The Mysteries of a Life Force called Life

Dear Ms Gewen,

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


Thanks a lot for the above article on life and what was mentioned in that web. I decided to reply to your letter into my blog instead.

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 controlled by thousands of physical biochemical reactions, and so on until it leaves the body when we die, leaving only the empty skeletal shell behind it once lived in? What is it?

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. All these are just non-living organic nitrogen molecular fragments, sugars, 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. A life has to be sacrificed to give life to another life as Jesus did. Similarly, all of us, including the animals have to sacrifice another life, a living thing as food 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 plants as food for other plants and animals. This chain in cycles goes on and on. We cannot eat bricks, mud, soil or another thing that does not have life in them.

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, but they cannot create or buy a 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. Did another body reading my explanation ever realized this? Be thankful I write on thoughts on this.

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, yet scientific logic and reason. They merely were told to give grace for their living (literally) bread.

The Bible teaches us:

The Bible teaches us, without most Christians realizing this reason I gave above.

‘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 I 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’? You can see my scientific logic now – something I have wondered since a child.

Life is A Lamp: The Flame 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 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.

They must be lighted in the first place. Someone must carry the torch – the flame (life) itself to light up the first lamp. Only then the first lamp will be lighted. This was God who blew the flame into the nostrils of Adam to light up the first man on Earth.

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.

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, Creator, Programmer, and Designer we respectfully called God. I am not sure about Allah which the Muslims do not allow the Christians to use. So 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 require 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.

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 child-like thoughts:

I have since small thought about this mystery. 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.

Water into wine:

I then wrote about on Jesus Christ and His miracle… and so on. I compared the chemical composition of the human body with that of wine. It was the first miracle Jesus performed by converting six waterpots of stone of water into wine at a wedding in Cana of Galilee (John 2: 1-11).

Water is the most important precursor of life, and in the human body of an adult, there are about 6 litres of vital blood like wine flowing through the body. Wine has a very close chemical composition to that of a human body. It was a very lengthy article I penned my thoughts.

The pre-era of computers:

Unfortunately 1981 was a pre-computer era, and we have a secretary by the name of Miss Tan Cheng Sim in the ASM helped me typed it out on a type-writer. She is a professional Secretary with a Company. Now I intend to transfer all my articles into a computer so that they can all go online. But the article is so long that it would take me many days to retype it on a Microsoft word.

A former Professor of Zoology and Genetics from the University of Malaya and Academician of the Malaysian Academy of Sciences, Professor Emeritus Dr Yong Hoi Sen recently suggested to me during the judging of the inventions among the Malaysian universities and also from the Industries from various countries (ITEX 2010) that I scan all my previous articles into the computer to make them available online. We were one of the many International Judges for this Annual Inter-Varsities Innovation and Invention Competitions. But I thought if I do this, I will not be able to edit it.

Need help with typing:

Miss Gewen who sent me the attached article had earlier told me that Microsoft has a software that automatically transfers typed written copies into soft copies. I did search the Internet but it was too much trouble to do this as I am not too good with computer software.

If I can find someone who can do this for me I will pay him / her and my thoughts and writings will be accessible to all, including the learned scientists still tying to define and tell us exactly what is this entity called ‘life’ that can only exist when we are alive.

Unsolved despites volumes of published papers:

Until then we can only describe the characteristics of life, publish volumes of books and journals on comparative anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry to fill up entire National Libraries of all nations and give detailed descriptions on Zoology, Origin of Species as Charles Darwin did.

Scientists can publish volumes upon volumes on taxology, DNA, molecular biology, chemistry of nucleic acids, proteins, amino acids. They have done all that. They can even synthesize amino acids in the laboratory as Stanley Miller and Harold Urev did in their laboratory at the University of Chicago in 1952, and published their results in 1953.

But the first step is for them to define life, and tell us what it is? And they haven’t done that till this day. They are just avoiding this issue and question despite their vast learned knowledge on Science and Technology.

Molecular biology and Biotechnology:

We can even make use of our understanding of DNA to branch out into molecular biology, molecular medicine, biotechnology, recombinant DNA technology, Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), DNA sequencing and genome identification to build up a data base.

Useless knowledge:

We also understand the mechanisms of cellular signaling, phosphorylation, and so on, and …on. I am very familiar with all these having undergone a post-doctoral training in molecular medicine together with other medical scientists, research doctors and senior scientists from ASEAN countries when I was working as a researcher at the Institute for Medical Research many years ago. I have even lectured on molecular medicine to the academic staff of a university and the scientific association last year.

But all that knowledge still cannot answer my question ‘What exactly is this entity called ‘life’? Where did it come from, and where did it go when life ends and these textbooks knowledge of biochemistries (of life) completely ceases? We learnt all these in our undergraduate, postgraduate training and doctorate scientific sessions and meetings. Plenty of them! But we still did not define life.

Not that simple: Might as well buy a piece of meat:

Miller’s experiment in creating amino acids at the University of Chicago does not mean he has created life. He only created a very small part of the chemical composition that made up what life was.

If that was what Miller intended to deceive the rest of us in the scientific community, I might as well buy a piece of beef from the local market, and call it ‘life’ That piece of lifeless beef would have far better life chemicals inside it. It would have the entire profile of DNA, the correct composition of amino acids, well designed muscle protein structures, sugars, biological fluids, electrolytes, vitamins, minerals than what Miller was able to demonstrate to us. His was just a flask of amino-acids and other lifeless organic substances, and nothing more. That’s not life. That’s not the music of life? They are just as collection of non-living chemicals

Beef is dead and lifeless:

But where is that life in that piece of beef I bought? Where was that ‘life’ or ‘vital force’ that once dwelled in it and where has it vanished when the butcher slaughtered that cow?

This was what I was trying to answer in my 48 page article ‘The Mystery of Life’ written on January 1981.

I shall try to upload those very lengthy thoughts once I can get it re-typed into a computer.

Sorry for any mistakes – spellings, grammar, omission, repetition, unintentional confusion, etc I typed this reply for Miss Gwen as fast as my thoughts dictated my fingers. I have not run through or edited it yet.

I need the Bread of Life (dinner) now to sustain my life. My sugar (oil in the lamp) is running low and needs to be topped up.

Scientists and nutritionists called this ‘essential daily nutrition’ I thank God for this free daily Gift of Life. This is what Christians call ‘giving thanks and grace’ at all meals.

I know there are lots and lots of typo errors in this hurried reply. I did not look back.

Regards and apologies to Miss Gwen and to all my gentle and patient readers for all my above mistakes!

Thank you.

Lim ju boo