There's an old (1960's) QFR in which Freddie Franz says that razor sharp claws & teeth were there to shred "tough vegetation" like "coconuts".
Seriously.
Animals not meant to eat meat
by Carl 48 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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sir82
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Giles Gray
Carl-" Lions teeth sharp and pointy for chewing meat ."
Pandas have some of the biggest teeth of the bear family and they mostly eat bamboo.
xjwsrock-" well some alligators have jaws that can exert 3000 lbs of pressure. That ain't for crushing sweet potatoes."
How else was Adam going to open a coconut?
smiddy-" Every living thing on this planet lives off the life of some other living thing .And it always has."
Doesn't this prove that life had to have had a creator?
Wizzstick-" How would it distinguish between a sleeping animal and a dead animal?"
Its keen electrical sensors in its nose would detect if there was any electrical impulses going on in the carcass. If there was nothing electrical going on then it was meal time.
Diogenesister-" There are fossils with undigested animal parts inside the stomach. Not to mention fossilized predators with the teeth and claws of meet eaters. Fossils take millions of years to form, therefore we know predation has been taking place for millions of years."
What is to say they didn't just eat dead dinosaurs?
I miss being a JW with all the answers...
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sir82
Found the article in old post from this site.
That post did not give the magazine date. But you could easily search the CD_ROM for the text of the question & find it.
I highlighted the (most) absurd bits:
Some animals have characteristics that seem especially suited to killing, such as lions and poisonous snakes. How can this be, if they were all vegetarians at one time?—L.K.,Netherlands.
It is understandable that this question might arise, for as things stand now many animals do kill one another for food. But please note that this is as things stand now. Is there anyone on the earth who can say from personal observation how these animals acted six thousand years ago?
Throughout the earth humans kill animals and eat their flesh. But does man’s ability to chew and digest meat prove that all men eat meat or that men have always eaten meat? No, for God’s Word, the oldest and most reliable history of mankind, shows that originally Jehovah gave man "all vegetation bearing seed" and "every tree on which there is the a fruit of a tree bearing seed" as food. It was not until over sixteen hundred years later that God permitted a change of diet for man, allowing him to hunt animals for food.—Gen. 1:29; 9:2, 3.
True, those who believe that man and animals evolved over a period of millions of years might not accept this, but it is what the Word of God says, and Jesus Christ said, "Your word is truth." (John 17:17) If the present diet and mode of life of humans does not represent what it originally was, is it not possible that the same is true of animals?
We must keep in mind that scientists are limited in their knowledge. Even if a man is an authority in some field of animal life, he does not know all there is to know about an animal as it now lives, to say nothing about how it lived thousands of years in the past. Those who are humble and sincere admit this. The very fact that scientists have different opinions proves the point.
For instance, the question came up as to whether cobras can hear sounds. On November 27, 1968, an Associate Curator of Reptiles at one of the large zoological gardens in the United States wrote: "All snakes are unable to hear sounds; this also includes the Cobra." That seems quite final. However, on the very same day the Curator and Chairman of the Department of Herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History explained: "It has been generally assumed . . . that snakes are deaf to air-borne sounds. Recent evidence has it, though, that some snakes can hear low-pitched sounds. How this relates to the cobra problem is uncertain. The weight of evidence is still in favor of the theory that it is movement rather than sound that influences the cobras, but the matter certainly is not closed."
The Bible long ago indicated that the cobra hears the "voice of charmers," but could refuse to listen just as a human can refuse to hear. (Ps. 58:4, 5) Would it be wise to reject what the Bible says just because some scientists think the facts to be otherwise? The above quotations show that the answer is, No. Similarly, that certain current evidence does not seem to support what the Bible says about animal life in the past should not cause one to reject God’s inspired Word.
Another thing, is one justified in concluding that the way an animal uses its body today is the only possible way? As an example, a tiger uses its fangs and claws to catch, kill and tear apart other animals. Yet, could not these same fangs and claws be used in tearing apart heavy vegetation and ripping off husks and shells?
‘But what about poisonous snakes?’ someone may ask. Animal poisons might appear to be just for killing or protection, but are they? In "Animal Poisoners" H. Munro Fox wrote: "In some cases we know that poisons play a role in the functioning of the body of the animal which manufactures them. In many instances this may be the real raisond’être [reason for existence] of the venoms, quite apart from any protective value. The poisonous spittle of snakes, for example, has work to do in the digestion of the snake’s food." Another illustration is a certain green marine worm that is partly covered with a poisonous slime. Is this poison to protect it from being eaten? It might seem so. Yet if the young of this worm settle on this slime, the poison changes them into microscopic males instead of the large females they would have developed into if they settled on the sea floor.
It is true that hundreds or even thousands of problem cases might be brought up, ones that apparently indicate that animals always killed one another, that this is necessary for the "balance of nature."But should our lack of complete knowledge of God’s creation cause us to lose faith in him and his Word? Should we let questions about preying animals prey on us?
The Bible explains that in the paradise in Eden God gave to "every wild beast of the earth and to every flying creature of the heavens . . . all green vegetation for food." (Gen. 1:30) Later all of the basic kinds of land animals lived in Noah’s ark for a whole year without devouring one another. And evidently drawing on the conditions that existed in Eden and that will be restored in the future, God’s Word says: "The cow and the bear themselves will feed; together their young ones will lie down. And even the lion will eat straw just like the bull. And the sucking child will certainly play upon the hole of the cobra . . . They will not do any harm or cause any ruin in all my holy mountain."—Isa. 11:7-9.
Surely the grand Creator who made the heavens and all that is in them, who arranged the perfect balance and order of the stars and who knows how harmony and peace existed in Eden, can restore paradise conditions. Bringing about a "balance of nature" wherein animals do not kill one another is not beyond His ability, is it? So, let us look forward to that time with confidence and trust.
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TD
There's an old (1960's) QFR in which Freddie Franz says that razor sharp claws & teeth were there to shred "tough vegetation" like "coconuts".
Yes. The fallacy of reduction. We could quibble about the function of a propeller by itself, but when that propeller is mounted on an airplane, its function is self-evident beyond the point of argument.
Freddy didn't seem to understand that principle, let alone realize that it applies to the claws and teeth of predators too. Cuvier, for example wrote: "....that the claws may seize the prey, they must have a certain mobility in the talons, a certain strength in the nails, whence will result determinate formations in all the claws, and the necessary distribution of muscles and tendons."
He goes on and shows how the turning of the forearm would require "special formations of the bones ... thus affecting the shoulder-blade and its structure and the legs and other muscles." The chances of all this happening at once were inconceivable to him and therefore unimaginably impossible.
As creationists, JW's are shooting themselves in the foot because Cuvier's observation is still the backbone of the intelligent design argument.
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Patrick45
It's simple to me. If God created an all-veggie planet, soon those would have eaten all the green stuff and have overpopulated and destroyed the base of living on the planet. MAD-scenario- unworkable CO2-bomb. God bless.
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Landy
If god didn't intend us to eat animals he wouldn't have made them taste so nice.
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Vidiot
wizzstick - "One JW theory is that God changed the animals post flood."
Ah, but that would arguably require a "creative" act; something that Yahweh's had a hands-off policy on since Day #7, 12:01 a.m. (Panacean standard time).
...
Which implies that they would have had to - gasp - change, i.e. evolve...
...like, a thousand times faster than even "evolutionists" say is possible.
(queue record-scratch sound effect) :smirk:
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redvip2000
By the way, "don't believe in evolution" is - in my eyes - a far to simple sentence. "don't believe in classic Darwinism" as an explanation would sum up my belief, in the sence that infinitely small adaptive steps are no explanation for novelties, new species, new Types.
So once a specie goes through 1 millions "small adaptive steps" and looks nothing like the animal before those 1 million "small adaptive steps", what exactly is this new creature?
This makes as much sense as someone that lived a thousand years ago and spoke latin, trying to make the point that if there is a small change in a word here and there, it will just be a small variation of latin, and it will never result in a new language....except that it does, and it did.
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forgot to mention that many years before i left the cult, i had this same thought about why animals are so adapted to hunting and eating meat. I brought it up to my bible study conductor, and he just stared at me without any good answer to give me and then simply said that "well sometimes you just need to have faith instead of questioning everything"....
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blondie
If the present diet and mode of life of humans does not represent what it originally was, is it not possible that the same is true of animals?
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Based on that reasoning, then if the present mode of human life (dying after 100 years or so) does not represent what it originally was, living forever; is that not possible that the same is true for animals, that they would never die?
I knew jws who believed that their pets would be resurrected and live forever with them.