It’s a Fish-Eat-Fish World: Carnivory Existed Before the Flood

Disclaimer: Some YEC readers have “gently reminded” me that not all Young Earthers adhere to the position I’m criticizing.

Considering that Young Earthers attempt to read an obviously non-literal passage of the Bible as if it was meant word for word, it’s not surprising that their claims often end up being a little eccentric. And while people who are familiar with evolution, science and the Bible may sit back and ignore the creationists’ antics, the layman may actually fall for their tricks.

Even more dangerous is when a non-Christian is persuaded by these people that their doctrines actually represent those of the Bible! A non-believer will almost surely reject Christianity out of hand, or some people may be ensnared by creationist claims, only to wake up to how false they are at some point in the future. At that point the dangerous possibility exists that the convert will reject Christianity itself because they built their beliefs on a false and shaky foundation.

It’s for this reason that all Christians should unite against Young Earth Creationism and expose the foolishness of its teachings. Fortunately for us Theistic Evolutionists, the Young-Earthers often expose their logical fallacies without us even having to raise a finger.

One example of just such an occurence happened around my birthday two years ago when a couple actually donated the world’s finest fossil specimen of one fish eating another fish to the museum that Answers in Genesis founded.  For such a travesty to happen near the day of my birth was certainly a slap in the face to me, but fortunately I get the last laugh because that fossil the AiG folks treasure so much actually undermines a major creationist doctrine! Not to mention that it shows how rampant Orwellian Doublethink is amongst even the most celebrated authorities on creation.

If you are familiar with the origins debate, you will no doubt be aware that YECs¹  believe that most if not all of the world’s fossils have their origins in the Great Flood of Noah. They also believe that animals never ate each other until after the flood, when God explicitly decreed it acceptable to Noah. Genesis 9:3² they say, is the Biblical record of carnivory’s origins.

Unfortunately for them, a fossil created during the Flood showing carnivory would ultimately be the death knell of this belief. Evolutionists (and other Old Earthers) believe that fossils were made thousands to millions of years ago- way older than the Flood and thus the alleged Divine “go-ahead” given to pre-carnivorous animals to finally begin eating meat. Young Earthers believe that fossils were created during the Flood which is still older than God’s giving permission for carnivory.

Thus this prized fish specimen is a major problem for creationists. How could there be any fossils demonstrating carnivory if carnivory didn’t exist until after all the fossils were created? There is no way around this. The implications are that either carnivory existed prior to the Flood, or that this fossil was made sometime after the catastrophic event.

There seems to be a little bit of disagreement among creationists as to whether or not the Green River Formation where these fossils were found actually was formed by the Deluge, but even if it wasn’t, there are still many hundreds of fossils that show evidence of carnivory. Everything from Allosaur tooth marks on Diplodocid tails, to tooth marks on ammonite shells, and then of course, that famous specimen of a Velociraptor with its claw plunged into the belly of a Protoceratops, their struggle for survival frozen in stone.

The claim that most fossils are of vegetarian, pre-Flood animals does not hold under scrutiny. Either the biggest portions of the fossil record were created post-Flood, or carnivory has been around since the beginning. The implications for creationist doctrine are big, whichever path you take.

It is a fossil in exquisite detail of a fish caught in the act of swallowing another fish—this could not have been a slow event. Whatever happened had to be a catastrophic event—consistent with the Flood of Noah’s day.

Thus saith Mr. Ham. Now how can anyone in their right mind justify believeing that carnivory didn’t exist until after the Flood at the same time that they recognize the existence of a fossil recording a carnivorous act taking place during the Flood? The cognitive dissonance must be astounding.³

A proper, less literal understanding of Genesis, is the solution to to the conundrum of pre-Flood carnivory. Using science as a guide to fill in details that the Bible doesn’t elaborate on is a proper way of learning about the past. Melding a scientific understanding of Earth’s history together with the Bible ultimately yields an accurate synthesis of the world’s beginning.

Edenic animals were indeed vegetarian (or else naked defenseless Adam would be in big trouble!), but the Bible gives no detail on the dietary habits of animals outside of this general vicinity. It’s for that reason that we rely on secular sources like the fossil record, sources that clearly indicate that carnivory had been around ever since life forms were advanced enough to eat each other.

It may seem a travesty for such a beautiful and important fossil to end up in a creationist “museum,” but what at first seemed a travesty may end up being a very good thing. God can use evil to accomplish his good purposes in this matter in the same way he did when Joseph was sold into slavery. Hopefully this obvious contradiction to creationist doctrine on display in a creation museum will cause someone to wake up to the foolishness of YECism. This person can then stop posing a threat to the spread of the gospel with their weak-foundationed evangelism, and can shift their focus of their witnessing where it belongs: with Jesus, not any particular understanding of Genesis.

Footnotes!

¹ Just try to pronounce that! Sounds like an exclamation of disgust to me. “Yeck!”

² “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I [God] given you all things.”

³ Honesty compels me to inform you that I could not find a statement on Ken Ham’s beliefs about when carnivory originated except that it was sometime after the Fall. That being said, many of the less “prestigious” creationist web sites I’ve found have indeed stated that they believe carnivory began after the Flood. I just don’t want you to think I was trying to build a straw man argument or misrepresent Mr. Ham’s views if it’s ture that he disagrees with these other creationists.