At a glance
This site reads the original plant-food provision, the curse and creation’s future liberation together as favoring an originally peaceful creation changed by human sin. Some parts of that case are inferences across passages: Romans 8 does not explicitly date creation’s subjection, and Genesis 3 does not say that every kind of pain began at the Fall. A present ecosystem’s use of predators does not establish when predation began. None of these points implies that Ross denies the Fall.
Define the dispute carefully
In chapter 15 of the 2025 first edition of Noah’s Flood Revisited, Ross reads Genesis 1:30 as identifying vegetation as the primary food source underlying terrestrial life, rather than requiring every animal to eat plants directly. He argues that Genesis 9’s permission to eat meat concerns humans and cites Job 38 and Psalm 104 for God’s provision of prey to carnivores. [1] In chapter 18 he places creation’s subjection to decay from its beginning and explicitly acknowledges that work and pain became more difficult under sin’s curse. [2] References identify sections rather than printed pages.
The question examined here is whether particular creaturely conditions preceded human sin. Ross’s view allows some of them before sin while affirming consequences of the Fall.
Food and the original creation
Genesis 1:29–31 assigns plant food to humans and to the land animals and birds it describes, then calls the completed creation very good. On the site’s YEC reading, this shared provision supports an originally non-predatory order.
Ross emphasizes that verse 29 gives humans seed-bearing plants and fruit, whereas verse 30 gives the animals green plants. He understands the latter as the vegetation underlying a food chain that can include predators. The plant descriptions differ, but both clauses present the plants as food given to their recipients. Neither explicitly says the animals receive that provision by eating other animals. This site therefore favors the direct sense of the parallel food grants. The competing reading may still argue that provision is not an exhaustive description of diet; a food list alone does not prove every detail of an original ecosystem.
Ross also argues that the distinction between livestock and wild animals in Genesis 1:24–25 implies carnivores before sin. The distinction need not be a division by diet: a wild animal need not be a predator. The passage distinguishes creature groups without expressly identifying meat as their food. That is why this site gives the subsequent food grant greater weight in interpreting the original diet.
Genesis 9:1–4 expressly expands human food after the Flood. It is a useful contrast, but a change in human diet does not independently establish the history of every animal’s diet. Ross is right to distinguish the human instruction in this passage from an instruction addressed to every animal.
Ross also appeals to Job 38:39–41 and Psalm 104:21–30, where God provides food for predators. Those passages establish divine provision, but they do not explicitly date the beginning of predation relative to Adam’s sin. The YEC reading must explain why predation in a fallen world remains under God’s providence; Ross’s reading must explain why that provision describes the original animal diet despite Genesis 1’s plant-food grant.
What the curse says about suffering
Genesis 2:15–17 connects human disobedience with death. Genesis 3:14–19 describes changed conditions, painful childbearing, toil and return to dust. Those are substantial consequences of the Fall.
Genesis 3:16 speaks of multiplied sorrow or pain. Silence about pain earlier in the narrative cannot establish that every sensation or discomfort was previously absent. A careful YEC argument should distinguish harmful creaturely suffering from ordinary sensation and should not make this verse state more than it does.
Romans 5:12–21 connects Adam, sin and human death in its account of salvation. Applying that passage to all animal mortality requires an additional canonical argument; it is not the explicit subject of those verses.
Creation’s subjection in Romans 8
Romans 8:18–25 places present suffering beside future glory, describes creation as subjected to futility and awaiting liberation, and connects that hope with the redemption of believers’ bodies.
This site understands that story alongside Genesis 3 as a Fall-and-restoration pattern. The passage itself, however, does not identify the date of subjection or name Adam as its cause. An alternative reading may understand subjection as a condition imposed from creation for a future purpose. Both proposals must explain the passage’s language and canonical connections. Describing bondage and liberation is not a measurement of entropy, a biological timetable or a license to identify all physical decay with moral evil.
Isaiah 11:6–9 and Isaiah 65:25 portray creaturely peace. Reading that peace as restoration of an original order strengthens the YEC synthesis, but the restoration connection remains an interpretation rather than a detailed inventory of every pre-Fall process.
What observations can contribute
Predation’s role in a present ecosystem is a question about present relationships. By itself, that role does not date the origin of predation. Conversely, this textual objection does not disprove an old-earth biological history or establish a complete YEC ecological model. Scientific reconstructions on either side need observations, stated assumptions and testable explanations.
Conclusion
The site retains its YEC preference for an originally peaceful order changed by the Fall. Its strongest case connects several passages; it should be presented with the limits of each one. Disagreement with Ross over pre-Fall conditions must preserve whatever consequences of the Fall he actually affirms.