Why did Adam have to name all the animals?

[relativetruth]

God knew that eventually, after Babel, he would scatter humans and provide each with their own language and other words for all the animals.
So God gave these other languages the words but Adam had to work it out for himself!

Did this god, after creating Adam, think 'what is the poor sucker going to do with himself?', 'maybe I should give him something to do?' [while I fine tune the Universe].

[Samuelxcs]

Apparently he named them all in just one day.

http://www.creationtips.com/adaminal.html

Genesis 2:20 says Adam named the animals on the sixth day of creation week.

Many people say he couldn't name every animal in the world in just one day.

They are right.

But the Bible doesn't say Adam named all the animals. It says he named three groups — the cattle, the fowl of the air, and the beasts of the field.

He didn't name all the beasts of the earth (Genesis 1:25), or everything that creeps upon the earth (Genesis 1:25). He named only the domesticable animals, birds, and the smaller wild animals living near him.

It doesn't take long to name something “dinosaur”, “dog”, “horse”, “owl”, etc. Adam named only the major kinds, or groups. There are a lot of species of owl, for instance, but naming them all owls would be sufficient.

Five hours to name 3000 animals

The late Dr. Henry Morris pointed out in his Defender's Study Bible that it would have taken Adam only about five hours to name around 3000 basic kinds of animals (one every six seconds). This would have been adequate to acquaint Adam with those animals and also to show him there was none sufficiently like him to provide suitably close companionship.

Adam didn't have to go out looking for those animals to name either. Genesis 2:19 says God brought them to him. And remember — God created Adam perfect, so Adam's brain would have been sharper than ours is. He could have named every major group of cattle, bird, and beast of the field in hours.

That was fast...

[Fiji]

In its never ending quest to reduce humans to mindless drones, the Quran takes a different approach.
There Allah takes Adam aside (away from the angels) and teaches him all the names of the animals. Then, Allah returns to the angels and challenges them to come up with the names of the animals and goes "Ha! you can't, can you?! Ya bunch of looooooosers! Go ask that lowly creature I made from dirt what they're called!"
Aaah, Allah, the only creature in all of fiction more evil than Biblegod.

[Nick]

Geesh, Give a God a break.  Does He have to do everything?  Adam needed something to keep him busy until Eve came around.  He could not just thump his .... all day and night.

[velkyn]

I love how apologists simply ignore the bible when convenient and lie badly.

19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

   But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib[h] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

the naming is weird but it's weirder that God couldn't figure out that an aardvark wouldn't be a good mate for Adam. 

and Allah, indeed seems to be more of a bratty child than this Ywhw.

[relativetruth]

I love how apologists simply ignore the bible when convenient and lie badly.

19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

   But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib[h] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

the naming is weird but it's weirder that God couldn't figure out that an aardvark wouldn't be a good mate for Adam. 

and Allah, indeed seems to be more of a bratty child than this Ywhw.

Did God make a female aardvark out of the rib of a male aardvark?
What about jellyfish? Do they have ribs?
All these questions..

I still don't know why naming was soo important! Who was Adam going to have a conversation with referring to , say, a duck-billed platypus.

[velkyn]

Did God make a female aardvark out of the rib of a male aardvark?
What about jellyfish? Do they have ribs?
All these questions..

I still don't know why naming was soo important! Who was Adam going to have a conversation with referring to , say, a duck-billed platypus.

my god man, yuo've some up with yet a new problem in the bible!

and I'm guessing that since many primitive cultures get hung up on how names supposedly give you power over things,   naming the critters would signify that Adam has that "dominion" thing over the world.

[relativetruth]

I would like to know the name Adam used for a duck-billed platypus.

I hope that there is some theist somewhere who can answer this question.

I am not even asking how the platypus got to Australia from the Garden of Eden or why it survived the flood!

[nogodsforme]

Or even what language Adam used when he named them.....

[jetson]

Wouldn't it be funny if he named the crocoduck.

[Backspace]

I still don't know why naming was soo important! Who was Adam going to have a conversation with referring to , say, a duck-billed platypus.

Wasn't Adam supposed to pick an animal to be his "help meet"?  Probably easier to interact with a help meet when it has a name -- I imagine "Hey you" was rude even in Adam's day.

Oh, and don't forget: a bat is a bird.

[RaymondKHessel]

This topic is great. It demonstrates, in a very simple and easy to read way, how these fables were never meant to be deconstructed, let alone by a 21st century mind.

It always struck me as weird that basically Yahweh had to re-design *EVERY* animal on Earth once Eve ate the magic fruit. I mean plenty of animals are clearly in pain during childbirth, so that curse carried over. So did dying, apparently.

And so did the whole "THINE BODY SHALT NO LONGER PROCESS NUTRIENTS PERFECTLY, AND SO TRULY I SAY UNTO YOU, THOU SHALT POOP AND PEE FOREVERMORE!!!" gimmick when he had to re-wire the bodies of every living thing to make room for a biological waste system.

That's a lot of buttholes to create over one little apple.

Anyway, I too wonder what the original naming system was. I doubt Adam was creative to come up with thinks like "Hippopotamus" or "Rhinosaurus" or "Albatross". I get the feeling everything would have been named "Oog" or "Ug-tug" or some derivitive. Tug-Ug, Oog-Ug, etc.

Seems like a complete waste of everybody's time in the wake of the Babel story, but hey, Yahweh's got a plan. And personally, I think it's total genius to make his plan appear exactly like an endless string of fuck-ups and misfires.

[Historicity]

What is queer is Dr. Morris trying to rationalize an obvious fairy tale as true.  I'm not as good as Adam.  If you presented me with 3000 objects, one every 6 seconds, and required me to make up a nonsense word I could do it.  But would I remember it the next day?  No.  Would I remember the nonsense word from 100 words back?  No.

Fairy tales are intended for children and we don't get into nasty, dirty sex except parenthetically.

So Adam's pal would be a help meet.  The fact that she would be a sex partner is avoided.

If you take it out of a fairy tale context you have God bringing these female animals to Adam and proposing bestiality.   The later Mosaic laws against bestiality are supposed to be God's Law.  But in this story God hadn't thought of it and picked it up from Adam's disapproval.

I once read a history of the Plymouth Colony called Saints and Strangers.  Late in life one of the patriarchs noted in his diary that he was going to take up the study of Hebrew so he could learn the names that Adam gave to the animals.

[Brakeman]

Did Adam name all the fish and whales too? All the crustaceans? All the insects? What about the poor amoebas? when did they get their name? Where did Adam catch his first STD?

[velkyn]

Did Adam name all the fish and whales too? All the crustaceans? All the insects? What about the poor amoebas? when did they get their name? Where did Adam catch his first STD?

::scratch:: ::scratch::  I shall name thee gonorrhea! 

[nogodsforme]

This topic is great. It demonstrates, in a very simple and easy to read way, how these fables were never meant to be deconstructed, let alone by a 21st century mind.

It always struck me as weird that basically Yahweh had to re-design *EVERY* animal on Earth once Eve ate the magic fruit. I mean plenty of animals are clearly in pain during childbirth, so that curse carried over. So did dying, apparently.

And so did the whole "THINE BODY SHALT NO LONGER PROCESS NUTRIENTS PERFECTLY, AND SO TRULY I SAY UNTO YOU, THOU SHALT POOP AND PEE FOREVERMORE!!!" gimmick when he had to re-wire the bodies of every living thing to make room for a biological waste system.

That's a lot of buttholes to create over one little apple.

Anyway, I too wonder what the original naming system was. I doubt Adam was creative to come up with thinks like "Hippopotamus" or "Rhinosaurus" or "Albatross". I get the feeling everything would have been named "Oog" or "Ug-tug" or some derivitive. Tug-Ug, Oog-Ug, etc.

Seems like a complete waste of everybody's time in the wake of the Babel story, but hey, Yahweh's got a plan. And personally, I think it's total genius to make his plan appear exactly like an endless string of fuck-ups and misfires.

I like the way your mind works. But you already knew that.

[pingnak]

Why obviously he named the Platypus 'Perry'.

There are always 'explanations' (aka 'excuses'). 

How could he name all the critters in a day?  Eden didn't have that many.  What kind of paradise would have mosquitoes and bot flies and fire ants and honey badgers?

[nogodsforme]

Why obviously he named the Platypus 'Perry'.

There are always 'explanations' (aka 'excuses'). 

How could he name all the critters in a day?  Eden didn't have that many.  What kind of paradise would have mosquitoes and bot flies and fire ants and honey badgers?

I hereby order that all nature documentaries be narrated by the super bitchin' zoology expert commentator Randall: "Honey badger don't give a sh!t--eww, what's that, a mouse? He's eating a mouse. How disgusting is that." I would pay cash money for him to do voiceovers on everything on the Discovery Channel. 

[Maxwell]

I've never found the bit where Adam names the animals. Where does it say that?

[monkeymind]

Genesis 2:20

[Maxwell]

Genesis 2:20

Sorry I'm not familiar with that. Yeah ok I'll find it.

[jetson]

Genesis 2:20

Sorry I'm not familiar with that. Yeah ok I'll find it.

Just google it, Genesis 2:19-20.  And then read it.

[ungod]

Genesis 2:20

Sorry I'm not familiar with that. Yeah ok I'll find it.

Just google it, Genesis 2:19-20.  And then read it.

So I read it:

Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

and it raises all KINDS (sorry, Kent Hovind!) of questions.

1. What language did Adam name the animals in? After all, the Bible doesn't tell us what language Adam and St, er, Eve spoke!

2. Why would God have Adam name all  the animals when He knew that, according to His Plan, the tower of Babel thingie was scheduled not too far off, and all the animals would have to be named all over again in the new languages! What does this say about an "Omniscient" God!

3. It says Adam named the "livestock"! I thought Eden was a paradise, but here it is revealed that Adam and St, er, Eve had livestock to look after! Getting up early to milk the cows, herding sheep, butchering, feeding the livestock, shovelling manure...sheesh, what kind of paradise is that?

[Brakeman]

butchering, feeding the livestock, shovelling manure...sheesh, what kind of paradise is that?

Just to be clear, as there was no death in the garden of Eden, the animals that were "butchered" did not die, they lived on as skeletal zombies, and since there was no pain of sadness there either, the butchered animals "preferred" to be zombies as they liked it that way..

What's so odd about that?

[Backspace]

1. What language did Adam name the animals in? After all, the Bible doesn't tell us what language Adam and St, er, Eve spoke!

The notes in my Bible say Yahweh, Adam, Eve, and the serpent spoke Esperanto.

[Historicity]

1. What language did Adam name the animals in? After all, the Bible doesn't tell us what language Adam and St, er, Eve spoke!

The notes in my Bible say Yahweh, Adam, Eve, and the serpent spoke Esperanto.

Nu...
Sed ili ne povas vokigxi denaskaj esperantistoj cxar ili ne naskigxis.

=
   Well...
   But they not can get-called from-birthy Esperantists because they not got-born.
=
   But they can't be called native speakers of Esperanto because there were not born.

(The joke loses in the translation.)

[Klokinator]

In its never ending quest to reduce humans to mindless drones, the Quran takes a different approach.
There Allah takes Adam aside (away from the angels) and teaches him all the names of the animals. Then, Allah returns to the angels and challenges them to come up with the names of the animals and goes "Ha! you can't, can you?! Ya bunch of looooooosers! Go ask that lowly creature I made from dirt what they're called!"
Aaah, Allah, the only creature in all of fiction more evil than Biblegod.

Sounds more like allah is a cool homeboy prankster I'd be chill with hangin' out with.

[Gnu Ordure]

Ungod:

Getting up early to milk the cows, herding sheep, butchering, feeding the livestock, shovelling manure...sheesh, what kind of paradise is that?

None of that would have been going on. Eden was vegetarian:

 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
 29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

So after the Fall, certain species became carnivores - which must have been a bit of a shock for the newly-designated prey species.

Larry the Lamb: Hey, it's my good buddy Lenny the Lion. How ya doin', pal?
Lenny the Lion: <chomp>
Larry the Lamb: WTF? <dies>

[Brakeman]

I was aware of that Gnu, I was waiting for someone to point that out as you did. Thanks.
However, Just what exactly would Adam and Even need livestock for if they weren't needed for food or milk?
 Really, it was the land of Milk and Honey, so what did you need sheep or cattle for? Lawn control??