Sunspots 966

Things I have spotted that may be of interest to others:

A  discussion, in Naturalist Historia, pointing to more discussions, on how the immune system is related to origins.

Scientific American reports that leeches can jump.

Christianity Today on the question of Orthodox Jews serving in the Israeli military.

Snopes, the important fact-checking web site, supports Biden's claim that historians rank Trump as the worst President in US history. You can see how all Presidents, including Biden, are ranked by these historians, on this site.

LiveScience discusses the idea of what a species is. It's complicated.

Newsweek has compiled a long list of people who served in important positions in the Trump administration who have refused to endorse his current candidacy for President.

Thanks for reading.

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 565

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

The Arts: Listverse reports on 10 non-European languages that have provided words which are common in English.

Christianity: Reaction to a poll of Israelis, from Christianity Today and Relevant. Israeli Christians (mostly Catholic and Orthodox) are much less likely than US Christians to believe that Israel should be controlled by Jews.

Relevant wonders when conservative Christians will start to take global climate change seriously. (Some already do, of course.)

Ken Schenck argues that sex should be kept within a marriage.

In BioLogos, a discussion on the meaning of death in the Bible, and whether there could have been death before the Fall.

Computing: Gizmo's Freeware points out that you can use wildcards in Google searches.

From the same source: A freeware replacement for the Windows 8 or 10 start menu.

Wired reports that changing passwords frequently doesn't really make you more secure. (Provided, of course, that the password you are continuing to use is hard enough for the bad guys to figure out.)

Humor (and Food): A four minute YouTube video of a Kit Kat candy bar being surgically implanted into a Three Musketeers candy bar.

Politics: A writer for Sojourners says that he is a one-issue voter -- he's looking for a candidate with integrity. He doesn't seem to have found one.

The Washington Post reports on proposed US Constitutional amendments, lots of them. (Like 11,000+)

Fivethirtyeight counted up the phrases most often used, in the Republican Presidential debates, by Cruz, Kasich, Rubio and Trump.

Science: The Christian Science Monitor reports that ravens may have at least a rudimentary theory of mind. (The article tells you what that is.)

Fivethirtyeight tells us why most of us are right-handed.



Image source (public domain)

Death and natural selection: compatible with the Bible?

In a series posted by the BioLogos Forum, the question of whether death, which is often thought to be a central part of how natural selection works, is considered. A Southern Baptist theologian doubts that such a mechanism is consistent with scripture, and with the goodness of God. A christian biologist responds, indicating that it is.

The biologist puts forth a couple of important ideas: biologists have a more complex view of the role of death and natural selection than Darwin (and most modern non-biologists) have, and some important theologians, before Darwin's theory was ever proposed, believed that non-human death could have occurred before the fall.

Here's the last post in the series, which provides links to the other three. (Look to the right of the photo of a church.)

Sunspots 334

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

 
Science: National Public Radio reports on the paw paw, a fruit native to North America that you may have never heard of.

Wired reports on a possible case of human change in response to natural selection, namely lowering of the age when women had their first child, within the past 200 years.

Christianity: E Stephen Burnett points out that our own fallen human nature is never a movie villain. It's usually some monster, or some monstrous human.

Image source (public domain)

God does not like human death

The Bible makes it pretty clear that God is not pleased by death.

As Ezekiel 18:23 puts it: Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? (All scripture quotations from the ESV. See here for copyright policy.) See also Ezekiel 18:32 and 33:11. God is not pleased even at the death of wicked, sinful people, even though He ordered the death of such people over and over again in the Old Testament.

The shortest verse in the Bible has a point. Jesus was grieved at the death of his friend, Lazarus, even though He knew that He was about to raise him back from the dead.

Death is described as the last enemy, in 1 Corinthians 15:26.

Revelation 21:4 tells us that death will be gone from the final home of the redeemed.

So God does not like human death, and does not merely say this, but sent Himself to experience it and defeat it.

What about animal death?

Humans and animals are not the same, although humans may be said to be a kind of animal. Genesis 1, especially verse 26-28, describes our creation in more detail than for the animals, and it is possible that it is also describing a different kind of creation. The passage indicates that God treats us differently than He does the animals -- we are in God's image, and we have dominion over the rest of creation. Not in Genesis, but most important, God came to earth in human form. So we aren't the same as animals.

I'm not sure that God is so grieved about the death of animals. (Or plants, although I won't say more about that.) Besides the different status of humans, in relation to animals, why do I say this? For several reasons:
1) God prepared garments made from animal skins for Adam and Eve when they realized that they were naked. Presumably, God Himself killed some animals in the process of preparing the skins.
2) God was pleased by the animal sacrifice made by Abel, and throughout the Old Testament, accepted, and required, animal sacrifice.
3) The Flood apparently destroyed all but a few of the animals. It was not the animals that were being punished for sin, it was the wicked people of Noah's day. They had done something to deserve their punishment, but the animals hadn't. But almost all of the animals are said to have perished. God's concern seemed to be for the preservation of types of animals, not for their individual lives. (See here for some of my questions about the flood.)
4) God has allowed, or ordered, predation, which means that many kinds of animals are going to die, to feed others.
5) Jesus tells us that God knows about each sparrow that falls (Luke 12:6-7). It doesn't say that He does anything to prevent them from falling.
6) The chosen people ate meat. This practice was apparently continued through the time of Christ, and, according to Luke 22:7-13, Jesus, Himself, ate part of the Passover Lamb.
7) The disciples fished, and Jesus helped them do it. In one case, He ordered that Peter catch a fish, and may have even fished, Himself, after He was resurrected. (See John 21:6, John 21:9, Matthew 17:27, Luke 5:4 and Luke 24:36-43)
8) God has created, or allowed, the process of natural selection, whereby, say, an oyster may lay millions of eggs, but, on the average, only one of these will reach maturity. The others die, because they are not as fit, or because of various chance processes that eliminate them.

It seems difficult to argue that God is greatly grieved, or grieved at all, by the death of non-human creatures.

Natural selection is a process associated not only with the survival of the fittest, but with the non-survival of those who are not fit. Although much of this non-survival is simply a failure to produce offspring, some of it is individual non-survival -- death. At least after the Fall, natural selection has undoubtedly operated. It is possible to doubt that it operated before the Fall -- there are many who do doubt this, but it is also possible that natural selection, a messy process, resulting in vast amounts of non-survival, is a process that God has used, even before the Fall, to shape and develop non-human life. After all, He used a messy process, resulting, or at least allowing, vast amounts of human death, to bring mankind along until the covenant with Abraham, the Mosaic Law, and then more mess, up until the establishment of Himself as savior, redeemer, and Lord, by Christ.

I have previously posted about the question of death before the Fall of humans, here, here and here.

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.

* * * * *

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.

*  *  *  *  *

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.

The Fall and the immune system (repost)

Mike Russell, of the Eternal Perspectives blog, does some serious writing. His recent post, "Where'd that come from?" asks about the source of the human immune system. I'd like to comment on his question here. (A previous comment by me corrected his use of "auto-immune system." He meant to say "immune system." I wrote the comment more sharply than I should have, and I apologize. Sorry. As another commenter indicated, either way, it's a good question.)

Russell assumes that the first humans wouldn't have needed an immune system until after the Fall. His question is whether it was original equipment, unused until after the Fall, or added after the Fall. The obvious answer, of course, is that we don't know. Not knowing doesn't stop me from musing.
Some believers think that Adam and Eve somehow evolved from previous human-like beings, under God's direction. If so, they would have already had an immune system. Russell doesn't believe this. I'm going to respond to his question, assuming that Adam, and then Eve, were specially created in an uncorrupted state. I don't have a definite answer.

We can't be sure when mosquitoes and germs were created. Genesis 1:20 says that God created water organisms and winged birds on the fifth day, and living creatures on land on the sixth. Are mosquitoes and bacteria water or land creatures? There is nothing that clearly indicates when either was created in Genesis 1. Most insects are land organisms, but mosquitoes spend part of their lives in the water, part on land. (Moses would not have been expected to write about bacteria, because his readers wouldn't have known what he was talking about, nor would he. God knew.) If they were created, along with other creatures, during the period described by Genesis 1, were mosquitoes biting pests before the Fall? Did bacteria cause disease before the Fall? It is possible that both were created after the Fall, although the Bible says nothing about this.
After the list of entities appearing on each day is given, Genesis 1 adds the phrase, ". . . and God saw that it was good." (KJV)

Did humans need bacteria and insects before the Fall? We can't be sure. Very possibly, bees, which pollinate flowers, would have been needed. If non-fallen humans defecated, dung beetles, maggots, and bacterial decomposers would have been useful even before the Fall. Beneficial bacteria now live in our large intestine. Perhaps they did then. Leaves may have fallen, and fruit fallen off of trees, before the Fall. Decomposers, bacteria and fungi, would have been a good thing, in that case. Alcohol production requires yeast organisms. If unfallen humans drunk alcoholic beverages, yeast organisms would have been good to have.

If pest insects, bacteria, and viruses were created before the Fall, they must have been "good." We don't usually consider them good now. Romans 8:21 says that creation will be liberated from decay, or corruption. I suppose that most Christians consider disease germs, pest insects, and weeds to be part of the corruption of the present fallen world. If the creation was free of corruption at its creation, which is implied by Genesis 1's use of "it was good," then it must have changed. The most likely time for it to have changed is the Fall. I am not aware of any explicit Biblical evidence for this, but will assume it. If new germs and insects, preying on people, were created as a result of the Fall, or if pre-existing organisms were modified at that time so as to do so, and humans didn't have an immune system yet, humans must have been modified to cope with some of the new pests at the same time, by giving them an immune system.

It is possible that humans needed an immune system from the beginning, to ward off accidental invasions of decomposing bacteria. Would accidents, of any kind, especially this kind, have been possible in an unfallen world?

It is possible that humans first appeared with the ability to fight off disease germs, at a time when they didn't need it. I believe that God created some entities with properties that are of benefit to us, or to the rest of His creation, and it took us a long time to find it out, so that the benefits weren't used for a long time. For example, quinine and rubber producing plants were presumably present from before the time when humans appeared. It is doubtful if their uses in fighting malaria, or in making tires, were known to many people until within the past 500 years or less. Their uses probably weren't known to anybody in the Old World until 1400 or so. God may have deliberately pre-configured them to be helpful, and we discovered this much later. The same sort of speculation could be made about some of the chemical elements, and about other things. If that is true, why couldn't God have pre-configured humans with an immune system, before they needed it?

A little on how the immune system operates. It has the built-in capability to develop a response to almost any foreign invader. It doesn't have such responses, but the capability to develop them. That's why flu shots are given, so that recipients will develop a response from the exposure to a non-virulent invader, so that when the real thing comes along, they will already be immune to it. (They are given every year because there are new types of flu every year.) I am suggesting that, just as we have the capacity to develop immunity to invaders we haven't experienced yet, built in from our personal beginnings, it seems possible that Adam and Eve were created with an immune system, which didn't become useful or necessary until after the Fall.

Allergies to certain substances that we'd be better off not reacting to are due to the immune system. The immune system makes some pregnant women develop antibodies against their own babies. The immune system makes auto-immunity possible. Some diseases, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, are developed because a person's immune system reacts against her own body, not against a foreign invader. The immune system, which is so important in fighting off invaders, and in policing the body for cancer cells, acts, in the cases mentioned, as if it may have fallen. It's doing things that harm us.

It seems to me that either an immune system existing before it was needed, or one created right after the Fall, are possible. I haven't answered Russell's question. However, I hope that these speculations help him, or someone else.

Taken from a post of February 26, 2005.