the Bible is mostly myth, so there isn't a lot of logic to it. However, Orgull, damn good question.
If death is the result of sin, why do animals die?
by Orgull 64 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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RubaDub
Obviously, animals die because they sin too.
For example, isn't it a sin for a dog to hump the leg of a visitor or lick its balls in front of company.
Come on now, just like humans, animals are not perfect either.
Rub a Dub
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sinis
I believe that with their sin, all of creation was cursed as well, and so animals came under that curse, resulting in their eventual death.
Perhaps it wasn't "sin". What if there were rival brothers, with the youngest (Jehovah) having the ear of the Pantheon of Gods, and forced his view point to end their "immortality" or pipeline to the gods. It would be akin to you building a gorgeous house and your neighbor gets jealous and persuades the city counsel to have it torn down, what are you going to do? Sin might be the explanation that the Jews give, but it may not be the "real" reason. The real reason could be as trivial as jealousy, and for that we all pay the price...
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Ténébreux
For anyone who thinks animals were never meant to die: How is it that certain flowers mimic the appearance and smell of rotting carrion in order to attract flies for pollination? If God designed the plants and animals, he designed death into the system right from the beginning.
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TheListener
If the Lion is going to lie down with the Lamb why is the circle of life so complex?
Did God totally change the animal kingdom after Adam's sin?
The entire ecological system is so complex, so intricate that if all animals were grass eaters and will be again that a major change would have to occur.
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emptywords
They weren't created to live forever. But I do empathise with youre question and think it is valid.
The scriptures say we die because we sin. Animals don't sin, yet they die. So it is not a punishment that they die they were not created to sin.
lol what did i say they were not created to sin.
I think that animals dont' fear death but survival of their kind.
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startingover
I find it amusing how people raised in a christian nation try to use the bible to answer this excellent question.
The bottom line, we are all animals. Humans just happen to be a little more intelligent than most, but in the final analysis we are all just "leg humpers". There is no "sin" for humans jut like there is no "sin" for animals. It's just a made up concept by groups that want to control others.
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WTWizard
The Tower's answer is that animals were not intended to live forever. They also do not want people to become too attached to pets, since their death is inevitable.
However, here is a better question. Animals were supposed to be perfect, even though they have finite lifespans. This would indicate that they complete their life courses (or become food for other animals), and then wear out and die. The problem is this: I have heard of dogs that get arthritis. Pets need preventative medication for parasites. If animals were perfect, why then do they need preventative medication? And why do they develop diseases? I have even heard of animals getting cancer, heart disease, and diabetes! And I have heard of obesity within animals.
My answer: The chemicals in our food (and in most pet food) are making us sick. The food companies put poison in our food, so we can get sick and need the drugs that the subsidiary drug companies put out. The drugs themselves make us sicker, ensuring dependence on them. And they have the governments keeping someone from putting out an herbal remedy that cures cancer, diabetes, and all heart problems. Knock out the regulators and let the free market run itself, and soon enough the top scientists will solve our aging problems and have mankind living forever in near-perfect health without the help (?????????) of God's Tyranny.
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sinis
They weren't created to live forever. But I do empathise with youre question and think it is valid.
The scriptures say we die because we sin. Animals don't sin, yet they die. So it is not a punishment that they die they were not created to sin.
lol what did i say they were not created to sin.
I think that animals dont' fear death but survival of their kind.
I find it amusing how people raised in a christian nation try to use the bible to answer this excellent question.
The bottom line, we are all animals. Humans just happen to be a little more intelligent than most, but in the final analysis we are all just "leg humpers". There is no "sin" for humans jut like there is no "sin" for animals. It's just a made up concept by groups that want to control others.
EXACTLY!!!! I find it amusing also that we try to formulate life around Christianity. Hello people, man has been on earth for at least 10,000 years of which Christianity has only existed for around 1500 of those years (and even that is questionable)! Why are we so eager to shit can 8500 years of beliefs, when the ancients may have been far closer to the "truth", after all they lived it and possibly saw things that Christianity could not even fathom.
Really, HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT ANIMALS WERE NOT MADE TO LIVE FOEVER and that the "gods" thought otherwise later down the road? Take the Bible (especially the NT) out of the equation and you have no clue what man or animal was supposed to do or how long they were supposed to live! As I have mentioned with the Sumer texts, which coincide VERY nicely with Greek and Roman "myth" is that the Gods were jealous (which is seen in the Jewish scriptures) and thought of man as expendable.
Anyone ever think that perhaps man may have been given the choice to live forever in ignorance (with the gods supplying every need) or live a limited life in knowledge, perhaps even knowing what the gods knew? Perhaps man thought that this knowledge would eventually unravel the secret of immortality and then they would not only have knowledge but immortatlity. Infortunately, this may not have worked. What was Nimrod REALLY doing at the city known as the "gate of the gods" that the bible says nothing would be beyond his means? Was man going to get his cake and eat it too, only to have some of the gods foil his plan? Makes you wonder. That is the gift of life, exploring other thoughts, cultures, and beliefs and not having Christianity, in its feable attempt, explain it for you...
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Leolaia
The OT presents death as a natural part of existence in the world. It occurs naturally just as flowers wilt away, water erodes away stone, mountains gradually crumble, torrents wash away soil, water disappears from the sea or riverbed (Job 14:1, 10-11, 18-19). And just as these natural processes are created by God, so is death part of the created world. Thus death of animals is implied twice in the primeval narrative, either at the hand of God or on his behalf (Genesis 3:21, 4:4; cf. 4:20). God grants humans the right to kill living animals (Genesis 9:3-6). And when God creates a new heavens and a new earth, death will still be part of the natural world, people will still die -- only not prematurely (at least those not under a curse) but after fulfilling their days (Isaiah 65:20). There is still "a time to die," only one wouldn't "die before your time" (cf. Ecclesiastes 3:2, 7:17).
By portraying man as created from dust and even STILL dust during life ("dust you are and to dust you will return", 3:19), the Yahwist creation narrative in Genesis 2-3 gets at the fragility of life that is implied elsewhere in the OT (cf. Psalm 103:14, Isaiah 40:6). The threat that is given in Genesis 2:17 is one of premature death (hence, the concept is one of dying "on that very day"). And as long as Adam and Eve have access to the Tree of Life, they would continue to live (Genesis 3:22), but because they have also attained divine knowledge ("the man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil", cf. "you will be like the gods, knowing good and evil", v. 5), they are banished from the garden and blocked from the Tree of Life (v. 23-24). This is very similar to the myth of Adapa in Akkadian sources which denies the first-created the combination of immortality + wisdom (in that story, Adapa already has divine knowledge and is deceived into rejecting the "food of life"), a combination that the gods only have.
In no sense does the original Hebrew story imply a "fall" of man; the perspective is actually quite the opposite. It uses a maturation theme to portray Adam and Eve as, essentially, "growing up", which is overt in 2:24 ("This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife"). I wouldn't necessarily say that the myth should be read allegorically, but it is hard to deny that the story plays out the maturation cycle at some level. Yahweh is the parent, Adam is the child, the Garden is the nurturing child-friendly place that Adam is raised in, and Adam's time in the Garden corresponds to childhood. Like a child, Adam is naked and is unashamed of his nakedness in childish innocence. Yahweh gives strict rules to Adam, as a parent would to his child. Yahweh shields Adam from adult knowledge ("Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil"), while Adam is nurtured and sustained by the Tree of Life (i.e. he is kept safe from harm). Like a small child, Adam learns language by naming the animals. Then as Adam grows older, he finds a companion and they acquire a more adult understanding of the world. They discover that breaking parental rules do not necessarily bring the consequences they thought they would bring, and they begin to discern right from wrong, and the shame of nakedness. In other words, they lose their childish innocence. Realizing that they are now adults, Yahweh prepares them for life outside sheltered childhood by explaining the facts of life, like sexual attraction for one's husband, childbirth pangs, and the toils of work. It is now time for Adam to work and produce his own food rather than having it provided for him by his parent. Yahweh has the two of them, now a married couple, move out of his home, and there is no returning to the sheltered, infantile existence of childhood. Considering that Asherah was a nurturing maternal goddess and the possibility that Adam was divinized in earlier forms of the story (cf. Ezekiel 28, if related to the Eden narrative in Genesis), it is possible that the maturation theme had an etiological function in earlier forms of the story, i.e. not just the origin of death but the origin of life stages as well. Thus the original form of the story may have had Yahweh and Asherah (i.e. the nuturing Tree of Life) as the parents of Adam who had a companion (Ishah) formed from his flesh, with the two humans removed from the Garden as an etiology of the process of growing up. Then, in a polemic against Asherah devotion, the mother figure was removed from the story and Asherah herself (via her epithet Chawwah, "serpent [lady]", which is elsewhere attested in Phoenician texts as a title for Asherah) was posited as the companion, whose eviction from the Garden parodies the removal of Asherah from the Temple (as well as the weaving of garments for Asherah, cf. 2 Kings 18:4, 21:7, 23:4-7, and possibly the continued practice in Palestine of tying rags to sacred trees for healing purposes).
It should also be borne in mind that Paul's use of biblical themes from Genesis (from which the modern concept of the "fall of man" via sin derives) in Romans 5:12-14 is a late theological reinterpretation of the original Hebrew story which draws on themes developed in the Hellenistic period (cf. Sirach 25:23, "In woman was sin's beginning, and because of her we all die"). There is no concept of sin per se in Genesis and the story implies that death is already in existence as a concept in the Garden and it is understood as something that is forestalled by the Tree of Life; since man already "is" dust and since death is part of the natural order, it is not that death as a category sprang into existence through the act of disobedience. Rather, it is that act that made man and woman vulnerable to death in a way they were not already.