Life and matter

[bkrishna_n_a]

How do you refute the the theory "Life comes from matter", with an

evidence.

 

[LRDD]

Life definitely doesn't come from matter. If so we should be able to give back life to a dead body by permutation and combination of matter. Even a dead tree can't be brought back to life by injecting chemicals. When the life force leaves the body, it begins to decay and decompose. If life is also coming from matter and death has occured due to say,heart attack,which means stop of functioning of the heart, we should be able to bring life to the dead body by making arrangements for the heart to pump again or air to pass in and out of the nostrils! So, these are only the symptoms of life in the body and shows that the life force is of the different nature than the body which is made up of matter. As long as the life force is there the matter functions. When a baby is born dead, it doesn't grow anymore. So growth and the other six changes takes place in the body as long as the living force is ENLIVENING the dead body.

So life didn't come from matter, does not come from matter and will not come from matter.

[Gauracandra]

When talking about whether life comes from matter I think we inevitably get into a discussion of Darwinian Evolution. I think the best book I've read that raises serious doubts about evolution is Michael Behe's "Darwins Black Box". I'm sure you will be able to find many reviews/ commentaries on this book, both pro and con, on the Internet. In case you are not familiar with the term black box, it refers to a process in which inputs go in, and then through some unknown process, outputs come out. The point he makes is that when Darwin developed his theory, he knew of the existence of the Cell (the black box) but he had no understanding of what was going on in the cell.

 

Certainly I will not be able to do justice to the book in a few short paragraphs, but one of the key arguments Behe makes is called "irreducible complexity". To give you a brief background, Michael Behe is a professor of Microbiology at Stanford University. In his argument against evolution he analyzes what occurs on the molecular level within the cell (something Darwin could never have known). He gives many examples, but for simplicity sake lets take blood cloting. When I cut my finger, my blood cells start to coagulate and seal up the wound. Thus I don't bleed to death. Suppose for this to occur I would need a certain protein sequence 12345. Behe's argument is that having sequence 12 5 will not help you. It is all or nothing.

 

Now evolutionarily speaking suppose I was able to get part 1 of the sequence. And then after 20,000 years of random processes I got part 5 on the other end. Now these are stand alone pieces. According to the rules established by Darwinian theory, if my body is producing things which I don't need, it will for energy conservation SELECT these items out. I can't say "I have piece 1 but just hold on, in another 100,000 years I'll have pieces 2 and 5, and then in 50,000 years I'll get pieces 3 and 4 and voila I'll have something useful called Blood Clotting. If your body is producing things it doesn't need, according to the very rules of Evolution, they will fade away. This is how they explain why we no longer have a tail. We had no use for it so over time it disappeared.

 

Thus from a molecular level you have irreducible complexity, a system so complex that if one piece is missing the entire system fails in its purpose. You either have all or nothing. The body is very finely tuned. If even a small piece is out of sequence you get things like Downe's Syndrome, Sickle Cell Anemia, Cancer etc.... It is partly because of this view that there has been a rather large change in Evolutionary theory (though you hardly ever hear of it). The traditional view is that evolution is a gradual process. But ideas like irreducible complexity bring into serious question this gradual process. There is a large and growing segment of Evolutionary theorists that acknowledge this problem. Their solution to this problem is to say that instead of occuring slowly, evolution actually occurs in big spurts. So one day I'm sitting around, and the next day I have sequence 12345, and all at once I've evolved the ability to clot blood. I say this jokingly, but pretty soon they'll say evolution occured in 6 days and on the seventh took a rest.

 

The problem is that you will never get rid of the Theory of Evolution. No matter how many serious questions you may bring up that call it into question, unless you can bring in another materially based theory that replaces it, it will stay. If I remember correctly, according to Vedic teachings, the size of the soul is described as such: Take the very, very tip of a hair, the smallest possible portion. Then cut this tip into two pieces. Then take one of these pieces and cut it in two. Then again and again, for 10,000 times. At the very end of this process you'll be left with an infinitesimally small piece. And that is the size of the soul. The soul is smaller than the atom and yet pervades the whole body. So how can our crude material tools analyze something which is both spiritual and infinitely small. This is the problem. Scientists will never be able to detect the soul and will always be looking for material processes to explain everything.

 

Gauracandra

[tintin]

" Life comes from matter " ?

 

Science has not been able to accurately define life. It has known the characteristics of living being and the things essential for its existence, but has never defined 'life' itself. In my opinion, you can not prove the above statement unless you understand what 'life' really is.