Animal Mortality in Genesis?
Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 11:28 pm
I first encountered EFGFS today because I Googled the subject of animal mortality in Genesis, and ran into Rich Deem's article on OEC vs. YEC.
One of the puzzles of Creation is, if there was no animal death before the Fall, why predators are so admirably equipped for their hunting and predation: the musculature and skeletal structure and dentition of big cats, or the wing structure, beak structure, keen eyesight and talons of raptors, just to name two examples. I don't know yet whether Rudyard Kipling was a Christian but I remember his writing:
"Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Dared form thy fearful symmetry?"
I believe it was the last line of that poem that asked, "Did He who made the lamb make thee?"
Unfortunately, I am not so overjoyed to find someone supporting the idea as to overlook flaws in logic. I have to ask where one can possibly find any statement or implication in Genesis 2 that animals were eating each other before the Fall. The chapter does not say or imply that they weren't, either. It only says that God created Adam, then God created the land animals, then Adam named the animals, and then God created woman (Eve) and brought her to Adam. There is just no way that the second chapter of Genesis can be stretched to include the subject of animal mortality or predation among the animals.
One of the puzzles of Creation is, if there was no animal death before the Fall, why predators are so admirably equipped for their hunting and predation: the musculature and skeletal structure and dentition of big cats, or the wing structure, beak structure, keen eyesight and talons of raptors, just to name two examples. I don't know yet whether Rudyard Kipling was a Christian but I remember his writing:
"Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Dared form thy fearful symmetry?"
I believe it was the last line of that poem that asked, "Did He who made the lamb make thee?"
Unfortunately, I am not so overjoyed to find someone supporting the idea as to overlook flaws in logic. I have to ask where one can possibly find any statement or implication in Genesis 2 that animals were eating each other before the Fall. The chapter does not say or imply that they weren't, either. It only says that God created Adam, then God created the land animals, then Adam named the animals, and then God created woman (Eve) and brought her to Adam. There is just no way that the second chapter of Genesis can be stretched to include the subject of animal mortality or predation among the animals.