babelfish

A world without death...wouldn’t that be great?

I just finished reading <a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/scientific_american.asp" target="_blank">this,</a> and this part in particular

got me thinking: wouldn’t it be great if Adam had never sinned? That way we could be living in a world completely free from death! We would never have to die, and neither would any other living thing!

This got me wondering, what exactly would it be like, this world without any death?

First of all, do plants count as life? Would trees and shrubs and algae and stuff live forever? I suppose if all the animals restricted their diet to fruits, nuts and grasses, this could be theoretically possible. But wouldn’t the ocean soon be choked with kelp and the earth choked with trees? Well, maybe not, since plants themselves rely on decomposing vegetation in order to grow, and decomposing vegetation comes from...dead plants!

Well, maybe plants can die. They don’t seem to suffer, after all. Although they do appear to be just as competitive as animals, in their own way. Can you imaging a mighty maple saying to a struggling sapling "here you go, little buddy, I’ll just move some of my massive limbs over to let some sunlight fall upon your tender little leaves..."

Now, about this "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" command: How long, in a world without death, before God would be forced to tell the fly and the gnat, "okay, you guys have multiplied enough, I now must sterilize all of you." Eventually, he would have to sterilize all of his creatures, even the slow-breeding ones, wouldn’t he? Even (gulp) us, his special pets! What if you were told that starting with your generation, humans were not to have any more children, because the earth was now "filled." Personally, I’d be a little miffed.

There are so many more questions that could be asked. This world that Bible believers are looking forward to, where the lion will lie down with the lamb – will the bat lie down with the mosquito? Or will all those annoying and icky things like bugs and bacteria and snakes no longer exist to plague humanity?

MrDarwin

What you're asking, essentially, was whether God had a "Plan B." If Adam & Eve hadn't sinned, would God have had to come up with a different plan for his/her/its creation? Or was their sinning an integral (and inevitable) part of it all?

babelfish

Yeah, I guess so. Although I sense a bit of wistfullness when Bible believers talk about that part of Genesis, a sort of yearning for "what might have been."

I'm also trying to figure out whether ecosystems as we know them would be possible without death playing an integral part.

Shadow Wraith

I like Ken Harding's analogy of a parent leaving a loaded pistol in a playroom with a 5-year old and God leaving a tree that would forever doom mankind in the garden where the first humans lived.
<a href="http://www.mbdojo.com/~rssl/absurdityofsin.html" target="_blank">http://www.mbdojo.com/~rssl/absurdityofsin.html</a>

Heading to Hell

Of course Man had to sin. Otherwise God would have got really bored. At least now He's got something to occupy his time...

babelfish

Thanks for the link, I really enjoyed that. Now if I could only bring myself to spam it to all my fundie relatives...but unfortunately that goes against my subjective morals.

scigirl

Shadow Wraith: Thank you so much for that link. I especially liked this line:
scigirl

Grumpy

To put it another way, since one integral feature of natural ecosystems, death, is ostensibly the result of Adam's disobedience, Adam is therefore the co-creator of the world we see today. Yet the world today, corrupted by The Fall, is supposed to be an example of God's perfect creation.

A conundrum, to be sure -- unless God intended for today's world to come about, and relied on Adam's disobedience to do it. But then it wouldn't really be disobedience, so....

Starboy

That reminds me of a joke.

For his own amusement God plucked a Frenchman, an Englishman and a Russian from 20th century earth and took them on a tour of Eden. As God took them by Adam and Eve the Frenchman exclaimed, "Mon duex, they are so beautiful, so sexual they must be French”, the Englishman heard this and replied, “Don’t be silly, they are so dignified and majestic, they have to be English”, at this the Russian said, “You are both wrong! They must be Russian. Look at them, they have no clothes, no shelter and only an apple to eat between them, an they are told that this is paradise!”

Starboy

Red Expendable

The christian god is all knowing, so after creating adam and eve, god 'knew' they were going to 'sin'. So doesn't that meant they were set up to fail?

And so based on THAT - doesn't that mean that the christian god created sin - or the ability for human beings to sin, did it intentionally.

So that being the case, the christian god is not only the dealer, but is playing with a marked deck. The other players (human beings) are then nothing more than amusing entities to toy with. Win some here, lose some there.

GOD, how could you?!!!!! You knew what was to happen to us poor poor meek humans and went ahead with the plan anyway!!!! I simply can't BELIEVE it!!!!!

RedEx

[ July 11, 2002: Message edited by: Red Expendable ]</p>