I’ve been thinking about this for a couple decades, and I believe that you have it exactly right. Adam and Eve would have been created with perfect DNA, and their descendants would have inherited that perfect DNA, with harmful mutations accumulating over the course of generations.Just my opinion here as I happen to have been thinking about this recently but here goes.
I think that it may be possible that the effects of our own sins have a degenerative effect on our DNA. Starting with original sin which had immediate and irreversible consequences on the genes of Adam and Eve that introduced sickness, death, and decomposition.
In the beginning the human DNA was perfect and there was no time limit on how long we could live. As the sins of the human race were piled on to our history it continued to corrupt and distort our our genes, which naturally led to a decrease in our overall longevity. This downward trend continued until the point were the positive effects of medicine caught up to and halted the natural decline in our health, and people slowly started living slower.
I haven’t had the chance to look it up yet to see if this is plausible, but if this theory is true there should be a slow rise in the number of genetic abnormalities and diseases. I would think that would include cancer, muscular dystrophy, or even autism. I’m sure some one has thought of this before, but like I said I just happen to be thinking about it lately, but haven’t had a chance to actually research this stuff to see if it is, in fact, provable. I would actually like to know if anyone else knows anything about this
I also recently started considering the causes of aging and recently read an AMA article that, in a sense, suppored your view point. Well said.Just my opinion here as I happen to have been thinking about this recently but here goes.
I think that it may be possible that the effects of our own sins have a degenerative effect on our DNA. Starting with original sin which had immediate and irreversible consequences on the genes of Adam and Eve that introduced sickness, death, and decomposition.
In the beginning the human DNA was perfect and there was no time limit on how long we could live. As the sins of the human race were piled on to our history it continued to corrupt and distort our our genes, which naturally led to a decrease in our overall longevity. This downward trend continued until the point were the positive effects of medicine caught up to and halted the natural decline in our health, and people slowly started living slower.
I haven’t had the chance to look it up yet to see if this is plausible, but if this theory is true there should be a slow rise in the number of genetic abnormalities and diseases. I would think that would include cancer, muscular dystrophy, or even autism. I’m sure some one has thought of this before, but like I said I just happen to be thinking about it lately, but haven’t had a chance to actually research this stuff to see if it is, in fact, provable. I would actually like to know if anyone else knows anything about this
That sounds really interesting! Do you know where I could find it (online or print?)
Except that Adam and Eve were not created with “perfect” DNA, and Scripture in no way implies this. The creation was not perfect, only God is perfect. Scripture says God looked on all He had made and called it “very good”.
modern science also is coming to accept a possibility that at one stage our ancestors might have lived very much longer, and that the threats to longevity were only from predators or natural disasters, not diseases we now accept as facts of life. So there is no inherent conflict in believing in these as literal ages, nor in accepting them as statements to the effect that “his life and influence lasted for a really, really long time”.
We could probably get into a hair-splitting contest over the various definitions of “perfect” and “very good,” and in the final analysis all we would come down to is your interpretation versus mine, and we’d both be guessing. From my view, I can’t picture God calling something “very good” when it had lethal recessives in its genes. An original’s DNA can be perfect (without errors in the “programming”) without meaning that the creature itself is perfect, in the sense that God is perfect.
Genetic decay.
If you look at it, all the patriarchs in the list from Adam to Noah were of a very advanced age.
Sorry, it took me awhile to find it. Here is the link msnbc.msn.com/id/43631577/ns/health/That sounds really interesting! Do you know where I could find it (online or print?)
That’s more of what I was talking about when I said perfect. Not the people themselves, but the DNA chains that God provided them…
I read a comment on there about there being super long lives and the social problems it could cause. Maybe God intentionally dropped our longevity to control the population a little better? If we all lived to be 900 we would have A LOT of kids running around, even if you only had 1 every 10 years… lol
Yes, sanitation, clean water and knowledge of bacteria have increased the mortality rate. In addition infant mortality is way down which lowered the life expectancy big time.