I strongly suspect that it is this issue, more than any
other issue, that lies behind the popularity of scientific
creationism. The crucial question is whether or not there
was death before the fall. Immediately (of course) we
are confronted with the problem of defining "death" (plants
only, animals and plants only, or animals, plants and humans
alike; or only the spiritual death of humans). Any one
who believes that the earth is more than a few days older than
Adam and Eve, it seems to me, must accept the reality of death
before the fall, at least death for plants -- and surely
animals, too, unless we are prepared to believe that all
animals were "vegisauruses", as they would say in Jurassic
Park, a view that seems incredible to me (if not to others).
Theological issues obviously come in at this point: the
lion and the lamb, the nature of God's creative intent,
etc. This territory is well travelled, to say the least,
but I think that some of the pre-Darwinian discussions that
arose out of uniformitarian geology are well worth reading
again. I strongly recommend the section on "Connection between
Geology and Natural and Revealed Religion," in Edward Hitchcock's
Elementary Geology. (Often printed in the mid-19th century; my
copy is the 8th edition of 1847; see pages 284-302). Hugh
Miller is another interesting author from the period.
For those who accept a wholly or partially evolutionary scenario
for the origin of human beings, the problems are compounded by
questions about the nature of the soul -- another thorny issue
that isn't new and isn't going to evaporate next week. IF
God created us by a continuous process, so that our souls are
aspects of our high level of mental organization, then we are
forced (I think) to accept the idea that human nature reflects
our ancestry in certain ways. This is not the same thing as
saying that we MUST behave in certain ways BECAUSE we have a
certain genetic heritage, but it does raise obvious challenges
to the traditional view that we "fell" from "perfection".
Those who take this road, I suggest, ought to confront the
existence of moral and natural evil head on, stating flatly
that death and suffering and other nasty things are built in
to the world from the beginning. Of course this raises problems
for theodicy -- but can anyone state a view of the origin of
suffering that doesn't raise problems? The traditional view,
that wasps lay eggs in paralyzed spiders to give food for
their offspring because Adam and Eve disobeyed God, might
seem wholly unjust to the spiders: what did they do to warrant
such a judgement? (I won't dwell more on theodicy here,
except to say that atheism also has its own version of the
problem of evil: namely, how we even speak of "evil" and
make moral judgements if there is no transcendent basis for
them?)
If death was built into things from the beginning -- something
akin to supralapsarianism? -- then the "fall" might be
understood as a metaphorical way of speaking about the very
real choices faced by free agents, who choose to disobey God
all the time and must face the consequences. Given the very
curious stuff that happens in other parts of early Genesis,
with snakes speaking and odd trees growing about the garden,
this seems like a sensible thing to conclude.
Ted Davis