</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />One of the main issues that seals any attempt to meld evolution and the Bible together is that those who believe that way are going to have to explain why all of the death that took place, represented in the fossil record, prior to Adams' fall. There was no death prior to Adam and Eve's fall.
Can you provide scripture to back this up?</font>[/QUOTE]Indeed I have already - but I will revisit it.
First, God pronounced that everything on earth was VERY GOOD at the end of creation (even at the end of each step in creation). We know that God does not think death is good -
Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin [is] death; but the gift of God [is] eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord
Psa 23:4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou [art] with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Death came upon ALL FLESH as a result of Adam's sin.
Rom 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
Gen 6:12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
Gen 9:15 And I will remember my covenant, which [is] between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
Num 16:22 And they fell upon their faces, and said, O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and wilt thou be wroth with all the congregation?
Num 27:16 Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation,
Job 34:15 All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust.
Jer 32:27 Behold, I [am] the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?
1Cr 15:39 All flesh [is] not the same flesh: but [there is] one [kind of] flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, [and] another of birds.
(if ever there was a verse that refuted evolution, 1 Cr 15:39 is it)
Gen 3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken:
for dust thou [art], and unto dust shalt thou return.
This was a curse as punishment for sin. The wages of sin is death. Death entered the world on the day that Adam sinned!
Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
So there is a HUGE ammount of scriptural evidence that indicates there was no death before Adam's sin... there was no death before the curse.
Let me put it to you this way -
Evolution's only mechanism for supposedly 'selecting' mutational changes is through 'Natural Selection' or "survival of the fittest". For there to be survival of the fittest, there would have to be death of the unfit. Clearly, the Bible indicates that every part of creation leading up to and INCLUDING the creation of man was "very good". How then can there be all the death that is required leading up to and culminating in the highest evolved species (man) when everything up to and including man was declared very good?? That would mean that God is declaring millions of years of death, struggle, pain, and suffering as 'very good'.
Moreover, God said in his reasoning for the flood that all flesh was corrupted. So corruption of flesh is a bad thing. What do you supposed mutations are? Most mutations cause diseases, cancers, death, etc. So if everything before the curse was declared good by God, we can probably assume there was no mutation or corruption before the curse. Again, this is very bad news for evolutionists and progressive creationists.
However, it does make sense of other things - for example how plants can survive on earth being created BEFORE the sun in our solar system was created. If they were part of an eternal system - they would not need heat from the sun to "survive". Which really begs the question - was it an eternal system rather than a 'closed' or 'open' system? (back to the 2nd law of thermodynamics question) Without the sun, the whole earth is a closed system - even evolutionists would have to agree with that - and the increasing entropy would be having it's way left and right. Yet nothing corrupted as God declared each day "good". Why? The eternal sustaining power of an eternal God.
Some say "But God wouldn't do that to our universe.... there is no evidence that God did or has ever effected the natural world that way".
Sure there is - Remember Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego? They stood in flames of a furnace so hot that it killed the men outside the furnace... yet they were unhardmed... their clothing was unharmed... the smell of smoke wan't even in their clothing.
Look at the Israelites when they left Egypt. The BIble says there was not one sick or feeble person amoung them when they left... and their shoes didn't wear out for 40 years! Look at Elijah with the Widow and her son... their meal and oil didn't run out.
This is what happens in an eternal system where the eternal sustaining power of God is present. This is how I imagine the pre-fall world to be as there was no death... no sin... everything was 'Very Good'.