ad-hoc hyper-evolution arguments regarding "the fall"

mods, i admit, i need your help here. i can't make sense of this. in this thread, as we hurtle increasingly further off-topic, faith suggests the old creationist canard, that before the fall there were no animals that ate meat. while i fail to see the biblical basis for this, i suppose this should be a science thread, due to sheer inanity and absurdity of the claims, in ignorance and irreverence of scientific, well, anything. faith, for instance, writes: and in another posts suggests an extremely speedy version of evolution: adding, here is my reply, which i am moving from the other thread:

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It hangs together. Think about it.

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as an art student, i've seen a lot of stuff hang together. in galleries, even. sometimes, the stuff that sticks to the wall the best...

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A cat or a number of cats -- it depends on what a Kind is -- but not the sabre-toothed.

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i really, honestly do not know where to begin with this. maybe you should start another thread. because this sort of idea, well, simple argued something like this. it requires gross ignorance and distortion of biology, geology, paleontology, genetics, and evolution itself. in fact, it's far, far more radical than anything evolution has ever claimed -- why are creationists suddenly willing to support evolution to prop up ad-hoc misinterpretations of scripture?

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let's start with this. a cat is a mammal. all mammals have more than one kind of tooth, and that includes canines. this is actually part of the definition of a mammal, and we have very few animals with more than one kind of tooth that are not mammals. (dimetrodon, for instance, which appears to basally related to mammals.)

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cats are hunting and killing machines. the fastest land animal on the planet is a cat, and it uses its anatomy like a spring, so it can catch and eat just about anything it wants. cats have claws that remain razor sharp by means of shedding their outter sheaths. cats are slim, and muscular, and strong, and fast. cats are designed to kill, not stand around eating grass. one needs only look at a cat and a cow to see the difference in builds between an animal that does well eating grass, and an animal that does well eating other animals.

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in other words, a cat that is not designed to eat meat would be so fundamentally different from a lion that we would not even call it a cat. it wouldn't look like a cat, or act like a cat. it wouldn't BE a cat. we could draw more similarities between it and a cow, or even a duck-billed dinosaur than we could between it and a cat.

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i can't really explain this to you better, because i'm at a complete loss here. this is downright stupifying. maybe i have a bit of a different perspective, because i have cats that we have never been able to train to NOT eat the birds, mice, and lizards in our yard.

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Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.I chose "Social Issues ...", rather than a science thread, to allow some scope for religious based responses. With a strictly scientific discussion there might be little to debate. I'll grant that this is not a perfect fit for the topic.Edited by AdminNWR, : add comments on promotion.

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yes, i did not know what to do with it either. i'd like to mention also that this is not really limited to meat-eating, or cats, but all of the hyper-evolution "life as different before the fall" type arguments.

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Surely you recognize that as a metaphor, rather than as being intended for literal reading.

oh, good, i didn't have to say it and ruin my reputation as a strict literalist.and actually, it's the wolf who lays down with the lamb, and the lion who eats straw. also, taken literally, "dust shall be the serpent's meat" doesn't make sense, as that already literally happened in genesis 3.Edited by arachnophilia, : typographical error

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Some prophetic passages are both literal and figurative, with many fulfillments over time.

Because those carousels can also provide life to a village. In this case it is not for Faith's benefit, but riding the carousel is still doing good, doing GOD's work.Faith's ideas on the evolution of this earth are totally wrong and there is no possibility of changing her mind, but there are also many lurkers here at EvC, ones whose minds have not yet atrophied, who may be opposing the concept of old earth and evolution because they believe like Faith, that it goes against the word of GOD.What we do, when riding the carousel, is pump knowledge up to be distributed like lifesaving water to the villagers here. We show them that many Christians, in fact almost every major Christian Church, have no problems with either an old earth or evolution. we show the lurkers that an old earth and evolution, instead of countering the word of GOD, are the Word Of GOD, writ BY GOD, in GOD's hand.The Universe is the production of GOD and by studying His universe we learn more about how GOD did it. In the words of the Clergy Letter, currently signed and endorsed by over 10,000 US Christian Clergy: Yes, we may well be like children riding the playground carousel, but hopefully the water we pump up will bring new life and knowledge to the parched fields of YECs and Biblical Creationists.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

We are talking about evidence and falsifiablity. Science utilizes something of a cybernetic approach to the developement of theories. Mistakes are made, lots of them, and corrections are applied by peer review, review of evidence, new evidence, better experiments, new data, new evidence, new theories, better tools either technological or theoretical.Taking the universe as God's work it's clearly not something humans made. The collection of copies of copies of scrolls that is called the Bible is clearly something written by the hands of humans in human languages with human ideas. It is a human produced artifact. The universe is not. The actual universe takes precedence over the theories of humans.lfenABE: Copied this over from:The gentic inheritance of sin - if it is true what are the consequences?

How about Euglena? (neither an animal nor a plant) and other protists? Bacteria?This all seems rather arbitrary. Where do you get the idea that animals did not die before the Fall anyway? I can see it for man, as that is in the Genesis account (though I believe it means spiritual and not physical death - after all, Adam and Eve did not die physically THAT DAY, as the text says they would).Genesis 2 KJV
17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.OK I see Faith has given some reasoning here... Why does what happens at the end of time mean it was the same in Eden? This is a rather arbitrary logical leap, don't you think?I just had another thought. How would Adam and Eve even know what death was before the Fall if they had never seen animal death? The admonition, "thou shalt surely die" would have been meaningless to them.Edited by deerbreh, : Respond to overlooked comment.Edited by deerbreh, : Another thought on death

Scripture that says the Creation was cursed for our sake, that it all groans in anticipation of release from the curse, and the statement that death entered the world with sin. The context there is humanity only, but with the other statement about the creation, it is clear that all living things were affected by the Fall, not just humanity.

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Rom 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned ...

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Rom 8:19-23 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected [the same] in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only [they], but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, [to wit], the redemption of our body.

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Yes, it started with spiritual death, and continues in our inability to sense the presence of God, our being "but flesh" ever since. They did die physically too, however, which would not have happened at all without sin, but they were a lot healthier than we are now, because sin hadn't yet accumulated to a degree to kill them sooner. The gradual shortening of the life span through the generations after Adam demonstrate the effect of the accumulation of sin.I'm sure there was enough communication between God and Adam and Eve beyond what is recorded in the Bible to make it likely they had a good idea of what death entailed. But it's not all that important anyway, as obeying God would have been obviously the only right thing to do. That much they knew without special revelation.The point about the lion and the lamb is not that the one proves the other, but that in answer to the claim that cats are simply built to be carnivorous, if they are ever supposed not to be carnivorous, as in the future, then there is no reason to assume they had to be carnivorous in Eden either.God knows about the Euglena and bacteria. I'm not required to know.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Huge logical leap to say that this means animal death only came with the Fall. Why not plant death as well? Are not plants part of the whole creation? It says they will die the same day they eat from the tree. Is that literally true or not? If not, why do you choose to take "the same day" figuratively but take "death" literally to mean physical death? Again, this seems highly arbitrary and a little convenient. This also seems like a weak argument. Death is very difficult to comprehend for someone who hasn't seen it. The fact that the serpent contradicts God by telling Eve that she will not die suggests that Eve had some understanding of what death was. Remember this was before eating of the tree so there are a lot of topics that Eve would not have understood being in an innocent state. It is doubtful she would have understood death unless she had actually experienced seeing an animal dying. Somehow I don't think the death of a carrot has the same impact. No you are not required to know. But it does not help the credibility of your argument if you can't explain why one form of creation was affected by the Fall and another wasn't when you are using the phrase "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together" to reason that animals did not die before the Fall. At the least, your reasoning has a lot of inconsistencies.I am still really puzzled as to why it is so important to your theology that animals did not die before the Fall. It seems like a clumsy "add on" that just doesn't fit, has dubious scriptural basis, and undermines the credibility of your position. So why invest so much in it?

Wait a minute. I thought Noah saved all kinds of animals. Why were the extreme types not saved? And I thought you didn't believe in macroevolution. Going from a herbivore to a carnivore is certainly macroevolution. A whole different digestive system is required, not just a change in teeth. And there are neurological changes as well to allow an animal to be an effective predator. Edited by deerbreh, : posted before being finished.

uh-huh. that's why this thread was started. it turns out that, in rejecting evolution, creationists are actually accepting a much, much more extreme and radical version of evolution -- one which defies common sense, genetic and fossil records regarding ancestry and relation, and biology.it seems they don't have a problem with evolution -- just science in general. they'd rather "imagine" things based on their particular interpretation of the bible than try to make sense of the natural world as it exists. they see science as just another myth, and they like theirs better.

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What do you expect ? Creationists don't really carew about understanding what happens - or in the consistency of their views. THey're quite happy to posit large-scale evolution at a speed well beyond that expected by science if it suits them.Creationism is all about adherence to a fixed dogma. Any excuse they make up to defend that dogma is automatically good to them. Anything that goes agaisnt the dogma has to be wrong.And they often get angry when people prefer reason and truth to their uninformed and biased opinions. Edited by AdminPD, : Off Topic Warning

I think that is a bit harsh. Anyone who is staying with the discussion as Faith does for the most part is attempting to understand. It is just that once a person has made creationist dogma a core part of their faith it is understandable that they will go to great lengths, sometimes to what we think is absurd, to defend it. After all, if one thinks that rejecting a literal interpretation of Genesis is rejecting God, as many creationists do, including my own mother, one does not have a whole lot of intellectual room to maneuver. What is confounding is that they would accept such a radical view of evolution as postulated by the idea of a rapid herbivore/carnivore transition after the Fall or even the evolution within "kinds" after the Flood. If evolutionists were to propose such radical changes occuring in thousands, let alone hundreds of years, the creationists would rightly be subjecting them to unmitigated scorn and ridicule. But, to be fair, the concept of evolutionary time and geological time has always been a difficult concept for the lay person. Even evolutionary biologists, who spend their lives studying it, aren't in complete agreement (for example, "gradualism" vs. "punctuated equilibrium"). Of course Gould never proposed such a hyper rate of evolution as the evolutionary creationists are proposing. It seems that the evolutionary creationists have embraced an even more radical form of Darwinism than the evolutionary biologists. It is a fascinating development, almost as curious as the notion that all of the continental drift occured within the space of a few years around the time of the Flood. Edited by deerbreh, : To provide a subtitle.Edited by deerbreh, : clarityEdited by AdminPD, : Off Topic WarningEdited by AdminPD, : Removed Warning