A Family of Cats

Genesis 1:24

“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

“Johnny,” shouts the teacher, waking him up from his daydream. “Which family does the lion belong to?”

“I dunno, Miss,” replies Johnny. “No family on our street has one.”

If Johnny had been listening, he would have learned from the teacher that there is a “cat family”, better referred to as felidae, which includes lions, tigers, jaguars, pumas, cheetahs and pet cats too. All these felids had evolved from a common ancestor millions of years ago. Surely there are enough similarities to suggest that this teacher is right.

In fact, it is completely biblical to suggest that all cats had a common cat ancestor. The Bible states that animals were created according to their kind. We refer to these Kinds as baramins, from the Hebrew words for “created kind”. God did not, in fact, directly create tigers and lions, etc. He created felids with all the genetic information necessary for the wide adaptation we see in the baramin today. Noah took a pair of felids on to the Ark – not two tigers, two lions, two leopards, etc. So we agree with this teacher that all these cat species have developed from a common pair of felids, but this is not Darwinian evolution because no new genetic material was made, and, in any case, those felids could not have given birth to horses or other animals outside the baramin. Similarly, this did not happen millions of years ago, but about 4,500 years ago, after the Flood.

Prayer: We are amazed by the diversity of Your creation, Lord, and by Your wisdom in how You made each kind of animal. Amen.

Ref: Encyclopædia Britannica, < https://www.britannica.com/animal/feline >, accessed 10/31/2018. Image: Charles J. Sharp, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 International.

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