Some have attacked the historicity of the account in Genesis by disagreeing with St. Paul’s statement that death entered the world through sin. They say that death is part of the natural order, that both plants and animals died before man came onto the scene, and that even the consumption of plant matter as food involves the death of the plant, or of cells. The author examines this argument, and suggests that plants are not alive in the same sense that animals are, and that in that case the destruction of parts of a plant need not involve death in the Biblical sense.