Which came first?  No, not the chicken or the egg scenario, although according to the latest cutting-edge research, it is the chicken (tic).  Rather, the question should be asked, “Which came first:  sin or death?”  While the creation / evolution issue can be debated on the realm of evidence, scientific method, and technical jargon, there are repercussions in the realm of theology, which flip back to philosophy, which often are not highlighted.  Here are some brief thoughts:

One has to create a new system, or program a new OS if you will, if you start with the premise that death can exist before sin.  Death becomes a means of life, creativity, progress, advancement, hope, and optimism.  It then has to have no bearing on morality, theology, ethics, or anything related to salvation.  This OS creates a background where mutations are hoped for (whether theistically evolved or by chance is another issue) and the hope for bettering life.  It is the harshness of failure that cancels out anything otherwise.  It is the breakdown of the genetic transcription or replication process that gives life its next step to perfection, albeit weeding out the other astronomical number of errors that are imperfect.  If death existed before sin, then one cannot make judgments on the process of death, the means of death, the experience of death, or anything remotely related to death.  One has to ask the question, if one cannot address death, then how can one even address life?  Take this to the larger perspective and one is forced to be mute in the fields of ethics, morality, liberty, politics, ontology, theological anthropology, any social science, and any biological life science.  Furthermore, the denial of user access to religion and theology are obvious.  If anything, academia shifts on focusing on how one should reach death faster and quicker; if not, discover methods to induce mutations and using intelligent processes of eliminating inferior humans for the larger survival of the human race.  Alas, doesn’t this electrifying version inspire the human drive for hope and salvation?  The sad reality is the twentieth century already gave multiple examples of this perversion.

An OS that determines that sin came before death would have to conclude that there are ethical and theological realities that have affected our human condition of life.  This would have biological, psychological, as well as existential and ontological repercussions that would not only give an appropriate and accurate explanation of the world and its follies, but our personal shortcomings as well as that one guy we can’t stand too.  Life would be the stable factor and sin the contingent repercussion.  Hence, isn’t it the doctrine of sin that needs no theological evidence for?  More thoughts on this later.

The geology, astronomy, cosmology, and physics of it all will need to work themselves out, as they once did when the first batch of intelligentsia were bona fide Christian theists.  But before we even enter that arena, shouldn’t we decide now, before-thinking these things through, that we need an appropriate OS to platform these thoughts to begin with?

Which came first:  sin or death?  You choose and divvy out the ramifications:  proper functionality and resonance with reality or self-destruction and delusional aberrance.

Romans 5:12  Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

Romans 6:23  For the wages of sin is death…

1 Corinthians 15:56  The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.

James 1:15  Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

1 John 5:17  All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death.