Being among the living, all of us have a bias toward life. We are not to blame, for our first reference point is our own existence. We view life as special, something unique, divine, sacred. We naturally consider life as inherently superior to inanimate objects that do not enjoy our vital fluids. Being dead is less interesting than being alive.
But our fealty to the living, while understandable, obscures some uncomfortable truths. As comedian George Carlin observed with this typically offbeat take on the sanctity of life: "If everything that ever lived is dead, and everything that's alive is gonna die, where does the sacred part come in? I mean, life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realize that God is one of the leading causes of death."
Our preconceptions, our biases, and our self-serving tendency to view life as sacred derive in part from the fact that life is mysterious and notoriously difficult to define with precision. The difficulty arises because every characteristic that was supposed to be unique to life has ultimately been found in non-living systems. Each new description of life seems to exclude some form of existence that can reasonably be deemed alive or to include something inanimate.
Defining life matters because one must first have a refined understanding of the essence of life in general to comprehend human life in particular -- or more to the point, human existence in relation to other forms of life and our supporting physical environment. Wrestling with the difficult task of defining life is necessary if we are to reveal god's superfluous role and understand humanity's humble place on Earth.
Historically, the effort to distinguish life from non-life has proven so difficult partly because the quest has been based on an erroneous assumption. From the early Greeks to modern thinkers, great minds have recoiled from the notion that life might be a matter of degree, because our intuition so strongly demands that something be alive or not. But our intuition serves us poorly here.
Most people would logically reject the conclusions from quantum mechanics that an electron will exhibit the properties of either a particle or wave, depending on how we measure its activity. But experiments have proven that duality with incredible degrees of precision. Similarly, the more rigorously we attempt to define life the more we encounter ambiguous cases that test our assumptions, stretch the limits of our definitions, and demonstrate where intuition and common sense falter. With even modest scrutiny, the essence of what makes something alive quickly becomes non-intuitive when we are presented with forms that defy easy categorization, such as crystallized virus capsules or bacterial spores. Then we have prions: nothing but raw protein containing no genetic code. Yet these proteins self-replicate and cause horrible brain-wasting maladies such as mad-cow disease, Scrapie, and Creutzfeld-Jacob disease.
While philosophers and biologists have failed to meet the challenge of defining life, in their labors we find clues to how this impasse can be overcome. The fact that scientists have discovered no simple quality that defines life, after endless years of effort, is an important hint that life is not something materially different from non-life but instead represents a natural place in a continuum from simple to complex.
History has failed to give us a good definition precisely because life was viewed not on this continuum from inanimate to animate, but as a huge leap from one to the other. To be alive meant having a special essence, something beyond the normal mechanisms that governed inorganic chemistry and physics. The tendency to invoke "vital forces" to explain life endures today in much of the general public. But vitalism, the principle of endowing the living with a life force, is tautological and explains nothing. If something is alive, it must have a life force; if it is dead, a life force must be absent. That is not helpful.
We now know that no life force exists. The laws of physics and chemistry are indifferent to our struggle to define life, and operate identically on the same principles whether we deem something to be living or dead. The carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, iron and other atoms that come together to form our bodies are just atoms; they are the same elements that are found in the iron skillet in our kitchens and the nitrogen in the soil fertilizing our gardens. The atoms in our bodies are not special or endowed with any properties different from the atoms in every object around us. Iron is iron is iron, whether attached to hemoglobin in our blood or flaking off the hull of a rusting ship.
Digression for Nerds
But before going any further, let's pause to clarify two concepts critical to the definition of life that have already been introduced: a continuum and atoms.
Stuff Without Borders
A continuum describes a whole with no part that can be distinguished from neighboring parts except by arbitrary division. The best example is visible light. You know without hesitation when something is green (Astroturf) or blue (the newest M&M candy), but cannot say exactly when one color yields to the next. Any attempt to define where one color ends and the other begins becomes arbitrary because green turns to blue across a smooth gradient of frequencies with no inherent boundaries. This nature of the light spectrum applies to the idea of living and non-living as well. If we call green "inanimate" and blue "animate" we see that no boundary exists between the two because they transition one to the other with no intervening gap.
Starstruck Atoms
Atoms deserve special attention since everything we know, alive or not, is an aggregation of atoms. A quick story about these basic building blocks of nature and their astronomical origin will help demystify the stuff of which we are made and make the concept of life's ambiguity more accessible.
The simplest and lightest atoms -- such as hydrogen, helium, and some lithium -- formed just moments after the Big Bang. A star derives energy from nuclear fusion, a process that combines these lighter elements into heavier elements. Our own sun is currently fusing hydrogen to helium, a process that will occupy most of its lifetime. After the hydrogen supply is depleted, the star will burn helium to form progressively heavier elements such as carbon, oxygen, silicon, sulfur, and iron. Up to a point, fusion releases energy and is therefore self-sustaining, which is why we see the sun shining every morning (unless you live in Seattle).
But the creation of elements heavier than iron requires the input of energy, and is not self-sustaining. Some other source of energy is needed, and that comes from the explosion of a supernova. A massive star will eventually deplete its energy source of lighter elements. The star will collapse into itself when no longer supported by the release of nuclear energy through fusion. If the original star was sufficiently massive, the collapse will release a huge amount of energy in a spectacular explosion. The resulting supernova supplies the energy necessary to support fusion of nuclei heavier than iron. The explosion also causes a blast wave that ejects the elements into interstellar space. Some of this dust is eventually gathered up in planets, like Earth, as new solar systems form. Every single carbon atom in your body, and every carbon atom in the charcoal at the bottom of your barbecue, comes from such interstellar dust.
Derived from stardust, the elements in your body exhibit no special properties. Carbon is carbon. Nitrogen is nitrogen. As far back as 1828, Friedrich Wöhler proved the point when he synthesized urea during his attempts to make ammonium cyanate, demonstrating that compounds once considered the provenance of life (like urea) could be made from ordinary inorganic materials, all derived from the detritus of spent stars. Atoms are just atoms; the stuff of life is the same as the stuff of non-life. All of us and all the things around us are quite literally star dust.
Definitions Found Wanting
This understanding both informs and complicates our efforts to define life, exemplified by the most recent edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The venerable lady suggests that life is a "state characterized by the ability to metabolize nutrients (process materials for energy and tissue building), grow, reproduce, and respond and adapt to environmental stimuli."
At first, that sounds perfectly reasonable. But the Britannica definition is in fact completely inadequate, incorporating only a small number of traits from a suite of primary characteristics that have been included in previous definitions of life:
• Autonomy
• Reproduction
• Stability, Change and Evolution
• Resistance to Entropy
• Conversion of Matter and Energy
• Metabolism
• Excretion
• Movement
• Autopoiesis
• Homeostasis
• Complexity
• Organization
• Growth and Development
• Respiration
• Responsiveness
For our purposes here, we do not need to go into detail about what each of those terms mean. But we know that every trait in that list has a fatal flaw as a means of defining life. Every trait fails as a prerequisite for life because:
1) It is present in some non-living systems (crystals exhibit growth, for example); or
2) It is absent in some living systems (movement cannot define life when living things like sponges don't move); or
3) It can only be determined or defined across generations (evolution, reproduction), depriving us of the ability to decide if the creature before us is alive or not.
Every single characteristic or trait that has ever been used to define life suffers from one or more of these three deficiencies. But perhaps two additional categories, information and artificial life, will help us escape from this dilemma.
Information
Every living things carries within itself a set of instructions for how to develop into a specific type of living thing. Every cell in your body has a complete set of DNA, which acts like the blueprint for an architect building a house. Your DNA contains all the instructions for making you. But somebody needs to read the blueprint to convert the plans into bricks and mortar. That is the role of RNA, which translates the code embedded within DNA by converting the information in the DNA into proteins, the building blocks of all life. If DNA is like an architect with a complete set of blueprints, then RNA is like the general contractor, who reads and translates the architect's plans to build the structure. In this analogy, the structure is a set of proteins, which in fact is what you are.
Think of DNA and RNA as information that each organism uses to build itself. Richard Dawkins has succinctly captured this idea: "There is nothing special about the substances from which living things are made. Living things are collections of molecules, like everything else. What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, not warm breath, not a 'spark of life.' It is information, words, instructions."
This appeal to information to help us define life solves some immediate problems. We can safely say that any live thing contains a genetic code that describes how to make that thing, indirectly in the case of viruses. So perhaps we have finally found the answer to the definition of life. We might conclude simply that the presence of DNA (or RNA) defines life. How elegant! We are so close, but no, once again we have been foiled, because not every thing that contains a genetic code is alive. An animal that has recently died retains a full complement of DNA, but is still dead, just as dead as Monty Python's parrot. We might salvage the situation by saying that life is defined by the presence of DNA or RNA and the ability to use the information to create new copies of the genetic material. That solves the dead animal problem. But then we come to the problem of dormant life. Bacterial spores and crystallized viruses are not capable of using their genetic material to make copies during their periods of dormancy.
Using information content to define life runs up against another problem. The genetic code is digital. Instead of being a binary system of 1s and 0s as in the computer world, the genetic system is quaternary, having four distinct states rather than two. Either way, we have an immediate and obvious non-living example of information stored digitally. Computer code can contain enough information to replicate itself, and the computer has the ability to use the information to do so. The existence of digitally stored, self-replicating information cannot define life because examples are found in non-living systems. Also, as storage media become denser and smaller, the discrepancy between the enormous amount of information contained in an incredibly small space in a cell and the information content on a computer chip becomes slightly less dramatic every year. Although the gap in information storage in biotic and abiotic systems remains gargantuan, one can imagine that the discrepancy will disappear one day. And that leads us to artificial life.
Artificial Life
Artificial life is the simulation of biological functions through the use of computer models, robotics, or biochemistry. Many businesses and books are devoted to the topic. But however fascinating this pursuit is, it offers no assistance in our journey to define life. Any clever creation arising out of this field of study could not be defined as alive or not in the absence of a good definition of life. The field of artificial life would benefit from a clean, distinct, unambiguous definition of life, because experts in the field would then know if they had succeeded in making something life-like. But, inversely, progress in the field of artificial intelligence does nothing to advance a definition of life. Even if Aibo the robotic dog advanced to the stage of speaking English, making your breakfast, and driving you to work, we still could not say if Aibo were alive or not without a good definition of life.
Final Ambiguity
As noted earlier, nobody would deny the existence of green or blue, yet nobody can define when one color becomes the other. That inability to draw a clear line between them does not diminish the reality of the two colors. We accept the existence of clearly identified colors even when the transition between frequencies in the light spectrum lacks a clearly delineated boundary. Life is no different. We know at the extremes when something is alive or not, with no ambiguity, just as we know something is green or blue. Other cases are ambiguous. A virus could be alive or not, depending on your perspective. In some cases, such as viruses, bacterial spores, prions and Rotiferans, defining matter as alive or not becomes arbitrary, an exercise in semantics rather than a window into the deeper workings of nature. We might be obsessed with attaching a label of "living" to something, but that something simply sits somewhere along a continuum of complexity regardless of the label finally affixed, indifferent to our discomfort.
The region along the spectrum where abiotic transitions to biotic is a zone of ambiguity that exists because life is not an all-or-none phenomenon, and because the stuff of life is the same as the stuff of non-life. Previous definitions of life have fallen short because of a common commitment to find a "spark" that simply does not exist. Definitions sought to capture something essential about life that was not found in the abiotic world, rather than accept that no such distinction can be found. Definitions of life were meant to reflect something fundamental about nature, not to serve as useful tools for categorizing complexity. That is why all have failed.
There is no single unambiguous definition of life. Most examples of life are complex; most metabolize, grow, reproduce, and evolve over time. But not all do, and not all have all of these functions present. Some physical systems also share these same characteristics. That fact is not troubling; it reflects the reality of nature. "Life" is an arbitrary label we apply to distinguish extremes of complexity along a continuum. We know that a block of pure quartz is not alive and that a screeching kid in the restaurant is; whatever label we paste on all those cases in between is a convenient convention, but in no way reflects any fundamental break or division between the living and non-living.
With a healthy perspective on the phenomenon of life, we prepare ourselves to explore how humanity fits into the big picture. God never enters into the equation; invoking a higher being is not only unnecessary to understand life but one of the biggest obstacles. Without god, humans have no claim to special status. And being humble about who and what we are is easier when we recognize our kinship not only with our cousins in the animal kingdom, but also with the dirt under our feet and the charcoal in our barbecue.
Follow Jeff Schweitzer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JeffSchweitzer
Scientists struggle to define life - USATODAY.com
Psychozoan: The Definition of Life
Defining Life - NASA - Astrobiology - Latest News
Scientists struggle to define life - USATODAY.com
Why do we need to have a "Religion and Science" section? Religion already has a domain here, and I assume this one was to occupy those grumpy ol' meanies who don't accept some of the fluffier ideas floating around there. Can't we just have a place where science rules, and doesn't have to share top billing with a completely unrelated subject?
I'm signing off of this one; I think what needs to be said has been said, so time to move on. I'll give my opponents the chance to have the last word.
For those who believe I have an abrasive personality: tough. What being abrasive generally means is that I disagree with you but I fail to pamper while I make my case. Get over it. I certainly don't mind opposition; I just ask that arguments be internally consistent. Most have failed here on that score.
For those who support me: I am grateful, and am thankful that you take the time to comment and post.
Jeff
Best wishes.
Ecclesiastes 12:7
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Genesis 3:19
Psalm 137:9
Happy shall he be that taketh and daseth thy little ones against the stones.
Ezekiel 23:20 (NIV)
There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.
Deuteronomy 28:53
And thou shalt eat of the fruit of thine own body, that of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.
1 Timothy 2:12-15
Suffer not a women to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing.
Deuteronomy 21:18-21
If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son…bring him out unto the elders of his city…And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.
Malachi 2:3
Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces…
Leviticus20:9
For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death.
Mark 3:29
He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.
Tip of the ice berg.
Your research into what it actually says and then using as a rebuttal to those who would impose it literally upon the rest of us is remarkable. It's a useful service and I thank you for it. Good job, I couldn't do it.
Nice blog, BTW. Liked your photos of Indonesia and Scotland. :-)
Sri Vidya (06/41) Tantra Kundalini Kriya Yoga Meditation Swami Rama
www.youtube.com
Regards.YOGAmrit Yogi Dr Ajay
Instead, your spin is: there is no god, and humans are not special. At the same time, your book envisions a world of "high morals" if only we stop talking about the divine. In my view, our ability to envision such a world, to imagine a just society that has never yet existed, is enough to make us special.
It is a mistake to think that recognition of the "special" qualities of humanity implies lack of humility. Humility is a lesson learned by the true student of science, philosophy and religion, all of which teach that man is special.
I also agree with you that divinity is not needed for any causal explanation. I wasn't talking about causal explanations. In my example, divinity was an expression of admiration and wonder at the well-ordered structure of the universe. This agrees with a large percentage of the uses of religious language. As for the uses that do put gods into an explanatory scheme, all three of us agree that we don't need such explanations.
The specialness of humanity can be addressed physically, in terms of the human brain and the planet-changing capabilities of humans. But more importantly, the specialness of humans is visible through the lens of poetry and philosophy. Here again, religious language is often used, but not in an explanatory way.
A lot of people have this problem not just those of "faith" whomever that is because there are so many different shades and degrees of "faith" just as there are non-faith.
I am not a member of "those of faith". My position is that faith is NOT essential to spirituality. There are the facts, which science pursues; and there are values and global perspectives, which are developed through poetry, philosophy and religion.
How can you be special and humble at the same time? What is special is humanity at large and in its distinguishing characteristics and POTENTIALITIES. Humility pertains to the individual, and is the most prudent attitude to adopt in one's pursuit of wisdom.
Humans are able to imagine moral landscapes that transcend the evidence of history. This alone makes them special.
But look at it another way: it is evolutionarily advantageous for us to regard our species as special. Our language is not a pure representational mirror, but is oriented toward human functions. It makes sense, according to the pragmatic theory of truth, to affirm the specialness of humans as a means toward the realization of their natural potential.
"Most people would logically reject the conclusions from quantum mechanics that an electron will exhibit the properties of either a particle or wave, depending on how we measure its activity. But experiments have proven that duality with incredible degrees of precision. Similarly, the more rigorously we attempt to define life the more we encounter ambiguous cases that test our assumptions, stretch the limits of our definitions, and demonstrate where intuition and common sense falter."
I see it as a matter of training: we in "Western Civilization" have been trained for thousands of years in certain mental habits, but in the last couple of centuries we have started to learn new mental habits, with the help of scientists like Einstein and Heisenberg, and artists like Picasso and Rothko. Describing older mental habits as "intuition and common sense" suggest that they are innate and not learned. I'm not so sure about that. (It might help if new more about the mental habits of other cultures.) In my experience, at least, having read some modern physics and looked at some modern art, the hard thing now is to think of matter and energy as two separate things, or to imagine space somehow uncurved by gravity, or to think of pre-modern visual representation as "realistic" rather than an arbitrary ordering and presentation of objects.
Most modern scientists see spirituality & scriptural statements with DOUBT, except a few, like Albert Einstein-
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who cans no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.†By Albert Einstein
.Albert Einstein, was SPIRITUAL MAN ,so he discovered the mysterious.This happened to every inventor, poet, writer , scientist,who propounded any great deed but not all are like Albert Einstein, who knew , how his inner powers are to be utilized, using the SPIRITUALITY. YOGA , was a tool, developed by GREAT ANCIANT SCIENISTS, called “Rishis/Maharishis for it. Every scientist needs CONCENTRATION for his research work. How would you concentrate with out knowing the exact method of attaining CONCENTRATION? It is in spiritual scriptures of “ASTANG YOGAâ€.
As a scientist, don’t be trendy, apply your x, y method of science to realize GOD, if failed to realize, then go to a YOGI, make a belief in his “ METHOD OF YOGA “. If you don’t realize GOD, after applying the “ Method Of Yoga “,only then have a disbelief in GOD.Spirituality is not based on BELIEF/FAITH but the scientists have to follow & believe on " METHOD OF SPIRITUALITY" ,otherwise "Method Of Science" would be called " METHOD OF NON-SCIENCE".Resp.Sir,spiritual man,like you can do it.
“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this…†Lest there be any remaining doubt that Einstein did not believe, he also said, “The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve.â€
BTW, the use capitalization to emphasize a point is a bit distracting.
1. What do you mean with personal God? BTW, I believe God is universal but can be realized personally by applying "method of Raj Yoga".
2. Do you see spirituality,science or both elements in the following ? & how ?
" A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
By Albert Einstein.
3. Sir,I am a fan of your learned self.May I write more in favor of my viewpoint on the issue.
Thanks for correcting me on use of capitalization, BTW I used to covey clearly as limited words are provided for writing a comment.Regards .
Science has thus far discovered that “STUFF†of LIFE and NON-LIFE is same. Does that rule out GOD?
From a commonplace and a simplistic point of view, having found no essential difference in ATOMIC STRUCTURE between Life and Non-Life, scientists may as well claim there is nothing DIVINE or GODLY about “ALIVE†humanity and non-living beings. In other words, this LIFE is just a CHEMICAL/PHYSICAL ACTION-REACTION taking place, without THE DIVINE or GOD playing any role.
This may well be true. But it would be a superfluous truth.
There is more to GOD or DIVINITY than a normal human being and a scientist defines both. The Western Scientists, and, therefore, most Atheists, influenced by the prevalent LOWER MODERN SCIENCE, think there is nothing divine about life. Thus, they denounce GOD.
These scientists and intellectuals could not be more wrong.
The FREE MYSTICS and YOGIS of INDIA have since the very beginning been informing us that ALL IS ONE WHOLE ALLNESS. In fact, there are freely available ANCIENT INDIAN YOGIC TEXTS for us to gainfully learn a thing or two even now. Therein THE SEEKER asks THE GURU that if ALL IS ONE SELF ESSENCE, does that mean even “SHIT is GOD?â€
Thus, science, especially of West, has found nothing new. Eons ago, Free Mystics and Yogis of India found THE ULTIMATE TRUTH. Science is yet not THERE, to re-define LIFE.
I guess it's a big deal for those who take Genesis literally. Maybe I'm just intervening on a conversation between you and them. But I find their idea of religion offensive and so am annoyed when smart people take them as its representatives.
However, The QUINTESSENCE of ALL THAT IS, life or non-life, is ONE.
So far as GOD creating LIFE; well, it is a simplistic idea of simple people from The East as well as The West. That does not mean their intentions are not good. It only means their CONCEPTION of THE DIVINE does not match THE TRUTH or REALITY AS IS.
From a YOGI or a FREE MYSTIC point of view, which relies on FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE; both the common lot from scientific community as also from the religious, make the same mistake. Both have AN IDEA about REALITY, not THE SELF-EXPERIENCE of The ULITMATE REALITY.
So, what is The TRUTH of ALPHA and OMEGA?
It is this: WHAT-SO-EVER IS, "this" or "that", is made of ONE, WHOLE, ALLNESS, IMMANANENT "STUFF", which, a normal being calls SPIRIT in REVERENCE. The Scientists and Science do not find, are unable to discover "IT". Not because they are not smart enough, but because they are not sufficiently attuned to THAT WHICH IS.
This - "WHICH IS"- does not OPEN UP to IRREVERENCE, or, to COLD HEARTS.
This is where a simple GOD-FEARING, not necessarily GOD-KNOWING, simple person scores over CLINICAL SCIENTISTS. This is where YOGIS and FREE MYSTICS succeed. It is where the clever ones fail. It is where the simple ones win.
It is the realm of THE DIVINE.
I have subscribed to your future writings through the email alerts.
The naturalistic worldview, the idea that man is not special and there is no meaning to life and we will all cease to exist after death, is ultimately unsatisfying and in conflict with the hope generated by progressive social causes.
I for one refuse to accept the naturalistic viewpoint even if it is correct. It's depressing as hell and makes both religion and science meaningless. What does it matter if some finite temporary animals know more about the world around them if they're only going to be around for a short time anyway?
They get to meet their children and maybe even their grandchildren.
Life isn't all about you.
Go in peace.
I accept that I live this one life and when I die, I DIE period. Where were you before you were born? I think that is what happens when you die. I don't expecet some exciting life if I happen to believe in the right god or religion (which is a challenge by it self given that we have thousands of them) or I don't expect to be burned for ethernity for not believing in the right god.
With a progress in human civilization, I hope religion will have no part in future society. But the truth is, there will always be some portion of the society that really need the comfort of having a dad or a big brother in the sky who is looking over them.
Of course, my take on this is that it in no way diminishes the "specialness" of life (whatever that means); but, on the other hand, it elevates the non-life to a level of respect and admiration and wonder that i think is often missing. As you pointed out (that Carlin pointed out), we insist on seeing life as more important and impressive than non-life simply because of our own bias.
Once again a pretty interesting esoteric abstract concept gets twisted for some political point; It's hard to distinguish that which is alive from that which is not therefore we don't need God?
The fact is the God of the Bible implies very clearly that the animate and the inanimate are all part of a big ecosystem. Man, animals, plants, and the soil itself suffers the consequences of "sin". Man is not separate from the earth save for the soul which has been given by God (which the materialists rejects as unreal and of no consequence).
True, Genesis mentions “breath of life†four times. The phrase exists nowhere else in the Tanakh, or Hebrew Scriptures.
Genesis 2:7 says, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.â€
Though you say, “The animals received the breath of God as man did,†the biblical account differs with your claim in two ways: Nowhere else is it written that God breathed life into any other creature. Also, the word for, “breath†in Genesis 2:7, transliterated, “neshamah,†best translated “spirit-breath,†suggests that there was something, indeed, very special in that particular instance of inspiration. This is all the more the case when considering that this is NOT at all the word for “breath†in Genesis 6:17, 7:15 or 7:22.
It’s so easy to superimpose the linguistic structures and preconceptions of our native tongue onto other languages. Doing so not only does injustice to the literature being discussed, it opens oneself up to an incomplete, if not total, misapprehension of a text.
During my grad studies in Biblical Languages and Literatures at St. Louis University, I became an atheist. It’s obnoxious when Christians throw Scriptures around with indignant triumphalism – especially when they don’t study the Bible in its original languages…much less examine the discord between the manuscripts, themselves.
In fact, wouldn't the ambiguity on life/non-life leave possible resolutions open to the idea of God having a role? And how exactly do we measure the complication involved when we throw God into the mix when we already don't now how simple or complex the solution actually is?
This is going to be offensive, but for the sake of the American public I sure hope this represents the statistical low for presidential advisers.
"a trait common to those who believe in god".
Good Lord.
excellent
As far as taking god out of life and taking the humanity out of people, there are many millions of people who live humane, moral lives EVERY DAY free of god, superstition and religion. And there are many millions of people who believe in god that choose to live immoral, inhumane lives. Your thinking isn't rational.
1.What is the real cause of sorrow ?
2.How one can achieve extreme joy ?
3.What is sorrow ?
4.What is joy ?
Dear Sir, Answers of these questions will be different for SCIENCE but for SPIRITUALITY these will be same.Spirituality is all about exploring that ENERGY( AATMA /PURUSHA in Sanskrit Language ) ,which escapes from the hands of scientists but certainly realized by YOGIS.Suggested readings are-
1. The Life Divine ; by Shri Aurobindo,Published by Shri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry,India.
2.Bhahm Sutra Bhasya :By.Ved Vyas,Geeta Press ,Gorakhpur,India.
3.Raj Yoga ; by Swami Vivekananda.
Your article is nicely written on scientific grounds only. GOD BLESS YOU.OM.
I'll match your Indian masters (I'm a great fan of Sri Ramana Maharshi, U.G Krishnamurthi,& Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj) with "Perfect Brilliant Stillness" by david carse