True enough.

However, do you believe that God created animals to prey upon other animals? And, by extension, do you see carnivores in the new earth, which is supposed to be a restoration to Edenic conditions?

Why/how do you conclude that the animals on the ark had to be carnivorous?

That's not altogether true. The only factor not available in hygienically "clean" plant food is Vitamin B12, and the animals get it from exactly the same source as we can -- from bacteria. These bacteria live in the soil and in the human gut. Once we have been "cleaned" of bacteria by anti-biotics, it is true that we can no longer get enough Vitamin B12 from the bacteria in the gut alone. I believe that the current quandary of vegans lacking Vitamin B12 is not reflective of our original creation. We have good reason to believe that, originally, we could get enough from our tne bacteria living in our own gut from the mouth on down.

However, if we are willing to be less "hygienic" and eat more vegetables fresh from our garden, without vigorous cleaning, we will likely ingest B12 that way too. And the body needs only infinitesimally small amounts because it recybles B12 quite efficiently. (There are other complications for those who are not in perfect health, but that's another subject altogether.)

However, what I said above is really not relevant for keeping animals on the ark for a year. For these reasons:
1) It takes several years of ingesting no Vitamin B12 for a deficiency to develop.
2) That vegan animals ingested no Vitamin B12 is extremely unlikely. (I don't think Noah sprayed their food with Lysol or autoclaved it. )
Not true at all.

I suggest you don't believe all you read from the omnivorous propaganda machine.

When I had my oldest children, the health benefits of a plant-based diet were not well known, and doctors and nurses expressed great concern when they discovered that's what our diet consisted of. They were surethat young children needed cow's milk, at least, to grow up healthy and strong. Fortunately I knew better, and if I didn't, the fact that our vegan boys were consistently the healthiest and biggest in any neighborhood we invaded should have convinced me.

Having said all that, I believe there's a place for supplements. But they are not required under ideal conditions, and I'm quite sure they were not required in the ark.

Concerning carnivourous animals, there is nothing around in nature that would suggest how such a world would look like. If God did indeed create the world in such a way that nothing that was alive ever died, there must have been a recreation after the advent of sin. Not only do we have the many carnivorous animals that either prey on other animals or eat carcases, but we also have the balance between carnivorous and herbivorous animals that leads to total havoc if the carnivores were to be removed by human interferance for instance. If you were to kill all the carnivores in the Canadian forests for instance, there would initially be a huge increase in deer. This might look like a good thing, until the time a few summers later when there simply is not enough plants around for the new, reinforced herd to eat. They would be all over gardens and plantations eating up that which humans had planted for other purposes. They would also not get enough food individually and lots of the deer would be too weak to survive a canadian winter. So you would again be down a smaller herd and the cycle would repeat itself.

So consider this, you might be happy that your new earth pet dog will stay alive througout eternity if God recreates the world in such a fasion, but you will also never ever se a puppy again. You might be happy that your pet rabbit will ever be around, but you will never see a baby rabbit again. Is the picture still as clearcut as it might have looked like just a minute ago?

Thomas,

According to God's original plan, the reproduction of both animals and humans would cease when the earth reached the ideal number of inhabitants. And, as to the new earth, we know that after a time we won't have the pleasure of seeing again human babies or children. However, the pleasures we will enjoy there will surpass by far those we enjoy here.

Will we still be human?

Not exactly in the same way we are here.

Mark 12:25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

So God has to concede that what He thought was very good at creation did have some room for improvement after all?

A rose bud is perfect, yet it will become a full blooming rose.

A full blooming rose is no less perfect than is a rose bud. Both rose bud and blooming rose passes on their perfection to the new seed they are designed to promote. Thus perfection yelds perfection.

Sure, and that's my point. Just because something was created perfect, this doesn't mean there's no room for improvement.

The rose bud was created to bloom and then die to make space for the growing seed. Humans recreated androgynous is a different level of "improvement" where the original doesn't become the new by design but by redesign.