tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post112728166292950242..comments2024-03-28T17:53:43.541-04:00Comments on DarwinCatholic: Legends of the FallDarwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-1128032152896380312005-09-29T18:15:00.000-04:002005-09-29T18:15:00.000-04:00Excellent. I love this stuff. We absolutely must s...Excellent. I love this stuff. We absolutely must speculate on this stuff and come up with some reasonable ways of reconciling the story of the fall with the obvious physical evidence of disasters and animal death before humans were on the scene. Unless we do we'll have a real hard time converting those with scientific interests.<BR/><BR/>Certainly a hurricane or an earthquake, in itself, is morally neither here nor there, but it seems to me that one important issue is animal pain. It does not seem to me that we currently have a full explanation for animal pain in a world created by God and declared "very good", yet there almost certainly was animal pain in the pre-Adamic world.<BR/><BR/>Speculations:<BR/><BR/>As I take it, your speculation is that perhaps Satan attempted to destroy a primordial creation by "skewing" its basic laws in certain ways (perhaps to enable or require physical death, etc), only to have God take his attempts at perversion and use them to evolve not only a splendid multiplicity of creatures, but also what was to be His own physical body.<BR/><BR/>I like this, but it would seem to give Satan more of an active, "integrated" role in the creation of the world, a role which (if true) Genesis 1 entirely ignores. Why? Is it justifiable, exigetically?<BR/><BR/>Perhaps, if this is true, Adam and Eve were serving a sort of test or apprenticeship in the garden of Eden. As their purpose as human beings was to raise the material creation up to God in worship and receive His goodness as mediated through it, they were eventually to conquer more and more of the creation, bringing it under their stewardship and "supporting" it in the worship of God, worship which would be incomplete without their mediation. (Hence, the creation "groaning" references in St Paul.)<BR/><BR/>I've always wondered whether the curses after the fall were an objective altering of the order of nature or an altering of the nature of man or more a declaration of the consequences of their inability to perform their priestly function in their fallen state.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com