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Ever wondered if lions ate meat before Adam sinned—or why human childbirth is uniquely agonizing?
In this episode of The Jimmy Akin Podcast, Jimmy tackles a listener’s hot-button question head-on, unpacking Genesis, Aquinas, Augustine, papal teaching, and cutting-edge science to reveal: human death entered through the Fall, but carnivores, thorns, and even birth pains existed before it. He shows how theology and the “obstetrical dilemma” brilliantly intersect—proving faith and reason are on the same team.
Mind-blowing answers await. Hit play now!
TRANSCRIPT:
Coming Up
A reader writes:
Hello Mr. Akin, I apologize if this question has already been answered. What about Adam’s sin as the origin of death, carnivory, thorns, pain in childbearing, etc. Thank you.
Let’s get into it!
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Howdy, folks!
We’re in our second year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years to come—and get early access to new episodes—by going to Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast
Introduction
I’m always happy to help out with listener questions when I can—especially when a question regularly gets asked, because that means a lot of people are wondering about it.
In the query I’ll responding to today, the listener asks about several different subjects in connection with the fall:
- Death
- Carnivores—like lions
- Weeds—like thorns
- Labor Pains
So we’ll take a look at each of those.
First, though, let’s set the stage by talking about the Fall of man.
This event is recorded in Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit.
Early Genesis
The account of the fall is part of the first eleven chapters of Genesis.
Over the centuries, there have been different approaches to how to interpret these chapters.
Many people have assumed that they are to be taken fully literally, but not everyone has agreed with this.
There were some—including in the early Church—who recognized that there are clues in the text that point in another direction.
For example, the ancients knew as well as we do that it’s the light of the sun that causes it to be daytime, so when Genesis 1 describes the day/night cycle being set up on Day 1, but the sun isn’t created until Day 4, it’s a clue that the text we’re reading is not meant as a literal chronology.
Thus, around A.D. 220, the early Christian writer Origen stated:
De Principiis 4:1:16
Who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? and that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky?
Since the firmament—or sky—wasn’t made until the second day.
Similarly, around A.D. 417, the Church Father and doctor of the Church St. Augustine wrote of the days of creation:
City of God 11:6-7
What kind of days these were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!
We see, indeed, that our ordinary days have no evening but by the setting, and no morning but by the rising of the sun; but the first three days of all were passed without sun, since it is reported to have been made on the fourth day.
By 1950, the Church had concluded that the first eleven chapters of Genesis contain many non-literal elements, and in 1950, Pope Pius XII wrote:
Humani Generis 38
The first eleven chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which however must be further studied and determined by exegetes.
The same chapters . . . in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people.
We discussed the Church’s approach to the first eleven chapters of Genesis in Episode 80 of the podcast, so you can check that out for more information.
In 1986, St. John Paul II also warned not to try reading the beginning of Genesis as if it were a scientific text, stating:
General Audience, January 29, 1986
Above all, this text [Genesis 1] has a religious and theological importance. It doesn’t contain significant elements from the point of view of the natural sciences. Research on the origin and development of the individual species in nature does not find in this description any definitive norm or positive contributions of substantial interest.
So the beginning of Genesis needs to be read as teaching theological lessons—like God made everything that exists—rather than as teaching scientific lessons—like the specific chronology and processes he used to make them.
Similarly, in 1992, the Catechism of the Catholic Church taught:
Catechism of the Catholic Church 337
God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity, and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine “work,” concluded by the “rest” of the seventh day. On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation, permitting us to recognize the inner nature, the value, and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God.
So the Church understands the account of Genesis 1 as a symbolic one that presents the work of the Creator as if it took place in the span of a Hebrew week.
Setting the Stage
Now let’s set the stage for the issues the listener raises by setting the stage, because I want to point out something that many people fail to notice.
Even if you take Genesis fully literally, it still depicts a universe that is subject to Entropy.
Entropy is a very important concept in the sciences. Put simply, entropy is the tendency of things to run down or break down over time.
Systems that are subject to entropy tend to dissipate energy and lose organization over time.
And we know that—even on a fully literal reading—the pre-fall universe was subject to entropy because Genesis says:
Genesis 1:14-15
God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.”
This means the universe was subject to entropy, because entropy is the reason why the stars shine.
As stars burn their fuel, the heat and light they produce spreads out into the universe. It dissipates.
If stars weren’t subject to entropy then all the energy they generate wouldn’t dissipate. It would stay bundled up in the star.
We also know that the universe was entropic because Genesis states:
Genesis 1:29
God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.”
Entropy is also the reason that you get hungry As your body burns fuel (that is, food), you dissipate energy, too—partly in the form of body heat. That’s why you need to eat, to replenish your body’s fuel.
If you weren’t subject to entropy, your energy would never flag, and you wouldn’t need to eat.
So we see that—even if you take Genesis fully literally—the universe was already subject to entropy, meaning that the things in it have a natural tendency to run down and break down.
The Origin of Death
And that puts us in a position to understand death.
The term entropy was coined until the 19th century, but the basics of the concept were recognized long ago.
In the Middle Ages, they spoke of any matter made of different substances as inherently corruptible, and this included the body of man.
Aquinas thus recognized that the human body would break down and wear down over time. He stated:
Summa Theologiae II-II:164:1 ad 1
The matter of man is a body such as is composed of contraries, of which corruptibility is a necessary consequence, and in this respect death is natural to man. Now this condition attached to the nature of the human body results from a natural necessity.
The only thing that could stop the process of death and decay was something superior to matter, and so God gave the first humans the ability to avoid death and live immortally.
This is pictured in Genesis by the tree of life. When Adam and Eve sin, we read:
Genesis 3:22-24
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
So mankind lost access to the tree of life that would have allowed him to keep on living.
As a result, the human body became subject to entropy again, and human death is the result of our first parents’ sin.
The Origin of Carnivores
But what about other forms of death? Like when a lion—an obligate carnivore that must eat meat to survive—kills and eats an antelope? Does the origin of human death have anything to do with that?
The book of Genesis does not suggest that. It only discusses human death. Note what God tells Adam:
Genesis 2:16-17
The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day [meaning the time] that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Notice that God says you shall surely die. He doesn’t say that other creatures will start dying. Human death—not animal death—is what’s under discussion.
And it was only man that had a way to avoid death. Man had access to the tree of life; there is no suggestion that other creatures did.
Indeed, Genesis pictures the tree of life as something that only existed in the garden where man was. It states:
Genesis 2:8-9
The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The way Genesis depicts it, the tree of life—the symbol of immortality—was only available in the garden.
That’s why Adam and Eve lost access to it when they were kicked out after their disobedience. It’s why God “placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
If trees of life had been growing all over the world, Adam and Eve could have just kept eating it and never died, even though they were no longer living in the garden.
From this we can conclude that all of the animals outside the garden had no access to the tree of life and—without it—they would be subject to entropy and corruption just like anything else made out of matter, and so they would die.
The privilege of not dying was a unique gift that God had made available to mankind, not to every creature.
And we can show that—even if you take Genesis fully literally—that death did exist even before the fall, because Adam and Eve still had to eat to replenish their bodies’ energy and resist the effects of entropy.
You’ll recall that God told them:
Genesis 1:29
Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.
Well, when you eat plants and fruits, they’re either dead before you put them in your mouth or—if you’re eating them while they’re still alive—your teeth crush them, and your digestive system tears them apart at the molecular level.
So—one way or another—they die.
The entry of human death into the world thus does not mean that other creatures did not die, and this means that there is no problem with lions killing antelopes before the fall—or tyrannosaurus rexes killing triceratopses, for that matter.
Thus, Thomas Aquinas states:
Summa Theologiae I:96:1 ad 2
In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man’s sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as for instance the lion and falcon. . . . Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals.
The Origin of Weeds
The inquirer then asks about the origin of things like thorns, and this is a reference to where—after the fall—God tells Adam:
Genesis 3:17-19
Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, “You shall not eat of it,” cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
In context, this reference to thorns and thistles is because they interfere with Adam’s ability to raise crops and get food to eat.
If you go out in your field and plant wheat or barley, you don’t want the ground growing thorns and thistles, which will consume the nutrients in the ground and also make it harder to harvest the crops that are coming up.
This means that the thorns and thistles serve as weeds. A weed is just a plant that’s growing where you don’t want it to grow
And weeds that have defensive measures to keep animals from eating them—like thorns, spines, and prickles, which thistles have—are particularly annoying.
The inquirer asked if weeds like this were due to the fall of man. If you mean, did they exist before the fall—well, Genesis doesn’t answer that question.
The scientific evidence we have suggests that many plants now considered weeds have existed for longer than humanity has, so that would suggest that they did originate before the fall.
However, that doesn’t create a problem—both because Genesis is not trying to give us a literal chronology and because—even if you take it fully literally—it does not say that God created these weeds after the fall.
What the text says is that—when Adam plants crops, like the wheat he needs to make bread—the ground will also produce thorns and thistles, which will make his agricultural work harder.
But it doesn’t say that these weeds have never existed before.
It doesn’t address that subject one way or the other, because Adam has never had to farm before.
Prior to this, he was the gardener of Eden and could eat fruit all day, and it’s only after the fall that he’s going to have to till the soil to get food.
Since the ground has never been cultivated before, nobody has ever had to deal with the problem of weeds growing up among a crop that they’ve planted.
What the text is describing is a phenomenon that’s new in human experience, but the text does not indicate an act of new creation.
The Origin of Labor Pains
The final thing the inquirer asked about was the origin of labor pains. This involves a reference to Genesis where—after the fall—God tells Eve:
Genesis 3:16
I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.
Many people wonder about labor pains in connection with the Virgin Mary and whether she experienced them when she gave birth to Jesus. That’s a topic we discussed back in Episode 73, so you can check that out for more information.
But the listener asked how they were connected with the fall of man.
There is a relationship here, but it’s not what you might think.
This may surprise some people, but notice that God says that he will “Greatly Multiply” (or in Hebrew, Harbah Arbeh) her pains, which could suggest that there would have been pain even in an unfallen state.
Greatly multiplying something is not the same thing as causing it to happen where it never would have happened before.
Greatly multiplying something means taking something that would have existed and then making it much more intense.
So the birth pains could have existed before the fall; they just would have been much less than they are now.
This is similar to how Adam had to do some work as the gardener of Eden; just not the incredibly difficult work that he had to do afterward.
In the same way, Eve might have had to do some work in giving birth before the fall; just not the incredibly difficult work she’ll have to do now.
Note how the parallel is made between the curse that falls on Adam’s work and the curse that falls on Eve’s work.
Adam’s job is to get the food needed to sustain the family, and now that will be much more difficult.
Eve’s job is to bear the children in the family, and now that also will be much more difficult.
Of course, in real life, both men and women worked in the ancient world, but men’s work was oriented toward making a living and women’s work was oriented toward raising a family.
And those impulses are still built into human nature.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, Genesis reveals that human death entered the world through Adam’s sin, but it does not indicate that all death did so or that there were no carnivores, weeds, or birth pains before the fall.
Oh, listen . . . just one more thing.
The Knowledge of Good and Evil & Human Nature
While—as John Paul II stated—the beginning of Genesis is teaching us theological rather than scientific lessons, there are some cases where the theological meaning of the text and science intersect.
One thing that’s interesting about the intense labor pains that human women have is that they are something unique to our species.
Other mammalian species give birth much more easily than we do—without the intense and, fortunately, brief pain that human women suffer.
Humans are also much more intelligent than other earthly creatures, and that may have led the author of Genesis to link these two things.
Concerning the forbidden fruit, Genesis says:
Genesis 3:5-6
For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise.
they eat the fruit and
Genesis 3:7
Then the eyes of both were opened.
Genesis 3:22
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.
The phrase “knowing good and evil” is likely what is known as a Merism.
A merism is a rhetorical device that expresses a totality by naming its two parts, like when we say
- Bob worked Day and Night
- Betty searched High and Low
- God made Heaven and Earth
In other words, Bob worked all the time, Betty searched everywhere, and God made everything.
- Good and Evil
Can be understood as a merism meaning “everything.” Like a god, man knew about all kinds of stuff now, all the good things and the bad things.
So eating the fruit did make one wise, and that led to much greater pains in childbearing.
Genesis thus links the uniquely human intelligence we have with the uniquely human labor pains we have.
And you know what?
Science agrees.
The scientific explanation of why human females have such great labor pains compared to the females of other species is a combination of two things.
First, the fact that we walk upright.
Our nearest relatives, like chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans don’t do that. None of them walk upright the way we do.
So when our ancestors came down from the trees and started walking upright all the time, it forced the human pelvic bone into a new shape.
It also freed up our hands to let us manipulate our environment.
No longer would we need to walk on all fours—like dogs or cats or cows.
Nor would we need to walk on our knuckles—like chimps and bonobos and gorillas.
Now our hands were totally free to manipulate things in our environment. Now we could be full-time tool users, which meant we were now investing heavily in early technology, which helped create the conditions for the rise of human intelligence.
That led to the second factor that caused human labor pains—the growth of intelligence.
That meant we got bigger brains, which meant we got bigger skulls.
But that caused problems because when we started walking upright, our bipedalism caused the human birth canal to become narrow and twisted.
And the greater intelligence meant that our big skulls had to fit through it.
This created what is known in anthropology as the Obstetrical Dilemma: How do you get that big head out through a narrow birth canal?
Part of the solution was for human babies to be born really, really prematurely.
That’s why human babies are so helpless compared to the offspring of other creatures.
Like if you watch a baby deer getting born, it’s up and walking within minutes and even starting to run within a couple of hours.
Which makes sense. Deer aren’t predators the way we are; they’re prey animals, so their survival strategy is based on running away from dangers.
And does don’t have hands to carry their offspring like we do, so a momma deer can’t pick up her baby fawn and run with it if she needs to get away from a predator.
The fawn needs to be able to run for itself and keep up with momma.
Human babies, though? They can just lay there like blobs because their parents have hands and can pick them up and carry them.
Their parents also have scary smart intelligence that they can use to solve problems and keep them safe.
But human babies still need to grow to a certain point in order to be born and have a good chance of survival, so merely being born early didn’t entirely solve the obstetrical dilemma.
It’s just hard to get that huge head through the narrow birth canal, and that’s why human women have much more intense labor pains than the females of other species do.
So Genesis and science agree here! There is a connection between our unique human intelligence and our unique human labor pains!
Fortunately, those pains don’t last long, and they end up being worth it. As Jesus says,
John 16:21
When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human being has been born into the world.
Incidentally, the obstetrical dilemma also explains a few other things about humans.
One is how loud our offspring are. Most creatures have a survival strategy where their offspring are largely silent—especially prey animals that live on the ground.
Like baby deer. They can make noise, but they usually stay silent, which helps protect them from predators.
By contrast, human babies scream their heads off—way more than the babies of most species do.
And that’s a testament to how good their parents are at protecting them. Because of our big brains and our tool-using abilities, we can protect our offspring and keep them safe in ways other creatures can’t.
So our offspring can make all kinds of noise and still survive.
This is an aspect of how—as Genesis says—
Genesis 1:28
God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
In other words, we own this rock. Our offspring can scream their heads off, and we’ll still keep them safe.
So—if you’re a member of another species—don’t mess with humans or their babies!
Another thing the obstetrical dilemma explains about us is our division of labor.
Our babies are born so helpless that they need full time, round-the-clock care, which means human women need to devote a lot of attention to them. They don’t have time to care for the baby, find the food to feed everyone, and defend the family against threats.
So women are configured to be the primary caretakers of our offspring, while men are primarily oriented outward from the family to get food for the family and protect it from danger.
The natural division of labor between men and women is thus shaped by the obstetrical dilemma.
The obstetrical dilemma also explains about us is the fact we have lifelong marriages.
It takes basically two decades to raise our offspring to maturity, so the parents need to stay together for at least that long.
And—in those two decades—they’re very likely to have additional children, so that stretches things out further by a decade or two more.
And—in the ancient world, before modern medicine—you’re basically talking about the length of an average adult lifespan.
Hence, lifelong marriages—unlike other species.
And—as an incentive to keep the marriage together—with the man doing the work to get food, putting his life on the line against threats, and providing secondary childcare, human women are sexually receptive even when they’re not fertile.
That isn’t the way it is with many species.
In most mammals, the females are only sexually receptive when they are fertile. Their fertile period is known as Estrus, and that’s the only time the females are open to mating.
For example, with dogs and cats and most mammal species, the males are ready to mate at any time, but they have to wait for the females to become fertile and enter estrus.
Not so with humans. Human women incentivize their men to stay around and provide food and protection and secondary childcare by engaging in mating behavior even when they’re not fertile.
And that can be a real part of what helps couples stay together. Some people have rather bluntly but nevertheless honestly named mating behavior even when one partner isn’t initially “in the mood” as “Maintenance Sex,” because it helps maintain the relationship.
And it’s why St. Paul says,
1 Corinthians 7:3, 5
The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.
Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Thus giving your spouse their conjugal rights is what you want to do if you want a long and happy marriage. That’s how human nature is designed to work.
So you see how these concepts interrelate, and how they are connected to our uniquely human intelligence.
Genesis reveals that eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil led to women having greater labor pains—which was the punishment of Eve in her job as the primary caregiver of children.
And it reveals how eating from the same tree led to men having to work hard to get food for their families—because women were too busy caring for the children—which was the punishment of Adam in his job as the primary breadwinner for the family.
And science agrees. It is our unique intelligence that explains these distinctives that separate us from other creatures God has made.
Anyway, I hope that this helps the inquirer—and anybody else who is interested—with the subjects that were asked about.
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