The Biblical God is said to hold animal life in high regard (Jonah 4:11). Why then would he use a system which requires animal death to create man? I recognise that evolution causes more growth and learning, but is not preservation of life more important?
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This probably won’t satisfy as an answer but we couldn’t we ask the same thing about why God allows evil when he could prevent it? Or why didn’t he just create heaven to begin with rather than a first order of creation with suffering and death? I believe that God has holy and wise reasons for what he does even if we don’t understand it or it confounds our expectations based on his character.
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Why create a material universe at all? I’d love to hear God’s answer to that but it would probably blow my small mind.
In some ways this is a common YEC complaint against evolution, that God wouldn’t use death to create us since it’s evil, and therefore (they say) it’s only been happening since Adam and Eve ate the fruit.
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But if God is okay with unnecessary death when he could have merely acted instantaneously, is he really good? Is he even worth worship?
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Of animal and plant life God said, “it is good.” It is only after creating man that God said, “it is very good.” But that is of course before the fall, after which God was sorry that He had made man. Especially at the end of Genesis 8, God was not so happy about sacrificing animal and plant life for the sake of man.
You say that like there is an alternative or that evolution was some kind of design tool. But the whole point of evolution is that self-organization is the very nature of life – participation in the process of our own creation.
Sounds more like taxidermy, or there is the lament of stupid parents that it is a shame they have to grow up. I say stupid because growing up is the very essence of what life and children are. If they do not grow up then they are not children but dolls – not alive but merchandise.
Depends on what you value. Do you worship power and control or love and freedom? I see nothing worthy of worship in the former.
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Or why the Jewish sacrificial system? How many animals were slaughtered?
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This would presume such death is unnecessary. But just because we don’t understand the reason would not make it unnecessary.
I think it is for the same reason why God gave them laws regulating slavery. He had to reach for improvements from where they were at. Radical revolution never works. If you want to change things then you have to go for reforms of the existing sociological structures. So what did God do with this widespread practice of animal sacrifice? Instead of being for placating some imaginary deity, like a god of the ocean in order to take out some insurance on an ocean voyage, God had them use these animal sacrifices for something with more meaning – seeking to change their own self-destructive habits. It is not as if animals were not already expected to die for the sake of our food.
I don’t understand your reasoning. Why can’t He?
We have to be careful when using verses. We do not isolate a verse, giving it it’s own context and ignore other verses that seems to say otherwise. That is a hermeneutical principle no…no… God does EVERYTHING for His glory.
(Romans 8:28)
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
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