The Danger of Sound-Byte Arguments
Recently, I have had a discussion with an atheist over a meme that he posted. He decided to use two verses from Genesis (30: 37-39) as an argument for how the bible allegedly describes how animals got their stripes versus the scientific explanation of the development of stripes over time. There is a problem with this interpretation. If one looks at this whole story, we see a wager that Jacob had with Laban, his father in law. Laban had cheated Jacob twice, and Jacob wanted to leave with his family so he asked for his wages in striped and speckled and colored goats and sheep. Laban sorted out the sheep and goats so that none of these were in Jacob’s flocks. Jacob tied strips of poplar to the trees where his herds were breeding. All of the offspring born were such that they satisfied the wager and Jacob could keep them. The glaring problem in the atheist argument here about the origin of striped animals is that they already existed and that Jacob and Laban were aware of