Most Christians believe it is sin for which I am inclined to agree. After original sin, it was downhill from there. Everything from life spans, the ecology, and the enviornment has been in a steady and irreversible decline. I believe even as man's morality has deteriorated, so has the planet. Death was the result of sin(Romans 5:12-14) which is why I believe we have things like extinction. This is arguable as it is completely a spiritual theory, but then again, we're spiritual people.
I'm not well grounded in the sciences; I'm into literature, theology, and biblical philosophy---but from what I understand there is a plethora of scientific evidence to suggest as believerintheword stated, that there was an abundance of O2 is the earth's atmosphere then, much more then today. With more O2, living things tend to grow larger and live longer, and this has been proven in labratories with plants and vegatables.
Evolution has to be the height of absurdity. To imagine that life could be generated from non-living materials is stupidity of the very highest order. To imagine that DNA, the most unimaginably complicated living system we know of, self-duplicating and error correcting, happened by a string of fantastic, impossible chance coincidences is stupid. I have a lot of questions about evolution such as: how does nothing(big bang, cosmic evolution) explode? Where did the energy and matter come from in this supposed explosion? Why are apes still apes? Why aren't they evolving? Why don't we see creatures today in various stages of transformation? Better yet, why doesn't the fossil record indicate these transitions? The list of questions surrounding so called human evolution are endless. I understand that some Christians believe in evolution, and they're free to believe that, but I don't know how they reconcile evolution with the genesis account. I don't believe it, never have, and even if I was a dedicated atheist I still wouldn't believe it. The whole idea adds weight to the term ludicrous.
I believe the Genesis creation account because that is what the bible says. I also do not subscribe to the widespread belief that this earth is billions of years old. Why? Because the bible's geneologies doesn't indicate that it is. Besides, considering the suspicous methods they use for dating rocks you couldn't possibly derive an accurate reading. There's a lot of astronomy that refutes the Old earth belief, but again, I'm not a scientist. The bible says God created, and that he didn't require 100 zillion years to do it, so that's sufficient enough for me.
God Bless you