Posted on 04/28/2014 2:47:30 PM PDT by fwdude
Apr 22 2014
The idea that death was in creation before the Fall has major implications for the character of God. The same problem arises if one thinks that God used evolution to create. Evolution is a random and wasteful process that requires millions of ‘unfit’ organisms to die. Countless transitional forms would have arisen, only to fall as casualties in the great march ‘forward’. At some point, this allegedly ‘good’ God ordained a lottery of death that finally resulted in humans, and then God looked at His image-bearers, standing on top of layers upon layers of rocks filled with the remains of billions of dead things, and proclaimed His whole creation—along with the evidence of all the death and suffering that went into creating it—to be ‘very good’ (Genesis:1:31).
--Lita Cosner and Gary Bates (Creation Ministries International)
Yeah, and all done in one paragraph. Pretty unusual.
Why can’t a concise thesis be contained in one paragraph?
I am a Biblical Creationist: I believe that what the Bible says is true, and what the Bible does not say is open to conjecture. Some parts of the history of creation as we have received it bring questions to my mind that strict no-death YEC have not answered other than with shouts of “heretic!”
One question, for example: when Adam ate of the non-forbidden fruits and veggies, did they die? Or did they somehow survive harvesting, mastication, and digestion?
My theory is that there was corporeal death among the non-human creation. Adam is uniquely described as being given God’s Breath of Life. It made him “a living soul”; it is that which would have sustained him in immortality, and it is that which was taken from him at the Fall and which will be restored to us at the Resurrection.
Thoughts? Or just more shouts of “heretic!”
I didn’t say it could not. I said it was unusual.
“One question, for example: when Adam ate of the non-forbidden fruits and veggies, did they die? Or did they somehow survive harvesting, mastication, and digestion?”
You are correct.
Even the comment from God to Adam to “tend the garden” implies that certain plants were to be purposely discarded or thinned.
Adam and Eve ate of the Fruits of the Garden.
Do fruit trees die when you pick a fruit?
Who says he pulled up a turnip by the roots? (Thus killing it).
I don’t believe there was ANY death before the fall.
After the fall, “tending” means getting rid of weeds and such.
Weeds did not exist before the fall.
“Tending” meant “caring”.
There was no death before the fall.
The fall was how death entered into God’s creation. Romans 5:12
Let me throw an interesting twist into the discussion by mentioning the immortal jellyfish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii
To make a long story short, once the jellyfish mates, it reverts to its juvenile form, and then again ages normally.
Well, a simple jellyfish can do this, since they are far less complicated than a human being. Which is incorrect, in that many “simple” organisms have far more chromosomes than do humans. They are *more* complicated than we are.
Humans only have 44 autosomal and 2 sex chromosomes. And all the genetic difference that humans can have are contained in those chromosomes.
The highest number of chromosomes among plants and animals is found in a fern called Adder’s Tongue. 1260 chromosomes. Over 27 times the number that humans have.
So this is a good question for creationists.
If plants, animals and man could do this way back when, the forces of “nature” would be tremendously different.
ping
The living cells in the fruit die. Are we only to be concerned with the death of the whole organism?
You asked about living cells dying constituting death?
Would you consider yourself dead then, since some of your cells have already died?
I have found that when people ask questions they should already know the answer to, that what is really happening is that they are not asking about the real issue they have....
Stem cells, and the ability of life to pass on life across thousands of years shows life was engineered to last forever.
And yet, that tree was never forbidden to them—so who's to say they never did eat from it already?
My personal theory is that eating from the Tree of Life didn't cause immortality, so much as it prevented death. When Adam and Eve were expelled, they lost access to it and death was the result.
Hence I think natural human or animal death was always a possibility. It was simply a result of the Fall that it became a horror to be avoided.
No, Death did not exist before the fall, because the cells I lost were regenerated.
A cell by itself is not “alive”. It cannot feed itself, reproduce, etc. Therefore it is not alive. However, it is PART of something that is alive.
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