03/30/2026
Sorry Answers in Genesis, but the Bible does NOT teach that there was no animal death before Adam's sin.
Here are some biblical reasons that animal death may not have began with Adam's sin.
1. The primary passages related to the origin of human death are in Gen 3, Rom 5, and 1 Cor 15. These all specify that Adam's sin resulted in human death, but none of them make the same connection for the origin of animal death.
2. Romans 8 speaks of creation groaning, but does not specify that this includes animal death. Romans 8 does imply that the creation groans because it is ruled by sinful humans, and that the groaning will cease when the children of God are restored as sinless rulers, having godly dominion over the creation.
3. Only God has inherent immortality. Humans are created in the image of God, so humans may share in that immortality. Animals are not created in the image of God, so do not necessarily have immortality.
4. Genesis does not present the entire Earth as being edenic, but instead draws a distinction between the garden of Eden and the world outside the garden. Adam and Eve were commanded to go out and subdue the Earth, bringing it under their dominion. This implies that the Earth outside the garden was not edenic, and was in need of being brought under dominion. The Earth was not a gentle place of daisies and butterflies, but a wild world in need of being brought under control.
5. Another indication from the Garden of Eden that animal death could have occurred before the fall is the nature of the Tree of Life. In Genesis, the Tree of Life is provided so that humans could eat of it (one time? on an ongoing basis?) and live forever. There is no indication that the Tree of Life was provided also for animals.
6. In Genesis 1 we read that the creation was good and very good. YECs assume that the fall made the creation bad or even very bad, but this is not taught in Scripture. According to 1 Timothy 4:4, the creation is still good. We live today in a world with animal death, and yet God considers this world to be good.
7. We see passages in Job and Psalms (e.g., Job 38:39-41; Ps 104:21) in which predation is presented as how God himself provides food for predators. There is no hint in these passages that something is wrong, or that predation comes from Adam's sin. We may squirm when the lion takes down the antelope, but it seems the ancient Hebrews looked at this as part of the ordinary operation of God's good creation.
And one non-biblical argument:
8. On top of these biblical considerations, there is the whole problem of population growth. If organisms in Genesis 1 were fruitful and multiplied, and if there was no animal death, the Earth would very quickly have been overrun by every kind of creature God made. Think about rabbits, which have large litters and can have multiple litters per year. If rabbits were to multiply at rates like they can today, and if not a single rabbit ever died, we could go from two rabbits to quadrillions of rabbits on Earth in 500 years with a population density of 100 rabbits per square meter on land. That is just on land. That is just rabbits. The "No rabbit death before the fall" doctrine is not in the Bible, and has a serious population problem.
