For everyone, but especially for Theistic Evolutionists

[Cerebrum123]

Actually the Bible does certainly imply (in a pretty straightforward manner) ,that the curse of sin did end up affecting the animals. Genesis 3:14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.

Cursed "above" implies that the other animals are now cursed as well ,and I don't think God would include the curse as part of His originally "very good" creation. It seems to me ,by looking at the Bible as a whole ,you get that the original creation was perfect ,and that Adam and Eve blew it. We will one day regain what was lost ,and this will be the new heavens and new earth.
Again if you accept that humans were originally only supposed to eat plants ,from what Genesis states ,then I certainly think that since it uses the same language to describe animals ,that what logically follows is that the same restriction applied to animals. Also even if you are only saying that Genesis 1-2 are a polemic against false Gods ,I don't think that God would let something that is that big of an error be a part of it. Even Moses would have known about animals eating each other (if you believe he did indeed write Genesis) ,and unless he was told otherwise by God (this seems the more likely scenario to me) likely would have had them eating each other all along.
Besides if God did indeed create using the processes of evolution ,then there are ways he could have explained this even to the early Israelite's.

[pancreasman]

Actually the Bible does certainly imply (in a pretty straightforward manner) ,that the curse of sin did end up affecting the animals. Genesis 3:14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.

Cursed "above" implies that the other animals are now cursed as well ,and I don't think God would include the curse as part of His originally "very good" creation. It seems to me ,by looking at the Bible as a whole ,you get that the original creation was perfect ,and that Adam and Eve blew it. We will one day regain what was lost ,and this will be the new heavens and new earth.
Again if you accept that humans were originally only supposed to eat plants ,from what Genesis states ,then I certainly think that since it uses the same language to describe animals ,that what logically follows is that the same restriction applied to animals. Also even if you are only saying that Genesis 1-2 are a polemic against false Gods ,I don't think that God would let something that is that big of an error be a part of it. Even Moses would have known about animals eating each other (if you believe he did indeed write Genesis) ,and unless he was told otherwise by God (this seems the more likely scenario to me) likely would have had them eating each other all along.
Besides if God did indeed create using the processes of evolution ,then there are ways he could have explained this even to the early Israelite's.

This always strike me as a fairly simplistic view of ecosystems, particularly with regard to microscopic life forms. Everything ate plants? Does that mean everything ate plant cells that contained chlorophyll? Did all non-plants die of old age? Were there decomposer organisms? How did plants gain trace element nutrients in the soil? Why was there soil in the first place? What did pre-fall soil look like? What did it contain? Was there an ocean ecosystem? If there was no death, how did deep sea animals survive without plants? Did the human body support an immense host of flora and fauna as it does now? Did fleas eat plants? Doesn't this view of a complete disjoint between animal life before and after the fall propose a far more radical retooling of the form and function of countless plants and animals than evolution ever did? And wouldn't it have to be instantaneous? And why were cats cursed? What did they ever do?

[shunyadragon]

Correct. A phylogenetic tree cannot represent reality. In the other thread I'll explain why.

Magellan

Phylogenetic trees do represent reality, but your colored pea shell game is little more than parlor tricks. Nothing to do with science.

[USIncognito]

Mine! Er, I mean for my um uh niece. Yeah, for my niece. Wait. She's 28. For my grandniece! That's it. For my grandniece. She's going on 7. I mean they're obviously not for me. Wouldn't that be silly? I mean a 50-something year old playing with, er I mean collecting dinosaur toys. No, not for me but for my grandniece -- when she comes over.

How ironic. From this review of the 12 piece large assorted dinosaur collection...
"Okay - let me just say I'm 37 and, yes, I got these for myself. I just like dinosaurs, always have. I needed a little "flare" for my office cubicle, so thought I'd give these a try. They looked pretty cool in the product photo. But when they arrived, the coloring was bad (unrealistic - as if I'd know how a real dinosaur was colored...but I'm pretty sure it isn't metallic turquoise). If so, then the metallic-looking ones were probably the first to go extinct. You can't really "hide" anywhere when you look like that. Plus, half the dinosaurs in the package had twisted limbs, so that they couldn't be placed upright when I played with them in the bathtub (just kidding). Also, the lot of them looked too "cartoonish." Very poor quality workmanship, overall. That being said, I doubt a five-year-old would be as critical. I should probably stop buying myself toys."

:)

[magellan004]

Phylogenetic trees do represent reality, but your colored pea shell game is little more than parlor tricks. Nothing to do with science.

Your response was irrational.
Alleged_Alec cited a computer model Avida as a model of evolution:
Avida_2.6_screenshot.jpg

A model with black, green and red dots - as used by evolutionists referred to in the Wiki article.
Those evolutionists have used dots as a parlor trick.

Your control freak posturing as the end arbiter of all things material and spiritual - using the tedious 'I am Baha'i so I own you all' fools only yourself (and a few dozen susceptible Indian-Guru-adorers-wanna-be's).

Magellan

[oxmixmudd]

Actually the Bible does certainly imply (in a pretty straightforward manner) ,that the curse of sin did end up affecting the animals. Genesis 3:14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.

Cursed "above" implies that the other animals are now cursed as well ,and I don't think God would include the curse as part of His originally "very good" creation. It seems to me ,by looking at the Bible as a whole ,you get that the original creation was perfect ,and that Adam and Eve blew it. We will one day regain what was lost ,and this will be the new heavens and new earth.

This is one way of looking at the text, but it leaves out key points.

A) There is a tree of life in the Garden. It has a purpose - to impart physical immortatily to whoever eats it. Who or what needs this tree in your scenario?

B) The is sin in the Garden BEFORE the fall. The serpent tempts Adam and Eve. Surely the Serpent is NOT perfect, nor is the Garden perfect in that the Serpent is there in the midst of it. There is also the implication that things outside the garden are not as good as that which is in the garden (see below), just in that God threw them out of there and barred them from ever re-entering it again.

C) There is the need for procreation, there is the need to eat, there is the need to 'subdue' the Earth!. If the original Earth was tame and perfect, why is Adam commanded to 'subdue' it?

D) there are clear distinctions between the 'goodness' of the Garden and the perfection of the New Heavens and the New Earth. In the former there is the possibilty of sin, and there is an entire non-idyllic world outside the Garden itself. In the New Heavens and the New Eearth even the possibility of sin, or any sort of evil is removed.

The New Heavens and New Earrth is not merely a restoration of what was - it is a place completely unlike what was, with a completely different purpose.

Again if you accept that humans were originally only supposed to eat plants ,from what Genesis states ,then I certainly think that since it uses the same language to describe animals ,that what logically follows is that the same restriction applied to animals. Also even if you are only saying that Genesis 1-2 are a polemic against false Gods ,I don't think that God would let something that is that big of an error be a part of it. Even Moses would have known about animals eating each other (if you believe he did indeed write Genesis) ,and unless he was told otherwise by God (this seems the more likely scenario to me) likely would have had them eating each other all along.
Besides if God did indeed create using the processes of evolution ,then there are ways he could have explained this even to the early Israelite's.

I understand that you can arrive at these implications by reading the Bible alone, without regard to the witness of nature. But one can also derive a consistent reading where in the Earth is a flat or rounded surface on pillars above which is a firmament and above and around all this is water. The reading of scripture as regards the natural state of the heavens and the Earth has always required exterrnal input to properly sort out the physical elements of the text. There is nothing we need to know spiritually that is dependent upon science, let me make that clear. But to certain physical elements that are phenomenal or otherwise not specific enough it can't be assumed they are necessarily clear in their meaning, as has been shown over and over again over the course of history.

The bottom line is there is just too much 'stuff' in the world for it to represent 6000 years of history. And that stuff is arranged in a way that directly implies millions and even billions of years of history. We can't make that go away, and there exists no mapping of it to Noah's flood that can explain it - despite what AIG and ICR et al will tell you. Secondarily, in those elements of scripture for which we can get direct information with surety (joshua's long day, the structure of the Earth and the heavens) we can see that the technical, physical information in Genesis is NOT untuitively mappable to the real state of the cosmos. So the expectation that there is real technial information is the text is shown to be flawed. For those ignorant of this evidence and the surety of its implication, it seems reasonable to hold out for some new knowledge that will reconcile the intuitive reading of the text with reality. But for those of us intimately familiar with it and the distance which must be traveled for such a reconciliation is simply too far. And in light of the phenomenal nature of the text, unreasonable to be expected.

As to the physical evidence, we see evidence it intractibilty in that even YEC scientists propose theories that involve in some instance the universe to exist with different ages in the greater cosmos than found here on Earth -so intractable are the distances involved and the history evidenced in the stars and galaxies.

So, we have a couple of possibilities if we retain the intuitive reading of the text: the history in the Earth and cosmos is fake or forged. Our intuitive reading of Genesis is flawed. Or something really odd happened a la the retroactive causality that Dembski proposes. None of these makes the traditional YEC position tractable. Indeed, the YEC position leads directly to a loss of faith in anyone that allows themselves to become fully aware of the data and its implications, or it leads to the kinds of dishonest justifications for the position we constantly see from Ken Ham and those at AIG or YEC. Things like Jorge's 'meteor impacts are giant steam explosions'.

I personally find the theological problems relative to the 'looks old' argument worse than the theological problems associated with my current direction. Demski's idea would be my choice IF it thought it reasonable to conclude the Genesis text contains technically accurate information that did not need to be informed by science to be properly understood. But the way the cosmos is described in Genesis 1, coupled with the textual references to time being very different for God in Psalm 90:4, Peter and Christ's statement "before Abraham was, I am" lead me to believe that is not a valid expectation to start with.

Jim

[Alleged_Alec]

Your response was irrational.
Alleged_Alec cited a computer model Avida as a model of evolution:
Avida_2.6_screenshot.jpg

A model with black, green and red dots - as used by evolutionists referred to in the Wiki article.
Those evolutionists have used dots as a parlor trick.

The dots are just a representation of a complex genotype (in this case: lines of code), not the actual model.

[rogue06]

The position that animals were all vegetarian before the Fall requires an unwarranted assumption that “I give every green plant for food” actually means “I give only green plants for food.” The former is in the Bible, the latter is not.

I would also add that there is no indication that carnivores only started eating meat after the Fall. Genesis 9:3 refers to God giving man permission to eat meat after the Fall. There is nothing said about a change in diet for other animals. Thus it was never recinded for animals if they had also been covered by the prohibition. There is no verse in the Bible stating that animals could, at some point, start eating meat. This suggests, at least to me, that it never applied to them in the first place since there are plenty of carnivorous animals.

Further, it would seem that animal death prior to human sin is not a theological problem if God's gift of eternal life was obtainable for Adam and Eve in Eden, but not for animals prior to Eden. Thus while the statement that "death is the result of sin" is accurate, the view that “human death is the result of human sin" seems more reasonable than "all death is the result of human sin."

While Adam was told that he would die if he ate from the Tree of Knowledge (Genesis 2:16), there is no mention of imposing death upon animals if Adam disobeyed and sinned. More importantly, the penalties that are specifically mentioned in Genesis 3 are all inflicted only upon the guilty parties (Adam, Eve and the serpent).

One final note. The providing of food (Genesis 1:30) implies at least the potential for starvation. If humans (and animals) were immortal before the Fall, and incapable of starving, then why would they even need food in the first place?

[Cerebrum123]

rogue06 ,That injunction allowing man to eat animals was post-Flood ,and not post-Fall. Also there are instances in the Bible ,that make it pretty clear that ALL of creation is affected by the curse of sin(Romans 8:19-23). Again "cursed above" implies there being a curse on the other animals as well. Your point about food is irrelevant to starvation due to the fact that there will be food in the new heavens and new earth. Do you think anyone is going to starve to death in heaven? Also I have a better question for you the curse on Adam entailed the ground to be cursed ,and thorns and thistles ,does the fossil record have thorns and thistles before humanity? If it does(according to TE's there were millions of years before humans existed) ,then there was no real curse on Adam.

Jim ,If you try to make the "days" in Genesis into unknown periods of extended time ,then it makes things complicated when the Bible talks about Adam and his lifespan. It says that the total time of Adam's life was 930 years ,so Adam couldn't have survived from day six to day 7 if the previous days had been millions of years. So unless ALL of those days were either very short (less than a thousand years each) ,then Adam wouldn't have lived past the creation week. Also all of Genesis after Noah's flood is counted as actually happening in the way that is written. Why aren't things like the story of Abraham taken to be figurative ,and where does it stop?
What does Jesus' preexistence have to do with the days in Genesis 1 being figurative?
Hasn't General Relativity shown that time does run at a different pace in different places due to things like gravity? So why is GTD (Gravitational Time Dilation) in reference to the stars so impossible? Big Band cosmology has problems with distant starlight ,and it's called the "Horizon Problem".
Also as for Noah's flood ,why would he be told to take all birds on board if it was local ,and many of them could have simply flown away. Not to mention that it lasted for a year ,and covered ALL of the high mountains for that time. These things do not make sense.

I think that either evolution is true ,and the Bible isn't (none of it including the reason for Jesus dying on the cross are relevant ,after all death being the "last enemy" isn't really much of a consequence) ,or it's the other way around. Also Jesus said that Adam and Eve were the model for marriage "from the beginning" ,and not infinitely long after God started creating. Also if God rested on the 7th day ,then does that mean that evolution is no longer happening? That was clearly supposed to be the end of Him creating anything.

[KingsGambit]

rogue06 ,That injunction allowing man to eat animals was post-Flood ,and not post-Fall. Also there are instances in the Bible ,that make it pretty clear that ALL of creation is affected by the curse of sin(Romans 8:19-23). Again "cursed above" implies there being a curse on the other animals as well. Your point about food is irrelevant to starvation due to the fact that there will be food in the new heavens and new earth. Do you think anyone is going to starve to death in heaven? Also I have a better question for you the curse on Adam entailed the ground to be cursed ,and thorns and thistles ,does the fossil record have thorns and thistles before humanity? If it does(according to TE's there were millions of years before humans existed) ,then there was no real curse on Adam.

Jim ,If you try to make the "days" in Genesis into unknown periods of extended time ,then it makes things complicated when the Bible talks about Adam and his lifespan. It says that the total time of Adam's life was 930 years ,so Adam couldn't have survived from day six to day 7 if the previous days had been millions of years. So unless ALL of those days were either very short (less than a thousand years each) ,then Adam wouldn't have lived past the creation week. Also all of Genesis after Noah's flood is counted as actually happening in the way that is written. Why aren't things like the story of Abraham taken to be figurative ,and where does it stop?
What does Jesus' preexistence have to do with the days in Genesis 1 being figurative?
Hasn't General Relativity shown that time does run at a different pace in different places due to things like gravity? So why is GTD (Gravitational Time Dilation) in reference to the stars so impossible? Big Band cosmology has problems with distant starlight ,and it's called the "Horizon Problem".
Also as for Noah's flood ,why would he be told to take all birds on board if it was local ,and many of them could have simply flown away. Not to mention that it lasted for a year ,and covered ALL of the high mountains for that time. These things do not make sense.

I think that either evolution is true ,and the Bible isn't (none of it including the reason for Jesus dying on the cross are relevant ,after all death being the "last enemy" isn't really much of a consequence) ,or it's the other way around. Also Jesus said that Ad am and Eve were the model for marriage "from the beginning" ,and not infinitely long after God started creating. Also if God rested on the 7th day ,then does that mean that evolution is no longer happening? That was clearly supposed to be the end of Him creating anything.

That's a false dichotomy - the Resurrection and/or inerrancy. The claims of the Resurrection must be judged on their own merits, not the merits of anywhere else in scripture. One TWebber (an inerrantist who does not believe in evolution) recently wrote a blog post on this subject that puts it must better than me: http://deeperwaters.wordpress.com/20...orth-dying-on/

[rogue06]

I think that either evolution is true ,and the Bible isn't (none of it including the reason for Jesus dying on the cross are relevant ,after all death being the "last enemy" isn't really much of a consequence) ,or it's the other way around.

I'll pick "C" -- that they're both true.

Also Jesus said that Adam and Eve were the model for marriage "from the beginning" ,and not infinitely long after God started creating.

Obviously Jesus didn't mean the very beginning in that we can all agree that Adam and Eve weren't around until the sixth day (though we may disagree what that means) rather than the first -- which was the beginning. I think it means that they were the model ever since mankind appeared upon the Earth, whenever and however that was.

Also if God rested on the 7th day ,then does that mean that evolution is no longer happening? That was clearly supposed to be the end of Him creating anything.

Evolution is a process or mechanism that God established. These processes and mechanisms continue on since creation.

[Cerebrum123]

The problem is that people who don't ALREADY believe the Bible are immediately going to think ,that since one part of the Bible is "wrong" then all of it is wrong. Now if the primary reason for Jesus' atonement (sin and the accompanying curse of death) ,are not based in reality ,then there is no reason for Jesus to have died. I don't think that that is a false view of the matter. I'm going to read that link ,but I think maybe you should think about this post.

[rogue06]

The problem is that people who don't ALREADY believe the Bible are immediately going to think ,that since one part of the Bible is "wrong" then all of it is wrong. Now if the primary reason for Jesus' atonement (sin and the accompanying curse of death) ,are not based in reality ,then there is no reason for Jesus to have died. I don't think that that is a false view of the matter. I'm going to read that link ,but I think maybe you should think about this post.

Not that the Bible is wrong but that a particular interpretation of it is wrong. They're not the same thing and should really not be conflated.

But tell me, should we continue to say that the Bible clearly teaches, for instance, geocentrism and refuse to acknowledge that is wrong because someone might claim that "since one part of the Bible is 'wrong' then all of it is wrong"? Or do we point out that the geocentric view was based upon a faulty interpretation of the text. That things were taken too literally when they shouldn't have been.

The same with the idea of a solid firmament. Should we continue to argue that there is a solid dome-shaped structure surrounding the planet or that this notion was based upon a faulty interpretation of the text? That things were taken too literally when they shouldn't have been? That the word used can also be translated as an expanse.

How about the antipodes? At one time it was thought it was impossible for anyone to be living there because Paul had explicitly stated that the entire world was hearing the gospel (Romans 1:8; Colossians 1:6; cf. I Timothy 3:16). Later Christian theologians used these passages as “proof” that no one could possibly be living on the other side of the world since nobody was teaching the Gospel there. The Bible said it, they believed it, and that settled it.

Augustine was adamant and wrote “Therefore we find it constantly declared that, as those preachers did not go to the antipodes, no antipodes can exist; hence that the supporters of this geographical doctrine give the lie directly to King David and to St. Paul, and therefore to the Holy Ghost.” St. Procopius of Caesarea in the middle of the 7th century exclaimed that the idea that people lived at the antipodes was nonsense reasoning that, “If there be men on the other side of the earth, Christ must have gone there and suffered a second time to save them; therefore there must have been, as necessary preliminaries to his coming, a duplicate Adam, Eden, serpent and Deluge.”

Do we continue to deny that anyone lives at the antipodes during that time because someone might say that "since one part of the Bible is 'wrong' then all of it is wrong," or do we recognize that the woodenly literal, overly simplistic interpretation was wrong but not the Bible itself?


I should add, none of this means that Jesus' atonement isn't based in reality. He died for our (humankind's) sin and gave us eternal life. There is nothing about dying for animal's sin (if they are even capable of sinning) and promising them eternal life if they trust and believe in Him.

[oxmixmudd]

rogue06 ,That injunction allowing man to eat animals was post-Flood ,and not post-Fall. Also there are instances in the Bible ,that make it pretty clear that ALL of creation is affected by the curse of sin(Romans 8:19-23). Again "cursed above" implies there being a curse on the other animals as well. Your point about food is irrelevant to starvation due to the fact that there will be food in the new heavens and new earth. Do you think anyone is going to starve to death in heaven? Also I have a better question for you the curse on Adam entailed the ground to be cursed ,and thorns and thistles ,does the fossil record have thorns and thistles before humanity? If it does(according to TE's there were millions of years before humans existed) ,then there was no real curse on Adam.

You need to read more carefully Cerebrum. The curse is not that the plants get thorns and thistles, but that the ground would no longer willingly yield up its good fruit to adam, the ground would yield up thorns and thistles to adam's efforts at cultivating the ground. The curse is on Adam's efforts, that he would have to toil to live, that his work would weary him and be sorrowful. Just as the curse affected the fruit of thw womb of woman - Her work (cultural perspective) would now also be much more difficult and painful.

Jim ,If you try to make the "days" in Genesis into unknown periods of extended time ,then it makes things complicated when the Bible talks about Adam and his lifespan. It says that the total time of Adam's life was 930 years ,so Adam couldn't have survived from day six to day 7 if the previous days had been millions of years. So unless ALL of those days were either very short (less than a thousand years each) ,then Adam wouldn't have lived past the creation week. Also all of Genesis after Noah's flood is counted as actually happening in the way that is written. Why aren't things like the story of Abraham taken to be figurative ,and where does it stop?

Well no, Adam is created last, not first. So there is not. Further, even in a semi literal rendering, as light and day are equated with dark and night, there is no real expectation the evening and the morning were of equial length. But this is all just of no consequence because you are again being much too literal. The days do not represent sequential periods of undefined length. We don't really know what they represent except units of work, a means of dividing the creative act into meaninful components. The fact that days 1-3 and 4-6 are concerned with making the filling the 3 major components of the cosmos (land/sea/sky), then it is even likely the 3 'days' overlay each other temporally. Again, as best I can tell from the text and from science, this text is not a construction manual for the universe. The temporal and physical elements in it are phenomenal or figurative, they have no 1-1 mapping to the acutal 'time frame' of creation.

What does Jesus' preexistence have to do with the days in Genesis 1 being figurative?

It's not His pre-existence I refer to, its His a temproral nature. "Before Abraham was, I am" means Jesus was from his perspective at that moment also with Abraham and even before him in the past. His existence encompasses all of time, and He himself is not bound to it or by it. So as He explains to us the creation, there can be no expectation that it necessarily took place sequentially in time. He can decide to do this or that at any time and at any place. Lets suppose God made the universe in a fashion where his sequence would look to us like He was moving backwards and forwards in time. How could he describe that to us? It would look all hodge-podgy to us. So he picked a description that is from his perspective accommodating as much as possible our very limited conception of existence. Or He didn't even bother to explain it to us from a persepctive of construction or time cause it would be beyond us anyway and just let the theoligical points be made using an existing literary framework.

Hasn't General Relativity shown that time does run at a different pace in different places due to things like gravity? So why is GTD (Gravitational Time Dilation) in reference to the stars so impossible? Big Band cosmology has problems with distant starlight ,and it's called the "Horizon Problem".

Humphreys theory has lots of problems that go way beyond the concept of time dilation. Yes, time is relative to reference frame, but that's not enough to solve the YEC problem.

Also as for Noah's flood ,why would he be told to take all birds on board if it was local ,and many of them could have simply flown away. Not to mention that it lasted for a year ,and covered ALL of the high mountains for that time. These things do not make sense.

I think that either evolution is true ,and the Bible isn't (none of it including the reason for Jesus dying on the cross are relevant ,after all death being the "last enemy" isn't really much of a consequence) ,or it's the other way around. Also Jesus said that Adam and Eve were the model for marriage "from the beginning" ,and not infinitely long after God started creating. Also if God rested on the 7th day ,then does that mean that evolution is no longer happening? That was clearly supposed to be the end of Him creating anything.

This is a very, very bad place for you to be Cerebrum. This is what Ken Ham teaches. And it has sent a lot of folks packing. The Bible IS true, and evolution has nothing to say about it. Any more than gecentrism, or meteorology have anything to say about it. The test of the Bible's authenticity does not rest on my ability to be able to derive scientific truth from it. The test of the Bibles Authenticity is first and foremost the Resurrection of Christ. That is the chief Cornerstone of our faith. He is either the Son of God or He isn't. If you are looking to Genesis to validate faith in Christ, you are looking at the wrong place. The new testament - the eyewitness testimony of the disciples, tells us of Christ. The old testament Messianic Prophecies tell us of Christ. We then either believe in Him or we don't. If we believe in Him, then He tells us that Genesis is one of the inspired texts, and how those texts were put together and their literal correlation with prehistory is irrelevant to the question of the inspiration or authority of scripture.


Jim

[magellan004]

The position that animals were all vegetarian before the Fall requires an unwarranted assumption that “I give every green plant for food” actually means “I give only green plants for food.” The former is in the Bible, the latter is not.

I would also add that there is no indication that carnivores only started eating meat after the Fall. Genesis 9:3 refers to God giving man permission to eat meat after the Fall. There is nothing said about a change in diet for other animals. Thus it was never recinded for animals if they had also been covered by the prohibition. There is no verse in the Bible stating that animals could, at some point, start eating meat. This suggests, at least to me, that it never applied to them in the first place since there are plenty of carnivorous animals.

Further, it would seem that animal death prior to human sin is not a theological problem if God's gift of eternal life was obtainable for Adam and Eve in Eden, but not for animals prior to Eden. Thus while the statement that "death is the result of sin" is accurate, the view that “human death is the result of human sin" seems more reasonable than "all death is the result of human sin."

While Adam was told that he would die if he ate from the Tree of Knowledge (Genesis 2:16), there is no mention of imposing death upon animals if Adam disobeyed and sinned. More importantly, the penalties that are specifically mentioned in Genesis 3 are all inflicted only upon the guilty parties (Adam, Eve and the serpent).

One final note. The providing of food (Genesis 1:30) implies at least the potential for starvation. If humans (and animals) were immortal before the Fall, and incapable of starving, then why would they even need food in the first place?

St Paul says that death entered the world at the Fall.

Magellan