Verse 7 shows God’s taxonomic
classification; flying creatures, domesticated, wild, and man. Man’s connection
to the other animals is through these living creatures. All creatures were made after their kind as it
says in Genesis.
Genesis 1:21 And God created
great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought
forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and
God saw that it was good…25 And God made
the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every
thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was
good.
Genesis 6:20 Of fowls after
their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the
earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them
alive.
Genesis 7:14 They, and every
beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping
thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his
kind, every bird of every sort.
Obviously,
this is a very general classification and has nothing to do with the dozens of species that Darwin and modern
scientists use to classify different living creatures. Much is made by the creationist minded and the fundamentalist about the
phrase after their kind in Genesis 1:21,25;
6:20; & 7:14. The word kind
contrary to what is said often, does not refer to an individual species, whichever
of the many definitions of species you use[1],
whether it be a local, isolated group of finches or something like the,
“breed,” of Animal Husbandry’s dog breeding. (Although there are significant
differences between breed and species they are also not from the same
disciplines so the issue is basically one about definition of terms that refer
to similar but not identical things.)
One of the things Charles Darwin was against
was the popularly preached by clerics and many pre-Darwin biologists view that
every species of animal that existed in his day was said to have come down from
an original ancestor just like them in a doctrine called, “the immutability of
species.” If there are a hundred species of a type of bird today then those
species would have existed back to Noah’s Ark, goes the idea. This is, of
course, absurd as mankind created many breeds of dogs in the last two hundred years
alone. If you regarded a breed and a species as having similar meanings but
under different types of scientific disciplines, Zoology versus Animal
Husbandry, then you can imagine speciation, the process where different breeds
or species of dogs, cats, horses, or birds came about taking place rather
quickly in history.
But
the word kind doesn’t mean species at
all. It is more like a general type of creature. Many species of cats came from
the first cat creatures on Noah’s Ark. The problem with evolution is that the
cat never became a dog, the pea never became a chrysanthemum, and an ape-like
creature never became a man. There is no evidence of such a thing occurring
without twisting the evidence into knots and the whole popularly understood
concept of evolution in that regard, called macroevolution, is a fairy tale for
atheists and in complete opposition to the Bible and reality.
Modern taxonomic classifications of living
things are purely man-made and are totally subjective to what man chooses to
include as a characteristic of the creature being named. God classifies animals
differently based on characteristics that would be understood by men without
microscopes. For instance, fowls fly, so the bat is a fowl in Leviticus 11:19
and Deuteronomy 14:18 and the Hebrew could not eat fowl with certain
characteristics. The words reptile and mammal were classifications created by
man for his own convenience and study. The Bible speaks of beasts of the field domestic animals, and beasts of the forest wild animals. It speaks about animals in the
way of their usefulness generally to agricultural man or military man, not
their peculiarities to the curious, modern man. Trying to force man’s
definitions of everything from beasts to sin on the Bible’s definitions is
futile and arrogant. When you argue allowing your opponent to control the
definitions of words you are surrendering all leverage to them. Finally, a
whale is a large creature that swims in the sea and therefore can be called a
great fish, because fish are creatures that swim in the sea. Compare Jonah 1:17
and Matthew 12:40. The order, Cetacea, for whales, is not a concern of the
Bible. A whale simply signifies a Leviathan, a large creature which, like all
creatures, came first from the sea and then other creatures from the earth.
(Genesis 1:20-24) Human taxonomic classifications are different language for a
different purpose.
Don’t read your own definitions, preferences,
or opinions any more than your own personal fears, hatreds, or bigotry back
into the Bible.
[1] John
S. Wilkins, “A List of 26 Species “Concepts”, Science Blogs: Evolving Thoughts, http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2006/10/01/a-list-of-26-species-concepts/ (accessed 1.14.2015).
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