For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now.
All suffering in nature — predation, disease, natural disasters — exists because of a curse placed on the entire planet due to human behavior.
Biology
59
passages in this field
Show this passage in
The cited passage
What current science says
Predation, disease, and natural disasters existed long before humans. Tyrannosaurs were apex predators 68 million years ago. Bacteria have been causing infections for billions of years — we've found evidence of bacterial infection in 2-billion-year-old fossils. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have been reshaping the planet for 4.5 billion years (plate tectonics doesn't need a moral trigger). Suffering in nature is the result of evolutionary arms races, geological processes, and thermodynamics — not a cosmic punishment for one species that showed up in the last 0.007% of Earth's history.
What the text says
This comes from Romans 8:22. The text says 'the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now' — interpreted by many as meaning all natural suffering exists because the world was cursed as punishment for human sin.
Three honest ways to read this passage
-
As history
The text records how its authors understood the world with the knowledge they had. Read this way, a difference from modern science is a window into the ancient mind, not a failure.
-
As accommodation
The text speaks to its first audience in their own terms, to make a point that isn't mainly about physics or biology. Read this way, the scientific detail is the vehicle, not the cargo.
-
As contradiction
The text makes a claim about the physical world that modern findings dispute. Read this way, the difference is a genuine factual disagreement worth naming.
GEBible doesn't pick one of these for you. Each entry shows the passage, what it says, and what current science says — nothing more.