That is, they explain suffering and death in the animal kingdom not as a result of God's curse on the creation because of sin, but as a necessary component of the balance of nature. The evidence says there was animal death before Adam. Of the many modern progressive creationists who hold similar views, one of the most influential is Hugh Ross. We literal creationists do see problems in this idea, however. The concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, loving, caring God devising such a scheme somehow seems to stick in our mental throats whenever they ask us to swallow it.
Knowledgeable evolutionists have difficulty with it, too.
For example, Dr. Holmes Rolston III, distinguished professor of philosophy at Colorado State University, has addressed this question in a recent article in a journal devoted to the interface between science and religion. The real problem is with the fall, when a once-paradisiacal nature becomes recalcitrant as a punishment for human sin. Rolston finds it completely impossible to harmonize the Biblical record with the standard concept of biological history. So does Stephen Jay Gould, probably the nation's most influential evolutionist. He stresses not only the cruelty of natural history, but also its randomness, with no indication of direction or purpose.