Evidence · Case 06 · Problem of Evil
The book of Genesis, the creation account
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Sources
Genesis 1:31, NASB
Objections & responses
- Science shows death, predation, disease, and natural disasters existed for hundreds of millions of years before humans. Isn’t the idea that human rebellion broke a previously good world contradicted by the fossil record?
Any scientifically literate reader will raise this, and it deserves a direct answer. Christians respond in several ways: some hold that very good means fit for purpose rather than free of death; some hold that the fall’s effects reach backward as well as forward in time; some read Genesis 1 to 3 as theological narrative about the human condition rather than a chronology of natural history. Each has costs. What this claim needs is narrower than a young earth: that Scripture presents evil as an intrusion into God’s good purposes rather than as his design, and that human moral evil in particular is diagnosed as rebellion. The Hebrew word for good (tov) means fitting or well-made, not painless, and that reading is the one relied on here.
- “Very good” is the narrator’s value judgment, not a statement that there was no suffering. Genesis 1 has God creating sea monsters and telling animals to multiply, which implies death was part of the system from the start.
The Hebrew tov does mean good in the sense of fitting or well-made rather than painless, and that reading actually helps the claim: the baseline is a world that works as God intended, and evil is measured against that intention. Whether animal death was part of the original intention is a question on which Christians differ, and it does not need settling to make the point about moral evil entering through human choice.