An exhortation from Greg on Genesis, miracles, and natural evil

I trust the Bible. Not you. And “the Judeo-Christian worldview”—which is a whole range of various interpretations on death, Genesis, and the fall which changed over the centuries—is not my standard for truth. Judeo-Christian worldviews and the Bible are not the same thing.

You keep assuming that the Apostle Paul in Romans claimed that all biological death came after the fall. This is another case of you ignoring the scripture context. Read Romans carefully and you will see from the context that the Apostle Paul was talking about human death.

Also, plants are the primary foundation of the food chain which support animal life on earth. That doesn’t mean that every animal eats plants directly. Even 100% carnivores rely on plants for their energy and nutrition. (And the Bible speaks approvingly of God feeding the lions by sending them the prey which feeds them. That’s another case of God using death for his own VERY TOV/good purposes in his creation.)

Nowhere does the Bible say anything about T-rex eating carrots. That is why the cartoon in no way mocks the Bible. It also doesn’t mock Judeo-Christian worldviews in general.

Did God react to Adam’s fall by coming up with a second creation? Did he suddenly endow carnivorous dinosaurs with flesh-ripping teeth? What scriptures address that aspect of your claim? Also, did the Creator swap out the herbivore-type digestive system of the T-rex (perhaps multiple stomachs as in a grass-eating cow) and swap in a meat-eater’s organs?

I have written often on that topic, including on this forum. Yet it is irrelevant to the carrot-eating dinosaur cartoon, so why would I mention it again?

I often don’t “get” your replies. So I guess this is a reaction we share in common.

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Perhaps. He changed the anatomy of the snake to creep on its belly instead of walk w legs.

Where in the Bible does it speak of God creating “kinds” over millions of years of survival of the fitest, diposal of the weak, disease ridden carniverous centered evolutionism? Of course when i say “worldview” i refer to Scripture.

Death is death. When carniverous animals are present, human death is inevitable for them, is it not? The new earth will have no death. Read Rev 21, 22 sometime. Listen to the words that describe the new heavenly earth. These words contrast to the world stained by sin. Interestingly, a couple of months ago someone in your camp complained that Genesis was inaccurate and foolish bc it has light existing before the sun…but the end of Revelation we see that there will no longer be a need for the sun. Then more recently the big thing is about the tree of life in the garden renewing Adam and Eves mortal lives with vibrance in the garden…yet at the end of Rev we find this tree of life when there are glorified bodies, no more death etc. The lion and lamb, wolf and goat will no longer be enemies. The essence of a renewed earth is counter to the way you suggest God created the earth. Makes not one bit of sense.

You claim Scripture is your source yet choose interpretations not fitting. We will be judged by our words. Your using words to paint a picture about God is the basis of your judgement. Does this not give you any sense of fear? If God is our greatest gift as a result of the gospel, then do you really want a God who despises and discards the weak and uses luck in mutation and disease, and death to display His creative powers for eternity? Does this sound like a depiction of the very enemy of God, and not the God of Scripture Himself to you?

Are you just playing devils advocate here to get my reaction or are you being for real? This internet thing makes these conversations strange and hard to figure whats real and whats not.

Once again Greg confuses TRADITION with the actual Biblical TEXT. Nowhere in the Genesis account of the serpent and Eve does it say that all snake species would change. It speaks specifically of “the Serpent”. This was no mere snake. It talked and was wiser than all of the animals of God’s creation (i.e., “than all of the beasts of the field” in many translations.) It was far above such creatures. This Hebrew grammatical construction is found in other Old Testament passages. For example, when the Psalmist says “I have more understanding than all of my teachers”, he is NOT saying that he is a teacher or should be counted among that group. Rather, it is a “contrasting” construction.The Serpent in the Edenic garden was superior to all of the beasts of the field. It was no mere animal. It was not one of them. It was wise and crafty. Indeed, seeing how Adam and Eve were given dominion over all of the animals, the Serpent in this text could NOT have been a conventional snake—unless Greg wants to insist that the Bible contradicts itself.

Moreover, Satan is often called a dragon or serpent (e.g., Rev. 12:9, 20:2.) So if someone compares scripture with scripture, they will realize that the Serpent in this text was no common snake. (Satan is being compared to a reviled snake, a common symbol of evil.) I won’t bother to go into the many accounts from other Ancient Near Eastern cultures where serpents are similarly prominent in their stories, sometimes representing evil and sometimes representing power and dominance. (Check out the Egyptian Uraeus, often depicted on the front of a Pharaoh’s crown and associated with a protective goddess of the Lower Nile region.) I could also get into the debates about the serpent as a common metaphor for evil and for dreaded enemies but one can easily learn about this topic online. For now I am simply pointing out the symbolic and metaphoric nature of the serpent in the ancient world.

Some traditionalists will still object and say, “But all snakes must have lost their legs due to the fall. They have been cursed to move about on their bellies and eat dust.” What they are missing is that grovelling about on the belly and eating dust was a common IDIOMATIC CONSTRUCTION in Ancient Hebrew and in other neighboring cultures. It was common language to refer to defeated enemies and their kings having to crawl in defeat and drag their bellies, eating dust as they were humiliated and humbled. Even in modern English we have something similar: “Eat my dust!”, especially in a racing context where the defeated party is left behind and forced to breathe in the dust of the victor. Nevertheless, that idiom has been generalized to contexts which have nothing to do with road dust or racing. For example, I once watched a chess match where the victor stood up and shouted “Checkmate! Eat my dust!” and walked away.

Anti-Bible activists online often mock the Bible for speaking of a serpent “eating dust”. They totally fail to recognize the obvious metaphor. The Genesis text isn’t saying that snakes will live on a diet of dust. It is saying that the serpent in the story is going to be relegated to a lowly status, defeated into the dust. Today we might say “knocked to the ground” as a reference to defeat.

We know that this relegation to the ground was metaphorical and not literal because Satan, the Great Serpent/Dragon, is mentioned as having legs in other passages of the Bible—such as in the beginning of the Job story when it says that Satan had been “walking about to and fro over the face of the earth” and observing Job’s favored life. So clearly the Serpent of the Genesis account has not been deprived of legs—and is not yet fully defeated into the dust. (The Book of Job does not depict Satan the Great Serpent slithering his way to heaven for his conversation with God.)

Welcome to the dangers of hyperliteral interpretations of the Bible, Greg. If you insist on over-literalizing the Genesis account of the fall, you will miss a lot of the intended meaning. (Of course that is exactly what happened and you did get totally distracted by man-made traditions and missed what the Biblical text is saying.)

The Serpent of the account of the Fall has also been associated by some scholars with the fallen seraphim angelic creatures. This interpretation is yet another which recognizes that the Genesis text is not talking about conventional reptilian snakes as popular traditions assume. Here is one example of such a discussion:

@Greg, nothing in the Biblical text says that all snakes on planet earth lost their legs and changed their behaviors due to what the Serpent did in the Edenic garden. You have confused popular man-made TRADITION with what the Biblical text actually states.

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Who says? The Bible speaks of various kinds of death. So you are just plain wrong. You keep insisting on your personal interpretation instead of what the Bible actual says. If “Death is death”, why didn’t Eve immediately drop dead when she ate of the fruit of that forbidden tree? Even most traditionalists agree that death in this context was a spiritual death, not an immediate biological death.

Of course, even the most traditionalist Young Earth Creationist ministries distinguish between different kinds of biological death. For example, Ken Ham insists that the obvious occurrence of plant death before the fall was OK for their viewpoint because “plant death is not the same as animal death.”

Thus: No, @Greg. Death is not death, according to the Bible. There are multiple kinds of death. It even speaks of a second death:

The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars – their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death. — Rev. 21:8

So yet again Greg is defying the scriptures in favor of his own preferences.

I have never claimed otherwise. So I have no idea why you headed into this “new earth” tangent—except that you are trying desperately to link me with some anonymous “a couple of months ago someone in your camp…” bad guy. This is known as the Argument from Negative Associations fallacy.

The Bible clearly contrasts the New Earth with the present earth that is described as being destroyed by fire. I never said otherwise, Greg. You failed again to taint me with such imaginary sins.

This argument is nothing but the traditional “If you don’t agree with me, God will judge you! You’d better be scared!” Greg, such behavior on your part is lame and disgusting. Most of all it is unbiblical—and it is certainly not Christ-like to condemn your Christian brethren in this way. Several theists on this forum, such as @Patrick, have expressed their exasperation towards this kind of last resort argument that far too many theists like to use online.

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Life is life. When we are saved from sin, we gain ETERNAL LIFE. Before the fall, Adam and Eve had eternal life as long as they chose not to disobey.

This is not what i mean. I am not saying better believe as i do or God will judge you. Im repreating what Jesus said in the sermon on the mount. He said that the measure that you use to make judgement will be applied to you when you are judged by God. So in principle, if you can possibly take Genesis 1-3 and make accessment that it suggests that God creates via evolution and that God in His nature is depicted as a God who uses chaos and makes natutal evil, then perhaps this is the God you desire to have eternal relationship with. My arguement is that this is not who God is. Genesis 1 thru 3 are showing who God is before any need for wrath towards sin.

No again. (Greg, your lack of knowledge of Bible basics utterly amazes me.) You are confused by a semantic domain “accident” of the English language.

Yes. But that doesn’t help your case. In New Testament Greek, there are three entirely different Greek words for “life.” Most importantly, biological life (BIOS) is carefully distinguished from “spiritual life”, as in “eternal life” (ZOE.)

The “eternal life” Jesus talked about is an entirely different word (ZOE) from biological life (BIOS.)

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Jesus had a physical body and died a physical death to save our souls where we gain a glorfied physical body that will live forever in heaven and in a new earth. Do you agree? Im not sure where you are going w this…gnostics believed that Jesus died a spiritual death and that sins of the body dont matter because the soul is saved and body discarded.

Greg, you will find my extended article on the three different Greek words for “life” in this comment from last year:

There are additional posts on that PS thread which will give you some grounding in some important exegetical and heremeneutical basics.

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According to scripture, the glorified body has glory of one sort and the earthly body has glory of another. I dont know how God thinks exactly on life in plants, but a few things come to mind: Jesus atoned for our sins by His blood. The sacrifice of animals before the new covenant did not forgive sins, but forshadowed the Messiah. In early Genesis, no shed blood. Plants dont have blood and have life with a glory that is different than the life of animals and humans. It appears that plants dying dont count as “death” Immediatelly after Adam and Eve sinned, sacrifices were to be made, again to foreshadow ultimate salvation by Jesus death.

I have tried and tried and tried to make sense of any type of animal death and human death before the fall to be fitting of the overarching picture God seems to be painting and i cannot make it work. I know the the earth appears old to science, i know that science thinks all life started from a common seed. In my mind, the essence of Scripture trumps mainstream science…

In other words, you trust God’s revelations in the Bible but don’t trust God’s revelations in his creation.

I trust all of God’s revelations. I reject your insistence on conflict. I reject the favoring of man-made traditions over God’s revelations.

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Well for the record, naturalistic universal common decent evolution is 99% philosophy and 1% science. Secondly, physical laws are continuously confounded in Scripture starting with God creating the cosmos, plants and animals from nothing and ending with Jesus rising from the dead. God in His essence is unnatural. He transcends nature. Science relies on the natural to make its case. God vs science is like Shaq vs an ant in one on one bball. Trusting science for all truth is like trusting horses in miltary conquests. I would imagine that you know what God says on several occassions in the OT about man trusting the almighty horse in battle before trusting Him at His Word.

Slow down. I did not say that all snake species would change. And i agree that somehow satan was formed in the serpent. All that i suggested (and in my mind meant to communicate) in a very short reply about dino teeth is that for some reason Scripture relays a picture about an animal changing physical form after the fall. Interestingly, we know that snakes once had legs and devolved to have none. I have no idea what species of lizzard did this or any of the fine details in this event at all. All i am saying is that for God to cause physiological change in animals after the fall of man is not only easy for Him, but in addition seems supportable by evidence in Scripture of the physiological form of this one species changing to another immediately after the fall. Scripture does not handle the fine details, so all this is, is greg speaking a hunch and to suggest the fact that God could have easily caused this. It is fitting too of NT passage

Ro 8: For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Greg, absolutely nothing in the Romans 8 passage says anything about the fall changing the physiology of animals. It is not a question of “fine details”. It is simply a FACT that the Bible never makes the claims you attribute to it.

You continue to confuse tradition with the Biblical text.

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Genesis does say something about it. Genesis 3:14. The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.

Whether it was this single “serpent” or another animal, God caused it to change in its physiology after the fall of man to become a creeping animal. So apparently, God can do stuff like this. The fall had ramifications upon creation and Ro 8 confirms this. Could God in His ultimate power change plant eaters to meat eaters like He did a walking animal to a creeping one? Of course. All fruit from the disobedience of man. He can direct fish into a fishermans net too. He can make animals talk, swallow people, but not digest them. He can even cause animals to get onto an ark? Is Noahs ark just a symbol in your new tradition?

And about the tradition vs Biblical text thing you keep bringing up- it seems that you have a goal to establish a new evolutionary creationist tradition. Maybe a new denomination? And really, the Christian worldview is not wrapped around just information in the Biblical text either. It is about a relationship with the Living God who created the universe which that text describes. I dont look at this as a debate about words. Rather, i sense God has given a conviction by His Spirit to make sure that I understand rightly who He is as per Scripture so as to have a right relationship with Him. The apostle Paul noticed in His time people claiming to be followers of Jesus, but their description was of the wrong Jesus. Thats bad news that i hope the church universal can largely avoid.

@Greg,

The point @AllenWitmerMiller is trying to establish is that much of your thoughts and opinions about Genesis comes from non-Biblical sources that colored the thoughts and opinions of the early Church Fathers … or the recent medieval Church Fathers.

Enochian literature has given us rather colorful and flambuoyant views about angels, Lucifer and Satan… views which are not actually warranted in the Old Testament.

The idea that there was no “dying” during the time of Eden is an example of this “tradition” vs. “biblical” dynamic.

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I have already checked off the liberal-religion -course- in -a -secular -college- interpretation- of Scripture -box years ago George. The secular interpretation of Scripture trends, tend to predetermine that religious texts are nothing more than evolution of former ideas with a little shot of personality by some new clan. I know Scripture and have studied church history enough to look to Scripture as not this but a text that stands alone as the very words written to give testimony about the only God.If there are views of similarity in neighboring cultures, then they 1.either borrow from the Bible. 2. Are honest attempts at promoting their religious spin on some history that word of mouth purports as truth historically.3. Are people groups consisting of people who are made in Gods image making up relugious ideas that are addressing what they sense to be true as Gods image bearers or 4. satan (who is evil, but who is smart, crafty and who has limited but supernatural power) putting ideas into the minds of mythical, false religions to cause scholars to want to interpret Scripture with lessening reverence as described in the first sentence.

And George- please hear this as a form of love towards you- by your defending Allen as yourself an self identified universalist, you do him no favors to convince me that he is on the right path. The apostle Paul, who saw the risen Jesus, did miracles, accepted an gospel theology that was the same as Peter and the other apostles and who performed miracles including speaking literal foreign languages that he never got educated about as well as miraculous powers of healing etc- this true apostle and spokesman for God tells us that the group called the Judaizers who made up the idea that the gospel of forgiveness by grace through faith needed an addendum that all potential converts first must “become a jew first,” automatically disqualifies it as a false religion that is sourced by satan, not God. - The gospel of faith in the true Jesus who died in the cross for our sins is the only means for escaping hell and receiving the greatest gift of eternal relationship with a loving good God in heaven. By you accepting universalist ideals, you expand the false ideas of the judaizers deeper into depravity…and these give people a false sense of security of salvation when perhaps they are not.

I dont say this as ideas i make up. I say this from a faith perspective that trusts the Bible as the very Word of God. “Faith comes from hearing abd hearing from the word of our God.”

@Greg,

Even the New Testament contains the evidence that Paul and one or two of the real disciples did not agree on some pretty important things.

So, you do no favors for your methods by making such patently false claims.

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I have scoured the Scriptures for over 30 yrs and i definately see alternative perspectives but never contradictions. The reason why this is, is because sin is not just doing bad, but also doing what appears good to the glory of self or the world. Additionally when you have a God who probably cannot be fully grasped in whole of His being being described w words, sonetimes there will be seeming confusion…I will give a perfect example straight from Jesus teaching that appears contadictory but is not, which demonstrates the reason for the patterns in Scripture.

Matthew 5:14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

A few verses later:

Mt 6: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

So what is Jesus saying? Make fruit that will be seen but do so not for self glory.

So this sets the pattern thru the NT. Example: Paul says we are saved by grace alone thru faith alone. James says faith without works is dead. Both authors write a theological slant towards these seeming different perspectives that 100% agreeable as they fit the overall Biblical worldview. And both authors make statements that prove that they are agreeable to each other.

Only the naive or those on a hunt for a contradiction will calculate scripture as contradictory. There is nothing in Scripture that is so in the original manuscript.

@Greg,

Now - - I am saved.