The first time I heard about evolution, it was quite interesting, I do believe that evolution does occur. But after some deep deep thinking, I came to a question that troubled me so much... why does every living creature die? Why doesn't evolution eliminate it? Worse still, why was death introduced by evolution in the first place?
Let's start by assuming that we developed through evolution before life even existed. There was nothing but a clean slate so to speak. So now evolution played its role to evolve all the creatures on earth, where exactly then does evolution decide that death is something for the benefit of any specie? Remember, evolution started with a clean slate.
By logic, we as humans can easily put so many theories as to why death exists, but it is very well known that evolution is greedy and selfish and tries to maintain a specie's life, why then do we die? How could death genes be created through evolution when their primary objective is to end the life of the species?
My first theory to solve this was that death was a result of a mutation. But there's a very big problem in this, death is a very complex process, involving growing, aging, then death. If we were talking about one gene, maybe, but thousands of genes that exist for the sole purpose of eliminating the creature's existence seem totally in contradiction with evolution's prime purpose, the survival of species.
A few days ago I found out that I wasn't the only person who was puzzled by this question, but what's more amazing, is that all theories posed to answer this crucial question fail outright. There is something that introduced death to all living organisms, and this was not evolution, whatever this something is, it's powerful and existed before life existed and either created life, or intervened in its creation and introduced things that would never have been introduced if nature had been left to run its course. This force cannot be anything short of a deity, of God. We read in the Quran:
تَبَارَكَ الَّذِي بِيَدِهِ الْمُلْكُ وَهُوَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ ﴿١﴾
الَّذِي خَلَقَ الْمَوْتَ وَالْحَيَاةَ لِيَبْلُوَكُمْ أَيُّكُمْ أَحْسَنُ عَمَلًا وَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الْغَفُورُ ﴿٢﴾
Translated: Blessed is He who possesses sovereignty and is able to do all things. He who created death and life to try you, who among you is better in deeds, and He is the mighty and the forgiving.
Interesting verses. So what does science say about it? Science is puzzled like I am on how on earth death could have ever been introduced into creatures, there are literally genes that exist for the sole purpose of aging and death, cells that are programmed to self destruct after a number of divisions, where did all that come from? Evolution?
Well, read for yourself the evolution of aging and marvel at the ultimate proof of God's existence from science itself.
How could death genes be
How could death genes be created through evolution when their primary objective is to end the life of the species?
It may be that evolution is a synonym for competition. The "death" genes are competing for the same resources as the "life" genes. You might call them death genes, but from the death gene's perspective the life genes are the adversary to beat. So as far as evolution is concerned the stronger of the opponents will prevail. The same thing happens in software development, especially in open source. If this wasn't true then there would never have been a Drupal 6, the first incarnation of Drupal would have been sufficient and there would have been no need for further development. It is also conceivable that Drupal will one day cease to exist if some other CMS proves to be superior in the future. I could also apply my theory to web browsers. For a long time Internet Explorer (IE) and Netscape were synonymous with being "online" Most everyday users didn't know the distinction between their browser and being on the Internet. Eventually IE dominated Netscape and was the most widely supported browser until Firefox came along. Once Firefox became a serious threat to IE, IE had to adapt to survive even if it meant imitating its competition. So the "death" gene is more of a constant like the water in the ocean and the "life" gene is like the waves that dance in motion, but eventually die as they reach the shore.
Your underlying assumption
Your underlying assumption that organisms would live for ever if they weren't programmed to die is wrong. An organism must expend energy in repair, and in repair mechanisms in order to have a long life. The cost of this can outweight the benefits. A creature that grows fast, has offspring and dies can leave more successsful offspring than one which devotes too much energy to its own repair.
Disease, accidents and predation also mean there can only be limited selection for longevity, and so it hasn't evolved (apart from some trees).
Finally you resort to the argument that "If we don't understand why something is so, then God must have done it". This is a false argument - just because we don't fully understand somethign now, it does not follow that we will not understand it in 10 years time.
Thanks for writing.
Thanks for writing. Organisms expend energy, but as humans are considered an open system, we can always obtain that energy from our surroundings.
Repairing of one's self is a constant process that doesn't expend more and more energy as time goes by, the only reason more energy is expended in this process is because of aging and the death scenario taking effect. Simply assume that your life freezes at age 20 and you'll know that as time goes by, you're not expending any additional energy in repair, and you're also able to produce more offspring, as a matter of fact, far more than you would when you age and die.
Your look at the topic stems from a birds eye view, if we were to accept all creatures developed from a clean slate, then we need to begin with the assumption no death existed and it evolved into all creatures, then we need to ask, what is the mechanism that would make nature introduce death, it introduced camouflage to protect the creature from predators, it introduced intelligence to enhance the creature's survival rate, why then did it introduce death? Look at it from the specie's sense, what purpose did death serve in its own write except in causing some species' eventual extinction. Death is counter intuitive.
Could we know the answer in 10 years? Perhaps. And when we do, then we can drop any assumptions. But until we do, a divine being is a plausible assumption. It would seem that something so counter intuitive could only be introduced at a higher level of intelligence than evolution's selfish and narrow perspective. Most of the points you raised as plausible explanations are discussed on the wikipedia article on the evolution of death.
The logic of the existence of a deity is actually not the conclusion of "we can't explain it, so God must have introduced it", but you'll find that this is a continuation of a series of articles I began earlier. Check out Certainty of Islam and The existant non-existant God
You misunderstand my post.
You misunderstand my post. An animal that lives ten years may need to use, say, 1% of it's resources for repair and maintenance of its body (I made up the 1% for the sake of explaining the point). But if that animal needed to live for 100 years, it may need to expend 2% of its energy to prevent gradual deterioration. That extra energy used in maintaining itself makes it less 'fit'; it is less likely to survive, and likley to be able to have fewer ofspring as a result. So evolution can favour shorter lived organisms. Like cars and washing machines, bodies deteriorate over time if mehanisms are not in place to maintain them.
There's a little flaw in
There's a little flaw in your argument, you talk about a creatures resources as something finite and depletable. That would be the case in a closed system that does not interact with its surroundings. Humans' resources are obtained from the surrounding environment. So to use your example, a creature living for 100 years may actually expend 1% while its equivalent kin living for 50 years may expend 2%. Assuming no abnormal circumstances. The more resources we gather, the less our expenditures from the total are.
The other point, gradual deterioration, is actually the case because of aging. We do exhaust more energy because we age, the process becomes pricey, the deterioration rate increases and the body eventually is unable to compensate in a fast enough rate no matter how many resources we gather. And especially when this deterioration affects our ability to gather these resources in the 1st place.
Finally, our likening to cars is also a little misleading, cars cannot repair themselves, we can. And if cars were to be able to repair themselves, but with a finite amount of resources, then your analogy would be accurate, then cars would need to truly preserve that energy for... reproducing perhaps :D
OK.. I give up. I don't have
OK.. I give up. I don't have enough time I'm afraid. You really need to read some basic books on ecology or evolution, as you obviously don't understand it.
On the other hand you obviously understand drupal modules much better than I do!
An animal's resources come from its food. An animal that spends 2% of it's food intake on repair mechanisms each day will be less able to survive in the short term than one that spends 1% of its food intake on repair - because it must eat more food, and has less energy to devote to other things.
I've been very interested in
I've been very interested in the causes of aging and self repair for quite some time in species myself as it seems quite counter intuitive, as every single cell in our body is guaranteed to be replaced every 7 years its puzzling why this cannot continue in perpetuity. Why we're 'programmed' to self destruct.
Evolution explains this quite well when you think of it as just a callous selection pressure in an ever changing environment, it does nothing other than favor those that produce surviving offspring that are able to in turn reproduce successfully in their given environment.
- In a changing environment (introduction of new predators, food supply variations, environmental variation etc) those that have the fastest lifecycle and most mutations will be favored as they will statistically have the largest percentage of members that are 'adapted' to that environment. Those that don't won't adapt to changing climate / food supply as quickly and will be selected against.
- Once a person / creature has been born / hatched there is no further genetic variation or mutation, therefore you will be ill suited for changes in the environment. Further placing selection pressure on those with a fairly rapid life cycle.
- If you have a energy intensive self repairing process (see recent articles about salamanders, there was a good discussion on slashdot), those with a less effective repair process (one that lasts only long enough for them to reproduce and bring up their offspring) will be be favored when theres a significant food shortage. A single event millions of years ago could have wiped out a more favorable (from the individuals point of view) genetic line. You might also find the evolutionary arguments for why calorie depreciation extends life span interesting, just google it if your curious.
All in all there is no selection pressure for living longer than is useful to the species, while there is selection pressure in producing early and dying young.
While this may not be so true in our current society, our genetic evolution is 100,000's of years behind our societal evolution.
I thoroughly enjoy all of
I thoroughly enjoy all of your thoughts on this site. Thanks for letting them out. If I may, I'd like to share my thoughts with you on this topic:
1. You did hit on a key point. The "theory of evolution" does not maintain in the life cycle beyond living organisms. Within the scope of this theory, life is already present and the hows and whys of death or birth are irrelevant and unanswered by the trivialities of evolution. However, there is no scientific consensus on how/why life began or how/why life ends. We rewind to the point where we are at a singularity.
In my opinion humans, in faith, have opened every door leading to the point of singularity. This is why so many diverse cultures and religions have so many diverse explanations for this question. If a scientific method returns a calculable answer to this question then a man of science cannot, for all humanitarian purposes, disagree with the results - lest maybe he prays himself...
2. Furthermore, defining our life cycle with terminology such as "evolution" does not mean that science equates to the theory of evolution. This is one of many common factors in creating for-and-against arguments on the basis of religion and science. I constantly marvel at how science is taken as competition to religious belief systems. And yet, in my opinion, the opposite can never be true. If scientific method calculates a religious text as factual, it doesn't have any affect on the man of no faith. But what of the religious belief system if the calculations prove erroneous? Does the belief system change as science does?
In the context of this topic, the acts that constitute the "science" of determining the life cycle of organisms are available for anyone to do. Two people can study the data of events and mutations, and they will presumably come up with the same conclusion. But if those two people derive a conclusion that is based on faith then they cannot examine one another's reasoning.
Thanks. Comments like yours
Thanks. Comments like yours are what make my writings worthwhile. Evolution is being hijacked to serve a purpose that it was never intended for. By people who have zealously committed themselves to a non-written scripture to refuse all religions without even taking the time to study them.
To me faith is more than just plain belief. Every religion, every faith, attempts to give an argument to persuade. And like a rational being, I try to analyze the argument and see weather it holds or not.
Science too is relentless in critically analyzing scriptures. The findings about the gospels are very disturbing to say the least. Verses that have been discovered to be missing in all but the latest manuscripts show a continuous human effort to distort an early original. I've referred to the Comma Johannum in a number of previous articles. Discoveries like these are what distinguish believers from truth seekers. Truth seekers are relentless in following the truth wherever it may lead. Weather it leads them to religion, outside religion, it doesn't matter to them. Being a truth seeker is not an easy endeavor at all as you must be prepared to forfeit everything you have ever held to be inerrant if it becomes fully evident that it is.
To me Islam not only poses a logical argument, but is still standing firmly through the very fierce attempts to prove its human origins. Please check out my article on the certainty of islam.
ha, good question. Evolution
ha, good question. Evolution as originally formulated by Darwin was pretty restrictive in what it was trying to explain, and it gets used now to try and explain a lot, sometimes too much (e.g. social darwinism ..). Certainly, there are other priniciples at work in the natural world!
As to life and death, I think it's also instructive to look beyond biology on earth - stars and galaxies also are "born" and "die", and maybe even the "universe" itself. So regardless of the specific dynamics that modifies the normal lifespan of a particular species, of which evolution is likely one, the wider pattern of "why does life have to die" is probably outside the scope of scientific explanation to answer. Which is probably what you are saying, yes?
I just think it makes sense, in many spheres, that death happens to make way for new life.
This is what I'm saying, not
This is what I'm saying, not only is science unable to answer, but science also says this should never have been. Just think about it, no genes at all, genes start evolving, where in this sequence do you see evolution deciding that death is a good idea cause it preserves the specie? From an observer's side of it, death seems so logical, earth not filling up, etc, but from evolution's side of it, it doesn't care about society or the earth filling up, it simply cares about doing all that is possible to preserve species. If evolution introduced death, then by all means it wasn't doing its job.
Death is logically impossible to have been introduced by evolution which means some other power introduced it, in my opinion that would be God and is a clear evidence that some very powerful being exists and is who originated life and death. This is the same as what the verses in the Quran state,
"He who created death and life to try you, who among you is better in deeds".
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