Creation Science Rebuttals
Creation Magazine
Catching a Kinkajou
Volume 26, Issue 3, June 2004
Review by Greg Neyman
© Old Earth Ministries
First Published 23 August 2005
Young earth creation science ministry Answers in Genesis ran an article in the June 2004 issue of Creation Magazine, in which the story of trying to catch a kinkajou is told (the article was the featured article on the Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International website on 10 Jan 2006).1
The argument given is that the kinkajou is classified as carnivorous, because it has carnivorous teeth. Although nice to know, it means nothing. Animals are not classified by their diet, but by their anatomical features. Because young earth teachings require that all animals prior to Genesis are vegetarian (Genesis 1:30), young earth creation science is an argument from necessity, and not from evidence.
Just because it is vegetarian now, that does not mean that it always has been a vegetarian. Who knows when (or if) it switched over to a vegetarian diet. It could have discovered fruit, and switched over on its own 5,000 years ago...50,000 years ago...or a million years ago. We have no evidence to indicate anything, and any guesses are just that...guesses.
The author briefly touches on Genesis 1:30. This verse says that we were given plants to eat.
29 And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 30 “Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so.
It does not say that we cannot eat meat. There is a huge difference here. There is no prohibition.
Also, one must take into account that God is giving these words to Adam, in the Garden of Eden. Thus, he is describing life in the Garden. We know that the Garden is a separate, special place, distinct from the world outside it. The Garden is perfect, but the world around it is not. Every indication is that the Garden contained vegetarian animals, as they were in harmony with each other. But, what's on the other side of that hedge? The fossil record clearly indicates millions of years of death prior to the Garden.
Despite the kinkajou having a mostly vegetarian diet, this information has no bearing upon the creation debate.
1 Creation Magazine, Volume 26, Issue 3. Published on the web at www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v26/i3/kinkajou.asp
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