I listened with interest to Ep 113 of the podcast, with @LorenHaarsma, on original sin. It was brought up by @jstump that some people feel the entire Gospel rests upon a particular view about original sin.
At that point, I paused the podcast and thought about it a bit.
In chats I’ve had with brothers and sisters since recently coming to faith, to me, it seems the most pivotal point for them is the origin of death (being, they say, sin), not the origin of sin.
So far I’ve put that in the “clearly wrong but let me spend some time maturing as a Christian before I tackle it” basket. I mean, clearly the very good world God created absolutely depends upon death, as anyone who has thought about biology or ecology must appreciate.
But also this week I caught a lecture by Tim Keller that directly challenged my view of death as okay. “Questioning Christianity” podcast, ep title “Hopefulness”.
Keller (26:12) references two “deep, deep, deep human intuitions about death”. First, “death is not natural.” Second, “it’s not right. It’s wrong.”
Keller’s lead-in and follow-up to this are both great. But I have searched myself and I really can’t relate. Before coming to faith, l did a lot of thinking about death, in terms of food ethics. But l really don’t think l talked myself into accepting death. I think I always did.
I find Tim Keller very insightful. And l do rate widespread deep-seated gutfeel as epistemologically worhwhile. (See CS Lewis, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.”) And l am prepared to accept l am odd and defective in my gutfeels.
But my question is, how can Keller’s position be reconciled with the scientific consensus on the evolution of life? Science says death didn’t come later, either suddenly or gradually, but rather, it was part of life all along.