Claim. Physical death is built into the principle-of-creation — even unfallen humans were designed to shed the flesh after a full earthly life and transition to the spirit-world forever. The body is the spirit’s “clothing”; nothing material can live forever. The spirit world is part of the original creation, not a post-Fall holding pen for displaced souls.
Elaboration. Per 1.2. The Death Caused by the Human Fall: “God created human beings to grow old and return to dust; physical death was allotted to human beings regardless of whether or not they fell.” Adam died at the biblical age of 930 “but this was not the death caused by the Fall.” Per the principle-of-creation, “the flesh is the clothing of the spirit. Just as one discards worn-out clothes, the flesh is to be discarded when it has grown old and weak. Only the unclothed spirit self then enters the spirit world.”
The argument is structural: if humans were meant to live on earth forever in the flesh, why create the spirit world at all? “The spirit world was not created after the Fall as a place for fallen spirits to abide. Rather, it is part of the original creation.”
DP uses the caterpillar-to-butterfly analogy: a self-aware caterpillar might cling to leaf-life, unaware it is destined for fragrant-flower-and-nectar life. Humans’ fear of death stems from Fall-induced ignorance of the beautiful spirit-world transition; unfallen people would relate naturally with spirits and welcome the day they enter that world.
Major break with mainstream Christianity, which reads Gen 3:19 (“dust you are, to dust you shall return”) and Rom 5:12 as making mortality the Fall’s penalty. DP makes mortality original-design and limits the Fall’s penalty to spiritual death (see dp-fall-caused-spiritual-not-physical-death).
See also. dp-spirit-grows-only-in-the-flesh-on-earth, dp-cosmos-as-incorporeal-and-corporeal-spirit-as-subject