Spaz

I dunno if this has been discussed before, and I haven't really searched any pages for it, but how do fundies explain deep sea animals and the "original vegetarian" stuff. I was watching the discovery channel and it's still on now, but it was explaining deep sea creatures. Deep in the sea, obviously, photosynthesis can't occur, so there are no plants, every animal deep in the ocean feeds on other animals, so how did these animals eat if all animals were originally plant eaters? Or do they all claim that the ocean was always a couple hundred feet deep max back then?

EDIT: I'm thinking this would be better in E/C can somebody move it?

EspressoSnail

I was watching that show. Very cool.
Umm... maybe at one time all animals were plants? *shrugs*

Spaz

I reposted this in here from GRD, the other can be deleted or merged or whatever, but I think it's dead anyway.


I dunno if this has been discussed before, and I haven't really searched any pages for it, but how do fundies explain deep sea animals and the "original vegetarian" stuff. I was watching the discovery channel and it's still on now, but it was explaining deep sea creatures. Deep in the sea, obviously, photosynthesis can't occur, so there are no plants, every animal deep in the ocean feeds on other animals, so how did these animals eat if all animals were originally plant eaters? Or do they all claim that the ocean was always a couple hundred feet deep max back then?

Duvenoy

It's even worse than that, bro. At the thermal vents in the floor of the oceans, where tempertures are extremely high and a few feet away, very cold, bacteria feed off hydrogen sulphide gas released by the vent. These are the basis for an entire food chain, including copeopods tube worms, crabs and octopi.

As none of this was known back in the days of bibical yore, it wasn't mentioned. Today, as far as I know, it's being pretty much ignored.

doov

beastmaster

These are the relevant verses of Genesis:

On its face, the latter verse applies only to terrestrial and avian life forms. So a permissible implication is that marine life was not vegetarian prior to the Fall.

Albert Cipriani

What I draw from the quoted verses is that the way things are now after the Fall is not the way God would have had it if there were no Fall.

That life must die in order for it to become the life-sustaining source of food for other life is the result of the Fall. Does this mean that before the Fall life did not kill to live? No. God, being omniscient, must have allowed this dog-eat-dog world to evolve as it did prior to the Fall in anticipation of the Fall, in order to have a suitable place prepared for Fallen man to be exiled into.

Otherwise, if Nature were perfect at the same time man was created perfect, why were Adam and Eve sequestered from the world in Eden, the perfect Garden of Paradise? Indeed, all of the world would have qualified as an Eden and that garden would be a superfluous redundancy. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

beastmaster

Albert, what makes you think that Eden was "perfect?" I see nothing in Genesis that indicates that Eden was superior to the rest of God's creation.

To the contrary, Genesis indicates that *all* of God's creation was "very good" when formed. Gen. 1:31 (KJV: "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." ) Nothing is said to be any more "good" than anything else.

Moreover, the vegetarian diet of the pre-Fall terrestrial and avian life forms was not limited to those living within the garden of Eden. Rather, it applied 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." Gen. 1:30 (KJV). Note that God had apparently not even created the garden of Eden at the point in creation when he made this vegetarian manifesto.

The only thing that Genesis indicates as being special about Eden was that Eden had the Trees of Knowledge and Life.

God cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden, not because they were unworthy to live in a "perfect" garden, but rather in order to separate them from the Tree of Life, lest they eat of its fruit and become like gods. Gen. 3:22-24 (KJV: "And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.")

Albert Cipriani

Dear Beastmaster,
Your reading comprehension skills need brushing up on. You assert: Wrong on both counts according to Genesis 2:8: “And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning; wherein he placed man whom he had formed.”

Contrast this earthly paradise in which Adam walked with the Lord in the cool of the morning to the world Adam was cast into: “Cursed is the earth in thy work; and labour and toil shalt thou eat there of all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth.” (Genesis 3:17-18)

You assert: Not true. After God created man on the sixth day, for the very first time He described His creation as VERY good. Genesis 1:31: “And God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. And the evening and morning were the sixth day..” – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

beastmaster

Thanks for your reply Albert. There's no need to insult my reading comprehension, as you can see we are merely reading different versions.

After comparing version-against-version at Bible Gateway, I see that the DRV is unique in all this "paradise" and "planted there from the beginning" business, which makes me quite skeptical of liberties taken in the translation. I hope to find time to take a closer look at the DRV's version in the near future.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Beastmaster,
Ouch! I’m sorry you took what I said as an insult. I guess I need to employ those smiley-faces more generously. The brush up on your reading skills aside was meant as a good-natured jab.

I’d have hoped my detailed response to you would have dispelled an suspicion of insult. If I meant to be insulting to you I wouldn’t have taken you seriously, and if I didn't take you seriously I wouldn’t have given you a detailed response.

If we can get pass this misstep on my part, I’d ask you to consider the Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible as the bible of choice, for it is the English translation of the Vulgate Latin version of the bible which was translated from all three ancient languages by the 4th century scholar, Saint Jerome, from manuscripts long since disappeared. His approach was as literalist. Ergo, you’re getting as close as you can get to the actual meaning of the words with him. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic