If there was no death (of animals) before the Fall, then why would animals need to eat?

[Lost4words]

I hate to burst your bubble but...have you never heard of Korea? Or Yulin, in China?

Yea, but Corgis are not on the menu there. Our flesh is just too tough!

 

[Job 33:6]

Where is the verse in the Bible that makes reference to animals having teeth before the fall?

Once again you are making claims without actually doing any of the work of establishing any facts for what you rail about. What does the Bible actually SAY about before the fall? That is the place to start. You keep starting with wild accusations and demanding that people explain your imagination away.

Here is scripture on creation before the fall:
And God said, “Look—I am giving to you every plant that bears seed which is on the face of the whole earth, and every kind of tree that bears fruit. They shall be yours as food.” And to every kind of animal of the earth and to every bird of heaven, and to everything that moves upon the earth in which there is life I am giving every green plant as food.” And it was so.
Genesis 1:29‭-‬30 LEB

So presumably animals ate before the fall because God gave them food before the fall. Unless perhaps they didn't eat their food that God gave them, they just sat around without teeth and without digestive tracks, waiting for Adam and Eve to eat first so that they could hyper evolve digestive tracks before eating.

This leads us to more questions about how some believe that death of plants and bacteria and insects were ok, just not death of animals for whatever reason. As if rotting and decaying vegetation is somehow a good thing.

Interestingly, Genesis also refers to cultivation of the land, which also tends to require substrate biomes, things like annelids and insects digesting leftover crops to make way for next year's planting. This has lead some to wonder if Adam and Eve were actually created during a more modern time of agriculture, recently in history, after mankind had already constructed civilizations. And after all, Cain was afraid of someone when he was exiled to the land of Nod, where he then went on to meet his wife (though scripture says nothing about Adam and Eve having more children before hand, so it seems unreasonable to conclude incest) also supporting the suggestion that other people pre existed Adam and Eve outside of the garden.

And Yahweh God took the man and set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it.
Genesis 2:15 LEB

Look, you have driven me out today from the face of the ground, and from your face I must hide. I will be a wanderer and a fugitive on the earth, and it will happen that whoever finds me will kill me.”
Genesis 4:14 LEB

There are a few other interesting body parts that animals would presumably be missing if they could not eat. One would have to wonder, if they had mouths and saliva, if they would ever swallow their saliva, where would it go?

All weird questions when we think about scripture in a modern scientific sense. It's much easier, in my opinion, to go with the ancient near-east, pre-scientific view of scripture. Then all these scriptural conflicts go away.

 

[Astrid]

Here is scripture on creation before the fall:
And God said, “Look—I am giving to you every plant that bears seed which is on the face of the whole earth, and every kind of tree that bears fruit. They shall be yours as food.” And to every kind of animal of the earth and to every bird of heaven, and to everything that moves upon the earth in which there is life I am giving every green plant as food.” And it was so.
Genesis 1:29‭-‬30 LEB

So presumably animals ate before the fall because God gave them food before the fall. Unless perhaps they didn't eat their food that God gave them, they just sat around without teeth and without digestive tracks, waiting for Adam and Eve to eat first so that they could hyper evolve digestive tracks before eating.

This leads us to more questions about how some believe that death of plants and bacteria and insects were ok, just not death of animals for whatever reason. As if rotting and decaying vegetation is somehow a good thing.

Interestingly, Genesis also refers to cultivation of the land, which also tends to require substrate biomes, things like annelids and insects digesting leftover crops to make way for next year's planting. This has lead some to wonder if Adam and Eve were actually created during a more modern time of agriculture, recently in history, after mankind had already constructed civilizations. And after all, Cain was afraid of someone when he was exiled to the land of Nod, where he then went on to meet his wife (though scripture says nothing about Adam and Eve having more children before hand, so it seems unreasonable to conclude incest) also supporting the suggestion that other people pre existed Adam and Eve outside of the garden.

And Yahweh God took the man and set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it.
Genesis 2:15 LEB

Look, you have driven me out today from the face of the ground, and from your face I must hide. I will be a wanderer and a fugitive on the earth, and it will happen that whoever finds me will kill me.”
Genesis 4:14 LEB

There are a few other interesting body parts that animals would presumably be missing if they could not eat. One would have to wonder, if they had mouths and saliva, if they would ever swallow their saliva, where would it go?

All weird questions when we think about scripture in a modern scientific sense. It's much easier, in my opinion, to go with the ancient near-east, pre-scientific view of scripture. Then all these scriptural conflicts go away.

God had a pre scientific view?

 

[brinny]

Man ate also hefore the fall.

 

[Astrid]

Man ate also hefore the fall.

Christianity never much interested me before
I went to USA for Uni.
There, it's everywhere!
One of my first encounters with someone
wishing-I guess-to get points by converting
this awful alien atheist Asian to the true religion.

She proceeded to tell about how lions used
to eat leaves or carrots or something. Then
suddenly their teeth, instincts, digestive systems
etc all suddenly changed for predation because
of "sin".
Later after some things happen involving bronze
scorpions and whatnot, they will change again and eat
straw.

This is what ( some of ) you guys really
think?

 

[atpollard]

Here is scripture on creation before the fall:
And God said, “Look—I am giving to you every plant that bears seed which is on the face of the whole earth, and every kind of tree that bears fruit. They shall be yours as food.” And to every kind of animal of the earth and to every bird of heaven, and to everything that moves upon the earth in which there is life I am giving every green plant as food.” And it was so.
Genesis 1:29‭-‬30 LEB

Thank you.
That is all I wanted from you was to first make a case from scripture of what it actually SAYS and then raise questions about what scripture says. It was the demand for explanation of “unsubstantiated speculation” that I objected to.

All weird questions when we think about scripture in a modern scientific sense. It's much easier, in my opinion, to go with the ancient near-east, pre-scientific view of scripture. Then all these scriptural conflicts go away.

I do not engage in creation vs evolution ‘pontification’ because I believe that that sort of debate is predicated on a misunderstanding of the PURPOSE of the early chapters of Genesis. If God had intended to create a textbook on Geology and Planetology and Evolutionary Biology, God would have created a magnificent textbook that would have peeled away mysteries and left scientists in awe. That was NEVER the intended function of Genesis. In my opinion, Genesis 1 is a polemic attacking the extant creation myths of the great empires of the age of its writing and an introduction to the answer to “WHO and WHY?” We still cannot understand phenomenon central to reality as basic as “gravity” or “quantum mechanics”, so the HOW of “God” and “creation” and “man” is irrelevant compared to the important and eternal questions of “who” and “why”. Genesis answers the IMPORTANT questions, and ignores the trivial questions (how) that we would not understand the answer even if we were told.

So speculate away if it amuses you, but recognize that you are asking the unimportant questions and ignoring the important answers.

One small example … in every other “creation myth”, the start is how the GODS (plural) were created (often from primordial water), but in Genesis 1:1 there is only one God, eternal and uncreated, that commands even the primordial waters. God starts out Genesis by setting the record straight on HIS origin and relationship to His creation. Theology (knowledge of God) not Astrophysics (origin of space) is the purpose of Genesis 1.

 

[atpollard]

Let's see you explain your own imagination away:
1. Before the fall, there was no death - where does the bible say animals didn't die?
2. If animals didn't die, they didn't need to eat so they had no teeth - where does the bible say this?
3. As a follow on to having no teeth, did they also have no digestive system? No openings for excreting fecal matter or waste water? Where is this supported in the bible? Let me remind you of something you said above

I made NONE of those claims (#1-3).
I simply suggest that demands to explain some “fact” from the Bible should begin by actually quoting from the Bible … then one can explain what was actually written.

Making unsupported claims and demanding that other people explain what you have imagined seems unproductive.

Why don’t you explain to me why the aliens hunted Dinosaurs to extinction with Laser guns before genetically altering lizard eggs to hatch mammals?
[As long as no evidence is required for a claim to demand an explanation.]

 

[Job 33:6]

God had a pre scientific view?

Not God, rather the ancient Hebrews who physically wrote Genesis did.

For example, the firmament with the windows and opened up to release the heavenly waters, and then later the windows closed to re-restrain the waters above. Like saphire, like frozen ice, like molten metal, in which God walks in human form above, which holds the stars "in" it, like thumb tacks in a cork board. In which birds fly across the flat face of, much like the hold spirit hovered across the flat face of the deal.

The language used in Genesis implies a perspective in which the ancient Hebrews held a similar cosmogony as other ancient cultures around the world on which there was a divine, yet solid in nature, dome over the land.

And God inspired these individuals and breathed the word through them, but some of their cultural experiences are still observed and present in scripture. It's the same reason the old testament uses cubits as a measurement. Cubits aren't some God ordained devine measurements, rather it's a cultural aspect of scripture where a historical people's used it as a form of measurement.

 

[Job 33:6]

Not God, rather the ancient Hebrews who physically wrote Genesis did.

For example, the firmament with the windows and opened up to release the heavenly waters, and then later the windows closed to re-restrain the waters above. Like saphire, like frozen ice, like molten metal, in which God walks in human form above, which holds the stars "in" it, like thumb tacks in a cork board. In which birds fly across the flat face of, much like the hold spirit hovered across the flat face of the deal.

The language used in Genesis implies a perspective in which the ancient Hebrews held a similar cosmogony as other ancient cultures around the world on which there was a divine, yet solid in nature, dome over the land.

And God inspired these individuals and breathed the word through them, but some of their cultural experiences are still observed and present in scripture. It's the same reason the old testament uses cubits as a measurement. Cubits aren't some God ordained devine measurements, rather it's a cultural aspect of scripture where a historical people's used it as a form of measurement.

 

[ElenaMaria_9]

Yea, but Corgis are not on the menu there. Our flesh is just too tough!

Phew! am glad to hear that!

 

[Astrid]

Not God, rather the ancient Hebrews who physically wrote Genesis did.

For example, the firmament with the windows and opened up to release the heavenly waters, and then later the windows closed to re-restrain the waters above. Like saphire, like frozen ice, like molten metal, in which God walks in human form above, which holds the stars "in" it, like thumb tacks in a cork board. In which birds fly across the flat face of, much like the hold spirit hovered across the flat face of the deal.

The language used in Genesis implies a perspective in which the ancient Hebrews held a similar cosmogony as other ancient cultures around the world on which there was a divine, yet solid in nature, dome over the land.

And God inspired these individuals and breathed the word through them, but some of their cultural experiences are still observed and present in scripture. It's the same reason the old testament uses cubits as a measurement. Cubits aren't some God ordained devine measurements, rath er it's a cultural aspect of scripture where a historical people's used it as a form of measurement.

That is all evident enough and entirely
coherent until "God", ex machina and all,
"inspires" one group to write the same sort of
fanciful story that others made up without it
being breathed at them. Not a word of it that
reveals a higher source.

Why say there's but traces of cultural
experience when the book is about their culture?
( Which Christiand somewhat weirdly appropriate
as their own)
Reading the OT, it's nothing but what this tribe did
their cultural practices and folk wisdom, and
how, like every culture, they figured they were God
special creation,
For my alien eyes it stretches credulity far past
it's elastic limit that God would inspire a fact free
account, and make it a highest virtue to have faith
in the absolute verity of it. And into the bargain
set up millennia of confusion and strife as the
details of the story increasingly unravel as the
actual nature of things becomes increasingly
apparent.

 

[brinny]

Christianity never much interested me before
I went to USA for Uni.
There, it's everywhere!
One of my first encounters with someone
wishing-I guess-to get points by converting
this awful alien atheist Asian to the true religion.

She proceeded to tell about how lions used
to eat leaves or carrots or something. Then
suddenly their teeth, instincts, digestive systems
etc all suddenly changed for predation because
of "sin".
Later after some things happen involving bronze
scorpions and whatnot, they will change again and eat
straw.

This is what ( some of ) you guys really
think?

Christian or not, have you studied Genesis?

 

[Job 33:6]

That is all evident enough and entirely
coherent until "God", ex machina and all,
"inspires" one group to write the same sort of
fanciful story that others made up without it
being breathed at them. Not a word of it that
reveals a higher source.

Why say there's but traces of cultural
experience when the book is about their culture?
( Which Christiand somewhat weirdly appropriate
as their own)
Reading the OT, it's nothing but what this tribe did
their cultural practices and folk wisdom, and
how, like every culture, they figured they were God
special creation,
For my alien eyes it stretches credulity far past
it's elastic limit that God would inspire a fact free
account, and make it a highest virtue to have faith
in the absolute verity of it. And into the bargain
set up millennia of confusion and strife as the
details of the story increasingly unravel as the
actual nature of things becomes increasingly
apparent.

Well, that's what the game is all about. It's a question of if someone believes that there is merit in the core values of the message (that God exists and that He is personal and engaged in us). Not everyone does, some people don't believe it while others do. That's the nature of faith and religion.

 

[Astrid]

"Game" *is an interestingly apt term.
(Choose to) believe / have faith is obviously
at the core of every religion.

The more it unravels in the face of observable fact, the
greater the virtue in holding fast the faith.

Weird core value.
If one wants to believe a god cares about them, why base it
off a book that is about so much about other and
generally fanciful things?

* same applies to superstitions and con games / scams,
teenage love and willing suspension of disbelief at a movie.

 

[Job 33:6]

"Game" *is an interestingly apt term.
(Choose to) believe / have faith is obviously
at the core of every religion.

The more it unravels in the face of observable fact, the
greater the virtue in holding fast the faith.

Weird core value.
If one wants to believe a god cares about them, why base it
off a book that is about so much about other and
generally fanciful things?

* same applies to superstitions and con games / scams,
teenage love and willing suspension of disbelief at a movie.

Some people might view it as unraveling, but other people view it as revelation. Not in the doomsday sense but in revealing God. For example, geocentrist Christians had their faith unraveled at the hands of Galileo, but simultaneously came about the revelation of a God who created a heliocentric universe. The same thing happens with the topic of evolution and it's currently unfolding. The unraveling of a younger literalist view in favor of a God whose functioning and operating in another way.

I wouldn't really call it unraveling unless you're under the former literalist position rather than the latter.

And the Bible is just a tool that we use to understand God. Scripture tells us that God is creator of the heavens and the earth and that we were made in his image and our intimately cared for by him.

If not a message like this, what else would we base our belief in God off of?

 

[Astrid]

Some people might view it as unraveling, but other people view it as revelation. Not in the doomsday sense but in revealing God. For example, geocentrist Christians had their faith unraveled at the hands of Galileo, but simultaneously came about the revelation of a God who created a heliocentric universe. The same thing happens with the topic of evolution and it's currently unfolding. The unraveling of a younger literalist view in favor of a God whose functioning and operating in another way.

I wouldn't really call it unraveling unless you're under the former literalist position rather than the latter.

And the Bible is just a tool that we use to understand God. Scripture tells us that God is creator of the heavens and the earth and that we were made in his image and our intimately cared for by him.

If not a message like this, what else would we base our belief in God off of?

Did I say faith unravelling? I pointed out the opposite,,
that the harder to.believe, the more virtue in faith anyway.

The story itself unravels as described.
A "tool," or manual with scarce a word
connected to fact or reason seems an
extraordinarily poor choice for something
to promote trust love and understanding.

 

[Job 33:6]

Did I say faith unravelling? I pointed out the opposite,,
that the harder to.believe, the more virtue in faith anyway.

The story itself unravels as described.
A "tool," or manual with scarce a word
connected to fact or reason seems an
extraordinarily poor choice for something
to promote trust love and understanding.

To be fair, I think that's kind of an opinionated thought, that say, Paul's Romans might not be connected to fact or reason. I would disagree. But that's just me.

And I would that that, at least in this case, some parts of the Bible I would say overwhelmingly promote trust love and understanding. Though to be fair, we tend to shy away from the OT, grueling books like Deuteronomy or liviticus. But thus is the human condition. Sometimes you get Jesus, other times you get Hitler and everyone sits down and you discuss pros and cons of morality.

 

[Astrid]

To be fair, I think that's kind of an opinionated thought, that say, Paul's Romans might not be connected to fact or reason. I would disagree. But that's just me.

And I would that that, at least in this case, some parts of the Bible I would say overwhelmingly promote trust love and understanding. Though to be fair, we tend to shy away from the OT, grueling books like Deuteronomy or liviticus. But thus is the human condition. Sometimes you get Jesus, other times you get Hitler and everyone sits down and you discuss pros and cons of morality.

I did say " scarce". Lots of things are
real. Red Sea. Babylon.
But things that relate to the
supernatural-kind of the point
of a god book-not a trace anywhere
to be found.
Trust, love, ethics, character, all that stuff is
in our culture too.

 

[Job 33:6]

I did say " scarce". Lots of things are
real. Red Sea. Babylon.
But things that relate to the
supernatural-kind of the point
of a god book-not a trace anywhere
to be found.
Trust, love, ethics, character, all that stuff is
in our culture too.

I would disagree here too. I'd say that it permeates in scripture, as opposed to being scarce.

From the perspective of a believer, even ethics of the secular world are an outflowing of God.

 

[Astrid]

I would disagree here too. I'd say that it permeates in scripture, as opposed to being scarce.

From the perspective of a believer, even ethics of the secular world are an outflowing of God.

What permeates it? Supernatural stuff that stands up
to scrutiny?
Six days creation, flood, babel, red Sea, Paul's snake story?

Love and trust permeates Job, Passover, what?

As for Chinese or other ethics we respect our ancestors
and it seems Christians don't.

How can you guys not give them a scrap of
credit for developing anything without getting
supernatural help? So disrespectful!

And for the Adam / Eve first 6000ya
literists, they are denying
their ancestors ever even existed!

I don't see love permeating a religion that
teaches such disrespect as that.