“It is interesting that death is not a biological necessity. Every living cell and organism is equipped with the essential machinery to ensure repair and renewal so that life can continue indefinitely. Surprising as it may seem, eternal life is not a biological impossibility! In one sense, although individual cells are destined to die, organisms seem to be designed to live forever. The ageing process involves active biological mechanisms, as yet poorly understood, which cause the repair and renewal process to malfunction, leading ultimately to biological decay and death. Perhaps this is a physical counterpart of the biblical truth that through human evil, the creation is ‘in bondage to decay’ Romans 8:21″
– Professor John Wyatt, Issues Facing Christians Today
Death is not a biological necessity
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2 responses
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For me as an individual I would personally like ever lasting life. However for the species I belong to it would be disastrous as it would impede our ability to adapt to our environment. It would also be a problem from a population control point of view. In short death is natural a part of our biological history. This said, we have reached a point where we start to understand the nature of ageing. And we can, on good ground, expect to solve this problem with in a couple of decades given current rate of research. Given my age of 45 I will have 50% chance to see it happen. My children? Most likely they will have a whole range of enhancements to choose from when they reach my age.
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Hi JH, thanks for the comment and interesting perspective. I’m not sure living longer would make us less adaptable would it? I’m not sure death is necessary for evolution to take place. I’m only a few years younger than you but I’m not sure there’s a 50% chance we’ll crack death. There are more people living until they’re 100 but not yet more people living longer – only one person has been verified to live beyond 120. It would seem more likely that before death itself is avoided we’d see significant progress in life extension but not so far. Science has long way to go before it can help me live to 150, eternal life seems a long way off. But what seems interesting in the article is that we seem built for constant renewal yet somehow we have decay.
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