Sunday, January 23, 2011

Creation Museum: No Death, No Birth

Yesterday I wrote about why young-earth creationists do not accept creation followed by long eons of development. Our host offered the explanation that old-earth creation would entail that death was part of God's design for the universe - a view they reject.

It occurs to me that one implication of this view is that there would also have been no birth in paradise. No babies, no children, no growing up. Not for people, nor for animals.

That is a hard teaching for a sentimental dad like me. And I think it is hard to reconcile with how the promise of children is described in Genesis. Childbirth is to be painful as a result of sin. But children are not a penalty of sin. Children are a gift.

1 comment:

dennistheeremite said...

CS Lewis' space novel "Perelandra" pictures life on an unfallen world, and anticipates the kind of world where birth, but not death, are a reality. The first book of the trilogy "Out of the Silent Planet" describes an ancient culture on a world that has not fallen but has been damaged by evil. There death happens, but there is a very spiritual view of parenthood.