Board index ‹ Assorted Bible Questions

[Pokemon]

If god made life so valuable why is death so necessary. For even just the most basic of survival. Animals die if they are unable to kill. That's why some animals like togers are muscular. They have to kill something that does not want to die to survive.

[jimwalton]

Death is how life perpetuates. Dead trees and leaves create compost, replenishing the soil. An organism can't thrive if death is not part of life.

All food requires death of some sort. If it isn't a lion killing and eating a gazelle, it's a hippo tearing out plants. Life as we know it cannot continue without death.

Death stimulates quality. Any apple orchard owner will tell you how pruning is necessary for healthy trees and fruit. So will any vineyard owner or even a florist who owns a greenhouse. You have to pinch back buds, trim off renegades, and cut off superfluous leads to nurture the desirable stalk.

Lindsay Stokes, in an article called “Why Our Body Destroys Itself,” relates the work of Nobel Prize winner Yoshinori Ohsumi. Ohsumi writes about autophagy, the body’s self-eating tendencies that are vital to our survival. Cells wrap proteins and organelles in a protective membrane and then shred them with enzymes, the equivalent of watching a wrecking ball reduce a skyscraper into a pile of rubble. It destroys to purge and utilize. Wouldn’t this cell prefer to have all of its organelles—just as a body would prefer to have all of its organs? Why, in the face of adversity, would a cell demolish something it had worked to build?

Ohsumi’s team discovered that autophagy isn’t cellular cruelty so much as it is necessary pruning. “Organisms never waste precious resources without good reason,” Ohsumi said, “and degradation is a process essential for the creation of new life.” At its core this process was one of destruction, but it was not reckless. A cell that was indiscriminately destroying pieces of itself was not going to last long, but one that could select old, broken, misshapen, or malignant proteins and recycle them into something new would flourish.

Researchers building on Ohsumi’s work have found evidence of autophagy in every tissue of the human body resulting in surprising consequent vitality. The heart autophagocytizes mitochondria (the organelles within a cell responsible for energy production) when they age and slow down so it can replace them with newer, healthier ones. Neurons in the brain clear away misfolded or damaged proteins that would otherwise build up and block transmission of the signals that compose our thoughts and actions. Even scars are not left behind; instead, through a slow and long process, cells carefully excise and reorganize the fibers of wounds. The mark on the skinned knee fades. The broken bone returns to full strength.

Such sacrifice and destruction let us build something better, preventing greater evil and preserving a greater good. Cells in a human embryo can appear to eat themselves nearly to the point of death, but that’s what turns it from something that looks like a tadpole into something that looks more like a baby. In other words, sacrifice now produces benefits later. Whether the sacrifice is submission to pain, change, or loss, we believe that "suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character" (Rom. 5.3-4) because the truth of it plays out in every theater of our lives. Whether it is in relationships, education, or the gym, we lose something and experience pain to be better off. These are biblical ideas. "Every branch that bears fruit [my Father] prunes so that it will be even more fruitful" (John 15.2).

[Pokemon]

I guess why tho? Could he not come up with a better system?

[jimwalton]

Wow, it's my perspective that, given what we know about science, death is one of the most perfect recycling plans that could ever be devised. What kind of a "better system" is even possible? If new growth and new life doesn't come from death, it has to come from spontaneous generation, in which case we will soon have an overabundance of organisms that just keep filling the Earth. And yet if nothing is ever allowed to die, we just keep piling up organisms to the point of grotesque overpopulation, scarcity of resources, and (presumably) endless suffering. And how can anything EAT if there is no death? What does anyone eat without killing it? I'm not sure there IS a better system. What would it be, and how's it even possible?