B) This is a forgivable thought, as it's plain to see that this does indeed become a contention in the Church based on Patristic understanding of creation. Nevertheless, I hinged my thoughts on St. Athanasius' quote before, that we are the only creatures, who by nature impermanent, receives the grace of the Image of God, that is immortality and incorruption. Thus, no other creature created in God's green earth seems to have immortality and incorruption, since this is engrained in the Image of God itself. I've also made the argument that the idea that biological death for all other creatures besides humanity as a result of Adam's fall can be considered a theologomenoun. Just as the first 300 years of Church fathers unanimously believed that angels can copulate with humans to give birth to the Nephilim, only to find that Sts. Augustine and John Cassian to be the first ones to refute such a thought proves that despite Patristic consensus of the time, it was unnecessary for dogma, and therefore theologomenoun. In fact, the blessed and honored Fr. Seraphim Rose claims that St. Athanasius and St. John Chrysostom were also against such a thought, but I have yet to find proof of that.
As time moves on, we will see a shift in an issue where I feel is not dogma. In fact, there is a sense that biological death is a necessary act of mercy of God for the sins of Adam, despite the fact that it's a tragedy and unnatural for any human being in the spiritual sense, as St. Irenaeus teaches (Against Heresies 3.23.6):
Wherefore also He drove him out of Paradise, and removed him far from the tree of life, not because He envied him the tree of life, as some venture to assert, but because He pitied him, [and did not desire] that he should continue a sinner for ever, nor that the sin which surrounded him should be immortal, and evil interminable and irremediable. But He set a bound to his [state of] sin, by interposing death, and thus causing sin to cease, (Romans 6:7) putting an end to it by the dissolution of the flesh, which should take place in the earth, so that man, ceasing at length to live to sin, and dying to it, might begin to live to God.
I find it rather interesting that God is even involved having to block the source of immortality to Adam so that he may not live in sin forever. This is not to contradict the idea that Adam brought death to himself. But it also raises the question even in biological death, it is not only a punishment Adam brought upon himself, but a necessity prepared to help Adam and all humanity in their sinful state. And what great prophetic wonder it is, that God may use death to destroy both sin and death in His incarnation!
Therefore the death and struggle of individual species of animals resulting only to give birth to higher species and forms of life shows us God teaching us that through a massive cycling of progressive processes, a plan for man was to appear, so that all of natures pangs and pains may be fulfilled in man's immortality and bringing all nature into unison with God. However, because of man's failure, all of nature's species continued in pain, and in fact, the world began to fail. Man continues to lead the Earth into bad shape, even while it progressed in knowledge and technology. The way they treat the Earth and they way they sinned is a reminder of the dire sinful state of man and the sinful results it brings to the world.
In addition, the world is one giant organism, by which we are to be stewards of its whole. We understand that there's a necessary balance of biological life from the microscopic to the predator/prey relationships, both plants and animals. The diversity of the world is but organs and tissues and cells of the Earth. The Earth never experienced death. Rather, it experienced growth and change. The Earth in its vast globe is created by the right "Side" of the Father, just as Eve was said to have been made out of the side of Eve, and the Church born out of the pierced side of Christ. The Earth's waters and ground became but a vast womb, by which the God seeded with the Holy Spirit (wind hovering the waters) and the Logos (the Light), by which the clouds, the oceans, the vegetations, the soil, the sun, the moon, the stars, the sea creatures, the creatures of the air, and the creatures of the ground all were processes of development in the womb, all of which had their roles whether it be as yolk sac, or placenta, or the growth of the fetus itself, by which many both grow and others necessarily "apoptose" (not necrose), to give birth to mankind. Therefore, the Earth never died in its vastness. The Earth simply went through life-changing processes for the sake of mankind. Rather than see it from the point of view of individual animals dying, what we learn is the animals are a continuum of individual parts of a whole system of the Earth, where they cannot exist without other parts.
But when man is born, God truly intervenes and grants man His divine image, as St. Athanasius teaches. For man in the Scriptures is both dust from the Earth and "breathe" from above. Therefore, the divine image is not something that was evolved, as you seem to think evolution entails. Whatever was the perfect "ape" that God saw, God took from its very beginning of conception to bless it with the Image, and placed it in Paradise. Man has the power to not depend on Earth in and of itself if we achieve greatness. There is no doubt even atheists want to work in such a manner so as to break free from the earthliness we latch on, that they work to advance humanity that we may not depend on the Earth, leaving her to float away in the proverbial iceberg of the universe, whereas we as Christians work to advance humanity that we may bring the ailing Earth to God, by faith (in God and in the Church) and by works (almsgiving, fasting, doing our jobs in the world, whether in science or any other field) through His grace.
