I don’t bring this up to mock anyone, but I recommend Mark Twain’s The Diary of Adam and The Diary of Eve. There’s a very funny scene taking place before the fall of a lion grazing and looking bored.

It’s been awhile since I read that Doug. So, I’ll be looking for it today. I recall laughing and feeling sad.

So, David – you are saying that you are a Cathar or Arian? Those are REAL old heresies that believe that this world was created and ruled by an evil god (or Satan) and that all material things are evil. What you have described is just a variation of that belief.

I am too much of an outsider to understand this. Is God omnipotent? If so, how can Satan get his way sometimes? Might God lose to Satan in the end?
It’s hard for me to think of Satan as other than metaphorical for the evils of human nature, and the apparent indifference of Nature. But like I said, I don’t understand all these things.

The crocodile is both a magnificent creature, the only living dinosaur — and not only a man-eater but, Biblically, the likely Leviathan monster invoked by G-d to Job. (Nile crocodiles lived in the Holy Land in Job’s time.)
IMHO, a crocodile’s brain is too small to contain anything but instinct (for a 20-foot half-ton reptile, it’s the size of a walnut), so I can’t say crocodiles are “evil.” But if we’re saying the state of nature itself, and not just humanity, changed with the Fall, Greg may be onto something …

The serpent is not only dangerous, but wise. “Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the LORD God had made.” (Gen 3:1); “…be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16). In the Garden the serpent told Eve “You will not die,” and for this the serpent was cursed, and made to go upon its belly, so perhaps that is a kind of just-so story about why the snake has no legs. But in any event, it will be noted that the serpent told Eve the truth, and it was this unseasonable truthfulness that annoyed the Lord God.
Still, the Lord God was not above using the lowly serpent to punish his Chosen People: “Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died” (Num 21:6). The remedy for the serpent infestation was to look upon a bronze serpent after one was bitten.
This latter procedure brings to mind the staff encircled by a snake of the healing god Asclepius, and the caduceus of Hermes, both of which were associated with the healing arts. Both symbols (staff with single snake, and wand with double snakes topped by wings) can be seen today in many logos of medical organizations.
That nature is violent and dangerous is a fact, but I’m sure that hypothesizing a Satanic infestation to explain this is far from the best explanation available. Did Satan invent the tapeworm? Is anyone so simple as to imagine that the tapeworm or other parasites were once non-parasitical and ‘good’? Are not human categories such as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ completely misplaced in this context?