The Mystery of Life: An Unmeasurable Vital Force

Mysteries of Life:

An unmeasurable Vital Force

Dear Ms Gewen,

Mysteries of Life

“Hype over Craig Venter's latest achievement outstrips the actual greatness of it (Scientific American): From GenomeWeb”

Thank you for the above article you e-mailed to me on life and what was mentioned in that web. I decided to reply to your attachment and your letter, and put my own personal thoughts on this subject as my reply to you. It is below in my blog.

First published on Wednesday, September 8, 2010

My view:

What exactly is this thing called ‘life’ is a horrendous puzzle scientists can never be answered. They need to look to God for the answer. Only God can tell us.

Tons of books, but no definition:

The scientists can write tons and tons of books on biology, zoology, botany and all disciplines of biological and biomedical sciences that could fill up entire national libraries, and even into the Internet, but not a single one of them so far has define what life is, let alone tell us exactly what life is, least of all, measure it?

Is it a vital force, an energy or what?

Is it a force, a form of energy, a vitalism (vital force), a power, a spirit, a soul, a kind of un-measurable invisible entity that resides inside a physical body that is able to control the pathways of thousands of biochemical reactions in a living body until it leaves the body when we die, leaving only the empty skeletal shell behind it once lived in? 

When that happens all, every single chemical and biochemical reaction MUST come to and instant stop and return to the soil where they once belong because there is no more 'vital force' to control them anymore.

As a graduate in chemistry I am very familiar with the laws that govern chemical reactions. Some chemical reactions like like hydrogen and oxygen into water by burning, and water back into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis are reversible, but many chemical reactions like the living chemistry of life into the chemistry of death are totally irreversible. 

We understand this from our knowledge in biochemistry, physiology, chemical pathology and in medicine we learn forward and backwards and forward again many times over and have taken hundreds of examinations on these in the universities all our life 

Characteristics of Life, but not Life itself:

When I was in school, we were asked in our science class what is life? We would rattle off things like ‘life response to stimulus, it feeds, it reproduces, it respires, it has locomotion…and so on. We were taught that way.

But these are characteristics of life, but not life itself. The question is ‘what exactly is life’? No scientist so far has ever answered this, not as far as I have read. They don’t even know how to define it, let alone describe or measure it.

Chemical footprints only:

Neither is life, DNA, nucleic acid, protein or an infective prion, sugars, electrolytes, salts that conduct bio-electricity, and so on life itself. 

All these are just non-living organic nitrogen molecular fragments such as sugars, amino acids and minerals, but they are all non-living. They cannot have all the characteristics of life without a living host.

DNA for instance is just a chemical footprint of the existence of life, but DNA itself is not living. Neither are nano-fragments of a protein-like substance called prion. They cannot thrive without a living host. It has to enter a living body to reside and multiply there.

A Life for a Life! Cannot be Substituted:

A life can only give or transfer this ‘vital force’ to another life. Life cannot evolve from non-life objects like stones, cement metals and plastics. 

A life has to be sacrificed to give life to another life just as Jesus did. Similarly, all of us, including the animals have to sacrifice its life as food to give another life, since food was once thriving with life till it was sacrificed to support another life – The Bread of Life.

Scientists correctly call this the carbon food chain till it returns to the earth on death to sprout out as plants life to provide food for other animals to consume as food. This chain in cycles goes on and on. We cannot eat bricks, mud, soil or another thing that does not have life in them.

Chemicals of Life:

 In the 19th century it was found that microorganisms such as yeast and fungi were responsible for biochemical reactions such as in fermentation. 

This gave rise to questions whether or not such biochemical activities were an indication that some kind of life force that existed only in living matter were responsible for the chemistry of living things.

 However, in 1897 Eduard Buchner discovered that yeast extract in the absence of non-living yeast or micro fungi can form alcohol from a sugar solution.  

Scientists then  concluded that biochemical activity  do not necessarily require the presence of living cells, but can be driven by special chemical substances, called enzymes found in the cells.

 Although this may be true, we still are not able to dismiss the fact that all enzymes originally are formed in the living cells, but they can be extracted out in a laboratory to drive a biochemical reaction outside a cell. This means that enzymes have a living origin.  We can’t escape that! So we are back to square one. 

Life for Life:

It requires a life to support another life and yet another life. I suppose that is why Christians give grace and thanks for every meal they eat no matter how rich they are. 

They can buy many other things – property, land, luxury cars, etc. etc. but  they cannot eat them as they are all non-living. 

They cannot create or buy  life, or change a non-living substance into a living thing. That power belongs absolute, and solely to God and God only. 

A rich man cannot create life and use it for his daily food to keep him alive. He has to buy, grow, bargain, or beg for food which once has life in it, sacrifice it, and transfer that force into his body to keep him alive.

This was the life that was sacrificed and he must thank God for his daily meals / bread as all Christian rich or poor must realized. 

Even kings, presidents and prime ministers do not have that power. All must thank God for a life God created to give life to another. Jesus did just that. Most of us do not realize this? Be thankful as  I write my on thoughts that all food once have life on them till we 'kill' it as food 

The Gift of God:

It is the free gift of God to all living things. Life itself cannot be bought with our physical wealth. I believe most Christian do not understand this spiritual knowledge yet scientific and logical enough for us to accept. Most Christians merely were told to give grace for their daily living (literally) bread, but actually they do not know the reason 

The Goldilocks Zone:

When astronomers, particularly astrobiologists attempts to look for life as we know it in an exoplanet of another stellar system he would be searching for a planet within a habitable zone called the Goldilocks Zone around a star where the temperature is just right, namely it must not be too hot or too cold for liquid water to exist.

We know that all biological life requires water to exist, without which no life is possible But that is true to my understanding if the existence of physical life is incorporated together with an unknown life force such as a soul residing inside a physical body that may not require water to exist.

 Let bring us to the question if a soul exists? Briefly explained,  the existence of life whether here on Earth or elsewhere in the immensity of this Universe may require two ingredients – the chemicals of life such as DNA, amino acids, sugars, salts or electrolytes , water plus a soul or some kind of “vital energy” yet to be clearly and specifically defined. 

In short, life = chemicals of life plus a "living force" 

As many as 123 definitions of life have been attempted and complied since the ancient Greeks and but none till today is satisfactory.  

One definition seems to be favored by NASA: “a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution. 

Definition of Life:

The normal definition of life  is one that has cellular organization, ability to grow, respire,  involves in metabolism and homeostasis, feeds and excretes, ability to reproduce itself, respond to stimuli and undergo evolution

One of the easiest ways to remember the definition of a living organism is the use of an acronym called MRS GREN to mean Movement, Respiration, Sensitivity, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion and Nutrition.

However, this definition like all other over 100 definitions attempted till today still does not specifically and accurately define life itself. 

All only describe the characteristic or properties of a living organism, but not life itself. So what is it?

No satisfactory answer can be given without bringing in some un-measurable force or entities residing inside that makes the chemistry of life ticks as we know it.

Does Soul Exist?

 Besides water that is indispensable for the existence of all life, can other forms of life exist without water? 

Water  is essential in order for most chemical reactions to take place.

This is especially true as water is  needed as a media to carry the countless metabolic pathways in a living body. 

But  is there something else, such a spirit or a soul that thrive inside a living body that can live forever without  water  and yet is able to control all the thousands of  chemical reactions taking place in a living body? 

In order to answer that, let’s look at what the Bible has to say before God created Adam.

^“And every plant of the field BEFORE it was in the earth, and every herb of the field BEFORE it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to RAIN upon the earth, and there was NOT a man to till the ground.

 But there went up A MIST (water) from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

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”

(Genesis 2:5-7)

I am unsure how other interpret these 3 verses, but to me it is so crystal clear that water was needed first before the Lord God took the dust from the ground to create Adam.

But Adam was still not living UNTIL the Lord God blew into his nostrils God’s own breath and Adam became a LIVING SOUL.

Please note these two words “living” plus “soul”

If we put them together Adam was still NOT living, not until God blew His  “life force” inside his body. 

This 'breath of life' into Adam's lifeless body is  yet to be defined by Science till today. 

 Dead Body + God Breath of Life (Life Force or Soul) = A Living Soul

 Does that ring the bell to most of us that a dead physical body needs a soul to be alive, and it is  this soul / spirit / life force whatever way we like to describe it inside a living body that controls all the thousands chemistries of life till it dies and returns to the soil from where it first came.

In other words, this life force control all the laws of chemistry we learn in our chemistry and biochemistry of  in a living body we learn in our undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses 

When this 'living force' leaves the physical body, the body dies, and all the chemistry of life break down and return lifeless back into the soil, because there is no longer any higher force to control the laws of chemistry anymore 

Does that make scientific sense to most of us reading this? It is very uncanny to learn or hear  this the first time 

We are made of Star Dusts:

If we have studied astronomy as I did at Oxford, we will understand we were all made from star dusts as a result of a supernova explosion somewhere among the massive stars millions or billions of light years away whose dusts landed here on Earth just about the same time Earth was created some 4.5 billion years ago.

We may have all originated from another world somewhere among the countless billions of trillions of trillion of stars first before we were all sent here to begin a new life in another world called Earth in another  stellar (solar) system after the other world ended its life violently in a supernova explosion? However we shall not go into this subject further as it is beyond the scope of this essay.

The Bible teaches us, without most Christians realizing this:

‘in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou returnest to the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. ... (Genesis 3:19).

This is what scientists called the carbon food chain. Absolutely how true and logical

‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God ....’ (Ecclesiastes 12:7).

Again, absolutely how true as we have reasoned it above, that when life chemistries end in our body, this thing called ‘life’ leaves the empty shell (body) and returns to the Giver of that ‘vital force’? 

We can see this scientific logic now – something I have wondered since a child.

 Spiritual Life:

 In Revelation 21:1 it gives us a hint that a new spiritual life in a new heaven when the present one ends, life there does not require water anymore for its eternal existence because our souls is not made of water when it leave our physical body (that requires water).

Water is not required when our soul enters into a new spiritual heaven:

“Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.”

Life is A Lamp of Life:

Consider my thoughts that life can only be transfer from life-to-life. Consider a series of unlit lamps. The lamps are our bodies, what I consider as just the physical shell of the body. It has no life in it. They all have oils and wicks in them. 

These only represent all the physical structures and all the chemicals found in the body. These are the skeleton (wick), and all the glucose, DNA, amino acids, proteins, fats, minerals, biological fluids, etc. 

These ingredients represent the oils and fuel in the body. But where is the flame which to me is the life itself. I call this The Flame of Life. 

The oils and wicks in them are just the non-living chemicals in a body. They are all unlit and un-burnt.

 In biochemistry and nutrition we call this metabolism. But what sets off this metabolism? Definitely it is not the chemicals inside. The oils and wick cannot mysterious burn by themselves.

The Lamp and Soul of Life:

In other words, the  unlit lamp  represents the whole physical body, the wick within are the systems, organs, tissues and cells that draws the oils of the lamp for its nourishment, but it is the flame that is the soul of the lamp that kept the entire lamp warm, bright and burning 

They must be lighted in the first place. Someone must carry the first torch – the flame (life) itself to light up the first lamp. 

Only then the first lamp will be lighted. Only then can this flame be transferred from one lamp to the next lamp. This was God who blew the flame into the nostrils of Adam to light up the first human life on Earth.

The Chain of Life called Evolution:

Only then can the Flame of Life be transferred from one person to another or from one living organism to another up the carbon chain as scientists call it.

Charles Robert Darwin FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) the English Naturalist from the University of Cambridge during his almost 5 years sea voyage in the HMS Beaqle all along the coasts of Africa to South America and to Australia collected vast specimen of life along the route, and published his world renown ‘The Origin of Spices’ was actually describing this flame of life spreading all over Earth which we call it Evolution of Life. 

To my mind today, it was just the flame being transferred from lamp to lamp. To my mind, Darwin did not contradict the Bible’s Genesis how life was created.

The Potter and the Clay: 

The creation of life is liken to the poitter and the clay. He take the clay from the soil to design and mould his potteries and fingurines. 

Even after the potter has moulded his wares, they are still not the finished products. The clay potteries, figurines are still soft, limp, “lifeless” so to speak, and unfinished. In order for his wares to be useful to withstand the pressures of the environment, they need to change and adapt to very harsh environmental fluctuations to harden them.  They need to be fired in a furnace to toughen them.

 

That fire is the lamp of life firing its energy into the clay to harden them for their survival over a certain lifespan.  That’s where the breath of life of God unseen and unmeasurable was pumped into every life till today even for each child or offspring born to a mother for them to survive environmental changes.

 

It is not necessary that the mother must give or pass on life to the child on birth.  The child can still be stillborn and dead when born. On a living birth we are all different

 

Similarly with the potteries of the potter.  Each of his wares are different from each other even for the same design and model of his wares, as much are cups, saucers, bowls, vases all different in the hands of a potter using exactly the clay and soil from the earth where all life and clay porcelain must begin. It is up to the potter how and what he wants to do with the clay from the soil. But all the potteries and figurines are unfinished products and must be being brought to the fire of a furnace to “pump life into them” figuratively translated    

 

As much as we, and all life created on earth are either slightly genetically different from each other or, as an entirely different species of life

 

All zoologists and evolutionary biologists know no life on earth is precisely the same or were they evolved from one species seamlessly to the next without a single missing link. A tiger is entirely different from a lion, cheetah, puma, jaguar, leopard, lynx, and a domestic cat., although they are all cats of the same family.

 

So are all the different species of fishes in the oceans as much as all the different birds in the air. They are all entirely different species of life as much as cups, saucers, bowls, plates and all porcelain products are different in the hands of the potter. They may be the same products, but they are still subtle differences. They are not exactly the same as all human races are different although we are all the human species as much as not all dogs, wolves and dingos are the same in the hands of God their Creator.

 

As scientists we are familiar with the classification of animals and into domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, suborder, families, genus and species, as much as we are familiar with genetics, and evolutionary biology, but we cannot explain why all life and animals seemed to be evolved so separately at different times since 3.7 billion years ago. The question we ask ourselves is, were they created separately which is quite different from being evolved very slowly through the eons of tens of millions of years for each species as given in the list here through the corridors of millions of years.  

 

The question we also ask is, why are they so different if the changes are so infinitesimally minute due to tiny, tiny mutagenic changes over such a long period of time. In such a slow evolutionary process their anatomy, morphology and other features including their adaptability to the environment ought to be almost seamless or almost the same? But why are they so different and adapt so differently?  

 

We do not know the answer using our understanding of minute mutagenic  changes of their genes and why there are large differences in the nucleotide sequence of their DNA, at least my understanding on zoology, genetics and in evolutionary biology does not permit me.   

 

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?  Will what is moulded say to its moulder, “Why have you made me like this? Does the potter have no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honourable use and another for dishonourable use?  (Romans 9:20–21)

 

 “Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots!

Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’

or ‘Your work has no handles?”  (Isaiah 45:9)

 

“Then the Lord said to him, '' Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?”

 (Exodus 4:11)

Time is Relative:

Time with the Lord a day is like a thousand years (to humans) and a thousand years are like a day (to God). (2 Peter 3:8).

A million years in evolution of life on Earth is just a day in Creation for God. He created everything in 7 Days, and one can imagine how long in epoch and geological time scale this was for a human.

Again what yardstick did  scientists use to  measure time? Was it Earth’s time based on Solar time of 24 hour / day, Solar Year of 365.25 Solar Days, or was it on a Galactic Year which is 226 millions of years over a radius of about 26 thousand light-years through which a galaxy spins?

God Eternal Time Cannot be Measured:

This is like conducting an medical experiment on rats and measuring time using a rat’s life span as the yardstick. Why not we use our life span or our clock as we normally do when we measure time as the measurement of time.

When scientists conduct an experiment on rats in a laboratory  it is like God conducting an experiment on us using God's time and not our time similar to us using rat's time. We don't do that. We use time as given on our human clock as much as God measure time according to His yardstick of measurements which is eternity 

 Most scientists  believe Creation of Life on Earth was not in a day, but in millions of years through  evolution. 

But most Christians were misled by Satan to interpret the time literally given in Genesis 

Satan even managed to effectively blinded the highly eminent Cambridge scientist Charles  Darwin FRS into believing the creation and evolution of life could not have taken Day 1, Day 2 ...Day 6.

If Satan could blind such a scientific intellectual, we can see how effectively Satan has blinded billions of humans over the centauries.

In Bondage and in Darkness:

All these argumentative and quarrelsome scientists are very effectively and heavily blinded by Satan so that they cannot escape. 

Satan is very cleaver Devil who came in disguise to permanently blind and deceive people including the learned scientists and religious people, the believers and the disbelievers to keep all of them into eternal bondage of darkness by using their scientific knowledge to clash with spiritual wisdom God actually gave them. 

But the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.’

From Lamp-to-Lamp:

It is only a flame (of life) can be transferred from one unlit lamp to the next unlit lamp. If not for this vital force (life or energy), all the lamps will remain unlit throughout all eternity. This mysterious vital force can only given by God Himself. 

No other person has this gift and power. So we ask ourselves where this flame came from. Was it originally brought to Earth from outer-space and seeded onto Earth as some scientists like Astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) of Cambridge and Chandra Wickramasinghe (1939 - ) in their panspermia theory believed?

Life seeded from Outer Space?

Even if life was seeded by comets in the Black Orts Clouds in the Kuiper belt at the fridges of the Solar System, where and how were those viruses created. They couldn’t just be present without an origin in the cosmic Black Cloud? 

Even if they were exogenous sources of life, viruses still cannot multiply without a living host on Earth. So how did life began on Earth? Where did that flame come from?

My answer is it must only come from a non-material Being, a Creator, a Programmer, and an Intelligent Designer we respectfully called God. 

But I am not sure about Allah which the Muslims do not allow the Christians to use in Malaysia, but not in all other Islamic countries since Allah is just an Arabic name for God to my understanding 

But  I am also unsure about the names of gods of other religions.

Only One Nameless God I know:

I only know the God of the Christians, the God of the Jews, and the same God of Israel that protected them from the Palestine to this day as written in the Bible (Deuteronomy 7:6, Deuteronomy 11:12). This is the only living God the Christians know. 

I do not think God ever gave a name for Himself? He is Spiritual Being. He does not require a name for Himself and He requires no earthy mortals to call him by a certain name? That’s my inner thought, that still small voice speaking to me. I do not know about others.

The Christians acknowledge Him as their Heavenly Father just as all children on Earth respectfully call their parents as ‘father, daddy, dad, papa, mama, mummy, mum, etc.

No children will disrespectfully address their parents by their surnames or any other names such as Mr. so and so, or Mrs. so, and so! How rude for children to do this. We just call our parents "papa or mama" 

Now my gentle readers can read my thoughts, just a glimpse of it what I thought as a boy, and penned it down all 48 pages of them on January 1981.

My Small Thought:

I have since as a small child  thought about this mystery for a long time.

In the January of 1981 I decided to write about this, and had my thoughts ‘The Mystery of Life’ published in the Newsletter of the Astronomical Society of Malaysia (ASM). It was a lengthy article expressing my thoughts, my views on the biochemistry in the body before and after death.

I then described what happens to this vital force residing inside the body once it leaves the body as an empty shell.

jb lim