God would have pronounced death and suffering "very good" (Talk.Origins)

Claim CA651:

If evolution is true, then God is directly responsible for death. God pronounced his original creation "very good" (Gen. 2:1), which implies that God is sadistic, taking pleasure in watching the suffering and dying. A God of grace and mercy would not use the principle of survival of the fittest.
 * Actual reference should be: Gen 1:31

Source:
 * Morris, Henry M. 2000. The vital importance of believing in recent creation. Back to Genesis 138 (June): a-c.
 * Morris, John D. 2001. What could the God of scripture call "very good"? Back to Genesis 145 (Jan.): d.

CreationWiki response:

Talk Origins is taking this out of context. It is not an argument against Evolution theory itself but attempts to reconcile the Biological account to Evolution theory.

While this is true, it ignores the fact that through the Bible God told about himself and His personality. This claim is about the impossibility of reconciling the Bible to Evolution. Based on what God said in the Bible it is possible to tell that there are things He would not do.

Specifically the Bible speaks of death as an enemy (1Cr 15:26) that will one day be destroyed. This also goes against the idea of God's calling a world with death "very good".

The claim states that God “would not use” not that He “would not allow natural selection”. So Talk Origins is using a bit of a Straw man since they misstate the claim.

That said, man’s sin is as much the reason why death continues as it is why it got started in first place. See below for more details.

That makes God no more responsible for death than a judge sentencing a law breaker is responsible for the law breaker going to prison.

Blaming Adam is not scapegoating, it placing the blame where the Bible and therefore God places it.


 * Even with death, in a sinless world it is safe to say that “none of us would exist.” It is likely that most if not all of us, have at least one ancestor of illegitimate birth. Much of human migration is affected by man’s evil ways, such as oppression by government and slavery. Such cases are sufficient to show that “none us would exist” without the fall.
 * This ignores the fact that God would have had other options including simply taking people bodily to heaven and arranging for the colonization of other worlds.

There is some truth in this, since apart from our acceptance of redemption through Jesus Christ we are separated from God. That said, how does it encourage ingratitude about the world to say that we wrecked a better state?

The claim is that death and suffering are man’s fault, and not God’s. The claim blames no one for suffering but ourselves. So this statement is in perfect agreement with the idea that suffering is man’s fault. Even if you accept that suffering is all in one’s head as Talk Origins states, then it is still a result of our fallen state. Fist of all, the claim does not say that there was no decay of any sort before the Fall. Some forms of decay would help keep things clean. While death is connected to the Second law of thermodynamics, that does not make death inevitable. Death is prevented every day by the body’s built-in repair mechanisms so death could be totally avoided if our bodies could perfectly repair themselves.

The Second law’s increase in entropy is a result of randomness in the system. It is possible that before the Fall God kept the randomness in check more so than he does after the fall. Before the fall Man and God had perfect fellowship with each other. The Fall broke this fellowship and it is possible that increased randomness was a natural result. These required no action on God’s part, but death would be the natural result of man’s sin.

Not relevant since this claim is an issue of Biblical interpretation, and its incompatibility with Evolution, and not which view is actually correct.