As I quoted above, Ephesians 2:1; Isaiah 1:5, 6; 2 Timothy 2:26, the human race has been taken captive. The only free choice I see is the ability to choose or reject God. A new born baby needs a savior. As it is written, John 8:34 GNB Jesus said to them, "I am telling you the truth: everyone who sins is a slave of sin. And ALL have sinned. And read earlier in chapter: Romans 8:1-3 GNB There is no condemnation now for those who live in union with Christ Jesus. (v2) For the law of the Spirit, which brings us life in union with Christ Jesus, has set me free from the law of sin and death. (v3) What the Law could not do, because human nature was weak, God did. He condemned sin in human nature by sending his own Son, who came with a nature like our sinful nature, to do away with sin.

Human NATURE is weak. Christ took our sinful nature to do away with sin. I do see that you can separate our physical nature from our "spiritual". There is an integral connection.

Skin - if your hypothesis is correct, then someone moving from an equatorial climate to a Northern climate would experience a change. Do we see that?

With Darwin's finches, they experienced a change in beak size do to the stress of drought. This was not a genetic change but an epigenetic change. Epigenetic switches can be passed on to the offspring, in the next generation. So you do not have to have a change in genetics (DNA) to pass on changes to your offspring. Darwin's finches in no way prove "evolution". Evolution is a change in DNA, not a change in epigenetics, and the finches were an example of the latter. A number of Bible references and EGW come to mind. The 10 commandments for example, the iniquity of the father to the children to the 3rd and 4th generation... And EGW talks about the experiences of the mother during pregnancy affecting the character of the offspring. This sure sounds like epigenetic changes to me.

Again, with all of those texts cited, including Rom 8:1-3, I exegetically see that you are eisegetically reading a ‘genetics law” into it, where the issue is purely a Spiritual and Free Choice one. Case I point, Rom 8:1-3, if a ‘born from above’ person was ‘“set free from the “genetic” law of sin and death” as provided by Christ,’ then how come they still suffer the effects of sin by, e.g., getting old and die in this life, let alone sin (cf. Rom 7). To me, it is all and has always been, from the start of this GC a purely volitional matter, which, when the wrong choice was made, resulted in physical detriment by the removal of the “Tree of Life” provision in its various dispensing forms.



Perhaps, either way, if they lived as long, and as unexposed/exposed to the sun, as those who live right after the flood, in a now damaged world. As some degree of exposure to the Sun is constant for most going from a darker skin “composition” to a lighter one may be much more slow/complicated than the other way around, as seen in how relatively fast someone can get a “surface” dark tan, indeed comparatively vs. how long it takes for them to lose it.

The fact that people in Africa, as well as other southern climates have a history of predominantly living out in the open/nature, versus others who had to build climate shelters and thus naturally lived in them year round, among other factors, led to this skin adapting change over time, with not much reasons for a reversal either way after that in succeeding, much shorter, sheltered and comfortably living generations.



I have not studied this topic in detail so I cannot make certain statements on this, however my view/working hypothesis is/would-be that both Character and Skin “sun-shading” are two aspects of the human body/person that God has permitted to be externally “malleable”. In terms of Character, this would justify generational curses for certain (influential) sins of Fathers in order to assure it “hereditary/cultivated” eradication.

So the tree of Knowledge is just a what, a symbol?

EGW talks about the physical side of things, I'm sure you will say that is ONLY do to the absents of the TOL...
So, which is it - is the vile body caused by a lack of access to the TOL or is it caused by sin? You are saying, the only reason the body degenerates and has disease is do to the lack of access to the TOL. This statement is saying, that the vileness of the body is caused by sin, a primary cause.

-The TOK itself was not the issue. The tangible act of taking of its fruit and eating of it was what concretized Adam and Eve willingness to disobey God and thus open the door fully to Satan’s unrestricted access to them. The whole thing was just a tangible “object-lesson” type of test.

(I don’t see how the claims of “holy flesh” have to do with what I had said.) (1) EGW is here speaking of the benefits that healthy living can have on those who observe God’s health laws, as indeed clearly proven. (2) Those EGW statements are made in a post-TOL removal context. Without that removal, the life perpetuating supernatural elements in that Fruit would have continued to do its work on maintaining the original optimal health. (Not only that, but nature also would have remained perfect, as the Garden of Eden did, still, aromatically, having access to the TOL.) And barring a radical death blow, I don’t see anything that this supernatural fruit could not have remedied. In fact my view is that Satan vindictively acted to bring noxious elements in the world because God had removed this opportunity for sinful man to live eternally. He thus wanted to turn man against God for so, literally/directly causing their death, and sought to accelerate this desired objective with those means.

That is the point I've observed - most people discount the fruit entirely. I think that is stepping too far. I see the fruit as integral. I've given you quotes on a different thread and will not repeat them here.

"holy flesh" - here is the point, there are things that damage us physiologically. Not only that, a lot of the physiology can be healed by adherence to the laws of health, and there is not TOL causing the healing. OK - why would they recoil in horror? What is the problem with the "flesh". Sure fits the genetic hypothesis.
So Christ' mission did what? Was it necessary, particularly if the TOL could heal anything? The word "salvation" is healing. I think you see the sin problem as totally a psychiatric disease. Would the be a fair assessment?

The poisonous bruise is what? Psychiatric disease? Lack of access to the Tree of Life? What? And what did Christ do to remedy the situation, for only He could have done it...

I merely see it as a tangible act confirming this decision to disobey God. Just like two people could just declare themselves to be “married” by just living together, but instead, to “make it official” either get married in a Civil ceremony and/or also Religiously in Church. Adam and Eve, being somewhat tempted, could have pondered disobeying God for decades, and still really not sin, but until they made the action, by taking and eating the banned fruit, that showed that this was indeed what they wanted to, they had indeed not yet sinned against God, with that actually being the most prominent way that they could sin.



I don’t pointedly recall your arguments on this, so perhaps you can provide the Post #/link where you had expressed, or begun to express these arguments.



I see now. However I stil find that God’s statement in Gen 3:22-24, as explicitly corroborated in the SOP that ‘a sinful man could live eternally’ overrides this view. Sure the psyche (aka. soul) would be sinful, but God said that this would not affect that person being physically able, with the supernatural remedies in the Fruit of Life to perpetually live eternally.

Furthermore, I don’t see that genetics and the psyche/psychology necessarily mix. In other words, I see that when God will give the redeemed a brand new body, it will contain a perfect “set” of genes automatically free from any traces of sin. On the other hand, the psyche, from which character is derived, like software for a computer, will be what we have “inscribed” in it by e.g., our thoughts, actions and decision, although I Biblically understand that God will first excise all and any traces of sinful elements from it first where those former adverse things will not ‘come to mind’. Still we will then have to on our own grow our characters to what they should be/should have been, starting with the good things that we already have and which were “carried over” into Heaven.

So I don’t see this psyche/psychological/soul “healing” as being something substantive per se, though the thoughts involved here do have a, probably not yet understood, tangible form. Our “character” is left up to us to form and not dependent/subject to on any form of external healing agent for it to be improved. Indeed it cannot even be “restored” as it is whatever one has built it up to be. God did not give Adam and Eve a “perfect character” as with their perfect bodies. They merely had a quasi-blank one that was free of both sin and also what good they were supposed to do. They were really fundamentally supposed to form it out of the basic principle of Loving God and Love their Fellow Humans.



I have not done an indepth study of this “holy flesh” issue, but it seems to me that it is Spiritually speaking of the ‘habitual desire and tendency to sin in various ways’. Thus the flesh is set against the “spirit”. (e.g, Matt 26:41; John 3:6). As I understand it, those who were claiming holy flesh were saying that they were free from such carnal (= habitual) tendencies to sin. As the greater context of that quote (Post #135094) specifies, those people had a belief that, since they had Holy Flesh, they could not do anything wrong, whatever they actually did, which apparently led them into a life of licentiousness. So EGW was exposing the horror of that misconception.

And even if the processes of the mind can and do affect the “composition/behavior” of the body/flesh, creating a craving, the notion that this was done by Satan in the TOKGE fruit is still not, especially Theologically valid to me. The “sin” that man gave in to only needed to be at the same level as the one that Satan himself had fallen.

Indeed the processes involved in Man’s fall and fallen men since could simply be that the body comes to craves the various secreted “substances” when something is ingested or that is produced when a sinful action is done. In particularly internally produces secretions, I don’t see that this is necessarily hereditary, however with some external substances, such as alcohol, it can come to re/mis-code applicable genes and be indeed passed on.

Good emotions do produces feeling that the body can crave and similarly sinful actions can do the same for particularly those who want it (i.e., it is ultimately still a mental psyche/mental decision, particularly giving in to it.). That is why I see a teaching that claims that Satan was allowed to make people sin addicts as not Biblical, given the abundant teachings in the Bible on the free and evitable choice involved in sinning vs. doing good.



Jesus’s successful mission made it possible that (1) Sinful man can be forgiven; (2) our psyche can be expunged from sin and also the wrath punishment that God naturally would pour out on it; and (3) by now being those character wise pure people, we can be trusted to live eternally, starting with a entirely brand new physical body to “house” that pure psyche, though I still see this in Heaven as conditional upon continued obedience.



True, for the salvation point, however I don’t see sin as a “disease” per se, but a condition, because one always has the choice whether to sin or not and thus contribute to that condition, which however, as with many conversion stories, it can be radically abandoned, (i.e., compared to what it was before). A “diseases” to me seems like something that one cannot actually overcome. Though it is common for man to sin, I see that God expected man to live without sinning and will also be momentarily looking for this in the final generation to be translated without seeing death.

So the notion of “healing” in salvation to me is purely a spiritual one. A person can control his/her choice to sin.

I personally see that you are here also making literal what I Theologically see/understand to be figurative expressions. Indeed that language is referring to the figurative statement in Gen 3:15b and so if you want to be literal here, you have to be also claiming that the Serpent actually “bruised/crushed” the head on man and not ‘poisoned them through the banned fruit’. On purely this figurative/spiritual notion, this “head bruising” to me is symbolic of the Serpent, through his success in making Man sin, coming to affect the psyche of Man where they would now prefer to choose sin, and the heel bruising, which caused someone to no longer be mobile, could be symbolic of how God, through a finally triumphant plan of Redemption, including the work of the redeem would come to literally bring down Satan by first pinning him down to this planet for 1000 years. (I believe that Satan and his evil angel will be then physically restricted to this temporarily abandoned planet until his final judgement and no longer allowed to freely roam the universe. And the “immobolizing” tangibly, typologically, object-lesson, started with the serpent creature no longer being able to flying as before. It very well may be that the creature serpent, who I believe like all animals also have a tangible psyche, actually allowed itself to become puffed up and was the only animal that accepted Satan to enter into it in order to tempt Adam and Eve and so God fittingly punished it for this free choice.



I believe I have answered this issue with its, to me, lone Spiritual implications in regards to sin, in the post above (#135103).

I haven't read all this discussion yet, just your first post here. This is quite interesting information you are bringing. I'm kind out of touch with the latest in cellular biology and just read a little about transposons when I read that these are the "junk DNAs" that I was familiar with.

From what I'm reading and understanding, transposon activities is restricted within the host and the genetic material do not travel outside into another host. Could you confirm or clarify?

Antibiotic resistance in bacteria is shared laterally, among bacteria of the same species and different species. This is done via plasmids and transposons.

I've read a study looking at rabbit endogenous retroviruses, RERV. The consentration of the RERV was measured in the meat of the rabbit, and the meat was eaten by the researches. The RERV what then measures in their blood. This is a potential mechanism for lateral transfer. The human genome has over 25,000 endogenous retroviruses. HIV is a retrovirus. The virus is taken up, DNA made from RNA, and the DNA is expressed. This is lateral transfer. There are many studies looking at the lateral transfer of transposable genetic elements.

Genetic engineering these days take advantage of the transposable elements. TEs can be designed to "attack" very specific locations within the DNA with incredible precision.

Many things in our physiology that we take for granted, may indeed to due to alterations by transposable elements. There is a virus, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), which can cause pneumonia and "syncytiums". Syncytiums is a single cell with multiple nuclei. Skeletal muscle is an example of "normal" body tissue that forms syncytiums. Another site the forms syncytiums is the outer later of a growning fetus called the syncytial trophoblasts. This tissue sheds transposable elements ensuring that any fetus born, will be "infected" by transposable elements. Genesis 3:16 AKJV To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;... Is there a connection?