Tom,
Show me two people who believe exactly alike and I'll show you one who is not thinking for himself.

In your theological exposition I am wondering if you are creating two different kinds of physical death? One for animals and one for mankind. I've heard folks express the opinion that the 'death' Paul was refering to was 'spiritual death' as apposed to physical death. That interpretation was created to allow harmonization between scientific theories and spiritual theories concerning physical death before Adam's sin, but Paul's additional comments on the subject of Adam's sin seem to negate that point of view.

My personal view stems from my trek from athiesm to Faith. I am well versed in and have made arguments for both sides. My trek began when I realized that even in hard core science some 'facts' are accepted as true without proof, and the logical deductions made from them also require faith. When, as Stephen Hawkins expressed it, we begin out study of science with an admixture of faith, then to me the question is "which faith offers more, both in this life and any possible afterlife?"
JLK

>Jerry;
>
>The only “truth” we can be certain of is our own interpretation and belief of what is true. You can have someone tell you what “the truth is”, but it is only an opinion. If in fact there is one truth it is indistinguishable to the masses. Not even one person knows what truth is. If they do, no one believes them.
>
>Now from a theological point of view, how could death or sin have existed before Adam? There was no one on the face of the earth until Adam was created. Now you take a rib from Adam and create Eve (to establish the inferiority of the female) and the result of that rib entices Adam to violate Gods law, which is the first sin and Adam has lost forever, eternal life for all of mankind.
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>Tom
>
>
>>>>>>>>>>About evolution, an engineer from MIT, Dr. Wal Brown, made the following observation: "If evolution happened, then death was widespread before man appeared. But if death preceded man and was NOT a result of Adam's sin, then sin is a fiction. If sin is a fiction then we have no need of a Savior."
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>A bit of muddled thinking there - surely the only thing you can deduce from death preceding man is that the assumption that death was a result of Adam's sin was wrong, there's nothing in the statement that can lead to the assumption that sin must be a fiction.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Then Apostle Paul was wrong when he stated that "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men,.." Romans 5:11-13 OR "For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man." 1 1 Corinthians 15:20-22 and the claim that he wrote by inspiration of the Holy Spirit is also false. So, if death existed before Adam, the first man, then Adam's sin in the Garden did not introduce death into the world and the belief that sin caused death is false.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>That doesn't mean that Adam didn't introduce sin into the world, just that the introduction of sin didn't cause death. Hence sin is not necessarily a fiction.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>mmm... you give me a choice:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Len: "...introduction of sin didn't cause death..."
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Paul: "...and death through sin..."
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Which one should I believe?
>>>>>
>>>>>I'm not asking you to believe or disbelieve anything, I was just pointing out the non-sequiter in the quote you gave.
>>>>
>>>>Non-sequiter.... Which quote, yours or Paul's?
>>>
>>>Dr. Wal. Brown's
>>
>>Hardly. Paul states that death was the result of Adam's sin. If death occured before Adam's sin, or before he existed, then death is not the result of Adam's sin, i.e., a transgression of God's Law, and therefore sin is a fiction. Of course, you realized that Brown's attack wasn't against the concepts expressed by Paul, but the ideas expressed in the theories of Evolution that propose that man evolved from lower life forms. Brown is stating that both evolution and the creation story in Genesis cannot be true. Do you believe that death was the result of Adam's sin? If so, how can death have occured prior to Adam's sin if it was caused by Adam's sin? If you claim that death was not the result of Adam's sin then you have a disagreement with Paul, who claims it is. You will have to take that up with him.