its alimentary habits would have been impossible. Other mechanisms would have been needed and the real engine for change couldn’t have been other than evolution.

How could a herbivorous animal be transformed into a carnivore overnight, without changing its whole body structure? The Bible doesn’t tell us that God recreated animals after the Flood, or that He created new animals. This possibility seems to be unrealistic, in the context of the Bible, and that is true because according to its texts the creation was completely finished in six days. Panthers and hyenas weren’t made after the Flood, but during the sixth day of creation. God could have miraculously changed entire species and could have transformed them into carnivorous animals, but that would have meant a new creation of the animal regnum about which the Bible doesn’t say anything at all, and which is unacceptable in the light of Genesis chapter 1. In the chapter 1 of the Bible it is written that God finished His creation on the sixth day and no other period of time is given for another creation in the biblical texts.

Someone could say that God did His creation in six days and after that, evolution took over and modified this creation in ways completely driven by nature. 

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   This combination between creationism and evolutionism doesn’t legitimise either of the two and increases the degree of ambiguity about the origins of animals on Earth. It was either creation or evolution in the Darwinian sense but if evolution took over God’s creation and modified it radically His declaration that the creation was very good doesn’t make any sense.

There are nevertheless some opinions that carnivores existed before the Flood. The following quote expresses such an idea:

 

“Actually, there is a hint in the Bible that there was pre-Flood carnivory, although I won’t be dogmatic about it. That is, when Cain was enraged that God (YHWH) rejected his sacrifice, God counseled him that “sin is crouching at the door” (Genesis 4: 7b). God pictures sin as ‘crouching’, but this means ‘ready to spring forth’. The same imagery is used in Genesis 49: 9, “he crouched as a lion”. Indeed, in Genesis 4: 7, the verb rōbets (רבץ) is masculine to agree with the implied wild beast, not feminine to agree with ‘sin’. So sin is like a lion waiting to pounce on Cain and consume him. Such imagery could indicate that animal predation had already started by this time. This time could be a little under 130 years after Creation—Eve regarded Seth as God’s replacement for Abel murdered by Cain (Genesis 4: 25), and Seth was born when Adam (and Eve) was 130 (Genesis 5: 3).”[6]

In this view, the book of Genesis offers some hints that shortly after the creation certain animals were already predators. If such is the case, this is an argument to support the idea that God had created the predators from the beginning because it would have been impossible for some species to evolve radically in such a short period of time. If God created the predators and if He created the animals before the creation of humans, as the book of Genesis says, death entered into creation before Adam and Eve’s Fall and without any connection to that. Death is the natural creation of God and has nothing to do with Adam and Eve’s disobedience. One can safely maintain that death wasn’t triggered by the Fall of man, but death and suffering were on Earth from the moment of creation. The inconsistency within the biblical text is obvious. It is impossible to harmonise the existence of carnivorous animals before the Flood with the kind of food that the book of Genesis says God had ascribed to all animals, and that was green plants. Here we have the biblical texts:

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“29 God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. 31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” (Genesis 1; 29-31 NRSV)

 What food was ascribed for the fish and other marine animals, according to the texts? To every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air God had given as food every green plant. How about the sharks or marine lions? Did they also eat green plants? How easily do they find such plants in the water? The following quotation gives an answer:

“Sea Lions are carnivorous which means that they love to consume meat. The main source of food for Sea Lions is fish and a very large amount of it! There are several types of fish that they will eat including herring, mackerel, pompano, salmon, and capelin. What they will have access to depend on where they live. They also enjoy consuming squid that is often found in the water. They are able to survive well in the water because they aren’t really picky about what they consume as long as it is plentiful and it contains meat.”[7]

Sea lions never ate green plants. How about other fish and aquatic living creatures? Did they all eat green plants? It is obvious that something like that didn’t happen. Carnivorous fish ate other fish and most sharks and other marine predators also ate the flesh of other aquatic creatures. This isn’t a minor adaptation to their environment; this is the way in which they are built. All sharks, according to the book of Genesis, would have eaten green plants until the Flood and after that when meat consumption was allowed most of them became predators, with exactly the same body structure. 

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    This is pure fantasy because nature doesn’t work like that. Having the same kind of teeth, made for tearing flesh and not for eating green plants, sharks always ate the same kind of food, for which they were biologically fit.

To maintain that Adam and Eve’s disobedience brought death into the creation is false and shows that the story of Adam and Eve is only a myth and not a real fact. Before the creation of the Garden of Eden death was on Earth, generated by God’s creation, through nature, and not by human fault. This is God’s world, a reality in which death was a usual phenomenon and was not a cause of some mistakes made by humankind. In point of fact, even the eating of fruits means death and destruction for those particular vegetal elements. It is not an animal death but the idea is the same, the consumption of living creatures by other living creatures. To maintain that there was consumption of fruits before Adam and Eve’s Fall but not biological death is a naivety and a contradiction in terms. Green plants were also alive before being eaten by herbivorous and carnivorous plants and animals ate meat.

How about the animals, were they really good as the book of Genesis says that God would have declared? They were not, because some of them were carnivores, but they were asked to eat vegetation and that means that they would have been built in an unsuitable way for their living conditions. Either God wrongfully created some animals to be carnivores and asked them to eat plants, or some herbivorous animals transformed themselves for unknown reasons after Adam and Eve’s Fall or after the Flood, and became carnivores. The most realistic probability is that God didn’t directly create herbivores or carnivores but they emerged in parallel through the evolution of nature.

We ought to ask if radical evolution of created entities such as animals is possible in the biblical vision. What is the authentic relation between creation and evolution? Could species created by God have evolved in such a way that they would have become other animal species? What is the limit of the adaptation of animals to the environment? One limit is the sudden modification of an animal from herbivore to carnivore or the other way around, a phenomenon entailed by the book of Genesis when it describes a dietary change after the Flood.

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The Bible doesn’t speak about evolution of the species in numerous generations; it was about some animals, which being structured to eat plants started to eat meat after the Flood. As a general rule an individual animal won’t radically change his feeding habits in a short period of time. A dog can eat a bit of grass sometimes as a medicine for the wellbeing of his stomach, but the same dog won’t systematically exchange meat for grass even if he is starving.

When did some herbivores become carnivores, after Adam and Eve’s Fall or after the Flood? Adam and Eve’s Fall wouldn’t have had anything to do with dietary behaviour of animals in spite of what many commentators maintain for theological reasons. In the book of Genesis, the moment in which a change in dietary habits appeared would have been the aftermath of the Flood. The idea that Adam and Eve’s Fall would have had anything to do with meat consumption doesn’t have any biblical support. If meat consumption was related to Adam and Eve’s Fall the approval for it would have been given immediately after their Fall and not after the Flood.

In the Christian teachings is well established the principle that death entered into creation after the failure of first human beings. Nevertheless, if God had created animals according to their kinds He had also created carnivorous animals which are differentiated by important characteristics from herbivorous animals. Those carnivorous animals would have eaten meat before the creation of humankind because they had been created previous to human beings and they couldn’t wait to feed only after Adam and Eve’s Fall.

Animals ate according with their biological structure generated by their natural evolution. A universal Flood, if it was an historical reality, would have determined an ecological disaster, but it is only a legend and nothing has happened after the imaginary Flood. Nevertheless, even a universal Flood cannot explain the sudden transformation of some herbivores into carnivores. In my opinion herbivores and carnivores evolved in parallel in the context of the continuous balancing of the ecosystem. If God had directly created all species of animals of every kind, He made herbivores and carnivores as different kinds of animals and from the moment of their creation carnivores started to eat animal flesh.

There are also some opinions which maintain that in the Bible there are arguments which favour the idea that God created carnivores on the sixth day. The following quotation will present succinctly this opinion:

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“The book of Genesis describes the order of creation and the kind of creatures that God created. Many young earth creationists believe that God did not create carnivores, but that some animals evolved or mutated to become carnivorous after the fall of man. Genetically, this is impossible, and if God somehow caused it to happen, it is never mentioned in the Bible. God created at least some of the carnivores on the sixth day. Here is the relevant passage: Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts [chayah] of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. And God made the beasts [chayah] of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1: 24-25)”[8]

 The author of this comment uses the Hebrew word chayah in order to demonstrate that the Bible says that God would have created carnivore animals on the sixth day of creation. This word is used in the biblical texts most often to indicate animals which eat flesh:

“We can examine how the Hebrew word (chayah) is used in the rest of the Bible…… An examination of the Hebrew word chayah indicates that in the vast majority of uses, the word refers to animals that eat flesh. It seems likely that the creation account of Genesis is referring specifically to the carnivores, especially since a prominent herbivore (cattle) is specifically mentioned in the same verse. If chayah were meant to refer to herbivores, cattle could be left out, since they would be included in the chayah term.”[9]

 If God had created carnivores, He brought animal death into His creation before the creation of man. Death was in creation before Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God so the idea that Adam and Eve had to die because they sinned doesn’t have any support. Adam didn’t die because he had sinned but because he was mortal; death wasn’t a punishment for human disobedience to God but a natural thing for man who was created from dust.

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Adam and Eve’s mortality, in the context of the book of Genesis is proven by the reference to the tree of life. An immortal being wouldn’t have needed the tree of life in order to get immortality. Their punishment wasn’t their death but the interdiction of access to the tree of life which would have offered them the eternal life. It is not the same to say that one will die following his or her disobedience or to say that because he or she was disobedient he or she will not live forever. Death isn’t a punishment but a natural thing. This is another theology closer to the biblical account.

Adam and Eve didn’t die following their disobedience to God, they were only prevented from living forever in the Garden of Eden. They didn’t die the day they disobeyed God, neither physically or spiritually; they were not allowed to eat from the tree of life and live eternally. When would Adam and Eve have needed to eat from the tree of life in order to live forever, if they hadn’t disobeyed God? After a certain period of time, unspecified by the Bible, Adam and Eve would have needed to eat from the tree of life even if they had obeyed God’s command not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Because of their sins they were condemned to live a mortal existence on Earth in conformity with their created nature.

God had created the world with death in it and death would have been present in the creation even if Adam and Eve had been obedient to Him. The presence of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden is an argument for this conclusion.

God created an evolving world. The natural world had its own evolution before the emergence of human beings on Earth. Herbivores and carnivores were the kinds of animals which emerged through evolution before the apparition of human beings.

Accepting for the sake of demonstration that the Flood was real, we may ask if after the Flood there would have been a shortage of vegetation. What was the cause which pushed herbivores to become carnivores? Why didn’t all herbivores become carnivores if the vegetation had grown extremely scarce? If the Flood had been real all vegetation found under water for several months would have disappeared because under water the light doesn’t go too far and photosynthesis cannot be realised. If it was such a drastic shortage of vegetation why weren’t all animals transformed into carnivores?

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     How did large herbivores like some dinosaurs still find plants if the shortage was that dramatic? The continuity in the existence of so many large herbivores contradicts the idea of the reality of the Flood because after the Deluge most vegetation if not all would have disappeared from Earth with a lack of suitable conditions for photosynthesis under deep waters.

What was the criterion of differentiation between herbivores which wouldn’t have been transformed into carnivores, and animals which would have become carnivores after the Flood? No such criterion could have been in place if all animals had eaten green plants before the Flood. In reality herbivores and carnivores were generated by nature following a very long process of evolution and selection and they were integrated in a large system in which both of them had and still have a function to accomplish.

From the camp of young earth creationists comes the naive opinion that carnivores are as a matter of fact herbivores which changed their behaviour. Daniel Criswell, Ph. D writes:

“Although the origin of predation is poorly understood, it is incorrect to attribute to young-earth creation the assertion that predatory animals quickly and recently evolved the physical features necessary for predation. It is a common fallacy that carnivores evolved from a change in form and function. No physical evolution was required to change herbivores to predators--it was merely a change in behavior.”[10]

The author of the text considers that a change in animal behaviour was enough to explain the important differences between the morphological structures of herbivores and carnivores. If only the behaviour is responsible for the differentiation between herbivores and carnivores, what would have triggered the change in behaviour? Was it an alleged scarceness in vegetation? Such a dilution had to affect all animals and not just some. Following a drastic reduction in vegetation all animals had to become carnivores, changing their behaviour, but they didn’t because they couldn’t. The differences between herbivores and carnivores are profound and determined by their biological structure, and their behaviour is influenced by these structural characteristics.

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Omnivorous animals can use their canine teeth either for tearing apart the flesh of another animal or the flesh of a fruit. At the same time, there are carnivores which don’t eat fruits. Lions, for example, will not replace a meal of meat with some apples, even if they are on the brink of starvation. In the wilderness lions’ behaviour can be carefully observed. Do they replace meat with vegetation when they are really hungry? They don’t. Lions and some felines do feed on grass, to clear out their system (vomit), but grass doesn’t get digested properly (which is why they vomit), since they have a carnivorous digestive tract. To digest plants, animals need to have a longer digestive tract, opposite to those which digest meat. The following quotation explains:

“Lions can’t eat fruits and vegetables. It is due to several reasons. 1: Eating is instinct behaviour which is predetermined by genes. If you try to feed fruits to one day old lion, it would not eat fruits. 2: Teeth of lion are built in such a way that it can’t eat grasses and vegetation. Lion’s teeth are pointed to capture and kill prey, they can’t crush vegetation. 3: Stomach of lion is unable to digest cellulose which is present in plants. For digestion of plants cattle have symbiotic organisms in stomach which are absent in lion. 4: Intestine of lion is too small to digest cellulose of plants, herbivores have much longer intestine.”[11]

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 [1]  animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/wild-cattle

 

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