Both are caused by sin.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That could only be the second death.

How could any death be caused by anything else? Only Satan could be interested in any other idea.

That's what I said, but using this paradigm's language.

But if both the 1st and 2nd death have the same exact cause, how is it that God saves everyone from the 1st but not the 2nd? As Daryl asked, what's the difference?

Definitions from one of Melashenko's slides:

INIQUITY = TE's (MGE's)

SIN = THE UNSANCTIONED CHANGING OF GOD'S INFORMATION SYSTEM (GENOME) BY EITHER DELETING OR ADDING TO THE CODE WHICH LEADS TO ADDICTION IF NOT CONTROLLED.

I'm finally on part 5.

Melashenko said that the Tree of Life would have kept them alive. This was part of his argument that sin is a physical problem since a physical solution (eating of the Tree of Life) exists.

But if sin ALWAYS kills when left to itself, and the Tree of Life could prevent death, the logical conclusion is that eating of the Tree of Life eradicates sin. Then just should have just let Adam and Eve have this antidote to sin.

It is not an antidote to sin. It would not eradicate sin.

Had man after his fall been allowed free access to the tree of life, he would have lived forever, and thus sin would have been immortalized. {GC 533.3}

Eating from the tree of life, would have immortalized sin! No plan of redemption! And what kind of life would that have been? We see it in our lives now. We would live on in ever increasing misery.

I think we tend to compartmentalized with this first and second death idea.

As I wrote in another thread --
The wages of sin is death, and when Adam and Eve sinned, death passed on all men.
Few people seem to realize that death (the FIRST death)is the punishment of sin and it was final, with no hope. People would die the so called "first" death and that would be it for eternity.

BUT then Christ took our sins upon Himself and died upon the cross.

The question -- since the punishment of sin was death and that death was eternal-- would Christ remain in the tomb because He was carrying all our sins?

We are told that doubt was even in Jesus mind as he hung upon the cross.
The first death WAS FINAL and the question was huge -- would this be the end of Christ?

But because He Himself was totally without sin, sinless, the grave could not hold Him, and broke open the prison house of death. It is ONLY because Christ conquered this first death and burst forth from the tomb that there will be a resurrection.

Because of what Christ did, everyone resurrected -- everyone of us.

Christ will never die a second time, but those who rejected Christ's marvellous gift of life, will die again, because they rejected what Christ did for them.

In mercy God will not allow them to live in the agony of knowing what they have lost and die the slow death of aging and the shutting down of the body that people often experience in the first death. The end for them will be quick and complete.

And so God took away the tree of life so people would die. Pulled the plug to the life giving tree so people would die.
That was the punishment for their sin.

If this is done by the mercy of God (which I won't argue against)
why would one question the mercy of God in ending the increasing misery of sin caused by a group or nation whose "cup of iniquity" was full, as in sending fire to destroy Sodom, so others could live in a society more conducive for people accepting salvation and the ways of life and righteousness that God offered.

I see your point. If sin caused some kind of "rearrangement" of the DNA code (or whatever the scientific formula theorized) then eating from the tree of life should fix that messed up "rearrangement" and destroy those MGE invaders that were injected by eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge.
And since "the MGE give the propensity to the behaviors we call sin," then eating of the tree of life would be getting rid of those propensities that causes people to sin.

Therefore there would be no "increase of misery" because the chemical situation that causes sin would be no longer in our system.
The tree of life would indeed be the antidote to sin.