Genesis and Marine Biology: A Word About Dolphins, Other Smart Swimmers, Clams and Such

Genesis 1 (vv. 21-23) opens the chapter on the very beginning of whales, dolphins and other sea creatures, on the fifth day of the creation week, in these words:

"And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day."

Now dolphins are "cetaceans," and not fish. If you call them fish, they will resent it. You see, they EAT fish, and dolphins do not wish us to think them cannibals. What will the whales say if they hear such rumors? Dolphins can swim at surprisingly fast speeds, and love to interact with people. You will notice above that "God blessed them," and that this blessing consisted in the efficacious command to "be fruitful and multiply, fill the waters and the Seas," and that the Seas of the world have already been mentioned.

From this passage, and the immediate context, we may learn several things about dolphins. First, they have not been around for "millions of years," but showed up one day before Adam and Eve did. Why before, and not AFTER? One might think this seems a bit inappropriate to those made in God's image to find themselves beaten to the game by the dolphins, who, although they are quite cute, and very funny (and boy are they smart), are not made in the divine likeness as we are.

This happened because God always follows His own rules. We have been told already what God was doing. He first created the heavens and the earth, and then began dividing this from that (to set each domain in order), and then began to fill each domain with the proper kind of animal. God was setting in order all things.

Now the Lord plainly likes dolphins and whales, and all their cousins. He blessed them, and then later called them (together with the rest of His new work, "very good."). Now the Bible refers summarily to all the creatures of the sea as "fish," even though obviously clams do not swim well, or have fins. But they do go well in chowder, and qualify as seafood. The reference simply names the inhabitants of the waters (seas), using the same language as the beast of the earth, "creatures which moveth" [either] "on the earth" or else "in the seas."

In other words, God divided the cosmos into three realms, and then filled each one systematically with inhabitants, and the inhabitants of the sea simply get called "fish," since this names the majority of them by sheer numbers. This way, after the fall of man, when God gave us fish to eat also (not just vegetation), we would have enough to share with the whales, dolphins and sea lions, and still have plenty to go around. This answers the question of whether red sauce came before or after the fall. Chances are fair that we already had white wine before we could eat fish, however, since it goes well with fruit and veggies too. And you can always cook with it.

But the time of the Lord Jesus and the apostles, fish was a main part of the diet of the middle east. In fact, Peter and Andrew made a living catching fish in nets to sell at the local markets, probably between Bethany (where they lived, just a short way from Jerusalem) and the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, as you go west to the coast. The closer you get to the water, the fresher the fish you buy gets, unless you preserve them with salt, as was the custom in those days. This makes them taste like sardines, but you can later cook (boil) the some of the salt out of them, when you get ready to eat them.

God forbade the Israelites to eat whales, dolphins and whatever else did not have BOTH fins AND scales, narrowing down their meals to just what we ordinarily call "fish." Leviticus 11:9-10 reads,

"These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat. And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters [note: this is the precise language of Genesis 1 again], and of any living thing which is in the waters [this part is added and new -- to explain the first by separating that which moves in the water from those creatures which do not -- like clams, to include anything one finds in the waters], they shall be an abomination unto you ...."

Now Genesis 1:28 gives Adam and Eve (and us today) dominion over whales, dolphins, sea otters and all other sea creatures, and Genesis 9:2 reiterates this promise to Noah and his family -- a kind of "second Adam," who exits the Ark with the new creation in miniature. These then spread out across the earth and multiply to fill it once again. The sea creatures did not need to take up space on the Ark of course. These were exceptions from the general destruction upon the earth God wrought in Noah's generation, which was primarily a curse aimed at the wickedness of men. God did not intend to punish clams for the sins of men. Sea creatures that died in the Flood were something like what we call "collateral damage" today.

Dolphins are quite closely related to whales, especially those poor creatures, the Orca, who have been dubbed "killer whales." They in fact very rarely attack people, and much prefer almost any meal found in the waters to you. They would rather eat any kind of fish than you. You are decidedly yucky to sea creatures, and even sharks have to get extremely hungry before you taste okay. Sharks that bite humans are usually just tasting, and when they find out what a lousy meal you are, they swim away in most cases. The big problem is that scuba divers look like seals or otters (in shiny black "snack suits") to many larger sea predators.

Shamu may look rather intimidating for size (and those big pointy teeth), but killer whales are usually quite people friendly -- but a little unpredictable. Dolphins, on the other hand, are always people friendly. And if you play with them, they are more likely to adopt you than try to eat you.

Now dolphins can outswim you, and sometimes it sounds as though they are laughing in the water when they make noises. They are a playful lot, and they even playfight in the water with each other, or else try to "ride the waves" inland like surfers do. They are also known to playfully "harrass" other sea creatures, apparently for fun, like sea turtles and others.

Dolphins are extremely intelligent, which has given rise to all kinds of myths and stories about them which range from doubtful to fairy-tale like in quality. Dolphin trainers find them easy to train, and they will work for fish. But they don't like tartar sauce.

Dolphins do not like sharks, and one kind, the bottle-nosed dolphin, will ram, and can kill, sharks that get too close. They have even been known on occasion to kill sharks -- by ramming them in their soft underside near what would be the ribcage with people -- when pesky sharks circle too close too people.

Porpoises are much like dolphins, but smaller and a bit more compact, and not quite as tame or people-friendly. They aren't fish either, but do not seem as smart as dolphins, though they do resemble them fairly closely. But porpoises have "flattened, spade-shaped teeth distinct from the conical teeth of dolphins." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porpoise). <-- Here, you can learn all about porpoises. The wikipedia entry for dolphins says that they are: ".... aquatic mammals which are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in seventeen genera. They vary in size from [four feet] and [88 lbs, in the case of the] Maui's Dolphin, [and] up to [30 feet and ten tons in that of] the Orca or Killer Whale. They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating fish and squid. The family, Delphinidae, is the largest in the Cetacea[n class] ...."

Dolphins do appear able to talk to each other, and animal behaviorists have long studied them to try to decipher just how they communicate with each other. They use three types of sounds -- which anyone who has visited MarineWorld will have noticed -- they sound like clicks, pulse-burst sounds, or else emit a sound similar to a whistle. Moreover, it is quite interesting to note that when the smartest (most subtil, or shrewd) of animals -- the serpent -- showed up in Eden talking, Eve did not blink an eye. One would have expected a shriek, followed by a gasp "Ah! A talking serpent, quick honey, get a broom or something heavy to hit it with!", but no such emotive language occurs.

She chats with him as though this sort of thing happened on a regular basis. Some have speculated that the linguisitic capacities some of the smarter animals seem to possess may have originally been far greater, before the curse upon all creation. There is nothing in the list of divine curses imposed which suggests that it was intended to be exhaustive. And there are good examples of things which did not exist in Eden, which are now curses, which God also did not mention in this list. Think of hurricanes, tornadoes, and all manner of deadly natural disasters. We know from the Bible that there was no death before sin; therefore, there were no deadly disasters of nature, or of anything else, before sin.

This means these are included in the divine promise that the day ye shall eat of it, ye shall surely DIE, though not mentioned by name. Did animals originally talk? Serpents did. Why not the others which show extraordinary, though most probably greatly muted (under the curse) intellectual capabilities? Was Balaam's donkey an example of an animal wherein God temporarily removed the curse imposed in Genesis to restrain the prophet's madness [for this is what the NT calls it]? It is at the very least, an interesting question. Even some chimps seem to be able to learn sign language, and can communicate this way with people, though on a limited scale.

After all, the proverbs DO command us to learn from the ant, lion, badger and other friends. Would we not be able to do this better if (originally), we could have chatted with them? Why is there nothing special mentioned about a talking serpent? The best explanation is the obvious one: this was typical or ordinary -- before the fall. Just because we do not NOW experience X does not imply (necessarily) that Adam and Eve did not.

So far as today goes, you cannot talk much with dolphins, though they can understand linguistic commands well when trained -- especially if you are holding the fish. Oh, the power of fish to befriend the dolphins! But you can swim with them, as some of these photos show.

Now Numbers 34:6 refers to the Mediterranean as the "Great Sea," as was commonly done in the ancient world. Today, one can find dolphins swimming off the eastern and southern coastline, as they tend to swim along shorelines some distance out, mostly playing and hunting for yummy fish. Wouldn't you?

There is good reason to suppose that their ancestors probably did the same things, while people traveled up and down those same coasts, from Sidon to Carthage and Carthage (in northern Africa) to Caesarea Philippi, buying, selling, delivering and retrieving goods. Exactly which kind of sea creature -- though a whale of some sort and not a fish -- had swallowed the prophet Jonah whole -- we do not know. We do know that he was headed for a port in Tarshish (Spain), in an effort to flee God's command to go the other way to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, around the late 8th century B.C. (Nineveh was sacked and destroyed by the Babylonians in 712 B.C. as divine retribution for ransacking Samaria in 722, only 10 years earlier).

Jonah ran away because he was -- we find out later -- afraid that God would convert them, and a whale - maybe one of Shamu's great grandparents -- swallowed him whole until he got entangled in seaweed and prayed after 3 days and 3 nights. Here, "the sign of Jonah," (meaning a miraculous work of God) shows us how God even uses sea-creatures to preach the gospel of Christ, who was slain by the wicked, and rose from the dead after being 3 days and 3 nights in the tomb of a rich man, Joseph of Aramithea.

This is consistent with the way God uses all creatures, which He endowed with wisdom from the first, to teach men our duties and what virtues we fail to show (and are reproved for this even by the lower creation). In this way, general revelation fortifies God's special revelation. If you don't believe me, ask Balaam's (fairly articulate) donkey.

There is one other important idea from the Bible to consider. The kinds of creatures God made originally have relatives which continue all the way back to the antediluvian world -- before Noah's flood. And we have not by any means exhausted the catalog of such creatures. Many live FAR beneath the ocean's surface, and have stirred the minds of men to fancy and speculation for centuries -- esp. pirate tales and maritime stories include all manner of alleged sightings and mythical claims. And there may be a kernel of truth in some of them for all we know.

The book of Job seems to recount creatures of very large proportions, and doubtless there are many smaller ones, we have yet to see. We do have fossils of dinosaurs, creatures of extraorinary size and strength -- though many of these are badly reconstructed in all likelihood -- which roamed the world of Noah's day and before. Were ALL of these killed in the flood? We simply do not know. If there are ones that did not, are they friendly? I hope so. If not, I hope they go well with tartar sauce. Whatever they are, God gave us dominion over all of them; and we know that dolphins are among the friendliest.

Here is a great power-dolphin photo shot [My favorite so far], nature's answer to the jet ski:

http://www.hickerphoto.com/data/media/45/dolphins_ws11.jpg

There are lions in the ocean too, sea lions. Here is a great sea-lion mugshot up close:

http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm

Here is a woman being overrun by playful dolphins:

http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm


This is how dolphins shake hands:

http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm


Dolphins cannot actually fly, but try telling Wilbur and Orville here.


http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm


If they can fly, sea lions can too. Apparently, sea lions are very competitive. This is what happens when sea lions try to be birds:

http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm

God made dolphins very fast, powerful swimmers, since they did not have jet skis when the world was brand new.

http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm


Dolphins have smooth, shiny skin. See?

http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm

Key Largo, Florida has a really cool educational camp for children (Dolphins Plus, Inc.) that allows you to swim with the dolphins, and learn all about some of God's more interesting sea creatures. Let's face it. We all want to swim with the dolphins and sea lions because they are more fun than a barrel of monkeys. School groups are welcome to visit too.

You can visit the Dolphins Plus, Inc. site at: http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-education.htm#blast (or you can call them Toll Free: 1-866-860-7946).

Homeschoolers can have their students go to a nearby amusement park, to spend a day of fun watching all kinds of sea creatures in captivity, to take notes and write a report on the favorite animal of their choice. Zoos are good for this too. And obviously, you will want to have some good research sources to help students explain their observations better.

The report should specify at least three primary characteristics which make their chosen animal special -- different from all the other animals -- and the older students should be required to follow a particular source noting format, either the MLA or Chicago style (see the latest edition of Kate Turabian's Manual of Style online).

The younger students should simply work on saying in print, as accurately as they can, just what they most like about their chosen animal. For young minds, cultivating enthusiasm for learning is more important than the quality of any one product, since the latter will improve over time with the former. Focus on vocabulary growth for the younger (word choices) and comparing and contrasting concepts with the older.

Contrasting concepts with animals might take the form of the question, "Why does this animal have THAT feature and not other animals? What does it do that helps the animal live well? This will inevitably demonstrate the goodness of God, Creator of all (since features adapt, but do not evolve). Recall that adaptation is not evolution, nor is genetic variation within animal kinds. Both of these occur, because God so intended by design; but neither implies evolutionary development by themselves.

These are necessary to evolutionary views, but NOT sufficient. Neo-Darwinism requires variation WITHOUT the genetic borders that prevent one kind of animal from developing into another. And Molecular biology has clearly falsified this need. If you wish to swim with the big fish, school is in. See Dr. Michael Denton's Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, for a critical, scientific (and devastating) evaluation of Neo-Darwinian mythology by a molecular biologist.

But these limits set by God, and genetic variation within them (flexibility or adaptability) are entirely consistent with the biblical outlook. God's goodness and wisdom teach us to EXPECT that he would enable animals to replace themselves with genetic variation to help keep any one species from becoming extinct. This is like diversifying your assets in the marketplace, so that if one or more stocks fail, the others might not. If we are that smart, How much more the One who made us!

Hence genetic variation as a demonstration of God's goodness to preserve what He has made, and His wisdom to show us how we ought to do likewise in our own affairs (diversification leads to preservation). The Proverbs teach the same, but that is a post for another day.