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jyeager wrote:
Many people are open to longer than 24 hour creation days, but some of those people are predisposed to the idea that no animals could have died prior to the fall simply because death entered the world as a result of the fall.
Sorry, but I am of the opinion that when someone rejects the literal 6 day/24 hour creation view, they are already on a downward slide and thus it isn't surprising that they would come up with what you are noting here and much more which is based mostly on novel speculation. There is nothing in Scripture that would indicate that death was not existent prior to the Fall. There is nothing to indicate that antecedent to the Fall, carnivores were actually herbivorous and would have remained so except for Adam's curse. Of course, there is Gen 1:30 which could be taken to mean that ALL creatures were herbivores. However, one would be hard-pressed to explain the reason God created carnivores originally with their specialized teeth, digestive systems, etc... And this doesn't take into account all the birds that feed on insects nor any of the other predatory animals. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/scratchchin.gif" alt="" />

Secondly, when God told Adam that he would "surely die" should he eat of the fruit of the Tree, if death was non-existent, then what exactly would Adam have understood by those words? Did God give Adam a pre-mortem lecture with graphic pictures to explain to him what death would be like? and that the entire creation would be effected by this death? <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/Ponder.gif" alt="" />

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jyeager also wrote:
One argument that at least one of the days was more than 24 hours is based on the naming of the animals. How long would it take Adam to name all the animals? Forget the fact that he had to observe them all and find fitting names based on their characteristics. Let's just say he took 3 seconds per species. That would enable him to name only 28,800 species in one day. There are more than that. So either he only named a small portion or that 'day' was longer than 24 hours.

What are your thoughts?
If can inject my thoughts here too? <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> The premise upon which this argument is built (sand) can't stand up to even a slight wind. It is assumed that there were more than 28,800 "species" of animals at creation. In fact the argument assumes to have a relative idea of how many species there were. The fact is, that one cannot know how many original species of animals God created from which other species developed. Secondly, it was just animals Adam was to name and not every creature that was made, was it not? (Gen 1:19, 20) And thirdly, does the Scripture even allow for a proposed contracted time element between Creation and Fall?

In His Grace,

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simul iustus et peccator

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