Could there have been animal death before the Fall?, 2nd edition

It is often said that the earth must not be very old, because death could not have occurred before the Fall of Adam and Eve, as told in Genesis 3. When this is said, it means death of non-humans, such as the many generations of animals that would have been needed for, say, the origin of birds from reptiles, by natural selection.

A search has led me to some web pages, all arguing, using the Bible, that there could have been, or even must have been, death of non-human creatures before the Fall. (There are also posts that deny this.)

Here they are:
"No Physical Death Before the Fall?" by Glen Kuban.

"Death Before the Fall: God Created Cellular Death Codes," by Glenn Morton.

"Creation Science Issues: Death Before the Fall of Man," by Greg Neyman. 

 "Animal Death Before the Fall: What Does the Bible Say?" by Lee Irons.

"Was there animal death before the fall?" by Jay Wile.

"Did death occur before the Fall?" by BioLogos.

I have previously posted on a related matter.

None of these take the view that there couldn't have been death before the Fall, but some of them also present reasons why some people believe that there was no such death.

See my posts on David Snoke's book, A Biblical Case for an Old Earth. Snoke argues that the Bible allows the death of animals before the Fall. Here's one such post. Click on the "David Snoke" label at the end of the post to see all of them.

This post is a revision of one from January 2008.

Thank you for reading!

 

Sunspots 737

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: A disturbing Relevant article about the shallowness of Christians, such as me.

A Christianity Today article on animal suffering and the Fall.

A Christianity Today writer says that embracing partisan politics has a serious detrimental effect on carrying out Christ's mission.

Christianity Today also says that religious persecution, world-wide, is getting worse.

Finance: NPR discusses the effects of forgiving college student's debts. It would be a mixed bag.

Health: (or something) The Associated Press reports on the tallest man in Pakistan -- he is 8 feet tall.

NPR points out that, for some of us, our doctor should have discussed climate change. Some doctors have, but most haven't.

NPR also discusses how to cut down on the number of falls taken by senior citizens.

Politics: (and History) NPR examines the history of Nativism in the USA. (For example, at one time, people of Irish descent were considered a threat by many.)

FiveThirtyEight discusses how the electorate reacts to a female candidate for President.

Surprise! Relevant reports that children are less likely to die from gunshots where there are stricter gun controls. (Gunshots are the second leading cause of death in children in the USA.

Science: Gizmodo has an article about the origins of domestic cattle, based on DNA studies. Some of those origins aren't clear.

Gizmodo also asks (and gets some answers) if the butterfly effect is real.

The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, I believe, it is public domain. 

Thanks for looking!

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 73

But this larger and more adventurous Christian universe has one final mark difficult to express; yet as a conclusion of the whole matter I will attempt to express it. All the real argument about religion turns on the question of whether a man who was born upside down can tell when he comes right way up. The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality. That is the inmost philosophy of the Fall. And when rationalists say that the ancient world was more enlightened than the Christian, from their point of view they are right. For when they say “enlightened” they mean darkened with incurable despair. It is profoundly true that the ancient world was more modern than the Christian. The common bond is in the fact that ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence, about everything, while medievals were happy about that at least. I freely grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about everything—they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything—they were at war about everything else. But if the question turn on the primary pivot of the cosmos, then there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody streets of Florence than in the theatre of Athens or the open garden of Epicurus. Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides, but he lived in a gayer universe.

Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 62

And now we come to the crucial question which truly concludes the whole matter. A reasonable agnostic, if he has happened to agree with me so far, may justly turn round and say, “You have found a practical philosophy in the doctrine of the Fall; very well. You have found a side of democracy now dangerously neglected wisely asserted in Original Sin; all right. You have found a truth in the doctrine of hell; I congratulate you. You are convinced that worshippers of a personal God look outwards and are progressive; I congratulate them. But even supposing that those doctrines do include those truths, why cannot you take the truths and leave the doctrines? Granted that all modern society is trusting the rich too much because it does not allow for human weakness; granted that orthodox ages have had a great advantage because (believing in the Fall) they did allow for human weakness, why cannot you simply allow for human weakness without believing in the Fall? If you have discovered that the idea of damnation represents a healthy idea of danger, why can you not simply take the idea of danger and leave the idea of damnation? If you see clearly the kernel of common sense in the nut of Christian orthodoxy, why cannot you simply take the kernel and leave the nut? Why cannot you (to use that cant phrase of the newspapers which I, as a highly scholarly agnostic, am a little ashamed of using), why cannot you simply take what is good in Christianity, what you can define as valuable, what you can comprehend, and leave all the rest, all the absolute dogmas that are in their nature incomprehensible?” This is the real question; this is the last question; and it is a pleasure to try to answer it.
The first answer is simply to say that I am a rationalist. I like to have some intellectual justification for my intuitions. If I am treating man as a fallen being it is an intellectual convenience to me to believe that he fell; and I find, for some odd psychological reason, that I can deal better with a man’s exercise of free will if I believe that he has got it. But I am in this matter yet more definitely a rationalist. I do not propose to turn this book into one of ordinary Christian apologetics; I should be glad to meet at any other time the enemies of Christianity in that more obvious arena. Here I am only giving an account of my own growth in spiritual certainty. But I may pause to remark that the more I saw of the merely abstract arguments against the Christian cosmology the less I thought of them. I mean that having found the moral atmosphere of the Incarnation to be common sense, I then looked at the established intellectual arguments against the Incarnation and found them to be common nonsense. In case the argument should be thought to suffer from the absence of the ordinary apologetic I will here very briefly summarise my own arguments and conclusions on the purely objective or scientific truth of the matter.

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 43

This startling swiftness with which popular systems turn oppressive is the third fact for which we shall ask our perfect theory of progress to allow. It must always be on the look out for every privilege being abused, for every working right becoming a wrong. In this matter I am entirely on the side of the revolutionists. They are really right to be always suspecting human institutions; they are right not to put their trust in princes nor in any child of man. The chieftain chosen to be the friend of the people becomes the enemy of the people; the newspaper started to tell the truth now exists to prevent the truth being told. Here, I say, I felt that I was really at last on the side of the revolutionary. And then I caught my breath again: for I remembered that I was once again on the side of the orthodox.
Christianity spoke again and said: “I have always maintained that men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its own nature to rust or to rot; I have always said that human beings as such go wrong, especially happy human beings, especially proud and prosperous human beings. This eternal revolution, this suspicion sustained through centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the doctrine of progress. If you were a philosopher you would call it, as I do, the doctrine of original sin. You may call it the cosmic advance as much as you like; I call it what it is—the Fall.”

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 29

The fancy that the cosmos was not vast and void, but small and cozy, had a fulfilled significance now, for anything that is a work of art must be small in the sight of the artist; to God the stars might be only small and dear, like diamonds. And my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from Crusoe’s ship-even that had been the wild whisper of something originally wise, for, according to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world. But the important matter was this, that it entirely reversed the reason for optimism. And the instant the reversal was made it felt like the abrupt ease when a bone is put back in the socket. I had often called myself an optimist, to avoid the too evident blasphemy of pessimism. But all the optimism of the age had been false and disheartening for this reason, that it had always been trying to prove that we fit in to the world. The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit in to the world. I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its meat from God. But now I really was happy, for I had learnt that man is a monstrosity. I had been right in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse and better than all things. The optimist’s pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything in the light of the supernatural. The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. The knowledge found out and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark house of infancy. I knew now why grass had always seemed to me as queer as the green beard of a giant, and why I could feel homesick at home.

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 28

It was as if I had been blundering about since my birth with two huge and unmanageable machines, of different shapes and without apparent connection—the world and the Christian tradition. I had found this hold in the world: the fact that one must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly. I found this projecting feature of Christian theology, like a sort of hard spike, the dogmatic insistence that God was personal, and had made a world separate from Himself. The spike of dogma fitted exactly into the hold in the world—it had evidently been meant to go there—and then the strange thing began to happen. When once these two parts of the two machines had come together, one after another, all the other parts fitted and fell in with an eerie exactitude. I could hear bolt after bolt over all the machinery falling into its place with a kind of click of relief. Having got one part right, all the other parts were repeating that rectitude, as clock after clock strikes noon. Instinct after instinct was answered by doctrine after doctrine. Or, to vary the metaphor, I was like one who had advanced into a hostile country to take one high fortress. And when that fort had fallen the whole country surrendered and turned solid behind me. The whole land was lit up, as it were, back to the first fields of my childhood. All those blind fancies of boyhood which in the fourth chapter I have tried in vain to trace on the darkness, became suddenly transparent and sane. I was right when I felt that roses were red by some sort of choice: it was the divine choice. I was right when I felt that I would almost rather say that grass was the wrong colour than say it must by necessity have been that colour: it might verily have been any other. My sense that happiness hung on the crazy thread of a condition did mean something when all was said: it meant the whole doctrine of the Fall.

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Can Klingons be saved?

I was amazed to stumble upon an interview in Scientific American, entitled "Did Jesus Save the Klingons?"

The person interviewed clearly is not a friend of Christianity. But so what? Is he right, and, could Jesus save the Klingons, or do Klingons need salvation through Christ?

I have previously posted on the question of religion among extraterrestrials (or not). My conclusions haven't changed. Here they are, re-stated:

First, we do not know, from science or the Bible, whether there are any intelligent races other than humans in the universe. The Bible is silent on the subject, unless Jesus was referring to such when he spoke about other sheep, not of this fold. (John 10:14) I'm not sure what He meant, but perhaps He was referring to the Gentiles. He might have been referring to extraterrestrials. Probably not. There are a lot of planets out there, orbiting other stars, and it is close to certain that there are a lot more that we haven't been able to detect. That doesn't prove that there is intelligent life out there. For that matter, it doesn't prove that there is life of any kind outside the Solar System. It is, however, impossible to disprove the existence of other intelligent beings.

Second, if there were intelligent aliens, would they need salvation? My guess is that they might not. Humans, according Christian doctrine, need salvation because of The Fall, a decision to disobey by our first ancestors, which resulted in sin becoming part of our very natures. Extraterrestrials might never have made such a terrible choice, or, possibly, may never had the opportunity to make such a choice. C. S. Lewis, no less, wrote about not one, but three races of intelligent, unfallen beings in his Out of the Silent Planet. It was fictional, of course. (See here.)

Would unfallen beings would need any sort of redemption? Maybe, maybe not. Fallen beings do.

Third, if there are fallen intelligent beings on other worlds, is it necessary that Christ died for their salvation? Maybe not. His death, once, on earth, might have been adequate for the redemption of the entire creation. Or, on some other planet, it might be that the equivalent of The Fall might require some other sort of atonement -- don't ask me what kind.

If the Bible is true, humans living on this planet need redemption through Christ. See here and here. We did sin, and we do need redemption, and can't provide this for ourselves. It is interesting to speculate about intelligent beings on other planets, but probably not very wise to speculate about it very much, unless and until we know that such beings exist.

It is possible that dolphins, whales, and great apes, and possibly some other animals, might be substituted for the extraterrestrials in the above discussion. But, again, we have no certainty that they can make important moral choices, and communicate about them effectively. Maybe, maybe not.

If there are Klingons, and they need salvation, God must have provided it, somehow.

Thanks for reading!

*  *  *  *  *

February 6, 2015 and July 27, 2015: Shannon McDermott has posted on this subject, at Speculative Faith. There are links to other posts about this subject, including views contrary to McDermott's, here.

Did Jesus say that some are born gay?

A web page, from Whosoever, "an online magazine for GLBT Christians" has this title: "Jesus said some are born gay."

That was news to me, but worth consideration. I wish to muse about that web page.

Why would being born homosexual matter? Here's what the page says:
Some Christians confidently assert that God did not create homosexual people "that way." This is important because they realize if God did create gays "that way," rejecting them would be tantamount to rejecting God’s work in creation.

Those are two interesting sentences, and there's some mushy thinking in them, or mushy thinking is assumed to take place in others. I think that what the first sentence means is not that some Christians claim that God did not create homosexuals, but that some Christians claim that no one is born homosexual, but homosexuals become such by their own choice. And, presumably, they can choose to stop being homosexual. Some Christians do claim that. They are at least partly wrong. Some homosexuals are born with such tendencies, and cannot change that.

Did God create homosexuals? Did God create NBA power forwards, kleptomaniacs, people with perfect pitch, or people with Tourette syndrome? Well, yes and no. God created humans, and humans are born with various physical or mental gifts or characteristics, including some that are clearly inherited, and others that can be developed with exposure to certain environmental factors, such as being raised in a musical household. Most of our characteristics are influenced by both heredity and environment. It is possible that God specially created zygotes, or sperms and eggs, so that they would lead to a person with perfect pitch, or a person who was prone to alcoholism, but most people don't really believe that. They believe, rather, that God allows such things to happen, whether usually perceived as good or ill.

If Christians reject hereditary influences on sexual preference, they are, most likely, wrong. It's a complex and controversial subject, but the preponderance of evidence seems to be that both hereditary and environmental factors influence sexual orientation. It would be surprising if they didn't.

Now, as to "rejecting them would be tantamount to rejecting God's work in creation." Well, some Christians may believe that way, but it is certainly not necessary to do so. We live in a fallen world. Most Christians, I suppose, would believe that cancer was not part of God's original creation, but is now present because of The Fall. Chemotherapy, using sunscreen, or abstaining from tobacco products, is not rejecting God's work in creation, but taking caution in a fallen world. It is possible that some homosexuals are born that way, because we live in a fallen world, just as some babies are born with various kinds of physical and mental challenges. Stating that some people are born with homosexual orientation is not rejecting God's work in creation, any more than allowing that the fact that some mosquitoes carry malaria is a rejection of God's work in creation.

The web page makes an important claim. That claim is about this passage:
Matthew 19: 8 He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it has not been so. 9  I tell you that whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries her when she is divorced commits adultery.”
10 His disciples said to him, “If this is the case of the man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry.”
11 But he said to them, “Not all men can receive this saying, but those to whom it is given.12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake. He who is able to receive it, let him receive it. (World English Bible, public domain)

The claim is that "eunuchs who were born that way . . ." refers to homosexuals. Well, maybe. The only other use of the word, eunuch, in the New Testament is in Acts 8, the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch. There is no indication as to how this man became a eunuch. There is reference to eunuchs in a few places in the Old Testament. They include Deuteronomy 23:1 He who is emasculated by crushing or cutting shall not enter into Yahweh’s assembly.
Isaiah 56 3b Do not let the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.”
4 For Yahweh says, “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
and choose the things that please me,
and hold fast to my covenant:
5 I will give them in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name better than of sons and of daughters.
I will give them an everlasting name, that will not be cut off. 
Jeremiah 52:25 and out of the city he took an officer who was set over the men of war; and seven men of those who saw the king’s face, who were found in the city; and the scribe of the captain of the army, who mustered the people of the land; and sixty men of the people of the land, who were found in the middle of the city. (The word, "officer," is rendered as eunuch in other translations. See here for a Bible dictionary article which discusses "eunuch" rather thoroughly, including the connection between eunuch and officer.)
The references in the Bible indicate that eunuchs were made so by an operation, or possibly by an accident. Occasionally, a man may have been born with no testicles, or with greatly reduced sexual capacity, and that that is most likely what Jesus was really speaking about.

However, even assuming that the web page is correct, which is a dubious claim, so what? The passage in Matthew, quoted above, seems to be about sexual abstinence, anyway.

Here is a link to five Bible dictionary articles about eunuch, including the one mentioned above. None of them support the idea that Jesus was talking about homosexuals in Matthew 19:12.

The first paragraph of this post, by me, a previous discussion of homosexuality, lists all the Biblical references to it, with links to those scriptures. There are eight of them. All of them refer to homosexual activity negatively. (None of them refer explicitly to homosexual orientation, as opposed to homosexual activity.)

A Wikipedia article on Homosexuality and Judaism also indicates that, although there are differences of opinion, most Jewish theologians believe that homosexual activity is sinful, but that homosexual orientation is not.

I conclude with a quotation from my wider discussion of homosexuality: "God is not ever unfair. He may demand more of some than others, in certain aspects of their lives. All of us are born with tendencies that we must control in order to live Christian lives. It isn't just homosexuals that are called to life-long celibacy -- some heterosexuals are. All heterosexuals are, until they are married."

Thanks for reading.

microrganisms and the Bible

Microorganisms, such as bacteria, yeasts and protozoa are very important. (So are viruses, but they aren't exactly alive, and won't be considered in this post.) Among other things that they do, they make Nitrogen available to other living things. (Nitrogen is an essential part of DNA, RNA, and proteins, so living things have to have it.) They help decompose dead things, so that the material they are made of can be used by other organisms, including humans. They cause diseases, including malaria, perhaps the disease that has killed more people than any other. They assist in various important processes, such as the production of ensilage (aka silage), the production of alcohol, and the manufacture of yogurt. They make it possible for bread to rise. Microorganisms living in our intestines also help us break down material, and some of them help us fight off certain diseases. The germs living in our intestines produce some vitamins for us.

In spite of their critical importance, microorganisms are not mentioned in the Bible at all. This is not surprising, since yeasts weren't discovered until 1680, and weren't believed to be living things until later, and bacteria weren't discovered until 1683. Protozoa were also discovered in the 1680's.

If there were six days of creation activity by God, on which day were the microorganisms created? The Bible doesn't say, of course, but the best guess for bacteria and yeasts is the third day, when the dry land, and land plants, appeared. (Genesis 1 doesn't mention plants living under water at all, and, if there were six days of creation, we don't know when they appeared, either.) As for protozoa, perhaps they were created on the fifth day, with water animals and birds.

Note -- Genesis 1 does not mention flying insects. Perhaps they were lumped in with the birds.

Were bacteria, and other microorganisms, important before the Fall? Again, we don't know. It is possible that decomposition took place before the Fall, and it is possible that bacteria helped the first humans digest their food. But maybe, before the Fall, decomposition didn't take place, and/or humans were able to digest their food without assistance. My guess is that defecation did take place before the Fall, and that decomposition bacteria would have been important then, but that's just a guess. Some scholars believe that animal death occurred before the Fall. (See here.)

I have posted on a related topic, mentioning most of the ideas above, a few years ago, here.

Thanks for reading.

Tapeworms before the Flood? Scientific evidence for that

Todd C. Wood is a firm believer in Young-Earth Creationism. Unlike some Young-Earth Creationists, he is familiar with the scientific literature, and accepts most of it. He also engages with scientists who do not believe like he does.

In a recent post, Wood comments on a report that indicates that there were tapeworm eggs in fossilized shark dung. (Tapeworms are commonly passed on by eggs in dung, which is eaten, accidentally or on purpose. Fossilized dung is fairly common. Such fossils are called coprolites.)

Wood doesn't argue about it, but he does not accept the date of approximately 270 million years ago for the fossil. He believes that this fossil was formed during the flood. Either way, the fossil indicates that tapeworms existed before the flood. If the date given is correct, they must have existed, not only before the flood, but before the Fall. 

If they did, as the evidence indicates, then their must have been parasites before the Fall. This, as Wood well knows, would raise some interesting questions for Young-Earth Creationists. (There are other kinds of Creationists. See here for an example.)

In this post, I speculate on dung, and also about organisms that probably existed before the Fall, such as bacteria and mosquitoes.

Thanks for reading. Read Wood.

Why do sickness and death bother us so much?

Why do sickness and death bother us so much? Every one reading this, and the vast number who won't, will die, barring some miraculous event. All of us get sick, sometimes as a minor inconvenience, sometimes as a crippling incapacitation, and sometimes to death.

Why, then, don't we just accept this state of things? Why do we expect things to go right, when they almost never do?

There are probably a lot of different reasons for our rebellion against the way things are. I hope I understand part of the reasons.

I think that, deep in our DNA, or our unconscious, is the knowledge that things shouldn't be like this. So we complain, and rebel against the way things are. What do I mean, things shouldn't be like this? The Bible teaches us that the first humans lived in a world without human sickness and death. (Plants and animals probably died, or were killed by humans.) But that world changed drastically, because those first humans disobeyed God, the Creator. I believe that we somehow know that there has been a change, and long for it to be reversed, and complain at the consequences of that change, the Fall.

Some of us question God's goodness, or even His existence, because of the consequences of sin in the world. How could a loving God allow such terrible things to happen? If I had the full answer to that, I would be God, which I certainly am not. But part of the answer is that God suffers with us, probably more than we suffer ourselves. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. Jesus also took the consequences of our sin upon Himself, for those who are willing to let Him do so for them. In the process, Jesus, Himself, suffered. Granted, He didn't suffer as long as, say, a burn victim, but He did suffer.

Another part of the answer is that God is going to provide a Heaven for those who believe, free from sickness and death.

It is not wrong to want to do something about sickness. Jesus healed every person who asked Him to do so. He also raised a few people from death. The Bible suggests that we pray for sick believers. But healing everyone is not God's final answer. (See here for more of what the Bible says on that subject.) Consider, also, that everyone Jesus healed died, most likely of sickness, later in their life. Those He raised from the dead  
died a second time. The Bible says that death is the last enemy to be defeated.

I think we, including me, concentrate too much on sickness. Although all the churches I have attended, and can remember, prayed most of their prayers for the sick, the New Testament church didn't pray in that pattern.

Thanks for reading.

Animal Death before the Fall, considered again

I have previously posted on the topic of animal death before the Fall. I have concluded, and I am not alone in this, that death of animals before the Fall was, indeed, possible, and would not contradict what the Bible says on the subject. I recently read an article by an author new to me, named Jay Wiles. Wiles, who is a self-confessed young-earth creationist, and apparently a fairly prominent one, argues, using the original languages of scripture (which I am not competent to do) that death, animal death, may well have occurred before the Fall. Wiles points out that most young-earth creationists do not accept this, but he argues that they are wrong. Those who claim that there was no death before the Fall often use this as an argument against the origin of changes in organisms by natural selection. Natural selection requires that some organisms die (or at least don't reproduce very well) so that if there was no death until after humans came about, natural selection couldn't account for much of the variety of organisms. Wiles does not believe that major changes could have occurred in living things, because there hasn't been enough time in earth's history for such changes, not because he believes that there wasn't non-human death before the Fall.

I have posted on this subject before. In this post, I refer to another article on the subject, and link to it. In this post, I claim that God does not like human death. In this post, and this one, I discuss the topic of death before the Fall as related to A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by David Snoke.

Thanks for reading!

Blog seminar on evolution and original sin

The blog, "An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution," is hosting a blog seminar (a new concept, so far as I know) on an article by George L. Murphy.

The article, which is 10 pages long, including references, in easily readable type, and in language which should be easily understood by a reasonably intelligent person (such as you) is freely available on-line. Murphy raises some fundamental questions about original sin and the Fall.

Thanks for reading. Read Murphy, and check out the seminar.

Why was there a Garden of Eden?

He Lives has raised a question that, I confess, is new to me. It shouldn't have been. That's why I read his blog.

The question is this. If there was no death, even of animals, before the Fall, was that true over the entire earth, or just in the Garden of Eden?

If your answer is "over the whole earth," then what, if anything, was special about the Garden of Eden? Why was there such a place, and what else was special about it?

That's a good question. Heddle's answer is that there was, indeed, death of animals before the Fall, but that the Garden of Eden was a place that was protected from that.

I'm not sure that I buy this answer, but I don't have a better one. One reason I'm not fully convinced is that David Snoke has argued that, when Adam was warned about eating from the Tree of Life, Adam had seen animal death. If he hadn't seen it, it would have been difficult for him to understand the warning. I'm not sure that that is true, either, of course. But if He Lives is correct, then presumably Adam wouldn't have seen death before the warning in Genesis 2.

Thanks for reading!

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by Snoke, part 6: Death before the Fall? (part 2)

In Genesis 2, God warns Adam:

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (All Bible quotation from the ESV. The creation of Eve is described later in the same chapter.)

If there was no animal death until after the Fall, would it have been possible for Adam to fully understand this warning? Perhaps not. It would seem that, if Adam had seen a dead animal, for example one killed by a predator, he would have comprehended the idea of death more fully.

David Snoke, in his A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2006), uses this argument in favor of death before the Fall. He also raise other arguments. (See here for my most recent post on this topic.)

Snoke does raise other arguments. One of them is from Romans 1. In that chapter, Paul writes:
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. Note the emphasized phrase. Snoke points out, correctly, that Paul didn't say "ever since the Fall." He said since the creation.

Snoke claims, with good reason, I believe, after reading his book, that part of God's attributes are, and have always been, his wrath, leading to righteous judgement. If God's wrath was perceivable before the Fall, then some of the effects of God's wrath, or at least animal death, and perhaps similar things (tripping over rocks, seeing tree branches break, and the like) must have been known to Adam and Eve. Says Snoke:
If Adam had obeyed God, this "very good" creation still would have testified to Adam of the power of God and the wrath he had escaped. (95)

Snoke also writes:
We must marvel at the shark, even while fearing it. It is well designed, frighteningly so. So also are many parasites. It is hard to believe that such well-designed weapons could arise by chance --they are good designs. . . . the main reason why many people want Darwinism to be true is that they just cannot accept the idea of God being glorified by violence. Darwin used the example of a wasp-eating larva as an example of something he just could not imagine God making in a good world. . . . If it would have been bad for God to have made wasp-eating larvae before the fall, how is it now justified? If we say that the only merit in making natural evil is to punish humans, then how are we punished by the death of a wasp? If we say, on the other hand, that the death of a wasp serves as a reminder to us of the wrath of God, why could not that have been the case before the Fall? God's wrath did not suddenly spring into existence when Adam and Eve sinned, and God had no desire to hide this side of his nature. (pp. 96-7. I pointed out, in an earlier post, that I do not agree fully with Snoke on the question of intelligent design, but his argument doesn't depend on direct supernatural design of the shark's body, or lack thereof.)

Thanks for reading. I hope to post more on Snoke's book later.

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by Snoke, part 5: Death before the Fall?

I have been occasionally posting about David Snoke's A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006). For the most recent post, see here, or click on "David Snoke" among the tags at the end of this post.

Snoke, in his third chapter, says that the main reasons that many Christians believe that the earth is not very old are beliefs that the days of Genesis 1 were 24-hour days, and that the Bible says that there was no death before the Fall. Snoke says that the second belief is the more important objection, and chooses to deal with it first.

Why do many Christians believe that there was no death before the Fall? One reason is Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— (all Bible quotes are from the ESV)

A second reason is Genesis 9:3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. God told Noah this, and it seems to imply that humans didn't eat animals before the Flood, which, of course, came after the Fall. Eating meat is one of the main reasons for killing animals.

To quote Snoke:

Proponents of the young-earth view, however, would say that the statements of Genesis 1:29-30 rule out meat-eating before the fall. In so saying, however, they are arguing from a positive command to a negative one. They take the statement, "I give you x for food," to mean, "You are forbidden to eat anything else." This does not necessarily follow. The parallelism of Genesis 1:28-30 and Genesis 9:1-3 may be taken to imply the opposite, that is, that Genesis 9:1-3 is simply a repetition of the same charge given in Genesis 1:28-30, and that the expansion that includes eating animals is the same as other expansions of parallel passages in Scripture, such as the different versions of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 or the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-12 and Luke 6:20-26. The later version dos not negate the earlier version; rather, it is taken as simply saying the same thing with slightly more information. . . .
If eating animals was not forbidden, then why would God single out green plants as food in the charge of Genesis 1:28-30? There are several plausible reasons. The best reason, in my opinion, is that God was establishing the hierarchy of his creation: green plants are the basis of the food chain. (pp. 65-66) Genesis 1:28-30 is here.

If animals didn't die before the Fall, then significant changes in animal types couldn't have been brought about by natural selection. Also, fossils, indicating that significant changes have occurred, wouldn't have been laid down a long time ago if animals didn't die before the Fall.

What does Snoke say about this? He argues that the death referred to in Romans 5:12 and other passages about the effects of the Fall is spiritual death, not physical. Adam, after all, did not die immediately when he and Eve first sinned, but, says Snoke, he did die spiritually, immediately. Since his death was spiritual only, it didn't affect the animals directly.

I will not reproduce all of Snoke's arguments here, but will mention one more such. Job 38 mentions, in the last verses of the chapter, predators and prey. Predators, of course, kill other animals. The context of the chapter is about God's creation. This strongly suggests that there was predation before the Fall. (An article by Snoke, about dangerous animals and the Bible, may be found here.)

I believe that Snoke makes a good case. I hope to post more on his book later. Thanks for reading.

(Note that Snoke, nor the Bible, say very little about the death of plants, so I haven't either.)

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by Snoke, part 4, Eden, Revelation, and the present

On pages 52-3, of his A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006) David Snoke discusses two views of the relationship between the world before the Fall, the present world, and that which is to come.
He says that there are two views about this relationship. One holds that the pre-Fall world and the world described in Revelation 21-22 are the same world, restored to the way it was in the beginning, at the end. Snoke does not hold that view. Says he:
In the second view, the original world of creation and our world are essentially the same, and the new heaven and new earth of Revelation 21-22 is utterly different from these. This view is supported by several key differences between the world of Revelations 21-22 and the world of Genesis 1-3. . . . First, Revelation 21:1 (NIV) makes clear that "there was no longer any sea," while Genesis 1 emphasizes the creation of the sea. Also, Revelation 21:23 and 22:4-5 emphasize that there shall no longer be "night" or "the sun and the moon," while Genesis 1 emphasizes the existence of darkness, held back by the lights form the sun and moon,and the balance of morning with evening, that is, nightfall. (p. 53)

Snoke also points out, on page 55, that the serpent, Satan, was present in the garden, while Revelation 20 and 21 state that nothing evil will enter the heavenly city. So, he makes a good case that the present earth is more like the world before the Fall than like the world at the end.

Thanks for reading.

Grass, by Sheri S. Tepper

Sheri S. Tepper is a prolific writer, and at least one of her novels (Grass, which was published by Doubleday in 1989, and is the subject of this post -- I read the paperback version.) was nominated for the Hugo award. I was surprised that the Wikipedia article on Tepper was so sketchy, and that there is no article on Grass.

I wouldn't say that Tepper is one of my favorite authors -- this is my first post on her, in over 1,000 such -- but she is certainly readable, and I found that there was a lot more to Grass than I remembered from my earlier reading. Let me qualify that previous sentence. No one has ever called me a male chauvinist pig, but some of Tepper's later work got so strongly feminist that I quit reading. One of my daughters recalls a similar experience with her work. Grass, on the other hand, isn't mostly a feminist work. It's science fiction -- speculating about what would happen if . . . The relationships and roles of males and females do enter the story.

Tepper has published two other books that are loosely connected, and this series is called either the Arbai series (after an extinct race of intelligent beings, found on many planets) or the Marjorie Westriding series (after the main character).

I have found a few reviews of the book. This blog post calls the book ". . . a rabbit-hole entry into rich moral questions . . .," and sees it as relevant to the US entry into wars in the Persian Gulf. This review calls it ". . . one of the most significant works of 1980s SF . . ." The review traces various significant literary influences on the book, mostly non-fantastic. Steven Wu's review states, I think correctly, that Tepper has loaded her novel with too much philosophical freight, but nonetheless commends her work. This review says much the same.

As I need to, I am going to give away various parts of the plot. This post will not be long enough to give all of it away.

Literary features.
I make no claim to be a literary critic, but even I can see that Grass starts and ends with, er, grass. Tepper begins, even before page 1, by quoting Isaiah 40:6, which she renders: "A voice says, 'Cry!' And I said, 'What shall I cry?' All flesh is grass . . ."

This marvelous passage opens the book proper:
Grass!
Millions of square miles of it; numberless wind-whipped tsunamis of grass, a thousand sun-lulled caribbeans of grass, a hundred rippling oceans, every ripple a gleam of scarlet or amber, emerald or turquoise, multicolored as rainbows, the colors shivering over the prairies in stripes and blotches, the grasses -- some high, some low, some feathered, some straight -- making their own geography as they grow. There are grass hills where the great plumes tower in masses the height of ten tall men; grass valleys where the turf is like moss, soft under the feet, where maidens pillow their heads thinking of their lovers, where husbands lie down and think of their mistresses; grass groves where old men and women sit quiet at the end of the day, dreaming of things that might have been, perhaps once were. Commoners all, of course. No aristocrat would sit in the wild grass to dream. Aristocrats have gardens for that, if they dream at all.
Grass. Ruby ridges, blood-colored highlands, wine-shaded glades. Sapphire seas of grass with dark islands of grass bearing great plumy green trees which are grass again. Interminable meadows of silver hay where the great grazing beasts move in slanting lines like mowing machines, leaving the stubble behind them to spring up again in trackless wildernesses of rippling argent.
Orange highlands burning against the sunsets. Apricot ranges glowing in the dawns. Seed plumes sparkling like sequin stars. Blossom heads like the fragile lace old women take out of trunks to show their granddaughters.
(p. 1-2, Grass -- New York: Bantam, 1990)

It ends thus:
Marjorie,
by the grace of God, grass.
Amen (p. 449. The end of her letter to her husband, who is going back to earth, while Marjorie remains.)

The biology of Grass
Or, I should say, the zoology of Grass, the planet, or Grass, the book. In spite of the title, there isn't much about the botany of the planet.

This review suggests similarities between the book and Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead. There is some connection. In Card's Speaker, an animal species is really another phase of the life of a type of tree, or vice versa. (I seem to recall some bizarre biology in the diggers of Card's Homecoming series, but I don't remember all of the details.)

So what's strange about Grass? There are, besides the grazing beasts, which are scarcely mentioned, after the opening passage, four apparent species of animals, the peepers, who show no evidence of intelligence; the "hounds," which are not much like hounds, which are as large as horses, and predatory; the hippae, which are even larger, also predatory, and definitely intelligent; and the foxen, which are also definitely intelligent. The hippae and the foxen have telepathic powers. The foxen are apparently able to control the thoughts of those around them, so that they can be nearly invisible to observers. The hippae can control humans. The reader discovers that these four types are actually all stages of a single species, going through something like the caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly progression found on earth. But there's a twist. At some time in the past, paedogenesis has occurred, and the final stage became unnecessary. Some hippae produced peepers without going to the final foxen stage. Later, some hippae did not make the final metamorphosis. Then the hippae came to hunt and kill the foxen, not needing them anymore.

There's another important aspect of the organisms of Grass. That is that they are immune to a gruesome viral plague that's destroying the inhabitants of other worlds, and threatens to wipe out mankind. (I didn't find Tepper's microbiology and biochemistry completely convincing, by the way, but this didn't really affect my reading.)

Mind control
The opening passage refers to aristocrats. On Grass, there are a few families of aristocrats (at least in their own eyes) living in estancias throughout the vast prairies of the planet. Somehow, the hippae have controlled their thinking, apparently using the aristocrat's knowledge of fox hunting, to bring about a complicated system of hunting that plays a large part in the lives of the aristocrats. They ride on the hippae (which is dangerous, because the hippae have sharp spines on their backs) accompanied by the "hounds," and are instrumental in killing the foxen. But they think that they are hunting foxes as humans used to do on earth. The hippae control all aspects of this.

There is also a population of non-aristocrats, living near the spaceport. They actually control almost everything on the planet, but the aristocrats don't realize that.

Marjorie and her husband have heard of fox hunting on Grass, and, reasonably enough, believe that it would make sense to bring their own horses with them.

Religious and moral aspects
It should be no surprise that a book that begins by quoting the Bible, and ends in a prayer, has some religious or moral themes and issues.

What are some of these?

One, whether Tepper intended it or not, is the question of earning salvation. Marjorie, who is a loyal Old Catholic (remember that the book is set in the future, when humans have reached several other planets) is trying to earn it by helping people who have violated Earth's strict birth control laws, and thus put themselves beyond the help of the state. This does not satisfy Marjorie. Does she ever find any sort of salvation? I'm not sure. Perhaps in her contact and even communion with a being of another race, a race so different that its members cannot even be clearly seen, she has found it, by the end.

Another one is the question of marital fidelity, and what makes a marriage work. Marjorie's does not. At the beginning of the book, she has never had an adulterous affair, but her husband has a mistress. When he is appointed ambassador to Grass, the mistress, and the wife, go along. By the end, Marjorie has given up on her marriage, which hasn't improved. On page 205, Father Sandoval, who has traveled to Grass with Marjorie, Rigo, their children and the mistress, tells her that he thinks the problem is, simply, that Rigo has been selfish -- he has wanted what he wants, when he wants it, not full-orbed marital intimacy.

Toward the end, Marjorie develops some sort of relationship with First, one of the foxen -- mostly telepathic, but partly physical -- and decides that she will not go back to earth with her husband.

There are religions in the book. One is Old Catholicism. Another is Sanctity, which is the dominant human religion. This review says that Sanctity is modeled on Mormonism. That may or may not be true. In any case, Sanctity is presented as more like an urban gang than a selfless religion. The leaders seek power, and impress children into years of service to the cult. On Grass, at least, the religion tolerates its monks (?) killing each other. When Sanctity learns that there may be a cure for the plague, they try to prevent its implementation, to maintain their own power. Another religion is the Moldies. They operate secretly, because of fear of Sanctity. Their aim is to destroy all humans.

The question of original sin, and the concept of sin, are discussed. Father Sandoval believes that the foxen were redeemed by Christ's death. Although the Arbai are extinct, enough of their artifacts remain to understand that they had no concept of evil, and, as a result, did not think the hippae capable of evil. The hippae destroyed them, by sending the plague through their inter-planetary transportation system.

The foxen know of the evil that the hippae do, and plan to do to humans, but do not act, but prefer to argue about whether or not to act, until Marjorie persuades them to do so. Her concern for her own horses is the trigger that causes this change. The foxen see that she is concerned, not just for herself, but for other creatures, so they follow her moral compass, and act to stop the hippae.

Finally, back to the last part of Marjorie's letter. She has come to believe that individual humans are no more important, in the eyes of God, than a virus, and that God is not concerned with individuals, but with large-scale events. Thus, she believes that, to God, she is like a blade of grass.

This was an ambitious novel. There are a number of aspects of it that I haven't mentioned, and the ones that I have mentioned aren't covered as thoroughly as they might be.

Thanks for reading.

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On April 2, 2009, E Stephen Burnett wrote an essay, asking questions about how far a Christian author could go in writing fiction which has a God who is significantly different from the Christian God, and whether a Christian could legitimately create a fictional character who is in defiance of God. I posted tentative answers to these questions, which are related to the subject of the post above, on April 12, 2009.

Could there have been death before the Fall?

It is often said that the earth must not be very old, because death could not have occurred before the Fall of Adam and Eve, as told in Genesis 3. When this is said, it means death of non-humans, such as the many generations of animals that would have been needed for, say, the origin of birds from reptiles.

A quick search has led me to six web pages, all arguing, using the Bible, that there could have been, or even must have been, death of non-human creatures before the Fall.

Here they are:
"No Physical Death Before the Fall?" by Glen Kuban.

"No Death Before the Fall - A Young Earth Problem," by Rich Deem.

"Death Before the Fall: God Created Cellular Death Codes," by Glenn Morton.

"Creation Science Issues: Death Before the Fall of Man," by Greg Neyman.

"Animal Death Before the Fall: What Does the Bible Say?" by Lee Irons.

"Creation Essentials, Creation Non-Essentials: Part 1, Death Before the Fall," by Dave Kresta.

I have previously posted on a related matter.

None of these take the view that there couldn't have been death before the Fall, but some of them also present reasons why some people believe that there was no such death.

I have not yet taken the time to evaluate, compare, and review these pages, but have reasons of my own for posting this. I may return to the subject later. Thanks for reading.

See my posts on David Snoke's book, A Biblical Case for an Old Earth. Snoke argues that the Bible allows the death of animals before the Fall. Here's one such post. Click on the "David Snoke" label at the end of the post to see all of them.

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On January 1, 2013, I checked the above links. All were still good, except for the ones I referenced in 2008 from Glenn Morton and Lee Irons. I changed the link to one that is still good, also by Morton, and changed the URL for the article by Irons.