@Burrawang, YEC does not qualitatively diminish the obscene, meaningless suffering of people. There are individual homo homini lupus atrocities so bad, so foul, so depraved that each alone invalidates the bizarre, hollow claim that God is love. Happening right now somewhere near you. And then there’s similarly unspeakable natural horror all around.
@knor, I love your use of understatement.
If God is the ground of infinite, eternal being, They are not Love by any theodicy of the imagination.
Dear Kai,
thanks for your thoughts on this, it’s appreciated!
It is not that I wouldn’t create in such a way, I can’t even make one hair black or white, it is that the LORD God is HOLY, He is HOLY, please get a solid grip on this reality Kai.
The LORD God Who is the GREAT I AM, is ETERNAL, He has always existed and He will always exist. In the beginning He created the creation, i.e., light, time, the entire universe, Earth and Life.
Our Loving, HOLY LORD God looked upon what He had made and said that it was good.
He didn’t say it was alright, or it was reasonable, or apart from a few problems it was OK, No, He said it was good and at the end of His creating ALL that He made during creation week, He said, it was very good.
What do you think our LORD God, Who is Truth, Who is Good, Who is Love, Who is Righteous, Who is Justice, Who is HOLY, meant when looking at the creation, God saw that it was good, and what do you think God meant when God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good?
Please make a mental note that God saw that it was very good, BEFORE Adam sinned.
That is, the creation started out without suffering and sorrow, without pain, without death, it was good.
Kai, the problem of theodicy is based upon a misunderstanding of the order of events of the creation and the entry of evil into the creation. Evil is not a thing of itself, it is rather an absence of good, that is, it is a parasite, that can only exist as a privation of something good. Evil cannot exist by itself without there being something good that it corrupts.
The order of the events of creation are straightforward and clear, with God seeing that it was good.
That is, no evil was being expressed in the creation, all that God had made was good and Adam and Eve who were made in God’s image were innocent and blameless before God.
When both Adam and Eve disobeyed God, their very action of disobedience manifested as evil, being the privation of good, that is their pure innocence before God, was destroyed when they CHOSE of their own free will to disobey their Holy Creator. At that point death immediately entered the creation, and Adam and Eve commenced their journey toward death.
God being HOLY and PURE and RIGHTEOUS, can not abide evil, in any way whatsoever, and He cursed the creation, which had an immediate effect on everything that God had made. For example the ground that was soft and yielded to Adam, no longer did so, it became hard, childbirth became painful, death was now a reality whereas before Adam sinned, it did not exist in the creation. God has not rescinded that curse and it is still current in the creation.
Prior to disobeying God, Adam and Eve walked in the Garden of Eden WITH the LORD God, that is they had a personal relationship with Him in Person, their consciences were pure and clear.
But after they had disobeyed the LORD God, (that is, they had sinned), both of their consciences bore witness to them of the magnitude of what they had done, and for the first time ever, they knew good and evil.
But that isn’t the end of the matter, Adam and Eve were the very first humans on Earth, there were no other humans whatsoever, (even though TEC claim there were, that is all false teaching based upon fallible human philosophy and just so stories and of course deep time and evolution.)
All offspring from Adam and Eve, were born into the creation that now had death in it and the knowledge of good and evil, is passed on to all generations born on Earth.
God separated Himself from walking with Adam and Eve in the garden, and He expelled them from the Garden.
Sadly, the combination of both free will and the knowledge of good and evil, saw mankind sink into vile, obscene and unholy practices to the point we are reliably informed, where every thought within man was on evil continually.
God determined to obliterate all that He had made by a Global Flood, but as He found Noah, a good man, He made provision for Noah and his family to be saved on the ark, along with breeding pairs of nephesh animals. I think it quite a possibility that God removed a portion of His sustaining power from the Earth as part of the curse, thus natural evil, things such as floods, etc… occur and man still has the knowledge of good and evil, thus evil is being expressed right now every second as we travel headlong into yet another Sodom and Gomorrah type situation, where dire evil, is common and infecting more and more people. Hence we have right now, wars and rumours of wars, Christians being murdered at an unprecedented rate since 2000 62,000 Christians in Nigeria have been murdered in genocide perpetrated by Islamist jihadist groups including Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Fulani militias; add to that the human trafficking going on, the modern slavery, the atrocities in Myanmar, the daily attacks by Russia upon Ukraine, the Iranian backed attacks against Israel, to name but a tiny few of the acts of evil being perpetrated daily at present and it isn’t difficult to see where this is all headed.
Thus, at present in our western countries there is still time to work whilst it is still day, but the night is coming when no man will be able to work without standing for God. I wish this were not so, and these things would take place in 10,000 years or more from now, but I am getting the distinct impression that much more evil is boldly afoot now than ever before within my short time here on Earth that is rapidly coming to a head in these present times.
Yes, you are correct.
This is only true AFTER Adam disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. The suffering is due to a combination of factors in my humble opinion, that are, first and foremost, the presence of manifesting evil within the creation by people sinning, that in turn multiplies the evil being expressed upon the Earth, combined with the curse that God placed upon the earth, that may in effect really be a partial removal of His creative/restorative power from the earth that allows corruption and decay to proceed upon the Earth. The end result of this combination is both natural evil and moral evil increasing upon the Earth in this present age, that God will put an end to in His good time. Praise His Holy Name!
God Bless,
jon
Words are just pegs to hang ideas on. Whatever you include in the word ‘good’ may not be what Genesis 1 meant. One way of understanding the expression in Genesis 1 is that ‘good’ means that ‘it functions as intended’.
Wait for it.
Group must have two meanings so you can not be in a group and be in a group.
People engaged in costly boundary signaling are usually unaware that they are doing so.
And anyone who does look at the world around them knows there are parts of the Bible that can’t be taken literally.
Not a “proven fact”, just the current consensus. Science doesn’t determine “proven facts.”.
Good to know that you understand the mind of God so well that you can state what He would or would not do. Oh wait, isn’t there a verse to the effect that no one knows the mind of God?
Psalm 104 is written to praise God and one of those praises is He placed the Earth on a firm foundation so it will not move. How is that historical? How is “And wine, which makes a human heart cheerful,” historical? You can cherry pick portions and say they fit your narrative, but you are ignoring the context of the entire Psalm.
Yes. It’s not necessary or worthwhile for one person to go through the 101 or whatever “arguments” for a young earth because any scholar of integrity would immediately issue a retraction, errata, or take other corrective action if a published result is shown to be in error. I don’t see that happening with creation.com.
I wonder if that drives people away from the church.
Not in the UK or the Continent. They’ve driven away already, and not due to OT literalism. A concert interrupted by a lecture is just not engaging for the masses. Especially their young. We were the first to industrialize, drive the people off the land, the church was riddled with class and then deference was destroyed by the all but meaningless suffering of the First World War.
@Burrawang, if your list can be countered point-by-point in less than an hour, isn’t it worth asking why the list is still out there, unchanged, after so many years?
Oh sure, I suppose that would be a temptation. And I think it is fine, and even admirable, to answer them all at once, I’m only saying that I don’t feel obligated to do that.
Dear Kai,
yes, that is absolutely true.
My understanding is that good has a positive meaning, you could say it is the opposite of evil.
Death is the result of sin and sin is disobeying or rebelling against God Who is Good.
What do you believe ‘good’ and ‘very good’ mean where those words are used in Genesis 1?
God Bless,
jon
I appreciate you saying this. Like Genesis 2–3, Romans 5 doesn’t mention animal death at all. This leads to an odd situation with the passages about the fall’s effects: the texts that speak of death don’t mention animals while the texts that include animals (such as Romans 8) don’t mention death. That makes sense if the death that entered the world wasn’t animal death, but is strange otherwise.
Since no text mentions death coming to animals due to the fall, your case rests on the death that entered the world being larger than human death. But not too large, since I believe you accept that plants, insects, worms and single-celled life could die from the beginning. You need a distinction between some kinds of death that are okay and could be called “very good” and others that are not – yet not the Bible’s own limitation to death that passes to all people.
It can’t be based on a biblical idea of what is alive. In the Bible, nefesh refers to what breathes (more precisely, what moves air). This is used to limit the creatures that drowned in the flood to everything that breathes (Gen. 7:22), leaving aside fish. While fish and perhaps insects and worms weren’t understood as breathing, they obviously moved. The word khayah refers to life with a focus on what moves (Gen. 1:20, 28, 30; 8:17). Khayah isn’t used of plants, but it seems to include critters like insects and worms. Even worse, both words are used of water! Biblically, water both breathes (Jer. 1:13) and lives (Gen. 26:17), the verbal forms of the nouns nefesh and khayah. Neither term, nor even the combination, refers to just the right set of creatures to have initially been made immortal.
What about switching from the specific words used to the general concept of being a creature? This doesn’t work either. When God fills the parts of creation with creatures on days 4 to 6, the creatures include the luminous rulers in the heavens (day 4) as well as fish and birds (day 5) and animals, insects and people (day 6). If we take this as the definition of what is alive, the stars and insects are alive while plants are not. Other texts show that while the Bible doesn’t consider plants to be creatures, they’re still recognized as alive. Jesus said, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain.” Without pressing this into a scientific statement, it shows that Jesus considers plants to be alive. You can read Paul’s view in 1 Cor. 15:35–41. What is alive isn’t limited to creatures, and creatures include stars.
There is no biblical line drawn in the right place for your purposes. No criteria can exclude water, plants, insects and stars from being “alive” while still keeping all the right land animals, birds and fish “alive.” The Bible makes a clear distinction between humans and other living creatures. It doesn’t mark out a wider group of creatures that initially couldn’t die.
Ultimately, your belief about the death that entered the world is not a biblical distinction. It’s a Burrawang distinction. You have based it on what you find unseemly or revolting, deciding that killing fish is a horror while killing locusts is perfectly good. I know you’re aware that we are all fallen people living in a fallen world, so why do you have such confidence in your intuition of what kinds of death are repulsive? Why assume that God must have felt the same way? This is what you said about God in a later post:
Again, this argument fully rests on your ability, as a fallen person, to distinguish what counts as bad death and what could be good death. As a Christian, wouldn’t it make more sense to adjust your fallen perceptions based on Jesus, someone who saw no horror in killing and serving fish to his followers? Wouldn’t Jesus be more likely to mirror God’s understanding of goodness than you or me?
That is sad. Especially since the church has faced other challenges without that same result. When scientists in the 1800s came to explain naturally how babies are made, it didn’t lead to the same falling away. That time, most Christians were willing to see God’s hand in the processes scientists uncovered rather than pitting God against those processes. Most Christians came to see a bit more poetry in the Bible’s depictions of God tenderly forming our bodies, but no less truth. Similarly, discovering that the universe is unfathomably larger than we thought and doesn’t revolve around Earth generally led Christians to a greater respect for God’s power and providential care.
The same thing could have happened when scientists uncovered the universe’s great age and the diversity of life produced through evolution. It could have just increased our awe in the face of God’s creative power. Instead, a vocal group has wagered God’s existence on the falseness of these discoveries. The church’s losses from this ill-conceived bet are truly tragic.
Dear Marshall,
thanks for your thoughts.
Yes I agree, and the Holy Bible makes it clear particularly in the Global Flood account that the Biblically consistent meaning of the term ‘death’ is all animals that have the breath of life in their nostrils. Obviously that does not include “plants, insects, worms and single-celled life” and many other organisms, that don’t meet the Biblical definition of being alive in the sense that animals and man are, all of whom do “have the breath of life in their nostrils’.
No Marshall, this idea you have of me is gravely in error. Both Fish and Locusts do not have the “breath of life in their nostrils” thus they do not experience death in the Biblical sense. Of course they are alive in the modern sense, but the Biblical principle here is having the breath of life in their nostrils.
But Marshall, don’t you see what you doing here? First you make a statement about what I believe, that as I have just described is gravely in error; then based upon that false statement, you reason that I am against what Jesus did. When in truth, the precise opposite is the case. I have no difficulty with catching fish and cooking them and eating them. Fish are an excellent source of healthy protein, and the reality that the Creator Himself, Jesus ate fish reinforces that.
That is your belief, and is consistent with the TEC worldview that in my experience has been the greatest cause of the ‘great falling away’ from the faith, that is, the mass advertising, educational indoctrination throughout the world of the false teaching that both ‘deep time’ and ‘evolution’ are real.
God Bless,
jon
I’m getting whiplash here, Jon. This is from our discussion earlier in this thread:
…And now this?
By changing your mind so easily on whether fish death is okay in God’s “very good” creation, you demonstrate the key point of my last post: you determine what kinds of death are significant based on fickle feelings, not the Bible.
Or whatever best fits the argument he is making.
1. Reflexive Self-Defense Without EngagementWhenever Marshall or Bill points out an inconsistency, Jon’s default move is personal reassurance rather than argumental correction — e.g.:
“I only believe what the Bible clearly states.”
“I am not guided by feelings, but by faith in God’s Word.”
“I simply take the Bible at its plain meaning.”
These statements sound pious but don’t address the charge. They merely restate his posture, not his reasoning — a kind of theological tautology. It’s vacuous because it neither defends his earlier claim nor reconciles the contradiction Marshall exposed.
2. Equivocation About “Death”When challenged about fish death in a “very good” creation, Jon tends to pivot:
Earlier: “No death at all before the Fall — creation was perfect.”
Later: “Fish death may not count; they aren’t living souls in the same sense.”
But when pressed on how he distinguishes meaningful vs. meaningless death, he retreats to “the Bible says so” without exegesis — an empty appeal to authority that ignores internal consistency.
This is vacuous because it replaces reasoning with repetition — a circular self-validation loop.
3. Preemptive SanctimonyHe’ll often cloak vacuity in moral humility, e.g.:
“I’m just a forgiven sinner trying to follow God’s Word.”
“If that ruffles feathers, so be it.”
These lines disarm critique emotionally but evade content entirely. They’re rhetorical smoke screens — meant to end discussion, not deepen it.
4. Why It’s VacuousBurrawang’s response pattern is not merely inconsistent — it’s argumentatively null:
No definition of “death” in Genesis.
No attempt to reconcile his contradictions.
No willingness to admit interpretive flexibility.
Reliance on sincerity as a substitute for coherence.
In short, his “response” to Marshall and Bill will almost certainly say something about himself (“I stand by Scripture”) rather than something about the issue (how to interpret “death before the Fall”).
Why? Because the text doesn’t say what you claim.
To keep to the basics:
Night and darkness, according to ANE understanding, was the enemy of the gods, an enemy the gods had to fight every single time the sun went down to make sure the sun made it safely through the darkness of the underworld so that it could rise again on the next day. It was part of the cosmic battle that started when the gods first appeared against the eternal darkness, which was an aspect of the great t’hom (teh-home), a battle that had to be fought for the world to continue to exist. Thus darkness was regarded as something to fear, a harbinger of death if the gods were not kept strong via offerings in the temples.
The phrase in Genesis drives home the point that darkness is not an enemy to be defeated, it’s just part of the rhythm established by YHWH-Elohim, put in its place when He called to light and commanded it to exist, harnessed to be just another servant of the One True God. It could have been said just once, but the repetition emphasizes the point that there is no battle, not just on the first night, but every, that every single night is under the rule of YHWH-Elohim and thus is not to be dreaded, and thus that going to sleep is as safe as being awake because the darkness of night will do no harm: the One True God has it under control – and He didn’t even have to battle it! He just divided it off from a period of light He named “day”, and for that matter didn’t even need a command to make it happen, He just did it.
That’s not a claim, it’s an excuse. They observe – correctly; Peter doesn’t say they’re wrong – that things just keep running the same, and use that as an excuse to say that Jesus isn’t coming back.
In fact Peter’s argument is worthless if in fact things haven’t been running the same since the beginning; his contrast is that there was a beginning and they don’t acknowledge it, and indeed (if the reference is in fact to the Flood) there was a second ‘beginning’, and that after both the first and after the second things kept running the same as always – so that the fact that things “goes on as it has since the beginning” is no argument against there coming an ending.
That’s an excellent point. Burrawang seems to be a Muslim when it comes to inspiration, treating the Bible as though it descended from heaven in perfection through what weren’t writers so much as deliverymen. That’s actually bad theology, specifically theological anthropology, and by the link to the Incarnation can lead to bad Christology.
But I’ve gone and gotten degrees in biblical studies and the ancient languages and culture it Bible came from – and I tell you that you do not trust the Bible because you refuse to admit that it is actually ancient literature written in an ancient culture in order to speak to that culture, and because you ignore common rules of grammar and literature in order to force the text to say what YEC teaches.
I got my science degree (a mere B.S.) after my other studies, so your view above just doesn’t apply to me. I learned to stand with the text, not with science as both YEC and TE do.
Dear Marshall,
yes of course fish are living creatures but they do not experience death in the Biblical sense as they do not have the ‘breath of life in their nostrils’.
21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: 22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. {the breath…: Heb. the breath of the spirit of life} 23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. 24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days. Genesis 7:21-24
7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Genesis 2:7
12 Yea, surely God will not do wickedly, neither will the Almighty pervert judgment. 13 Who hath given him a charge over the earth? or who hath disposed the whole world? {the whole: Heb. all of it?} 14 If he set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; {man: Heb. him} 15 All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust. Job 34:12-15
3 And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest. 4 Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. 5 Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: 6 And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. 7 So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. 8 And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. 9 Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. {wind: or, breath} 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. 11 Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts. 12 Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. 13 And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, 14 And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD. Ezekiel 37:3-14
It is clear to me that the breath of life applies to terrestrial creatures, but doesn’t apply to fish that do not have the breath of life in their nostrils. Fish are alive, they are nephesh. that is they are alive, they are living beings, but I don’t think that death as it applies to creatures that have the breath of life in their nostrils is the same for fish, but of course I may be wrong. Nephesh chayyah means living soul, and as far as I can determine, the Holy Bible only applies Nephesh chayyah to land animals and humans, and I would venture to also add, more than likely also to marine mammals that have the breath of life in their nostrils, (although that is not expressly noted in the Holy Bible as far as I know at least), but as for fish, they are nephesh, but not nephesh chayyah, that is ‘living souls’.
That is my interpretation as far as I understand the Holy Scriptures, but as I have said, I may be wrong.
Dear Marshall, that is once again, false, as I have just explained above, fish are quite different to land animals, marine mammals and mankind all of whom have the breath of life in their nostrils. There is nothing that I can see that contradicts that God saw that the creation was ‘very good’ when He first created it.
What you do appear to be ignoring is the Holy Bible plainly tells us that it was only AFTER Adam’s sin, that death entered the creation, that is, there was no death prior to Adam’s sin.
Again, it is only AFTER Adam sinned that death came into the creation.
I think that we will just have to agree that we disagree on this one.
God Bless,
jon
Dear Roy,
you still haven’t answered my question that I asked some time back now.
You claimed that the Holy Bible states that deep time is a reality, but you refused to answer where this text can be found, when I asked you to provide the references, such as Books, Chapters and verses.
I would be most grateful if you would kindly inform us where this is written as I am not familiar with this being written in the Holy Bible.
Thanks,
God Bless,
jon
If not for mass-posting scripture quotes, most of what he posts is neither from the Bible nor has any basis in it – like any YEC, he primarily posts science fiction.
[quote=“Burrawang, post:290, topic:57009”]
Our Holy, Righteous, Creative God, gave us the Books of the Holy Bible Old Testament, through the hands of inspired authors under the constraints of human language, in this case Hebrew,
[/quote]
(emphasis mine)
Which you ignore totally whenever it suits you.
Which is incorrect. That view ignores proper grammatical-historical interpretation.
But how do you define “good”? So far you seem to do so on a subjective basis – always a bad beginning.
And that’s an indicator of your worldview – a definition of basic things such as “good”, “beautiful”, and “true”, to use the ancient Greek philosophical set, point to the core of someone’s worldview.
That statement shows that you have no grasp of what a worldview is!
References have been given. Repeating them when you have ignored them before would constitute casting pearls before swine.
Who with a “TEC worldview” has said that deep time is found in the scriptures?
That is indeed part of the message – part that YEC throws out.
Nice insight!
Why would ANE beliefs be any more anathema than modern scientific beliefs?
Every generation of humans grows up in a culture filled with beliefs that don’t fit with the scriptures. It is part of incarnational theology that God speaks to each generation in its own terms.
So you think that ancient Israelites had no worldview? That somehow they didn’t absorb the culture they grew up in? or that God took possession of their minds and imposed the modern scientific materialist worldview that YEC operates from?
The first is impossible, the second is ludicrous, and the third is blasphemous.
Is exactly what goes into the trash when you ignore the historical cultural ANE context.
There goes YEC tossing Exodus 20:16 out the window – you just slandered every devout scholar of ancient Hebrew in the world.
The worldview of the Old Testament does not include your concept of “fact”.
Your view comes from a MSWV, not the Bible.
Not translations – interpretations.
What YEC does is rip the scriptures out of their historical and cultural context and impose their own modern context, which they blithely assume is God’s.
Yes – by using its forms and even literature.
It’s astounding how much in, for example, the Psalms is lifted straight from poetry about Baal! It’s a way of saying, “Good thoughts, but you got the wrong elohim”.
It doesn’t say anything about means, and it doesn’t say a single thing about the science of it – “Bring forth” is a command that doesn’t give specifics but is not ex nihilo.
Yet you use that for justification of the claim that for millennia He ignored the culture and language and literature of those people!
Which, BTW, is a crappy way to communicate.
And the claim is just intellectual arrogance and laziness, a way to avoid doing the ‘homework’ God expects.
Nicely described.
“Worldview” is exactly what YEC is clueless about.
Which you appear determined to make look foolish, thus driving people from hearing.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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