The Creation, Dinosaurs, and Adam and Eve

[Dorothea]

I've pretty much had the belief that dinosaurs were roaming on the earth before Adam and Eve came to be in the garden.

I was listening to one of Fr. David's lecture DVD's the other night, and somebody was asking about animals dying in Paradise before the fall. Fr. David implied that animals died natural deaths, but Adam and Eve did not die before the fall...they were made to live forever. I was listening carefully to the exchange between the person and he on this subject. The person asked about the animals skins on Adam and Eve (the killing of the animal(s)) to cover their shame, and it showed they were then mortal humans because of their disobedience and pride to God.

Well, it came to me that this animals dying and how old the earth and universe is, and how he had the time line of human history, which starts with the primordial (was that the word he used?) age....the age when God created light and darkness and the animals and such. He said nobody knows how long this time was up to Abraham. Well, it dawned on me that, yes, the dinosaurs that are billions of years old, fit right into that primordial age.

Anybody have any thoughts on this?

 

[JohntheTheologian]

I think the idea of a 'primordial age' is helpful to an extent. It guards against historicising everything, as if the Christian doctrine of creation is about some event in the past. I'm sure you Orthodox will agree that while creation may have started at some point in the past, it is not just an 'historical' event, for two reasons.

1) The first reason is metaphysical. If the universe depended upon God for its existence in the beginning, then it still does now. God is continuing to hold the universe in existence in the 21st century, so creation isn't just a matter for Adam and Eve and dinosaurs.

2) The second concerns our Saviour. Creation wasn't 'finished' at the beginning. Yes, the world came to exist, but the pinnacle of creation is Jesus Christ. Nothing could be said to be 'finished' until he arrived on the scene! Furthermore, the Holy Spirit who 'finished' Jesus in raising Him from the dead at the Father's command, is 'finishing' the creation of the world in the Church. Irenaeus calls the Holy Spirit the 'perfecing cause' of the world, because we are being made ready for the Last Day, when the whole of creation will finally stand before its Creator, and be judged.

So yeah, I agree with you, but I'm sure you'll agree with me that all of this is just the beginning!

 

[Dorothea]

I think the idea of a 'primordial age' is helpful to an extent. It guards against historicising everything, as if the Christian doctrine of creation is about some event in the past. I'm sure you Orthodox will agree that while creation may have started at some point in the past, it is not just an 'historical' event, for two reasons.

1) The first reason is metaphysical. If the universe depended upon God for its existence in the beginning, then it still does now. God is continuing to hold the universe in existence in the 21st century, so creation isn't just a matter for Adam and Eve and dinosaurs.

2) The second concerns our Saviour. Creation wasn't 'finished' at the beginning. Yes, the world came to exist, but the pinnacle of creation is Jesus Christ. Nothing could be said to be 'finished' until he arrived on the scene! Furthermore, the Holy Spirit who 'finished' Jesus in raising Him from the dead at the Father's command, is 'finishing' the creation of the world in the Church. Irenaeus calls the Holy Spirit the 'perfecing cause' of the world, because we are being made ready for the Last Day, when the whole of creation will finally stand before its Creator, and be judged.

So yeah, I agree with you, but I'm sure you'll agree with me that all of this is just the beginning!

Yes, as Fr. David said, we live in time and history - a linear one. It had a beginning and will have an end when God is ready for it to be. Fr. D. said that that could be 2 days from now, 20 years from now, 2000 years from now, or even 2 million years from now. We don't know. What we do know is that what Christ did on the Cross and Resurrected, it is finished. God has done everything for us and it is now just a matter of time of time and history going along as you said, with God present throughout this time, overseeing, for lack of a better word, until the Second Coming to which time, things that were wrong or unjust will be made just and right and the resurrection of the dead happens, etc.

This span between the time that God created the world until Abraham, there is no exact time. Those days in Genesis are not literal, as we understand it, as I'm sure you know. So, who knows how long it was between that time, and then of course, when Christ came Incarnate. What we do know is everything God wanted to be done with his creatures by defeating death and sin, has been accomplished.

 

[Ignatius21]

Those are interesting questions. I did a lot of reading some time back about "young earth" creation theories and the like...a prominent apologetics group called Answers in Genesis has written extensively about that position, taking the "days" to be literal 24-hour periods, and then believing we can add up the geneologies to get a fairly accurate measure of time. They even opened the Creation Museum near Cincinnati a few years back.

One key element to their argument is that, per the Bible, "original sin" (however understood...at least as Adam's own sin) was what brought death into the world and ruined paradise. They maintain that the skins put onto them by God were the "first death" that happened in creation. Therefore no animals could have lived before the creation of man, and certainly could not have died.

However, nothing in Scripture that I'm aware of ever hints that any "animal" other than man was created for union with God or for eternal life and immortality. Therefore, when God warned "you shall surely die," does that mean "death itself will start and you'll be part of it," or "you shall surely die like the animals already do." I'm really not sure.

The classic question "Where did Cain get his wife" still persists.

What I will say for the Creationists (and to a lesser extent the "Intelligent Design" movement generally) is that they do at least challenge, head on, the assumptions and presuppositions inherent in modern biology and geology, and do expose that many of these assumptions are exactly that...philosophical beliefs about what must have happened or about what can't possibly have happened. These assumptions can be neither proven nor disproven.

I'm not a young earth creationist. I'm not sure what I am exactly, but I believe much in standard evolutionary theory does run against the grain of Christian doctrine...and at least initially evolution was put forward as a theory of life specifically to get around theistic explanations by people who specifically sought to get around theistic explanations. There's a tendency to believe that anything labeled "science" is neutral and impartial, where anything labeled "religion" is biased and entirely based on private opinion.

In my experience, advocates of strictly naturalistic science are every bit as philosophically dogmatic (and I might even say religously) as any Bible-thumper ever was. And maybe more.

OK, I'm off my soapbox!

I guess it's all to say, I don't know whether to agree or disagree with the video you watched. I do think, though, that very often Christians of any variety can be so afraid of coming across like ignorant fundamentalists (who unfortunately are very loud) that they over-react and just accept all claims of naturalistic science carte blanche. I think we need to be careful.

ps. Regarding Answers in Genesis...there actually are some pretty impressive scientists who write for them. I'm far from sold on their theories, and I don't think I agree with the presuppositions they have about how to properly interpret Scripture, but they do make some fairly interesting arguments that are at least worth mulling over. And to me they're at least as credible as anyone who claims that the whole universe "just sort of happened"

 

[Dorothea]

Those are interesting questions. I did a lot of reading some time back about "young earth" creation theories and the like...a prominent apologetics group called Answers in Genesis has written extensively about that position, taking the "days" to be literal 24-hour periods, and then believing we can add up the geneologies to get a fairly accurate measure of time. They even opened the Creation Museum near Cincinnati a few years back.

One key element to their argument is that, per the Bible, "original sin" (however understood...at least as Adam's own sin) was what brought death into the world and ruined paradise. They maintain that the skins put onto them by God were the "first death" that happened in creation. Therefore no animals could have lived before the creation of man, and certainly could not have died.

However, nothing in Scripture that I'm aware of ever hints that any "animal" other than man was created for union with God or for eternal life and immortality. Therefore, when God warned "you shall surely die," does that mean "death itself will start and you'll be part of it," or "you shall surely die like the animals already do." I'm really not sure.

The classic question "Where did Cain get his wife" still persists.

What I will say for the Creationists (and to a lesser extent the "Intelligent Design" movement generally) is that they do at least challenge, head on, the assumptions and presuppositions inherent in modern biology and geology, and do expose that many of these assumptions are exactly that...philosophical beliefs about what must have happened or about what can't possibly have happened. These assumptions can be neither proven nor disproven.

I'm not a young earth creationist. I'm not sure what I am exactly, but I believe much in standard evolutionary theory does run against the grain of Christian doctrine...and at least initially evolution was put forward as a theory of life specifically to get around theistic explanations by people who specifically sought to get around theistic explanations. There's a tendency to believe that anything labeled "science" is neutral and impartial, where anything labeled "religion" is biased and entirely based on private opinion.

In my experience, advocates of strictly naturalistic science are every bit as philosophically dogmatic (and I might even say religously) as any Bible-thumper ever was. And maybe more.

OK, I'm off my soapbox!

I guess it's all to say, I don't know whether to agree or disagree with the video you watched. I do think, though, that very often Christians of any variety can be so afraid of coming across like ignorant fundamentalists (who unfortunately are very loud) that they over-react and just accept all claims of naturalistic science carte blanche. I think we need to be careful.

ps. Regarding Answers in Genesis...there actually are some pretty impressive scientists who write for them. I'm far from sold on their theories, and I don't think I agree with the presuppositions they have about how to properly interpret Scripture, but they do make some fairly interesting arguments that are at least worth mulling over. And to me they're at least as credible as anyone who claims that the whole universe "just sort of happened"

That's very interesting, wturri. I hadn't heard that before. As far as the animal skins. Yeah, there wasn't death in Paradise before that, but does that include animals who weren't created in His Image or made immortal before the Fall? That's a different question all together.

the Orthodox Church has no dogma on the time at the beginning in Genesis when everything was created. But, to me, common sense would say that people were not around at the time of the dinosaurs, or they'd been dead. Then there was the total end of the dinosaurs. Thus, Paradise came about with Adam and Eve makes sense to me. I think it says that Paradise was made after the animals came about out of the waters.

Anyhow, I certainly don't belileve in the earth being only 6000 years old. There's archeological evidence that shows otherwise. Our earth has been around for billions of years.

 

[MKJ]

Well, I'm reading Athanasius "On the Incarnation" at the moment, and he seems pretty clear that animals are not immortal by nature and died before the Fall. So that idea is not a recent one in any case.

 

[Dorothea]

Well, I'm reading Athanasius "On the Incarnation" at the moment, and he seems pretty clear that animals are not immortal by nature and died before the Fall. So that idea is not a recent one in any case.

 

[nutroll]

I just read this article the other day and thought it was an interesting take on some of the common Orthodox objections to evolution.

 

[Gregorios]

I personally fall on the side of Theistic evolution. That is that evolution as put forth by science is accurate however this was the mode that God chose to create the universe. Science tells us how, Faith tells us why as the old addadge goes, that's where I stand on the issue. Since there is no dogmatic definition from the Church, I am free to believe this

 

[Michael G]

I know a priest in the city where I live (those of you who know me know who I am talking about) who claims dinosaurs were cited in Africa in the 20th C. Considering I have a friend who worked for 30 years in Kenya before his death and never did he mention to anyone he knows anything about dinosaurs, I personally feel this priest is full of it. Needless to say, the young earth creationists are not the side that I fall on.

However, that being said, I still think it would be cool to put a T-Rex and Bronotsaurus in the icon of The Creation of the Animals.

 

[Dorothea]

I just read this article the other day and thought it was an interesting take on some of the common Orthodox objections to evolution.

Thanks, nutroll. I'll read it. Just skimming it, it reminds me. Of course there has been evolution in some animals. For example, the crocodile is an ancient reptile, which was much bigger in prehistoric times. It evolved to what it is today.

 

[Dorothea]

I personally fall on the side of Theistic evolution. That is that evolution as put forth by science is accurate however this was the mode that God chose to create the universe. Science tells us how, Faith tells us why as the old addadge goes, that's where I stand on the issue. Since there is no dogmatic definition from the Church, I am free to believe this

 

[Michael G]

I just read this article the other day and thought it was an interesting take on some of the common Orthodox objections to evolution.

I agree with much of what he says, but he says Sirach is non-canonical?

 

[ArmyMatt]

I personally fall (haha, pun) of young earth creation. I do not believe that animals died before the Fall, and my priest told me that the skins that were placed on Adam and Eve were the course flesh we have now, whereas the flesh we had back then, while physical, was pure and more angelic, and not the skins of an animal.

it just personally does not make sense to me for God, who is Life, to will any kind of death from the beginning, when all was good. or for the Heavenly King, to plant Immortal Man in a dying Kingdom, or how this dying and corrupt universe reflects the glory of an immortal and pure God.

 

[Dorothea]

I personally fall (haha, pun) of young earth creation. I do not believe that animals died before the Fall, and my priest told me that the skins that were placed on Adam and Eve were the course flesh we have now, whereas the flesh we had back then, while physical, was pure and more angelic, and not the skins of an animal.

it just personally does not make sense to me for God, who is Life, to will any kind of death from the beginning, when all was good. or for the Heavenly King, to plant Immortal Man in a dying Kingdom, or how this dying and corrupt universe reflects the glory of an immortal and pure God.

I see. Well, how do you reconcile dinosaurs on the earth billions of years ago.... did they somehow coexist in the Garden with Adam and Eve? How?

 

[jckstraw72]

i think, unfortunately, that Fr. David is incorrect, and that animals did not die before the Fall. here is what many Fathers have to say about death before the Fall: the entire creation was created incorrupt « Old Believing’s Blog

the basic idea is that the earth was made for man and given to man, and thus its fate is tied to ours. Orthodoxy views the fall and salvation as a cosmic event, reaching far beyond man. also, the Wisdom of Solomon (chaps 1,2) tells us that God does not desire the death of anything, and St. Paul tells us that all of creation was subjected to vanity by the sin of man, and thus all of creation groans in anticipation of its redemption.

as for dinosaurs, i do not accept the assumptions that go into dating methods, and thus i have no reason to believe that dinosaurs lived billions or millions of years ago.

and if God intends for animals to die, then its ridiculous for us to be sad when our pets die --- why should we be sad that God's will has been done? we mourn over death because we innately know that it is an intruder and a corruption.

 

[Ignatius21]

it just personally does not make sense to me for God, who is Life, to will any kind of death from the beginning, when all was good. or for the Heavenly King, to plant Immortal Man in a dying Kingdom, or how this dying and corrupt universe reflects the glory of an immortal and pure God.

and if God intends for animals to die, then its ridiculous for us to be sad when our pets die --- why should we be sad that God's will has been done? we mourn over death because we innately know that it is an intruder and a corruption.

Both excellent points, and reasons I think that simply saying "eh, religion says why and science says how and never the twain shall meet" is very convenient, but sweeps massive differences under the rug.

If death is the enemy of creation, and Christ came to redeem all of creation and overthrow death, then it seems rather nonsensical that God would use death, suffering, tooth-and-nail violence, cancer, and disease as instruments to eventually fashion a paradise that he calls "Very Good." To say that God used death and suffering as a means to create humans makes God into far more of a monster than any fire-breathing hyper-Calvinist ever did.

As to pointing out that there's been "evolution" in animals, it's often assumed that creationism teaches that nothing has ever changed, and Noah had two of every imaginable reptile on his ark, or whatever. Rather they believe that when it speaks of "two of every kind" it speaks roughly like "two of every genus."

For me, saying that a particular species that already contains all the genetic information required to live, reproduce and be what it is (i.e. a "canine" or whatever) can adapt and change and mutate and "evolve" over time is perfectly reasonable and sensible. DNA and genetic codes really are just brilliantly encoded streams of information. Mutations alter or reduce information. They are not known to increase information, which is what would be required for a germ to become a worm (hey, it rhymes!).

I once heard a lecture by an ID scientist approaching this from the standpoint of information theory and it really did make sense. He said it would be more scientifically and mathematically plausible for a human to devolve into an ape, than for an ape to evolve into a human.

But this does kind of take us on a tangent from the OP. I guess the point is that, when an "neutral" scientist says the evidence proves the earth is billions of years old, what he really means is that a particular interpretation of that evidence, guided and informed by assumptions based on philosophies of what must have happened, or could not have happened, is consistent with the earth being billions of years old. Having said all that I'm not convinced that the earth is any particular age, but on the one hand Creationists need it to be young to fit their interpretation of Genesis, where Darwinists need it to be very, very ancient to allow enough time to make such unlikely evolutions at least not be statistically impossible.

I will now step back off my soapbox

 

[jckstraw72]

Both excellent points, and reasons I think that simply saying "eh, religion says why and science says how and never the twain shall meet" is very convenient, but sweeps massive differences under the rug.

If death is the enemy of creation, and Christ came to redeem all of creation and overthrow death, then it seems rather nonsensical that God would use death, suffering, tooth-and-nail violence, cancer, and disease as instruments to eventually fashion a paradise that he calls "Very Good." To say that God used death and suffering as a means to create humans makes God into far more of a monster than any fire-breathing hyper-Calvinist ever did.

As to pointing out that there's been "evolution" in animals, it's often assumed that creationism teaches that nothing has ever changed, and Noah had two of every imaginable reptile on his ark, or whatever. Rather they believe that when it speaks of "two of every kind" it speaks roughly like "two of every genus."

For me, saying that a particular species that already contains all the genetic information required to live, reproduce and be what it is (i.e. a "canine" or whatever) can adapt and change and mutate and "evolve" over time is perfectly reasonable and sensible. DNA and genetic codes really are just brilliantly encoded streams of information. Mutations alter or reduce information. They are not known to increase information, which is what would be required for a germ to become a worm (hey, it rhymes!).

I once heard a lecture by an ID scientist approaching this from the standpoint of information theory and it really did make sense. He said it would be more scientifically and mathematically plausible for a human to devolve into an ape, than for an ape to evolve into a human.

But this does kind of take us on a tangent from the OP. I guess the point is that, when an "neutral" scientist says the evidence proves the earth is billions of years old, what he really means is that a particular interpretation of that evidence, guided and informed by assumptions based on philosophies of what must have happened, or could not have happened, is consistent with the earth being billions of years old. Having said all that I'm not convinced that the earth is any particular age, but on the one hand Creationists need it to be young to fit their interpretation of Genesis, where Darwinists need it to be very, very ancient to allow enough time to make such unlikely evolutions at least not be statistically impossible.

I will now step back off my soapbox

 

[Michael G]

Both excellent points, and reasons I think that simply saying "eh, religion says why and science says how and never the twain shall meet" is very convenient, but sweeps massive differences under the rug.

If death is the enemy of creation, and Christ came to redeem all of creation and overthrow death, then it seems rather nonsensical that God would use death, suffering, tooth-and-nail violence, cancer, and disease as instruments to eventually fashion a paradise that he calls "Very Good." To say that God used death and suffering as a means to create humans makes God into far more of a monster than any fire-breathing hyper-Calvinist ever did.

As to pointing out that there's been "evolution" in animals, it's often assumed that creationism teaches that nothing has ever changed, and Noah had two of every imaginable reptile on his ark, or whatever. Rather they believe that when it speaks of "two of every kind" it speaks roughly like "two of every genus."

For me, saying that a particular species that already contains all the genetic information required to live, reproduce and be what it is (i.e. a "canine" or whatever) can adapt and change and mutate and "evolve" over time is perfectly reasonable and sensible. DNA and genetic codes really are just brilliantly encoded streams of information. Mutations alter or reduce information. They are not known to increase information, which is what would be required for a germ to become a worm (hey, it rhymes!).

I once heard a lecture by an ID scientist approaching this from the standpoint of information theory and it really did make sense. He said it would be more scientifically and mathematically plausible for a human to devolve into an ape, than for an ape to evolve into a human.

But this does kind of take us on a tangent from the OP. I guess the point is that, when an "neutral" scientist says the evidence proves the earth is billions of years old, what he really means is that a particular interpretation of that evidence, guided and informed by assumptions based on philosophies of what must have happened, or could not have happened, is consistent with the earth being billions of years old. Having said all that I'm not convinced that the earth is any particular age, but on the one hand Creationists need it to be young to fit their interpretation of Genesis, where Darwinists need it to be very, very ancient to allow enough time to make such unlikely evolutions at least not be statistically impossible.

I will now step back off my soapbox

Wait a minute. You can take "two of every kind" to not be literal but you have to take the 6 day creation of the world literal? Seems like a contradiction to me.

 

[Ignatius21]

Wait a minute. You can take "two of every kind" to not be literal but you have to take the 6 day creation of the world literal? Seems like a contradiction to me.

No, they're taking both literallly. They take "day" to mean 24-hour period and "kind" to mean...well, kind. As in the "bird kind," or the "canine kind." One pair of "prototypical" felines could contain the genetic information necessary to adapt and evolve into an entire tree of feline descendants. Essentially the differences between a bengal tiger and a tabby cat are not very profound...size, color, temperment (although my in-laws have a tabby cat that would put the fear of God into any tiger). But they're both cats and could reasonably be traced back to a common source...such as two of the "feline kind."