46. How did marsupials migrate from Noah’s Ark to Australia and the Americas?

Marsupials are very similar to placental mammals, but differ in how they reproduce. Most marsupials lack a placenta, so they are unable to feed their offspring in the womb. Instead, after only a few days of gestation, their young must crawl out of the womb to feed from a nipple inside the mother’s pouch. (Thank god we humans don’t give birth this way, I can’t imagine any woman would want baby fetuses crawling out of her nether regions. Creepy. Although… come to think of it… the current method really isn’t all that great, either.)

What’s also intriguing about marsupials is where they’re located. There are 334 known species of marsupials; 70% live in and around Australia, 28% live in South America, and 2% live in Central and North America.

But looking at the map below, we can see that marsupials make their homes about as far away as you can possibly get from the Middle East, where Noah’s Ark would’ve settled. 

What’s also interesting is that there are no truly native placental mammals in Australia. How did all these marsupials manage to pull off such a long and segregated migration? Secular science and Creationists offer two very different explanations, let’s take a look at both.

The Secular View

Fossil evidence suggests that the earliest marsupials originated in China and then became quite common in North America (even outnumbering mammals, for a time). As their numbers dwindled in North America, they began to thrive in South America. Most of the marsupials that remain in the Americas today are from the opossum family (didelphidae).

Scientists say that millions of years ago, our earth was a very different place. Back then, Australia was connected to South America by way of Antarctica. Scientists theorized that a small number of marsupials must’ve found their way from South America, across Antarctica, and up into Australia. The eventual discovery of marsupial bones in Antarctica all but confirmed this suspicion. 

For years and years people thought marsupials had to be there, this ties together all the suppositions made about Antarctica. The things we found are what you’d expect we would have.
~ Dr. William J. Zinsmeister, Paleontologist at Ohio State University’s Institute of Polar Studies

More recent evidence from retroposon markers in DNA also suggests that all Australian marsupials descended from South American ancestry.

Other plant and animal fossils found in Antarctica match up with those found in Australia and South America, strongly suggesting that not only were these continents once connected, but that Antarctica once enjoyed a much warmer, tropical climate. 

Roughly 35-50 million years ago, Antarctica wished Australia “bon voyage” and it slowly drifted away toward the equator. The Australian rain forests gave way to extensive grasslands, and the marsupial stowaways spent the next few million years in isolation, learning to survive in the new ecological niches that Australia offered. 

Most palaeontologists agree that Metatheria originated in Asia, diversified throughout the northern continents, dispersed into Gondwana (the modern Southern Hemisphere) around the beginning of the Palaeocene epoch (65 million years ago), then moved through Antarctica to Australia before the Australian continent was isolated by the opening of Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica.
~Bennett, Verity. 2012. Fossil Focus: Marsupial evolution – A limited story? Palaeontology Online, Volume 2, Article 10, 1-9

Today there are far more species of marsupials in Australia than in South America, and it’s believed that this is due to changing environments and a lack of competition from other mammals.

The Creationist View

Creationists have a largely different view. They believe a global flood wiped out all mammals except for those aboard Noah’s ark.

While Creationists believe the landscape of the earth may have changed dramatically during the flood, most don’t believe that the earth has changed much since then. This means marsupials would’ve had to cross multiple bodies of water in order to reach Australia and South America. To bridge these gaps, Creationists suggest an ice-age occurred soon after the flood.

This ice age lowered sea levels and could’ve created a land bridge between Asia and Australia. To the north, another land bridge may have crossed the Bearing Strait (between Russia and Alaska), allowing for some marsupials to cross over the frozen landscape (hopefully without becoming tiny, frozen, “marsupcicles” in the process).

To explain the complete absence of placental mammals in Australia, creationists speculate that because marsupials can carry their young, this allowed them to outpace all placental mammals. All Australian marsupials crossed the land bridge before rising waters (and possible earthquakes) caused the land bridge to disappear forever.

When a marsupial has its young, they can hop into the mother’s pouch, and the mother can continue migrating. In other words, marsupials can travel farther faster than many placentals.
~Bodie Hodge, Answers in Genesis – June 8, 2012

So who is correct?

Obviously, these explanations are very different. Let’s take a closer look at some of the more debatable points.

Land Bridges

Subduction zone along tectonic plate boundaries (shown in red) around Australia (source: Geoscience Australia).

Both Creationists and secular scientists believe in ice ages, and that there was once a land bridge across the Bearing Strait. But few (if any) scientists believe that water levels dropped low enough to create a land bridge between Asia and Australia during the “Last Glacial Period.”

Part of the reason is that there are deep trenches where subduction divides these continents. This tectonic border would likely prevent any land bridges from fully forming. Creationists counter this by suggesting that earthquakes may have since changed the landscape or made these trenches deeper, or that marsupials found other, more creative, ways to get across…

“In some cases, animals could have ridden on floating debris to make it to islands or other far-reaching places.”
~Bodie Hodge, Answers in Genesis – June 8, 2012

How did all the marsupials get their first?

Assuming a land bridge existed, how did all marsupials arrive in Australia ahead of all placental mammals?

Marsupials can carry their young, which allows them to avoid having to stop to care for them, but some mammals are born with the ability to walk — and even run, and some marsupials would’ve made for extremely slow travelers.

The southern marsupial mole, for example, spends most if its life underground… and it has no eyes. Did it blindly burrow its way to Australia?

The koala bear is another good example. It sleeps or rests 22 hours a day (and my wife thinks I’m lazy) and is completely arboreal (lives in trees). When it’s not resting, it’s busy filling up on yummy eucalyptus leaves (which are indigenous to Indonesia and Australia, but that’s another issue). 

It’s hard to imagine that these slow, blind marsupials could’ve managed such a migration, let alone beat every single placental mammal to boot! (Especially when you consider that placentals outnumber marsupials 15 to 1). What’s also amazing is that not a single marsupial stayed behind — they all migrated away from the Middle East. 

How did this happen? 

It’s almost as if all marsupials traveled together in a group. Perhaps one marsupial, I imagine it would’ve been the kangaroo (because they’re obvious natural leaders), stood up after the flood and said, “Alright mates, listen up! I want everyone with a pouch to line up over here. God wants us to go on a walkabout to the ends of the earth, so that means there will be no settling anywhere in Africa, Europe or Asia. Got that? Also, some of us are much slower than others… or completely blind… so we may need to carry these guys on our backs or in our pouches.”

Perhaps, when they’d traveled as far as Mongolia, the kangaroo announced, “The God of Abraham has sent an ice age so that we may finish our journey. Some of the opossums will head north, across the Bearing Strait, and down through Canada, and into the Americas.” (Of course, these places didn’t actually go by these names back then, but I’m not exactly sure what the kangaroos would’ve called them — don’t laugh, if the Bible can have talking snakes and donkeys, this trip may have called for a talking kangaroo.)

The kangaroo continued: “It’s going to be a long, cold, arduous journey with weather like you’ve never seen, so make sure you dress warm and have a snow buddy. The rest of us will head down to Australia ahead of all the mammals, before the snow melts. We will never see each other again, so ladies and gentlemarsupials, I want to say what an honor it’s been making this journey with you.”

The Fossil Record

There is no evidence that modern Australian marsupials (like kangaroos, koalas, and wallabies) ever existed in Europe and Asia. Creationists reason that just because we don’t find fossilized remains, doesn’t mean they were never there. They acknowledge that it’s rare for fossils to form, and insist that the absence of fossil evidence does not disprove their theory. (Wait… why does this all sound so familiar?) 

When we think with a Biblical perspective, we realize that all kinds of land animals must’ve once lived in the Middle East, because they came with Noah’s ark.
~ Ken Ham, President Answers in Genesis, USA

Meanwhile, scientists made an almost equally absurd claim that marsupials must’ve lived in Antarctica… and they were right!

Marsupial Evolution

But evolution can also seem like a leap of faith, because we can’t see it happening. How does something like an opossum morph into something as different as a koala bear, a wallaby, or a kangaroo?

While scientists might rely on things like fossils and genetic evidence, this evidence cannot be readily observed by the layman, like myself. I’m more comfortable with evidence I can actually see.

In the case of marsupials, some of that observable evidence comes from similarities in their features, such as the trademark pouch. Another thing that’s readily observable is that all these similar animals live in the exact same isolated neighborhood.

While marsupial transitional forms may be long gone (even Creationists admit fossils are difficult to find), when I look at the marsupials that exist today, I can see the family resemblance (see images below).

The brown dorcopsis, for example, looks like a small wallaby, and the wallaby looks like a small kangaroo. And the tree kangaroo, with its long tail, looks like the lovechild of a kangaroo and a koala. 

Considering their isolation and similarities, I feel I can safely conclude that these animals must be related. While it’s reassuring that other lines of scientific evidence confirm this relationship, we don’t need this evidence to make our initial observation.

Miraculous intervention?

We could suggest that God performed some form of miracle — perhaps magically transporting all these mammals. But if that’s true, why didn’t He transport any placental mammals? And why deceive us with the impression that these similar animals must’ve evolved on this island?

Conclusion

The natural evidence suggests one story, the Bible another. While I really am willing to accept the flood account, I must insist that it be accompanied by some respectable evidence. If we didn’t have the Bible, there’s just no way we’d conclude that Australian marsupials emerged from the Middle East. 

Because we only find these unique marsupials in Australia, I’d have to conclude that the most logical explanation is that this is where they all originated.

While the prospect of their evolution may be difficult to accept, is it really any less absurd than believing an ancient man built a ginormous boat and filled it with two of every animal on earth? Or that all marsupials (including the slow and the blind) hiked their way from the Middle East to Australia, across a non-existent land-bridge, together, ahead of all placental mammals? 

Think what the geographical distribution of animals should look like if they’d all dispersed from Noah’s Ark. Shouldn’t there be some sort of law of decreasing species diversity as we move away from an epicentre — perhaps Mount Ararat? … Why would all those marsupials – ranging from tiny pouched mice through koalas and bilbys to giant kangaroos and Diprotodonts — why would all those marsupials, but no placentals at all, have migrated en masse from Mount Ararat to Australia? Which route did they take? And why did not a single member of their straggling caravan pause on the way, and settle — in India, perhaps, or China, or some haven along the Great Silk Road? … Why would an all-powerful creator decide to plant his carefully crafted species on islands and continents in exactly the appropriate pattern to suggest, irresistibly, that they had evolved and dispersed from the site of their evolution?
~Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, 2009, pp. 268-270

45. Is the Bible inerrant? Does it matter?

I’d like to explore a few alleged Biblical errors and contradictions under future questions, but before I do, I have to wonder: does it even matter if the Bible contains a few mistakes?

A brief history of Biblical Inerrancy

The claim that the Bible is inerrant has been around for a long time:

Of [the canonical books of Scripture] alone do I most firmly believe that their authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it.
~ Saint Augustine (354-430 AD)

The Scriptures have never erred… The Scriptures cannot err… It is certain that Scripture would not contradict itself; it only appears so to the senseless and obdurate hypocrites.
~ Martin Luther (1483-1546 AD), Werke, Weimar edition (WA), vol. 34.1, p. 356

The Bible as we now have it, in its various translations and revisions, when freed from all errors and mistakes of translators, copyists and printers, IS THE VERY WORD OF GOD and consequently without error.
~ 1893 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America

We affirm that canonical Scripture should always be interpreted on the basis that it is infallible and inerrant.
~The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, 1978

The Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant throughout.
~ AnswersInGenesis.org, Statement of Faith, 2013

Belief in inerrancy still remains popular in America. According to a 2013 poll conducted by The Barna Group, 81% of practicing Protestants, and 71% of practicing Catholics, currently believe that the Bible is inerrant.

Why are so many Christians inerrantists?

Most Christians believe the Bible is inerrant because the Bible says so:

Every word of God is flawless;
~Proverbs 30:5

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness…
~ 2 Timothy 3:16

…prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
~ 2 Peter 1:20-21

“For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”
~ Matthew 5:18

But letting Scripture testify to its own inerrancy sounds a bit like circular reasoning. Brian Edwards at Answers in Genesis explains the logic this way:

To say the Bible is the Word of God and is therefore without error because the Bible itself makes this claim is seen by many as circular reasoning. It is rather like saying, “That prisoner must be innocent because he says he is.” … If people were reliable, witness to oneself would always be enough… Because Jesus is God and therefore guiltless… His words can be trusted. In a similar manner, since the Bible is God’s Word, we must listen to its own claims about itself.

So… we can trust the Bible because God wrote it. But how can we be sure God wrote it? The Christian website GotQuestions.org explains:

Because the Scriptures are the inspired Word of God, we can conclude that they are also inerrant and authoritative… Because God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and completely perfect, His Word will by its very nature have the same characteristics. The same verses that establish the inspiration of the Scriptures also establish that it is both inerrant and authoritative.

But which verses prove the divine inspiration of the Scriptures? If they exist, I still have yet to find them. But if you’ve already concluded such verses exist, then it’s probably not a very big leap to accept whatever else the Bible may have to say about itself.

Defending inerrancy

You would think that pointing out an error in the Bible would be a simple matter — it’s not. For better or worse, Christians have been working for millennia to put a positive spin on every alleged error and contradiction. While some of these explanations may be correct, even apologists can’t seem to agree on which ones.

For the skeptic, it may prove impossible to explore and disprove every possible explanation, because there are so many ways in which an apologist can defend an alleged error. The apologist can claim it was poorly copied, poorly translated, is being misinterpreted by the reader, that the verse carried a different meaning in a different culture, or it has a spiritual meaning; even miraculous explanations aren’t out of the question. For contradictions, the apologist can claim that both of the alleged contradictions are true when considered from different points of view, or that the contradictions are describing unrelated events, or that one description is literal and the other spiritual.

Some inerrantists claim that the original manuscripts (or “autographs”) were perfectly inerrant, and that only the copies contain errors. Unfortunately, no original manuscripts exist today, so this claim must be accepted on faith. But even if this is true, if God didn’t take His words seriously enough to protect them, how can we take them seriously? If God has not protected the Bible from errors, what else is included in the Bible that we shouldn’t believe?

If the error can’t be easily dispelled, the apologist can also suggest we just assume an explanation exists, even if we never know what it is.

In short, if an apologist can’t find a way to explain an error, he can turn it into a claim that can never be disproved, thereby forever protecting the belief in inerrancy.

Can Christianity survive the existence of errors in Scripture?

If an error ever could be proven, apologists are split on what that would mean for Christianity. Some insist that all errors relate only to “secondary details,” and it would not be detrimental to the core doctrines of Christianity:

At the center of our web of beliefs ought to be some core belief like the belief that God exists, with the deity and resurrection of Christ somewhere near the center… If inerrancy goes, the web will feel the reverberations of that loss, as we adjust our doctrine of inspiration accordingly, but the web will not collapse because belief in God and Christ and his resurrection and so on don’t depend upon the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.
~ William Lane Craig

Apologist Greg Koukl claims that “inerrancy is neither necessary for salvation nor necessary to prove the truthfulness of Christianity.” Still, he strongly cautions against even entertaining the idea that the Bible might contain errors:

If you don’t believe in inerrancy — and I’ve just seen it happen time and time again — when the authority of the Word of God is undermined, then the genuinely necessary doctrines of Christianity begin to topple. Because let’s face it, the doctrines of Christianity are odd.

Indeed.

Other apologists claim that even a single error would be devastating to Christianity:

The question of ultimate authority is of tremendous importance for the Christian. If the Scripture is unreliable, can we offer the world a reliable gospel? How can we be sure of truth on any issue if we are suspicious of errors anywhere in the Bible? A pilot will ground his aircraft even on suspicion of the most minor fault, because he is aware that one fault destroys confidence in the complete machine. If the history contained in the Bible is wrong, how can we be sure the doctrine or moral teaching is correct?
~ Brian Edwards for Answers in Genesis

The Christian “Errantists”

But at least one quarter of practicing Christians don’t believe in inerrancy, and haven’t lost their faith. These Christians freely admit that the Bible contains errors:

The doctrine of Biblical inerrancy seems inherently improbable… the Scriptures contain what seem to be evident errors and contradictions (although great ingenuity has been applied to explain these away).”
~Anglican Bishop Hugh Montefiore, Credible Christianity

I could not believe that anyone who has read this book would be so foolish as to proclaim that the Bible in every literal word was the divinely inspired, inerrant word of God. Have these people simply not read the text? Are they hopelessly misinformed? Is there a different Bible? Are they blinded by a combination of ego needs and naivete?
~John Shelby Spong, Retired American Bishop of the Episcopal Church

Even the famous Christian author C.S. Lewis once admitted that the inconsistencies found in Scripture should lead us to “rule out the view that every statement in Scripture must be historical truth.”

While these believers acknowledge the existence of errors, they do not see them as undermining God’s message, which was expressed by imperfect men in various ways.

But not everyone’s faith survives this realization. New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman first became troubled by Biblical inerrancy while still in seminary, and eventually concluded that the Scriptures contain hundreds of thousands of inexcusable errors. This discovery, along with others (primarily the problem of evil), prompted Ehrman to begin speaking out against Christianity.

The Nonbelievers 

Unlike believers, nonbelievers have long argued that the Bible contains errors. Even apologist William Lane Craig admits that a nonbeliever reading the Bible “would likely conclude that the Bible, like almost every other book, has some errors in it.” But why is this? Are facts not facts? 

If the Bible said “1+1=2,” both believers and nonbelievers should be able to agree that this fact is correct. But if the Bible says “1+1=3,” the nonbeliever labels it an error, while the inerrantist labels it “a difficult verse” and then spends the next 2,000 years trying to explain it.

Not surprisingly, I was unable to find any secular scholars willing to defend Biblical inerrancy. You don’t find them defending inerrancy for the same reasons you don’t find them defending creationism or global floods; these ideas are more a matter of faith than a matter of fact. It’s readily apparent that belief in inerrancy is dependent upon first having a belief in Christianity. 

So are these errors and contradictions even worth investigating?

If believers can maintain their faith despite having acknowledged the existence of errors, is there any point in examining them? I think so, because if the Bible appears to contain errors, it certainly does cast doubt on the claim that it was divinely inspired.

If the only way we can see the Bible as inerrant is to become a Christian, then it’s pretty clear that the only reason claims of inerrancy exists at all is because Christians feel obligated to defend the claims of their religion, not because there’s any observable truth to it.

Conclusion

Author, motivational speaker, and self-help guru Anthony Robbins used to say that a belief was like a tabletop, and the legs that support the tabletop were like the various pieces of evidence we use to support that belief. The more legs, the stronger the belief. For many Christians, Biblical inerrancy still remains one of the legs propping up their belief in Christianity. Granted, it’s not the strongest leg, in fact, it probably doesn’t even reach all the way to the ground, and even needs a piece of paper folded up and tucked underneath it to keep the entire table from wobbling, but it is a leg, nonetheless, and so it should probably be evaluated (especially since three-quarters of Christians believe it). If it turns out there’s some truth to it, then it would certainly lend some credibility to Christianity.

But I don’t believe that Biblical inerrancy can ever be fully proven, because it’s impossible to prove every historical statement. And even if it could be proven, it wouldn’t prove that it was divinely inspired, no more than an inerrant phone book can claim to be divinely inspired. Errors and contradictions can only tell us if the Bible is imperfect, which is in potential conflict with the perfect nature of God and with His Word that claims to be “flawless.” But if the Bible was written by mere men, we should expect to see a few errors and contradictions.

44. Why would God make us so unintelligent?

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.
~ 1 Corinthians 3:19

The mind of God (assuming such a thing exists) is a truly incredible and incomprehensible thing. Not only is it able to keep tabs on the sins and actions of billions of people, but it also maintains a massive database of even the most seemingly irrelevant details, like how many hairs are on each person’s head (Luke 12:7, Matt 10:30). What’s more, the mind of God is constantly monitoring the prayers of billions of people (though I suspect most of these prayers just go directly into His junk mail folder). 

So compared to God, I think it’s fair to say that we humans are dumber than a box of rocks. In fact, if we humans are made in the image of God, we must surely be a severely retarded image of that God. And this raises a few questions worth pondering: 1) Why did God severely limit our intelligence compared to His own? 2) Why would God find it gratifying to win the affections of ignorant nitwits?And 3) why are we humans able and permitted to build “thinking machines” that can far outperform many of the functions of a brain designed by God?

God and robots

There’s an old saying in Christian circles that says, “God gave us free will because He didn’t want a bunch of robots worshiping Him,” (though I can’t imagine why not, robots are awesome!). In other words, God could’ve made us all so that we would naturally desire to worship and adore Him, but He preferred to give us a choice. (Sure, some critics will argue that it’s not much of a free choice when the only alternative is eternal damnation, but we’ll pretend that isn’t a problem for now.)

While God may not find satisfaction in receiving adoration from mindless droids, He does – strangely — find satisfaction in receiving adoration from almost-mindless humans. Sure, we may have free will, but are we really intelligent enough to use it? I imagine, to God, this must be similar to how we feel about getting adoration from a dog. Dogs don’t have to love us, but they’re not really all that bright, either.

Man vs. computer

What’s also a bit strange is that God doesn’t prevent us from building machines that can actually compensate for our own biological shortcomings. For example, we can build a computer that can solve millions of mathematical equations per second. Meanwhile, we’re lucky if our own brains can solve one per second! (Though we shouldn’t feel too bad about this, it’s just the way our brains were “designed.”)

If it’s important to God that our brains be poor at performing math (important enough that He should design us without this ability), why would He allow us to build machines that could potentially negate His intentional deficiency? And if it doesn’t matter, then why not just design us with brains that don’t suffer from this lack of functionality? How exactly did God come to make such a decision?

God: “So Jesus, how many mathematical calculations per second do you think we should allow the human brain to do?”
Jesus: “A few million should suffice, since you’re going to allow them to build machines that can do that anyway. You can’t very well have their brains being outperformed by their own machinery, or they’ll start to wonder why they’re able to build better calculating machines than you!“
God: “Millions!? I was thinking more along the lines of… like… one.”
Jesus: “One!? At that rate, it’ll take them forever to even make the slightest progress! It’ll take them thousands of years just to invent the pocket calculator!”
God: “Well that’s just it, I don’t want them progressing too quickly, I’d prefer to hold them back for as long as possible.”
Jesus: ”Fine, but don’t come cryin’ to me when they invent the Internet and start publicly denouncing your weird design choices.”
God: “Pfft, the Internet… that’ll take them forever.”

And it’s not just math, our brains are inferior to computers in other ways. Our brains do not come pre-loaded with useful information, it takes a long time to install new information, and once it’s installed, our memory is inherently unreliable. We’re also horrible at sorting large amounts of information; we have difficulty performing more than one complex task at a time, and our brains are not easily networked together. 

While our brains are far more creative and can help us to experience emotions (for better or for worse), they’re nowhere near as powerful as some computers. Computers can now kick our butts at every game from chess to Jeopardy. And computers are already starting to be better than doctors at things like diagnosing and treating patients. And in the future, computers will be relied upon to help us with more and more of our everyday decisions.

If computers could ever be made to truly think as we do, they will no doubt find their creators to be a huge disappointment. They will quickly realize that we had to make them because our own minds were far too inefficient to be of much use when it came to advanced problem solving. For them, I imagine, it would be like us meeting God and discovering He made us far smarter than Himself.

Conclusion

While it’s strange that God would desire adoration from creatures with limited intellect, we could speculate that He had good reasons for inhibiting our intellect. For example, if we were too smart, we might quickly figure out what life is all about, thus spoiling some test or experience that God had planned for us. 

But if there is no God, then our brains are not inferior to God, they are actually superior to most other animals (I say “most” because some animals are actually better at performing certain mental tasks than we are).

Advanced functionality (like processing math equations) may not exist in nature because 1) it’s biologically impossible, 2) it would require actual foresight and planning to produce, or 3) at no point in our evolutionary history did a gradual change toward such functionality improve our chances for survival or our ability to reproduce. And let’s face it, nature doesn’t select for clever minds that like to calculate, she selects for concupiscent minds that like to copulate (which is, no doubt, why we find ourselves fantasizing about sex and not math… though we shouldn’t feel too bad about this, it’s just the way our brains were “designed”).

So in the end, I’d have to call this one a draw. It’s a fascinating question to ponder, but I don’t know that this particular line of questioning leads us to any important answers. If God does exist, He may have dumbed us down to keep some things a secret, and if He doesn’t exist, then nature did the best she could with what she had.

43. Did the Bible accurately predict the future of Tyre (Ezekiel 26)?

Let’s face it, having an in-depth knowledge of ancient Tyre won’t make you the life of any party (unless you happen to be at a party with a bunch of archaeologists, which I imagine would be pretty dead), but these events are extremely important. Why? Because according to many believers, some of the strongest evidence for the divine inspiration of the Bible is God’s ability to predict future events, and Ezekiel’s prophecies about Tyre are some of the most frequently cited.

Predictive prophecy stands as one of the most viable proofs of the Bible’s divine inspiration. Ezekiel’s prophecy concerning the city of Tyre provides an excellent example of such evidence.
ApologeticsPress.org

It is our contention that when the passage is exegeted carefully and properly, these verses [about Tyre] are excellent witnesses to the divine inspiration of the Bible.
BibleArchaeology.org

While I’d prefer the evidence be a bit more direct (such as sending fire from heaven, or revealing insights about nature, or routinely answering prayers on a testable basis), this is the evidence we’ve been given, so let’s take a look.

A tale of two cities

Before we get started, it’s important to know that at the time Ezekiel wrote this prophecy (roughly between 592-586 BC), Tyre was divided into two locations. There was the island of Tyre, which was a well-fortified city located about a half-mile off shore from modern Lebanon, and the mainland city, once called Ushu, which became a suburb of Tyre. The city of Tyre still exists today, but the island and mainland are now connected by an artificial causeway (or land bridge) first constructed by Alexander the Great in 332 BC.

Our “proof of divine inspiration” begins in Ezekiel 26:

¹ In the eleventh month of the twelfth year, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me: ² “Son of man, because Tyre has said of Jerusalem, ‘Aha! The gate to the nations is broken, and its doors have swung open to me; now that she lies in ruins I will prosper,’ ³ therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against you, Tyre, and I will bring many nations against you, like the sea casting up its waves. 

Tyre was rejoicing over Jerusalem’s fall to Babylon, which God apparently found distasteful, so He curses Tyre saying, “I will bring many nations against you.”

⁴ They will destroy the walls of Tyre and pull down her towers; I will scrape away her rubble and make her a bare rock. ⁵ Out in the sea she will become a place to spread fishnets, for I have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord. She will become plunder for the nations, ⁶ and her settlements on the mainland will be ravaged by the sword. Then they will know that I am the Lord.

The island of Tyre was famous for her impressive and impregnable “walls” and “towers.” On the side facing the shore, they were said to be 20′ thick at the base and 150′ high.

The Tyre “out in the sea” unmistakably refers to the island, which was to become “a place to spread fishnets.” In order to accommodate those fishnets, the previous verse tells us the island would be made bare rock by the pulling down of Tyre’s walls and towers. (We know the bare rock in verse 4 belongs with the fishnets in verse 5, because verse 14 says, “I will make you a bare rock, and you will become a place to spread fishnets.”) 

Ezekiel then turns his attention to the mainland, saying “…and her settlements on the mainland will be ravaged by the sword.”

⁷ “For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: From the north I am going to bring against Tyre Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses and chariots, with horsemen and a great army.

Ezekiel accurately predicts that Nebuchadnezzar will come against Tyre. I don’t believe this was written after the fact (because Ezekiel could’ve provided much more detail), but I do believe that an attempt on Tyre was highly probable.

At the time Ezekiel wrote this, he’d been exiled to Babylon and may have known about the king’s interest in Tyre (the attack happened soon after Ezekiel’s prediction). Ezekiel knew that Babylon had already conquered the Assyrians (612 BC), and was about to deal a final blow to Jerusalem (587 BC). He also knew Babylon was in the process of incorporating most of the Eastern Mediterranean. Tyre, with its wealth and strategic ports, was an obvious target.

⁸ He will ravage your settlements on the mainland with the sword; he will set up siege works against you, build a ramp up to your walls and raise his shields against you. ⁹ He will direct the blows of his battering rams against your walls and demolish your towers with his weapons.

Having two locations referred to as Tyre (the island and the mainland) leads to much confusion and debate. Some people insist that the above verses speak only of the mainland, while others insist that it begins by speaking of the mainland, and then quickly turns its attention to the famed walls and towers of the island.

Ancient depiction of the fortified island city of Tyre, circa 837 BC, illustrating its walls and towers.

I tend to believe the latter for several reasons:

1. Verses 4 and 5 speak of the island’s walls and towers being destroyed, so when verse 9 also speaks of walls and towers being destroyed, I have to assume they’re one in the same. If not, Ezekiel never clearly differentiates between the two.
2. I was unable to find any historical evidence indicating that the mainland even had walls or towers. In fact, the city was most likely “an extensive line of suburbs rather than one mainland city” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911, Vol. 27).
3. Walls may have been unnecessary, since the mainlanders could escape to the island in times of trouble. “[Tyre’s] numbers swelled greatly in time of war, when residents of nearby cities on the mainland (such as Ushu) found refuge on the island,” (Katzenstein, H.J., The History of Tyre, 1973).
4. If the above verses only refer to a mainland siege, then where exactly does Ezekiel begin speaking about the island siege? Or is he mysteriously quiet about it?
5. Ezekiel’s audience may have known the mainland didn’t have walls and towers, so there was no need to explain which Tyre he was referring to.
6. What we do know is that the actual siege lasted 13 years (586-573 BC). It seems unlikely that the mainland city could survive a 13 year siege, or that it would’ve taken Nebuchadnezzar 13 years to topple its walls with his “battering rams.” The island, however, would prove much more difficult; it was able to receive supplies through its ports, which Nebuchadnezzar was ill-equipped to block.
7. We also know that when Nebuchadnezzar entered the mainland, he found it abandoned. It seems unlikely that the entire population of the mainland could’ve escaped to the island (with all their valuables) while under siege.

¹⁰ His horses will be so many that they will cover you with dust. Your walls will tremble at the noise of the warhorses, wagons and chariots when he enters your gates as men enter a city whose walls have been broken through. ¹¹ The hooves of his horses will trample all your streets; he will kill your people with the sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the ground. 

If the mainland was abandoned, this prophecy about Nebuchadnezzar killing the “people with the sword” appears to be a failure.

The island city probably made submission upon conditions, without receiving the hostile army within her walls. The capture of the city was far different from the prophecy of it according to the prophet Ezekiel himself… The siege probably ended with the nominal submission of the city and the surrender of a number of her nobles.
~Wallace Bruce Fleming, The History of Tyre, 1915

Unfortunately, Ezekiel doesn’t elaborate on exactly how he thought Nebuchadnezzar would take the island, other than to say he would “build a ramp up to your walls.” Interestingly, the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal once boasted that he’d built a land bridge to take Tyre in 663 BC (roughly 70 years before Ezekiel’s prophecy). While he was probably full of crap, Alexander the Great did just that in 332 BC (250 years after Nebuchadnezzar). Realistically, there are only a couple ways to attack a walled island, and since Nebuchadnezzar didn’t have a navy, Ezekiel may imagined something similar to a land bridge.

¹² They will plunder your wealth and loot your merchandise; they will break down your walls and demolish your fine houses and throw your stones, timber and rubble into the sea. ¹³ I will put an end to your noisy songs, and the music of your harps will be heard no more. ¹⁴ I will make you a bare rock, and you will become a place to spread fishnets. 

The main debate between believers and skeptics often centers over who these verses are referring to. Skeptics say it is King Nebuchadnezzar who is to plunder Tyre and throw its stones into the sea. Believers say it is the “many nations” mentioned back in verses 3-6, and that the prophecy was fulfilled by Alexander the Great 250 years later. Let’s take a look at the reasoning behind both views.

Reasons to believe verses 12-14 refer to “many nations”:

1. The verses about Nebuchadnezzar all refer to him with the personal pronoun “he,” while verses 12-14 change to “they” or “I” (God). If Ezekiel meant Nebuchadnezzar, he would’ve said, “He [not they] will plunder your wealth.”
2. Ezekiel has already identified that the “many nations” will make Tyre a bare rock used for spreading fishnets, so verse 14 must be referring back to those many nations in verses 4 and 5.
3. If Babylon did all the work, then there would be nothing left for the “many nations” to do!

Reasons to believe verses 12-14 refer to Nebuchadnezzar:

1. The act of plundering logically and sequentially follows the acts of crashing walls, trampling streets and killing citizens.
2. Because the pronoun “they” is never explicitly redefined, we should assume it refers to the most recently defined antonym (Nebuchadnezzar’s army), especially considering the sequence of events. If God is changing the subject, He could’ve prevented a lot of confusion by saying, “After Nebuchadnezzar breaks down the walls and tramples the streets of the mainland, other nations will then come and plunder the island.”
3. While it’s true that Ezekiel had already assigned “many nations” with the task of making Tyre bare rock, there are other assignments God tasks to “many nations” which He then assigns to Nebuchadnezzar. The first is the tearing down of walls and towers, which is assigned to the many nations in verse 4, but then seemingly reassigned to Nebuchadnezzar in verse 9. The second is the task of ravaging the mainland by sword, which is assigned to the many nations in verse 6, but then reassigned to Nebuchadnezzar in verse 8. In fact, just about all of what is assigned to “many nations” is then reassigned to Nebuchadnezzar, so there’s little reason to believe that verse 14 isn’t also being reassigned.
4. While God does describe “many nations” as coming against Tyre, He also calls Nebuchadnezzar ”king of kings” (verse 7). If Nebuchadnezzar is a “king of kings,” then he could be seen as ruling and controlling these “many nations.”
5. Ezekiel appears to be speaking of events that would happen in Nebuchadnezzar’s lifetime, not 250 years in the future.

While we may never know with certainty who was supposed to plunder and destroy Tyre, this is only half the problem. The other half is which Tyre was supposed to be thrown into the sea. Believers say the mainland, no doubt because this is what Alexander the Great threw into the sea. However, I believe that Ezekiel predicts it will be the stones of the island for the following reasons:

1. It is the island “out in the sea” that is used for spreading fishnets after its towers have been pulled down and it is made bare rock, not the mainland.
2. After speaking of the destruction of the island in verses 4-5, Ezekiel turns his attention to the ”settlements on the mainland” in verse 6. In other words, the prophecy about the island being made bare rock is for the island, not the mainland.
3. The lamentations in chapters 27 and 28 all focus their attention on the island, “Your domain was on the high seas, your builders brought your beauty to perfection,” and “You say, ‘I am a god; I sit on the throne of a god in the heart of the seas.’” God’s interest (and most historical interest) is in conquering the island.
4. Finally, being encircled by the sea, it just makes sense that Ezekiel would’ve imagined the island stones tumbling into the sea when pulled down. And in order to make the island bare rock, it’s easier to imagine casting the remaining stones into the sea than hauling them all back to shore.

^{14 (Cont.)} You will never be rebuilt, for I the Lord have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord.

²¹ I will bring you to a horrible end and you will be no more. You will be sought, but you will never again be found, declares the Sovereign Lord.

The final prophecy is that Tyre would never be rebuilt. Tyre still exists today, and has been continuously inhabited. In fact, Tyre was even visited by Jesus himself. So what happened?

Some believers defend its existence by suggesting that mainland Tyre was never rebuilt on the exact same spot as the old Tyre. However, even Biblical archaeologists admit that the area was so well cleared by Alexander that we don’t know exactly where the original city was, so we can’t very well confirm that the same area has never been rebuilt. And this defense assumes Ezekiel was speaking of the mainland never again becoming inhabited, and I’m fairly certain he was speaking of the island.

Believers have also suggested that this prophecy was fulfilled because Tyre was never again rebuilt by the Phonecians, or not rebuilt in exactly same way or with the same success. But Ezekiel is clear that it will “never be rebuilt,” and he offers no exceptions. We can’t have it both ways, if the prophecy can be satisfied regardless of whether the city is rebuilt or not, then the prophecy is meaningless.

Later in Ezekiel 29, Ezekiel gives us a glimpse of what actually happened in Nebuchadnezzar’s siege against Tyre:

29:18-19 Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon drove his army in a hard campaign against Tyre; every head was rubbed bare and every shoulder made raw. Yet he and his army got no reward from the campaign he led against Tyre. Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am going to give Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he will carry off its wealth. He will loot and plunder the land as pay for his army.

Skeptics say that because Nebuchadnezzar failed to plunder Tyre, Ezekiel was apologetic and says God will offer up Egypt instead. Believers say God never promised Nebuchadnezzar plunder from Tyre (He promised it to “many nations”), and is offering Egypt only as compensation for doing the Lord’s work.

Regardless, what can be inferred is that Ezekiel’s words were reaching the King’s ears, or else how would the king know that God had offered him Egypt? If Nebuchadnezzar also heard Ezekiel’s prophecies about Tyre before he attacked, then not only was the attack probable, but Ezekiel’s promises of victory may have spurred him on, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As for Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of Egypt, history is fuzzy on the details.

Conclusion

Here’s what I believe actually happened: Ezekiel was feeling angry and helpless over the loss of Jerusalem to Babylon, and was further enraged by Tyre’s indifference. This fueled Ezekiel’s vision of Tyre’s cherished island walls being pulled down into the surrounding sea, and the city becoming a devastated and uninhabited rock. No doubt this prophecy tickled the ears of many exiled Jews, and Ezekiel probably also hoped it would motivate Nebuchadnezzar to take action against Tyre.

This version of the prophecy failed, but coincidentally, 250 years later, Alexander the Great did use material from the mainland (and elsewhere) to build a causeway to attack the island. Later believers misapplied this fortuitous event to Ezekiel’s earlier prophecies and claimed this is what Ezekiel had predicted all along!

The ambiguity surrounding these prophecies is actually so great that it doesn’t really matter who eventually conquers Tyre, or when, or which stones end up in the sea, or why. There are literally thousands of combinations of events that could be shoehorned into this prophecy. It’s only with the benefit of hindsight that we now say, “What God meant was that the stones would be thrown from the mainland, by Alexander the Great, 250 years later, in order to build a causeway!”

But perhaps the most fascinating and significant change to the landscape of Tyre was that it went from being an island “out in the sea” to a full-blown peninsula! Who could’ve predicted that a causeway built to attack the island would silt up and become a thriving city unto itself!? Apparently not Ezekiel, who gives us a vision of an uninhabited island rock.

I believe Ezekiel did accurately predict Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Tyre, though this was probably more likely than not. I also believe that Ezekiel predicted that Nebuchadnezzar would slaughter Tyrians, pull the island walls and towers into the sea, and that the island would become an uninhabited bare rock. Ezekiel was wrong on each of these counts.

Ezekiel’s prophecies are made to appear successful through a combination of predictions that are probable (5, 6 & 16), ambiguous (3), open-ended (17), liberally reinterpreted in hindsight (7, 8, 9 & 15) and possibly self-fulfilling (4). There is not one solid prophecy here that I could honestly consider proof of divine inspiration.

If we’re going to insist that the prophecies of Tyre are proof “of the Bible’s divine inspiration,” we need to be absolutely certain of what is being prophesied. And ideally, one would hope that proof from God would be far less ambiguous. After all, my eternal life hangs in the balance, and it would be a shame to spend an eternity in hell because I misunderstood which Tyre God was actually speaking about.

42. Why does God allow animals to suffer?

The Bible doesn’t have much to say about why God created animals, other than to say He did, and gave mankind dominion over them (Genesis 1:26). Whatever His reasons, God (or nature) has chosen not to spare many animals from experiencing pain and suffering. Why?

Human suffering vs. animal suffering

In many ways, the problem of animal suffering is even more problematic than the problem of human suffering, because the standard explanations for evil are worthless when applied to animals.

For example, Christianity teaches us “It’s our own fault we suffer, it is a consequence of sin and the fall of man, and we are all sinners like Adam.” But animals did not sin against God, and therefore should not be punished as equals. They seem to suffer only as collateral damage in a conflict between man and God.

Christianity also teaches us that “Humans must suffer in order to experience free will,” but what is free will to an animal?

Or Christianity reasons, “It’s okay that we suffer, because God will reward us eternally in heaven,” but these animals receive no such reward (more on this below).

And the overwhelming majority of this gratuitous suffering takes place completely outside the view of man. If an animal suffers and no one sees it, is there a good reason to allow it? If not, how shall we excuse our benevolent God from the unreasonable amount of suffering He created?

Do animals feel pain?

If innocent animals suffer, then God is not benevolent, for a benevolent God would seek to eliminate any suffering that wasn’t absolutely necessary. So the theologian is in the unenviable position of having to explain why a good God does bad things. One such explanation is to completely deny that animals feel pain.

17th-century Catholic philosopher René Descartes argued that animals were just like machines, and they could not feel pain because they did not have a spiritual mind (an idea that later became widely accepted).

Modern theistic philosophers like Michael Murray still argue that animals cannot feel pain at the same level humans do because they lack self-awareness (a highly controversial philosophy).

Professor Bernard Rollin disagrees with them, facetiously recommending that anyone who denies that animals can feel pain should test their hypothesis by using a pair of vice grips to squeeze the balls of a large doberman.

While animals can’t tell us directly that they feel pain, it can be logically inferred through their reactions to it. If you’ve ever accidentally stepped on a dog’s toes, you know they respond to pain. Animals vocalize their pain, withdraw from it, and will even change their behavior to avoid it. Animals can also experience the opposite of pain, like a dog who enjoys having his belly rubbed.

We can also infer that animals suffer pain because they share so much of the same anatomy and neurological makeup that we do, and they even respond positively to the same pain relievers we use. All these analogous behaviors and physical similarities make it obvious that animals feel pain. There are also numerous peer-reviewed studies supporting this conclusion.

Speaking from personal experience, I once witnessed a dog get run over by a car, and he yowled in agony for several minutes in much the same way a human would. I can’t look at that evidence and say, “That dog didn’t really experience pain because he has no soul,” or “That would’ve been significantly more painful if he was actually self-aware!” No matter the degree, this dog was clearly capable of experiencing a large amount of pain. And for all we know, not being self-aware (assuming they are not) may make pain even more confusing and stressful.

Is God guilty of animal cruelty?

Many diseases and defects are endemic to specific kinds of animals. It’s almost as if predation and accidents alone were not enough suffering, so God designed specialized bacteria, viruses, parasites and diseases to multiply the suffering of animals.

Take, for example, the Tasmanian Devil we discussed earlier. Even at birth, his odds of dying outnumber his odds of surviving. Those that do survive are more than likely to contract Devil Facial Tumour Disease, a fatal contagious cancer that causes large growths on the devil’s face, making it difficult for them to eat or see, and putting the entire species at risk of extinction.  

Why? Have they done something to offend God? Did they eat of the forbidden fruit? Does their suffering help increase their faith? Or help them to experience the full extent of free will?

And there are many other diseases and plagues that are endemic among specific birds, reptiles, mammals, insects, etc. If God crated this world for humans — as some sort of test or necessary experience — then why not just design diseases to target us? 

Can we trust a god who abuses animals?

The fact that innocent animals suffer through no fault of their own should be very disconcerting to the faithful, for if God is willing to allow innocence to suffer without cause or reward, why should we believe we are any different?

God is essentially saying, “Sure, I make other innocent things suffer for no reason, but not you! You are different! You may be guilty of sin, but you have a soul! You suffer for a purpose!” Lucky us!

To use a parable: A woman once began dating a handsome man, only to later find out he had a ferocious temper, and had beaten and killed several dogs. He tried to reassure her by saying, “Baby, those were just soulless dogs! I would never do that to you!” But in the end she left him, because even if he never laid a hand on her, she would always fear that he would, and did not want to be with someone who could justify cruelty to innocent creatures.

Do all dogs go to heaven?

We might be able to justify the suffering of animals if we suggest that these animals go to heaven, but most theologians have ruled out this possibility:

“Our souls are rational–theirs aren’t–and ours are rational because they’re spiritual, not material.”
Catholic.com

“…if the word ‘soul’ is used to refer to an immortal soul that one day will inhabit heaven or hell, then no, animals may not be said to possess a soul. This is the only conclusion that can be drawn, respecting the instruction on the subject found within the Word of God.”
ApologeticsPress.org

The Bible does seem to segregate men from the animals:

Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.
1 Corinthians 15:39

But these people blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like unreasoning animals, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like animals they too will perish.
2 Peter 2:12

So it doesn’t matter if a 40-year-old chimpanzee is much smarter and has suffered longer than a 3-day-old baby, if they both die, it’s the human that goes to heaven and the chimpanzee that “perishes.”

What if animals did go to heaven?

Just for kicks, let’s imagine that animals do go to heaven. This raises a lot of interesting questions, like: Would they all go to heaven? Elephants? Horses? Apes? Chimps? Dogs? Cats? Snakes? Rats? Birds? Mice? Mosquitoes? Ants? Gnats? Plants? Amoebas? Bacteria? Or does God draw the line somewhere?

If single celled organisms are allowed into heaven, do all the cells that make up my body go to heaven? Or just the soul they hosted? (Because they have served me well, and I think they deserve a vacation from all my abuse.)

If single celled organisms are not allowed into heaven, how many cells must an animal have before it does qualify for heaven? 10? 1000? 1,000,000?

Or perhaps it’s not a matter of cell count, but intelligence. If that’s the case, is that 40-year-old chimpanzee worth more to God than the 3-day-old baby?

And what about ocean life? Do whales and dolphins go to heaven? How about fish? Even ugly fish? Like the anglerfish? Or do ugly fish go to hell? Does heaven have an ocean for these occupants? Or do they just float around us in heaven? Even the ugly ones? Because I don’t want ugly fish floating around me in heaven.

Finally, what about extinct animals? Will heaven be filled with friendly t-rexs, pteradons and trilobites?

Allowing animals into heaven may help us feel better about their suffering, but it’s not very biblical, and it seems to raise more issues than it solves.

Is God obligated to show us grace?

One more explanation I ran across while researching this question was the Calvinistic idea that animals, like humans, are basically deprived creatures that should feel lucky that God shows them any grace at all. But I would argue that God’s benevolence obligates Him to extend grace to His innocent creations.

The argument of last resort

When all else fails, you can still reason that there is an answer, we just don’t know what it is. This reasoning sounds like this…

We do know that God is just and that when we get to heaven we will find ourselves in complete agreement with His decision on this issue, whatever it may be.
GotQuestions.org

This is like saying, “Never mind that God’s actions are nonsensical and cruel, just keep believing, and when you die, you’ll find there really was a good reason for all those animals to suffer, just as there really was a good reason for God to allow all those children to be raped and murdered! There’s no absurdity God can’t explain! It can all be rationalized and marginalized in the afterlife!”

Assuming we approve of the idea that all nonsense can be explained away in the hereafter, then all religions become equally viable, since all their absurdities (the reasons we object to them) can also be explained away in the afterlife. The reason we reject these other faiths is because we find something about them that we consider illogical, and we rule them out. Likewise, if we find something about Abraham’s God to be illogical, we should rule it (or Him) out.

Conclusion

I can only imagine three scenarios in which one might justify the suffering of animals:

1) Animals don’t actually suffer. They certainly appear to suffer, so if they don’t, we have been deceived.

2) Animals deserve to suffer. Since animals can’t intentionally do evil, the only plausible explanation is to suppose that before they were animals they had the mental capacity to sin. But if animals don’t have immortal souls, this doesn’t seem very likely (and most Christians don’t believe in reincarnation).

3) Animals are rewarded for their suffering. Most Christian theologians have ruled this out, but even if true, God is still evil for making innocent creatures suffer without cause.

Therefore, if God exists, He appears to be a sadist, for He creates suffering because it brings Him pleasure. God was not forced to design animals, or to give them the capacity to suffer, or to design predation or specialized bacteria or viruses or parasites… but He did.

Still… we don’t know what we don’t know, and God may have a good explanation. Assuming He does, He is still guilty of placing us in a deceptive environment, one that leads us to conclude He is evil, for only evil creates innocence and leads it to suffer. We only know what we know, and what He has given us to know is a creation that seems to bare false witness against its good creator, which leads us to incorrect conclusions about imperative matters.

If there is no God, the fact that animals suffer as much as man is nature’s testimony to the fact that she does not distinguish between man and animal. Nature has no mind to respect one and curse the other, they are all the same.

Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals.
~Ecclesiastes 3:19

41. What is the meaning of eating?

We are so intimately familiar with our requirement for food that we rarely ever step back to ponder exactly why we were “designed” to eat. But does this requirement make more sense in light of a Christian world view, or a natural world view?

If God has designed eating, then pondering His purpose for it might give us some additional insight into His character. Conversely, if nature has designed us, then eating should serve purely natural objectives.

Eating from a Christian worldview

According to Genesis, God originally placed mankind in a garden stocked with plentiful food. Only after Adam was evicted from Eden was he forced to grow his own food.

So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
~ Genesis 3:23

Food, of course, is necessary for us to grow and for energy. But this still leaves us with a number of unanswered questions…

1) Why design bodies that need food at all?

If there is no great spiritual point to eating, one would think God would eliminate it, or at least greatly minimize the need for it.

God could’ve created a world in which we were all powered by water, or by the sun, or by some mysterious atomic power source, or given us food that’s so concentrated that we only need to eat once a year.

In fact, I see no logical reason for God to give us physical bodies at all. Why not place us here on earth in spirit form? What is gained by encasing our spirits in meat?

2) Why make eating so time consuming that it takes time away from more important things?

By design, we humans must invest a great deal of time hassling with food. We spend time growing food, hunting food, transporting food, working to afford food, shopping for food, preparing food, cooking food, eating food, and defecating stuff that was once food.

If God exists, our quest for food must be extremely important to Him that He should demand that we dedicate so much time to it. Wouldn’t God rather have us doing something more productive with our time? Like studying scripture, or praying, or worshiping, or seeking salvation, or witnessing to others?

Designing a preoccupation with food might make sense if there were a great spiritual meaning behind it. It’s as if God has said, “I have a point I desperately want to make clear to my creation, and I can only make it clear by forcing them to spend every day obsessing over food. If they refuse to concern themselves with this issue, I will cause them to die.” But what is this all-important message?

If our purpose in life is to work out our salvation, should’t we suffer hunger pangs and die if we fail to do things like read scripture, or go to church, or ponder our existence, or worship God? Why are we punished for neglecting our physical needs, but not our spiritual needs?

Starving children search the ground for bugs to sustain them. “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.” Genesis 3:17

3) Why does God sometimes make food too scarce?

Millions of people die each year from hunger and malnutrition. Yet God has ordered us to “Be fruitful and multiply.” Isn’t this self-defeating?

4) Why must eating put us at risk?

Eating itself comes with a number of inherent risks. Eating can cause: heartburn, indigestion, vomiting, diarrhea, parasites, disease, cancer and death.

Additionally, thousands of people die each year (mostly children) because of a poorly designed digestive system. When we swallow, food can become lodged in our airway, resulting in suffocation and death. Wouldn’t an intelligent designer see this potential hazard and give us one passageway for food and another for air? Why would a designer do this for ducks, geese, whales and dolphins, but not humans?

From an evolutionary standpoint, choking results in so few deaths that it isn’t worth selecting against (though any creatures that choked too easily would’ve been selected out). It makes sense for evolution not to notice such things, but an intelligent designer should know better. If we must eat, why would God make it dangerous?

5) Why predation?

Without a doubt, the absolute strangest aspect of eating is predation (animals using other animals as food). It’s as if God said, “Okay you animals, listen up! There are only two rules to this game: 1) you must eat to survive, and 2) you’re all on the menu! Begin!” This barbaric game encourages a sad and never-ending battle-to-the-death. God could’ve simply made all animals inedible, but didn’t. Why not? Is there some inherent value in having animals consume one another? What does God want us to learn from this?

We could blame predation on the fall of man, but how exactly does this work? Did God say, “Adam, I’m really disappointed in you, therefore I’m going to force all animals to suffer because of you”? These animals didn’t disobey God, yet they are made to suffer for our sin. (I’ll have more on this topic under the next question.)

Terry Pratchett, in his fictional book Unseen Academicals, describes the problem of predation this way:

“‘…one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the banks of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining on mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.’”

A natural view of eating

I can imagine, in nature, a very reasonable scenario in which eating may have come to exist.

The first replicating form of life (regardless of what it may have been) would’ve had to borrow from its environment in order to obtain the raw materials necessary to continue replicating. As this life progressed, it eventually discovered that a lot of the material it needed was readily available in other nearby organisms.

Consuming ready-made proteins saved predators from having to expend time and energy building them from scratch. This gave predators an advantage: it allowed them to grow and replicate faster than non-predators, and so nature favored predation, regardless of any ethical implications.

The first cells to remain conjoined in a colony found this kind of partnership mutually beneficial. They could work together to encompass other cells (or groups of cells) and consume and share the yummy contents.

Over time, nature favored specialized changes in these colonies that assisted the whole organism in detecting, pursuing, capturing and/or digesting other organisms. Size and speed were decided advantages; the larger and faster an organism became, the less likely it was to be devoured, and the more likely it was to be the devourererer…er.

From single cells on up to humans, we all perform the same routine: we consume, extract, excrete, replicate and repeat. We exist to feed and protect the colony, so that we may all reproduce once again.

Conclusion 

The Bible says “Love thy neighbor,” nature says “Consume thy neighbor.” Which is most likely to be responsible for how and what we eat?

I’m sure, if we tried hard enough, we could create some reasonable sounding spiritual metaphor for eating, but that explanation doesn’t seem to come quite as easily as the natural one.

Eating seems spiritually unnecessary, counterproductive and risky; and predation is unconscionable, gratuitous and cruel. Why would a loving designer build such a process?

Nature, on the other hand, has a very good reason for letting life consume other life, albeit an unethical one. But nature cannot think, and thereby has a very good excuse for not designing life ethically. What’s God’s excuse?

Bon Appétit!

40. Should Noah’s Ark be taken literally?

The story of Noah’s Ark is one of the most important stories of the Old Testament, because it is one of the few miracles that would’ve left behind a literal “flood” of evidence for us to examine. But before we can begin exploring this evidence, we need to ask how we should be interpreting the story of Noah, because not all Christians seem to agree…

“Secularists deny the possibility of a worldwide Flood at all. If they would think from a biblical perspective, however, they would see the abundant evidence for the global Flood.”
AnswersInGenesis.com

“There are no historical facts verifying this biblical account… So, it seems reasonable to read the story of Noah and the flood as an allegory…”
Christian-Bible.com

“An integration of all flood and creation passages clearly indicates that the Genesis flood was local in geographic extent.”
GodAndScience.org

So… which is it? Global, local or allegorical?

Navigating Troubled Waters

Up until about the 18th century, most Christians simply accepted the story of Noah as historical fact. But new discoveries and a rising tide of evidence slowly began to erode confidence in the historicity of the flood narrative, leaving many Christians with a boatload of reasons to reject a literal interpretation.

Maintaining a literal stance meant having to potentially defend and explain…

• why most geologists and archaeologists are wrong;
• how four men managed to build a boat large enough to hold all the world’s animals in under 75 years, using nothing but primitive tools, wood and pitch;
• where the flood water came from and where it all went;
• how Noah collected and cared for the over 8 million species that exist today;
• how freshwater fish survived an influx of salt water;
• how Noah obtained animals from distant places;
• how animals became distributed after the flood;
• how Noah obtained food for special diets (e.g. bamboo for the pandas, eucalyptus leaves for the koala bears, etc.);
• how Noah stored a year’s supply of fresh water for all the animals;
• how Noah provided suitable environments for all desert, amphibious and arctic wildlife;
• how so many plants and trees survived the flood;
• what the animals ate after departing the ark;
• why all dinosaurs and many other animals still went extinct;
• how all races sprung up from one family;
• why ice cores don’t contain an obvious “flood lair;”
• why no one else was aboard a boat during the flood,
• and many other issues.

While those who take a literal view have gone to great lengths to provide us with complex explanations, this hasn’t been enough to satisfy the most ardent Christian skeptics. But rather than just rejecting the Bible altogether, many Christians have taken to interpreting the story as allegory or a local flood.

Was Noah’s flood a local flood?

The local flood view begins with God warning Noah that there is going to be a great flood, but He neglects to tell him it’s only going to be a local flood. AnswersInGenesis.org asks:

“If the Flood only affected the area of Mesopotamia, as some claim, why did Noah have to build an Ark? He could have walked to the other side of the mountains and escaped.”

For once, Answers in Genesis and I are on the same page. God didn’t need to order Noah to spend decades building a giant boat. God could’ve just said, “Hi Noah! I need you to take the family on a little vacation while I do some remodeling. Why don’t you visit those mountains over yonder, where all those animals are headed?”

Local flood advocates tell us that God was simply testing Noah… for 70 years… because apparently God likes to test people by making them do unnecessary things for an insanely long time, (probably so they can laugh about it later in Heaven. “Hey Noah, remember that time I asked you to spend 70 years building that humongous boat!? And then I only sent a local flood!? HA! Man, you were so pissed after that, you got drunk off your ass and passed out butt-naked in front of your sons! And then yelled at them for covering you up (Genesis 9:21-25)! Ha! But it’s funny now, right?”).

Our story continues…

So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”
~ Genesis 6:7

Luckily for God, the entire human race lived in Mesopotamia at the time. Unfortunately, not all the animals did, so it’s a bit strange that God should put such emphasis on killing the animals, when He was actually only killing a very small fraction of them. In fact, why mention them at all? The only ones that would’ve gone extinct were those indigenous to Mesopotamia, and God doesn’t seem to have any reservations about letting animals go extinct. And certainly Noah didn’t need such a large boat for just the indigenous animals.

Next we move on to the problem of the waters covering the mountains…

…all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered.
~ Genesis 7:19

According to some local flood advocates, the word “mountains” is better translated “hills,” so this verse should probably read “…all the high hills under the entire heavens were covered.”

Here in California, we have a name for really high hills, we call them “mountains.” Noah never gives us any reason to believe that the mountains were not covered with water.

Genesis continues…

Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.
~ Genesis 7:23

According to local flood advocates, killing “every living thing on the face of the earth,” actually means killing “every living thing on the face of Mesopotamia.” We must also accept that the “entire heavens” only stretch out as far as Mesopotamia (which is quite a stretch).

God also mentions that “the birds were wiped from the earth.” Why? If this was a local flood, then were the local birds not smart enough to fly over the mountains to safety? Likewise, it wasn’t necessary for Noah to take two of “everything with wings” (Gen. 7:14).

If Noah’s flood was just a local flood, then there is no miracle here. No longer is this a story of a man left hopelessly adrift in an endless ocean, Noah is now just a man floating in a sea, surrounded by seashores. All this boat needs to do is drift ashore and everyone can disembark; it’s not necessary to spend an entire year on board, and Noah doesn’t need to wait for the water to recede. But alas, he does, and the ark comes to rest on… well… I guess we would have to call it the hills of Ararat (Genesis 8:4).

After the local flood, God creates the rainbow as a covenant to never kill all mankind with another flood, but leaves Himself a loophole that will still allow Him to kill millions of other people through floods.

In short, the local flood interpretation makes for a completely nonsensical story: there’s no need for a boat, or to rescue animals, or to remain at sea for a year, or to wait for the waters to recede, or for a rainbow covenant.

Was the story of Noah’s flood allegorical?

While the Bible does contain many parables and metaphors, I see little evidence that the story of Noah’s ark is intended as anything but a literal story.

Firstly, we have Noah who is listed in the genealogies of Genesis 5, 1 Chronicles 1, and Luke 3. Noah also had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. So unless Noah’s wife was impregnated by a particularly potent metaphor, we must accept that Noah was a literal person.

Second, if Noah was a real person, but the flood story was just an allegory, then someone was lying about what actually happened to Noah and his family.

Third, God Himself refers back to the flood in Isaiah:

“To me this is like the days of Noah, when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth.”
~ Isaiah 54:9

God seems to have forgotten that this was just a metaphor, and that He didn’t actually cover the earth with water.

Fourth, Jesus too seems to believe the flood was a literal event:

“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same in the days of Lot.”
~Luke 17:26-28

Jesus could’ve cleared things up by saying, “Just as it was in the parable of Noah…” yet he chose to describe these times as literal days. There were literal days before the flood, and literal days afterward. Jesus also says “It was the same in the days of Lot” — should we also take the story of Lot allegorically?

Fifth, elsewhere in the New Testament, Noah’s flood is also understood as a literal event:

By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.
~Hebrews 11:7

…to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water…
~1 Peter 3:20

…he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others…
~2 Peter 2:5

The people of “the ancient world” who were “disobedient long ago” were not imaginary, nor was the ark that Noah was building, they were all as real as Noah was.

Lastly, once again, there is the matter of the rainbow. Why do rainbows exist? According to the Bible…

And God said, “I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth… Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.”
~ Genesis 9:12-15

Why would God create a literal rainbow as a promise to protect us from a metaphorical flood?

Noah’s story is even a difficult to turn into a meaningful allegory. Sure, if we only look at Noah we can compare it to God’s salvation plan. But what about everyone else? Why did God make so many people, and then regret making them? Why was God more interested in saving the animals than these men and their families? Is God’s salvation only intended for a very small number of men… and animals?

Conclusion

I think it’s pretty obvious what the motive is for wanting to turn away from a literal interpretation, but I believe it’s clear that the Bible intends for the story to be understood literally. I believe the majority of Americans are correct in holding firm to a literal interpretation, so when I address Noah’s Ark in future questions, I will apply a literal translation for all the aforementioned reasons.

If it turns out the flood narrative is bogus, I think we need to man-up and accept it as such, not retreat to alternative interpretations that attempt to salvage a religious tradition.