Easter thought - Creation v. Evolution (part II)

Here's a very interesting (i.e. challenging) comment left on our blog concerning our latest posting on 'Easter thought : Creation v. Evolution' to which I would like to respond :

I sympathize with much of what you've written here--and am not inclined to argue about the rest--but here's what's problematic about a straight-up evolutionary history of creation:Evolution depends on death. Yet Biblically death entered creation after the original work of creation was finished.This isn't a question of whether the Bible can be read scientifically. It's a question of whether death and life are of a piece, whether unrighteousness and righteousness have fellowship or light and dark have communion.

Genesis itself does not state that death entered the world after the fall, and in fact if animals (especially carnivorous ones) lived and moved before the Fall, it is likely that something else had to die - even if the bible gives no explicit account on how animals and humans behaved. (unless those animals 'evolved' into carnivorous ones after the Fall)
In the same way, it also seems that pain must have been part of human life before the Fall as God to Even said 'I will increase your pain in childbearing' (Gen. 3:16) ['increase' implies previous existence].
Through man's original sin, evil entered the world, and the question may very well be whether death and/or pain were evil in pre-Fall creation. There is nothing in the bible showing that carnivorous activity by various animal species is the result of human sin and not that of God's goodness. It is all a question of perspective. Hugh Ross, in his great book "The Genesis Question" suggests that physical death can be seen as 'a tool for reastraining the spread of evil, and that wicked people are limited by death in the amount of people they can torture or kill.' (p.99). So one can argue that even if detah and pain existed before the falln it good still have been the result of God's goodness and not that of man's sin.
Another point is that 'evil' clearly existed before the fall of Adam and Eve. Satan's rebellion against God existed before the Fall, which means that spiritual death (i.e. spiritual separation from God) had already occured.
As for the famous passage in Romans 5:12, when Paul talks of death as the result of sin, one can easily see through context that he was referreing to 'spitirtual death' resulting from our broken relationship with God.