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This video is brought to you by surf Shark. Hello and welcome to
my channel Vice Rhino. Here today, I'm looking at chapter one of the
Seventh day Adventist book The Great Hope. This chapter is called why is There
Suffering? And attempts to answer the problem of evil? And oh boy,
is it an answer. I've never heard this one before. I'll give them
that. I mean, it still breaks down to but free will, though,
and never even attempts to address the suffering caused by natural disasters, disease,
or any of the other kinds of suffering that are not caused by human
actions. But the way she gets there is just a wild rye. So
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support my channel, So thank you. Okay. This chapter opens with a
pretty standard stick for apologetics. Suffering exists. God has infinite wisdom, power,
and love, and people who are inclined to doubt use the existence of
suffering as an excuse for rejecting the Bible. But by the second paragraph we
go right off the rails. The first sentence of the second paragraph and the
sentence that I read in the Airbnb that I found it left, and that
maybe order a copy of this book for myself so that I could see what
other wild shit contains is it is impossible to explain the origin of sin in
a way that gives a reason for its existence. Continuing, she says,
yet we can understand enough about sin's beginning and final end to show clearly God's
justice and goodness. In no way was God responsible for sin. From reading
the rest of the chapter, I now know that what she's getting at here
when she says that it's impossible to explain the origin of sin in a way
that gives a reason for its existence, is the idea that Satan didn't have
a valid excuse for bringing sin into the world. But that is by no
means clear until almost the last page of the chapter. So I spent my
time reading this wondering why she said it's impossible to explain. At the beginning
of the chapter that she uses to explain it, she points out that before
sin began, the entire universe was full of nothing but peace and joy,
saying that since the law of love is the foundation of God's government, the
happiness of all created beings depended on their willing harmony with its principles of righteousness.
God takes no pleasure in forced allegiance, and he grants everyone freedom of
will so that they can choose to serve him voluntarily. Now, can the
doctrine of free will be found in the Bible? No, It's a wholly
apologetic invention meant to explain the existence of evil in light of the omnipotent omniscient
and omni benevolent God that is also not actually found in the Bible, but
which modern Christians believe in. It's amusing to me that the idea of God
valuing free will above all else is a non biblical solution to a problem that
only exists because modern Christians have a non biblical view of God. The idea
of free will in Christian thought was introduced by Tertullian in the second century,
and it's an idea that he didn't get from the Bible, but imposed on
the Bible while under the influence of the Stoic school of ancient Greek philosophy.
According to the theologian whose name to mispronounced trolls Engberg Peterson, who specializes in
the study of the Pauline Epistles, quote, Paul firmly believed in divine determination
as an intrinsic part of his whole conception of God, and that fits in
with the God that we see in the Old Testament, the kind of God
who has no problem hardening Pharaoh's heart in order to manufacture an excuse to show
off his power, or who would send lying spirits to deceive his people into
taking actions that would lead to their destruction. The problem of evil and its
free will solution is entirely a modern and Christian have your cake and eat it
too scenario. If they would actually accept that the God of the Bible is
the God that is described by the Bible instead of insisting on a God that
has all the Omni characteristics, then the existence of evil or suffering is merely
due to God not having the ability to prevent it, no convoluted explanations required.
But since modern Christians are unwilling to compromise on the omnis, they have
to figure out how a God with these omnis managed to make a world that
was very clearly not designed by an all loving, all powerful, all knowing
being. You know, since such a being would have the knowledge and power
required to be able to design a world with no suffering. In fact,
isn't that what the New Heaven and New Earth of Revelation are supposed to be?
The final world where God will wipe away every tear from their eyes,
and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying,
nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. If that
verse is to be believed, then God does indeed have the ability to make
a world with no suffering, he just chose not to on his first try.
If free will is such a great good that it excuses God's perfect creation
that results in massive amounts of suffering, and free will is the ultimate cause
of all this suffering, then does that not mean that there is no free
will in the New Heaven and New Earth? Or will God somehow make it
work? And if God can make it work in the New Heaven and New
Earth, why could he not have made it work for the first one.
She then goes on to describe Satan's heavenly position before the fall, boring apparently
mostly from Milton's Paradise Lost, but bolstering it with a couple of Bible verses
that are very explicitly not about Satan. One is about the King of Tire,
the other is about the King of Babylon, both saying that these kings
sought to exalt themselves, and so in their pride God would make them low.
The bit in Isaiah fourteen is at the beginning of a segment where the
author prophesies against several nations, including Assyria, Philistia, Moab, Damascus,
and more. But nobody ever claims that the prophecies against Assyria, Philistia,
or any of the others are metaphors for prehistoric heavenly goings on. It's only
ever the one against Babylon because it's got that verse about the King of Babylon
being the morning star that falls from heaven, with the Latin translation of the
ancient Hebrew word for morning star being where we get the name Lucifer. Fun
fact, Jesus actually calls himself Lucifer in Revelation twenty two sixteen, saying,
I, Jesus have sent my angel to testify to you about these things.
For the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the
bright morning Star, with morning star being Lucifer. The author of Two Peter
also referred to Jesus as the morning star in chapter one, verse nineteen,
saying, and we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you
will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in the dark place
until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. So either
the morning star isn't specifically referring to Satan, but is rather just a metaphor
for a person who is greatly exalted, and thus is simply referring to the
human king of Babylon in Isaiah fourteen, or Jesus is Satan. She also
uses Ezekiel twenty eight, which is about the king or prince of Tire,
depending on how far along we're reading, and she's reading from later in the
chapter where it's about the king. So I guess that means that Satan had
a at some point, so that Tyre could have a prince as well.
Right, she doesn't clarify that, but that's what's implied by assuming that the
king of Tire is actually Satan. But that's far from the only problem.
Ezekiel twenty eight comes after two full chapters where the author describes Tire in many
of the same ways that it's described in Ezekiel twenty eight, but in a
context that makes it clear that the accumulated wealth, power, and beauty were
earthly things, describing their trade with other earthly nations. So in chapter twenty
eight, when it says that Tire was a signative perfection, full of wisdom
and perfect and beauty and whatnot, it's a callback to Tire's accumulation of wealth
through mercantile means bight jendizing, michandizing when the real money from the movie is
made. It even makes it explicit and verse sixteen of chapter twenty eight that
it's talking about the abundance of Tire's trade. The reason that these verses are
tied to Satan is because there are a couple places where the author made references
to Eden and the guardian cherubs, saying that the king of Tire was in
Eden as part of a statement about how perfect and beautiful he was, and
refers to him as the guardian cherub placed on the holy Mountain of God.
Modern Christians take this to mean that Satan was one of the Cherubim that guarded
God himself. But Ezekiel is clearly talking about the cherubim that guarded the garden
of Eden after the Fall, and it be more than a little bit weird
for God to appoint Satan to guard the Tree of Life immediately after Satan caused
Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Ezekiel twenty eight is
not about Satan. It's about how not even the most mighty and perfect of
earthly kingdoms are a match for God. Oh. Also, if we are
to believe that when Ezekiel's writing about the king of a certain places having been
in Eden, and take that to mean that he was literally in the actual
garden of Eden before the fall? Then who was the pharaoh of Ezekiel thirty
one, who is likened to the trees of Eden being told that he will
be brought down into Shiel along with Babylon, who is the greatest of the
trees of Eden. The author of Ezekiel used imagery from the Garden of Eden
as a metaphor for great and powerful people and nations several times, so why
do we only take it literally once? At this point we get a hint
of Ellen's noncommittal stance on the Trindy when she says, coveting the honor that
the Father had given his son, the Prince of Angels wanted the power that
was Christ's alone to use a note of discord now marred the heaven's harmonies.
This is written in a way that could suggest either a Trinitarian or an anti
trinitarian view, but I would lean towards it being anti Trinitarian, as it
talks about God having given his son honor. If God gave honor to Jesus
at some point. Then that suggests a time in which Jesus existed but did
not have this honor. Jesus was apparently one of Satan's equals, and the
whole Satan rebellion thing started because he was mad that he didn't get the promotion
instead of Jesus. And this is also the part of the book where we
leave even the pretense of grounding her ideas in Bible verses, as she talks
extensively about Satan's self exaltation, giving the other angels a feeling of dread,
with them pleading with Satan to cut it out, and Jesus himself showing that
God was good and just in deciding to promote him over Satan, but with
Satan ultimately rejecting the extended alive branch, allowing his jealousy of Jesus to consume
and control him. I imagine that these are details that she got from her
many visions, as she doesn't even attempt to tie any of this fanfic narrative
to anything that can be found in the Bible. But what I find interesting
here is the bit about how Jesus recognized Satan's jealousy and pride and tried to
give him a second chance. That doesn't sound very godlike, at least not
when talking about the modern Christian God. The whole reason humanity supposedly needs Jesus
is because even the slightest sin against God is worthy of eternal torture in hell.
And yet God tried to give Satan a second chance. He already felt
jealousy and pride. According to her narrative, those are sins. Sins must
be punished with an eternity in hell. But not only did Satan get a
second chance, God actually kept him on as his right hand man, allowing
him to spread discontent among the angels. And at this point in the fanfic
we get a really telling admission. The law of God is anti liberty.
Quote. He suggested that these laws were unnecessary and held them back since their
natures were holy. He urged that angels should follow their own wills. God
had dealt unfairly with him by giving supreme honor to Christ. He claimed he
was not trying to exalt himself, but was seeking to win liberty for every
being in heaven so that each one could reach a higher level of existence.
Now I'm sure she'd answer with the typical true liberty is becoming a slave to
Christ, thing that Christians are so fond of saying. But such war is
peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance's strength double speak is somewhat unconvincing,
to say the least. And going back to the whole thing about God having
perfect justice that requires punishing people with an eternity of torture for even the smallest
of slights, you know, like looking at someone and thinking they have a
nice butt. After Satan conspired to spread lies about God himself among the angels,
she says God was patient with Lucifer. He did not remove him from
his honored position, even when he began to make false claims to the angels
again and again, God offered him pardon if he would repent and submit.
Why does Satan get forgiveness for simply repenting and submitting while a human has to
accept a human sacrifice before forgiveness is even on the table. This flies in
the face of the whole perfect justice idea of God God. She says that
discontent had never before been known in heaven. At first, Lucifer himself did
not understand the real nature of his feelings. So God made angels with the
capacity to feel discontent, but without the understanding of what that is or what
it meant. Can Satan really be blamed for being as God made him?
And this part actually could be considered biblical. It seems to mirror the bit
in the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve didn't know right from wrong,
and so literally we're not capable of comprehending what the problem was with disobeying God.
God seems to be a fan of making people ignorant and then punishing them
for acting out of their ignorance. At this point, Satan apparently started telling
other angels that Jesus was plotting to humiliate him in front of all the other
angels, and this was apparently enough to require that God not remove him from
his high position, because in doing so, he would in fact humiliate him
in front of the other angels. And it's definitely not possible for an all
powerful God to have known in advance that Satan was going to do that and
so cut him off before he had the chance. Right quote, it was
necess harry for God to allow him to develop his plans fully so that anyone
could see their true nature. Lucifer was greatly loved by the heavenly beings,
and his influence over them was strong. And then we get surprise Aliens,
as she says God's government included the inhabitants not only of Heaven, but of
all the worlds he had created. I honestly did not expect to see a
bunch of stuff about Satan trying to win aliens to his cause during the celestial
revolt that ultimately gets them kicked out of Heaven in the chapter on why suffering
exists, But there it is. Anyway, Satan is apparently so good at
lying and being mysterious that he managed to work things so that Sin would not
appear to be evil until after his plans are fully developed. And because God
is limited to righteousness and truth, he could not adequately counter Satan's lies because
apparently the truth isn't always the best way to counter a lie. So Satan
flipped the script, and even though all the discord in Heaven was caused by
him, he said that it was a result of God's government, and so
God was helpless. All he could do, who was let Satan play out
his plan, because that is apparently the only way to get the whole universe,
angels, aliens, and all to see Satan for who he truly is,
and so at this point it became necessary to evict Satan, but God
was still apparently unable to destroy him, because in so doing, the remaining
inhabitants of heaven and the other alien worlds would think that God was being an
unjust meani pants. In order to fully understand the consequences of sin, God
has to let Satan to continue to screw things up and cause trouble. Otherwise,
the angels and aliens might only worship God out of fear rather than love.
Because you know, the God who threatens non believers with eternal torture and
has his prophets write down words like fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom is known for not wanting people to worship him out of fear, but
anyway, she says, for the good of the universe. Through eternal ages,
Satan must develop his principles more fully than all created beings would be able
to see his charges against the divine government in their true light. So God
us without the ability to understand why Satan's actions would be wrong. So we
have to see Satan's actions fully play out in order to grasp that side.
Note that's a nice little nod to consequentialist ethics. I thought we got our
morals from God's nature, in which case, comparing Satan's actions to God's nature
should be sufficient to expose them as immoral right from the get go, without
having to wait for him to fully flesh out his plan. But apparently ethics
are consequentialist, so we have to see the consequences of Satan's actions anyway.
God announces that he's about to kick Satan out to Heaven, which is the
catalyst that Satan needed to be able to openly condemn God's law, blaming Jesus
and his authoritarianism for the rebellion. So Satan gets kicked out of Heaven and
for some reason is allowed to live on Earth. Don't see why God had
to let that happen, But she says, Satan's spirit still inspires rebellion on
earth in unrepentant people like him. They promise liberty through violating God's law.
Condemning sin still stirs up hatred. Satan leads people to justify themselves and to
try and get the sympathy of others in their sin. Instead of correcting their
errors, they spread resentment of the one who points out their sin, as
if that individual were the cause of the difficulty. This is one of those
thought patterns that undergirds a lot of the modern Christian persecution complex. Not letting
me force other people to live according to religious dictates that they do not hold
is following Satan's plan pretending that liberty is actually liberty. Your condemnation of sins
that I don't see a problem with are not what stirs up hatred. It's
when you attempt to coerce other people into behaving as though they agree with your
condemnation, even when they do not. The freedom to disagree is indeed a
liberty. You can disagree with me all you want, but as long as
my behaviors are not causing harm to anyone, you should not be able to
police them. And I extend that same courtesy to you. When a Christian
hate preacher wants to preach hate, as long as they aren't calling for violence,
I don't call for them to be silenced. Now this is not to
say that I don't think that any speech that isn't an explicit call for violence
should be consequence free, just that legal consequences shouldn't come into play. For
example, I don't think it should be ill legal to say that you think
being gay is a sin, but the social consequences for bigotry should be such
that you are not comfortable stating such things publicly. So yeah, God's law
is most definitely not liberating, and in order to describe it as such,
Christians have to twist the meaning of the word liberty and now without explaining how
Satan wound up on Earth in the first place after being kicked out of Heaven.
After all, you'd think that in all powerful God could have banish him
to a location where he couldn't cause any more trouble. She says that Satan
misrepresented God's character to Adam and Eve in order to trick them into sinning.
No mention as to why God didn't warn Adam and Eve about Satan's existence,
or why God put the forbidden fruit somewhere where it would be easily accessible to
them, or why he made the fruit obviously delicious, just that Satan tricked
them into eating it by misrepresenting God, even though the Bible literally states that
the reason Satan gave for them not being allowed to eat from the Tree of
Knowledge was really the reason they weren't allowed to eat from it. Satan is
the only character in that whole story who told the truth, and in reality,
it wasn't even Satan. It was just a plain old snake described as
being the most clever of the beasts of the field, not an angel who
got kicked out of heaven. She says at this point that in banishing Satan
from heaven, God declared his justice and honor, But when human descinned,
God gave evidence of his love by offering up his son to die for the
fallen race. There's a couple things to note here. Firstly, God gives
evidence of his love by providing a path to salvation for humanity, but no
such path exists for Satan apparently, so it appears as though we found a
boundary to God's boundless love. Second, it's not like he provided this path
to salvation immediately, if you're a Young Earth creationist. He waited four thousand
years before deciding to intervene, even though he could have done so right from
the get go, and had Christianity be the dominant religion on every continent right
from the beginning of time, rather than having it start in Israel and slowly
spread through the world, mostly in the form of violence and oppression of other
religions. And if you don't assume a Young Earth creationist viewpoint, it gets
even worse, as God allowed humanity to exist, live, suffer, die,
and be condemned to hell for hundreds of thousands of years before intervening.
She claims that the Jesus sacrifice thing is essentially the climax of God's plan to
let Satan fully flesh out his plan before crushing it. Satan accused God of
exalting himself by demanding obedience from all his created creatures, demanding self denial from
all of them while not practicing it himself, and jesus sacrifice has now made
it clear to the universe that he actually made a bigger sacrifice than anyone else,
even though realistically, jesus sacrifice couldn't possibly have amounted to more than just
a slight inconvenience for such a powerful being, like even from just a temporal
perspective, if we ignore the fact that God is supposed to be eternal and
thirty three years out of an attorney is literally zero percent of that time,
we can say that God has existed since the beginning of time and go with
the young Earth creationist numbers to make the best case for it being a large
sacrifice as possible. So Jesus then existed for about four thousand years at the
right hand of God in heaven, being equal to the most powerful being in
the universe. Then he spent about thirty three years on earth, had a
really terrible weekend at the end of it, and then ascended back into heaven
to be the most powerful being in the universe. Again, thirty three years
out of six thousand amounts to a whopping zero point five to five percent.
So thus far, if we assume that God is limited by time, which
Christians absolutely do not, and Jesus sacrificed a grand total of zero point five
to five percent of his total time and existence to save humanity. By contrast,
the average life expectancy for someone who is born today is seventy three point
four years. If that person spends one hour out of every week at church,
that's zero point five to nine percent of their life sacrificed to God,
who only sacrifices zero point five to five percent of his life for us.
Now, sure, church is generally a more pleasant experience than being crucified,
but most of Jesus' life on earth was spent not being crucified. If we
take that into consideration and be generous and assume that the lead up to the
crucifixion and the time spent dead all count as the worst part of jesus life,
and assume that it was three full twenty four hour days instead of the
less than forty eight hours that it really was, we're down to zero point
zero zero eight percent of jesus total existence spent actively sacrificing, compared to humans
sacrificing zero point five nine percent of their lives to God as a minimum expectation,
with some people attending church multiple times a week and some church services going
on for four or more hours, giving us a range of zero point five
nine percent to as much as two point three seven percent of our lives sacrificed
to God. And when you consider that, many sermons are preached about how
you're not just supposed to give your Sundays to God, you're supposed to live
your entire life as though you were in church, giving the whole thing to
God. Then we wind up with an expectation that one hundred percent of your
life is sacrificed to God. So, yeah, the numbers don't lie.
Satan was correct when he said that God is demanding self denial while being unwilling
to do the same at least on anything even approaching the same scale at which
he demands it of others. At this point, she says, Christ did
not come to earth to die just so that he could redeem humanity. He
came to demonstrate to all the worlds that God's law is unchangeable. The death
of Christ proves that the laws and demonstrates that justice and mercy are the foundation
of God's government. In the final judgment, it will be clear that no
cause for sin exists. When the judge of all the Earth demands of Satan,
why have you rebelled against me? The originator of evil will have no
excuse to offer. So this is where we finally learn that the reason.
The chapter opened by saying it's impossible to explain the origin of sin in a
way that gives a reason for its existence. She meant a justification that would
excuse the commission of sin, not an explanation of the origin of sin,
but also This passage raises another question. The death of Christ on Earth demonstrated
to all the worlds, presumably even the alien ones that were mentioned earlier.
That God's law is permanent and unchanging. Does that mean that the aliens are
watching history unfold on Earth like a TV show? Is the Truman Show real?
But the Earth is Truman, with God Satan, the angels and demons
being the actors around Truman, and the alien worlds being the audience. That's
slightly unsettling and worth mentioning is that despite Jesus saying that he did not come
to abolish the law but to fulfill it, he most definitely abolished at least
parts of it and often directly contradicted it, saying things like you have heard
that it was said an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth. But I say to you, do not resist the one who is
evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him
the other. Also the eye for an eye bit is a direct reference to
the law. Leviticus twenty four nineteen through twenty says if anyone injures his neighbor
as he has done, it shall be done to him fracture for fracture,
eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Whatever injury he has given a person
shall be given to him. Jesus literally references the law before directly contradicting it,
giving a new command, one of non resistance. I don't see how
such changes to the law could possibly be seen as demonstrating that the law is
unchanging. She finishes this chapter by saying evil will never arise again. The
law of God will be honored as the law of liberty. A tested,
improved creation will never again turn from loyalty to him who has demonstrated that his
character is fathomless love and infinite wisdom. So I think this is attempting to
answer the question of how free will could possibly in heaven if free will results
in the presence of sin and evil, the idea being that after seeing the
whole story of Satan play out, everyone will freely choose to stick to God's
law because we can all see without a doubt that the law was set down
out of love for us. Unfortunately, this explanation is once again foiled by
God's omni characteristics. If God is all powerful, all knowing, and all
loving, then he knows how to design creatures with free will that already have
the required knowledge that will result in them honoring the law of God because they
know that it is given out of fathomless love and infinite wisdom. He has
the power to do so, and since he loves all of his creative creatures,
he would do so in order to avoid the necessity of sending any of
them to Hell, or even just watching the ones who end up in heaven
endure a life of hardship that could have been avoided. So, while I
understand at this point that when you said that the origin of sin is impossible
to explain in a way that gives a reason for its existence, you meant
in a way that justifies it rather than just accounting for it, I'm just
going to go ahead and agree with my first understand of that statement. It's
impossible to explain it in a way that adequately accounts for its existence given the
omni characteristics of God. And that's it for chapter one. I don't know
if the rest of the book is as much narrative storytelling as this one was.
Part of me hopes that it is. It made my job really easy
when all I had to do is summarize the plot that she laid out and
then comment that that was bonkers. But really, I'm just happy to have
these apologetics ideas that are actually still pretty common today, presented in a way
that is novel to me. I do love a good fantasy book, and
well, I wouldn't exactly classify this as good fantasy. It was way more
fun to read than Pastor Dicky was today's comment the day it comes to us
from Marty Lawrence five five to three to two. And it's a bit of
a longer one, and it has atrocious grammar. So if I don't read
it verbatim, I apologize. Sometimes I automatically correct bad grammar as I'm reading
it. So Marty says, evolution. What evolution? It's the already in
place epigenome in all life that does the adaptations to change environments, diets,
or new threats. Its actions are called epigenetics. In twenty fourteen, it
was materially proven to have even done the Darwin finchbeak adaptations, along with a
variety of other organisms that was looked at. Since the means for adaptations are
in place before new environments occurs, then logistically it takes on an intelligent design
signature, not the godless one of random evolution. So with classic adaptations being
explained above, it leaves effects from mutations. These effects would be new phenotypes,
new traits, or new speciation. The epigenome derived adaptations would be increase
of information, and effects for mutation would be loss of information. The two
are not one in the same as evolutionists would have you believe. Neither are
postulated evolution. The epigenome derived adaptations were wrongly called micro evolution, then macro
evolution mind constructs were piggybacked upon the wrong contrived precept of evolution. You see,
folks, after researching evolution in peer reviewed papers, I have the actual
scientific explanation why evolution is not happening. I've got these logistics down. We
are from it intelligent design. The intelligent designer Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is
a fact. He is what he said he was. He offers a free
gift of eternal, forever life just by your faith in his sacrifice, which
takes your sins from your possession, putting upon him in exchange for you.
Blah blah blah blah blah bah blah. Yeah, we all know the Christian
thing. So First off, yes, epigenetics do absolutely play a role in
evolutionary change. It does so when the epigenetic change occurs in a somatic cell
and is thus a heritable change. This is one of the processes at play,
aside from genetic mutation, that provides variation for natural selection to act upon.
I know of nobody who actually understands evolution who thinks that mutations are the
sole provider of novel structures, functions, proteins, or what have you.
Now that said, you obviously don't understand epigenetics, though in your defense you
at least seem to have a better grasp with a concept than Frank Turrek does.
You are saying that the epigenome was in place before the new environment,
thus proving that the epigenome was designed by God to allow adaptation. But that's
simply not the case. The a genome is determined entirely by the environment in
which the DNA that it is affecting occurs. I've said in previous videos that
DNA is not like a blueprint because how the DNA plays out will change depending
on the environment of the cell that it's in. Some genes will be expressed,
others will not. Others will be expressed in a different way, etc.
This is regulated by epigenetics. Each type of cell has its own environment
which epigenetically impacts the DNA, causing it to be expressed differently than the same
strand of DNA in a different type of cell. So it's not like a
human has a singular epigenome. Each cell type has its own epigenome, and
the epigenome of a cell can be altered during its lifetime, often through exposure
to elements in the overall organism's larger environment. Now, what I think Marty
is thinking of when he says that the epigenome was there before the environment is
phenotypic plasticity, the phenomenon in which two of the same organism will have genes
that are expressed differently depending on its environment. My go to example for this
was when I took water lettus out of my father's backyard pond and put it
in an indoor fish The original plant that came from outside had leaves that were
curled upwards, but all of the offshoot plants that began their life in the
fish tank had flat leaves, which I suspect was due to the light in
the fish tank, not providing as much energy as the sunlight out in the
pond, so they grew in a way that maximized the surface area that would
be exposed to light. The epigenome plays an important role in phenotypic plasticity,
but that doesn't mean that all changes that an organism undergoes as it adapts to
a new environment are necessarily epigenetic in nature, it's a bunch of different factors
of which epigenetics is but one and well, there definitely was a twenty fourteen
paper that showed that epigenetics likely played the main role in the adaptation of Darwin's
finches. That in no way invalidates all of the evolutionary changes that we know
took place through mutation, gene duplication, whole genome duplication, endosymbiosis, and
all of the other evolutionary mechanisms. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to go
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