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... that's a new one. Christian chreationist - one for the scrap books.

I wish to fuck people would read what I (or Wickle and keith) actually wrote. or properly read the articles linked... or simply not fly off the fucking handle and call others ignorant just because they disgree with them. A good start would be to go back to the start and actually read what I fucking wrote.

Without dragging this into a discussion of evolutionary biology, the definition of "species" and "subspecies" is a loose and changeable one (consider the wolf, for example), and the classification of animals known only from fossils into species is another issue where there is great debate (one only needs to look at the last 3.5 million years of human evolution to see this, let alone the arguments over dinosaur classification).

While various different examples are given different subspecies designations by some experts, others disagree. What we can say without fear of contradiction is that DNA analysis has shown these are all closely related varieties of lion. As this link from above states, cave lions are not, despite the name, to be necessarily regarded as a separate species. In fact (as is to be expected, just as we see in hominin fossils) there is a blurred line between these species, not a distinct delineation.

Consider the discussion over the Barbary Lion and European Lion as to the relationship and classification of them. As Wickle pointed out, modern lions live quite happily in snow conditions, but we are talking about 3,000 years ago and a type of lion that may well be descended from iceage populations. Populations which lived not just in warm interglacials but in ice, snow and tundra conditions.

Yes, over 10,000 years ago. But the wild areas of Europe (and the middle east) where these lions continued to exist until recent times is not exactly the Serengheti. The mountains get bloody cold in the winter. Why do you suppose lions could not exist there? Have you heard of tigers? Tigers live from the arctic circle in Siberia to the equator in South East Asia.

There is absolutely no reason to suppose that populations of the lions in question should not be able to hunt above the snowline in the mountains, even if they did not reside there full time. We might even imagine that in the verse in question the lion had been trapped in a snowy ravine or corrie and weakened by the cold before it was slain.


My skepticism of the factual basis of the bible doesn't prevent me from fairly and rationally looking at this verse and disagreeing with your opinion on the matter.