Death Before Genesis

[Xerces]

It sort of races across my mind while I was watching a documentary about evolution. If the xtian god supposedly created life perfectly, WITHOUT sin, and sin being what brought about every faulty occurrence in reality, including death, then why did god create people with the need to feed off other life?

 

(Genesis)

1:29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

 

1:30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

 

So if we define death as being the decapitation of a organism with a brain, that negates my whole question. BUT, if we define death as any living organism ceasing to exist, then that would mean death existed before sin supposedly entered the world. Which would also mean god created death, and if god is supposedly perfect, then in gods eyes all the death around us is also perfect.

 

*Note that even today we characterize planets like mars being absent of life, if the planet were to say, have a peach on it, or a plant with seeds, we would say it has life. Again why would god create organisms with the need to feed off other organisms, is god bound by laws of sin? And just what exactly is sin?

[mwc]

It sort of races across my mind while I was watching a documentary about evolution. If the xtian god supposedly created life perfectly, WITHOUT sin, and sin being what brought about every faulty occurrence in reality, including death, then why did god create people with the need to feed off other life?

...

*Note that even today we characterize planets like mars being absent of life, if the planet were to say, have a peach on it, or a plant with seeds, we would say it has life. Again why would god create organisms with the need to feed off other organisms, is god bound by laws of sin? And just what exactly is sin?

The very first mention of "sin" is here:

Genesis 4:7 If thou doest well , shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well , sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

This "god" defines what sin is for itself. So that Cain can know what it is. Doing well is not sin and not doing well is sin. It's not a bunch of rules and it's not "belief" in some silly stories. I would tend to think that if you're newly created then you haven't done anything and it would follow you could only be sin-free at that point.

 

So plants have no ability to really *do* anything. They're alive but they have no sense. They don't have the ability to "doest well" or "doest not well" in the sense of the verse above. Since we do have this ability we can "sin" but they cannot. The argument is also made that animals also do not have this ability and that while "god" appears to have this ability it only does things that are good (so it only "doest well" using the language of the KJV) though I would tend to disagree based on some of the things it does (one argument is that it is my faulty reasoning that makes me interpret these "not good" things this way and they really are good).

 

So if we define death as being the decapitation of a organism with a brain, that negates my whole question. BUT, if we define death as any living organism ceasing to exist, then that would mean death existed before sin supposedly entered the world. Which would also mean god created death, and if god is supposedly perfect, then in gods eyes all the death around us is also perfect.

I suppose an apologetic argument might be made that plants never died until "the fall" and "sin." I have no idea if one exists or if plant life really could be considered life (I'd have to check to see if it had the life "breath" within it which is usually what is meant to denote life in humans).

 

Two of the things needed to be a "god" was knowledge (one tree offered this) and immortality (the other tree offered this). We managed to gain one but were stopped before we obtained the other. This made us demi-gods of sorts. I'd say that this would mean that something that can't truly gain knowledge doesn't matter in this scheme of life/death/sin and plants are farther removed from this than animals and even talking snakes.

 

mwc

[★ Citsonga ★]

I would say that it basically just hinges on what was considered "life" by the ancients who wrote the myths. I suspect that they only considered conscious things to bear "life" (people, animals, insects). Inanimate objects like wheat and potatoes would not likely have been considered "life."