Are We Designed to Age?

[CraigD]

very good question

adam and eve were not designed to age, but what about us?

This reminds me of a popular topic in the wildly speculative conversations that went around various lounges and department rooms of my college ca. 1980. A fringe of folk maintained that the Old Testament documents extremely ancient cultural memories dating as far back as the primordial ooze, and the pre-fall immortality and very long lifespans shortly after the fall are factual, chronicling a series of genetic events by which “man’s” genome coded for successively shorter lifespans. This was some wild and loose scriptural and scientific interpretation and extrapolation that one couldn’t even begin to try to support with evidence of either kinds, but it does make an interesting, if tenuous, connection between moral philosophy and molecular biology.

…life is nothing but chemical reactions. why do they stop?

name another chemical reaction that gets sick and dies.

A burning candle.

 

I am not a chemist, but I’m hard pressed to describe a chemical reaction that does not exhaust its reagents, degrade its catalysts, or otherwise “get sick and die.”

 

Biology is complicated chemistry, where physical structure – cells, tissues, organs and bodies – play a complicating and critical role. Current understanding reveals mechanisms for cell senility that are both “mechanical” (eg: damage to mitochondria causing chain-reaction production mitochondria-damaging free radicals), and “programmed” (eg: shortening telomeres, limiting the number of times a chromosome can replicate)

 

Physiological death is not the end of biochemistry. Dead tissue is consumed by living things great and small, effects soil composition, etc. – to borrow a line from the Disney movie, it’s part of a great “circle of life”. Poignantly reminder of this, I just finished burying a good friend of 16 years, my cat. :surprise: Circle of life. Yeah.

[goku]

I am not a chemist, but I’m hard pressed to describe a chemical reaction that does not exhaust its reagents, degrade its catalysts, or otherwise “get sick and die.”

people die because they starve?

[CraigD]

people die because they starve?

On a cellular level, yes. People die when their cells cease to properly metabolize, and those cells break down. One can reasonably restate this as “people die when their cells starve.”

[Tormod]

This criterion would rule out most of the US Congress.

 

:surprise: :confused: :confused: :shrug: :frown:

[goku]

designed or not, some people do it better than others.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

I think so, assuming we are designed at all.

 

If we didn't age, one could make an argument against a reason for living. Why worry, we can think about it tomorrow.

 

If the hampster didn't have to chase the food, would it even bother to move? If we couldn't be harmed, lived forever, why would we do anything? We could take some superdrug along the lines of exctasy and just zone out. So I'll bet life has to be gained, moment by moment to be meaningful.

 

I read an article recently that said lifespans were increased by removing an enzyme or something from some test critter. If I remember correctly, it had a deleterious effect on its reproductive ability. Of course, I may have read that the way I wanted to read it. I didn't understand much of the article.

 

Allow me to throw in something else that I've been thinking about recently. I think it fits into this question quite well.

 

If an alien race had figured out how to extend its life, which is probably a requirement for getting here at all, they would probably yawn if they looked at us. Need is a relative thing, just like motion. If their lives were extremely long, one of our lifespans would be like a stretch in the morning to them.

 

What would we have that they would need?

 

Water? Hmmm. there are entire moons made out of water. it's probably the most abundant element in the universe. Not water.

 

Food? Possibly. But I find it hard to believe that they could travel between stars and not be able to supply their own food with their own systems. And, would the food be compatible anyway? We assume that the value systems of other intelligent life forms is the same as ours. But I have my doubts about that.

 

Power over us? lol. Only psychotics need that and I doubt that psychotics could build the equipment to get here.

 

If they lived for a thousand of our years, they'd not only be bored with our little planet, beautiful though it is to us, our mad scramble to accomplish extending our lifes another year, etc. would probably be very stressful for them to have to contemplate. They might study us to determine their own past, their own history, but that would probably be about it.

 

They probably don't need friends. :confused: And their sylogistic process probably works much slower and more thoroughly than ours does. They could afford to take slow, measured steps since that would equate to a very small price to pay in terms of relative time.

 

If we didn't age, we'd look at everything differently. Our entire value system/s would have to be reworked and in my view that would put a whole new face on everything.

 

I think it's very possible that we'd have even less respect for other ephemeral life forms than we do today. It's hard to get attached to something that is here one 'moment' and gone the next.

[biochemrex]

Aging is a product of evolution - a mindless process. We have minds so we could stop aging is we wanted to. It would seem aging is linked to the enzyme telomerase. Geron has managed to stop aging in single human cells. It may be possible to infect most of the bodys cells in a mature human by infecting with a virus which contains genetic material which will switch on the telomerase producing gene. Then perhaps instead of growing older we would grow steadily younger until we reached a state of maturity which would be eternal youth forever. Keith

[goku]

Aging is a product of evolution

assuming the evolutionary THEORY is correct.

theories based on theories that are based on theories, circular reasoning?

[Dreamchaser]

i love this site and tuning in listening to u guys whose intellect far exceeds mine is a treat but can confusing at times. my hat is off to u for starting such a good thread.

[biochemrex]

I am using the word 'Evolution" looslely to mean Natural Development ( no guiding hand), not to mean evolution which as a word does mean a guiding hand, a planned development with is predictable. Whether you believe in intelligent Design or not, there is no evicence of one. this of course does not mean one, but that we have been unable to detect it.

this is part of the problem so well defined by George Orwell in "1984" -" newspeak" - forcing the use of words that make it impossible to carry out reasoned debate. That is the big problem with our Society - our very language cripples intelligent debate. Keith

[Mercenaryend]

i just would like to think of the idea that without ageing , imagin being born , and having your parents partaking in the same activites you do , becuase they dont mature.

and not to try and lead into for-warned areas , but it also has to do with the sexual instincts.

[Bio-Hazard]

In all truth, I'd love to kick ethical people in the stomach and say that immortality can be achieved by the replacement of alternative chemicals while using biological agents to reproduce, reinstate, and reform natural biological occurences we see as displeasing.

 

There are two types of people in the world: Biochemists and Neuroscientists

 

One wants to create a syrum for immortality.. the other wants to increase neurological learning so that the time spent finding this syrum doesn't take as long.. thus, by learning at an exponential rate they can find it faster than the biochemist working for decades.

 

Stupid ethics and morons walking around like bimbos though, no one figures this crap out. :)

 

Get about 250,000 people with a Ph.D in the same city working on this and we'll get it figured it out real quick.

 

Promise.

 

Do me a favor and go for a Ph.D in Biochemistry and Neuroscience. Meet me in Amsterdam.

 

Listens to more Queen ;)

[HydrogenBond]

Aging is a natural process that makes room for evolution. If everything lived forever, there would a constant stress on the environment. The largest preditors would consolidate power and instinctively stomp out even the progressive invaders before they get too strong. A young adult with forward, but conflicting thinking, may be considered a future threat and would be neutralized early. It might be a world of ancients, children and sheep. .

[biochemrex]

The more PhDs hte slower the progress. Progress is made by creative people. PhDs are made by conformists. and conformists will never discover anything new and htey will just degrade us back to the caves. Does Bill Gates have a PhD? Look at the record. All the brilliant discoveries are made by drop outs. Keith

[HydrogenBond]

The "Piled High and Deep" give us differentiated understanding of phenomena because they are taught to look at and analyze things to the Nth degree. There is also another form of education, usually initated by the indivdual, that looks at a wider range of phenomena but to a shallower degree and attempts to bring diversity together into new forms. This is often the path of the entrepreneur. It was the path of many of the great thinkers like da Vinci, Edison, Newton. They new see opportunities within the differntiated work of many disciplines and then go outside the box, bringing things together in new ways. The specialist and the generalist should be part of a team. Entrepreneurs like Bill Gates hire the specialist to give depth to new ideas both good and highly speculative. An entrepreneur who can not afford to hire PhD's can be met with resistance because the entrepreneur does not seem to know enough to draw such provocative conclusions. Bill Gates had to first seek other men of vision and money (IBM) so the specialist could be payed to use their talents to be more supportive.

[biochemrex]

Bill Gates started out very small. Edison also worked that way - hiring others to do the work for him. But it is still a talent. We all rest on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. Alone we can do nothing. But I have noticed that most do not have the spark and no amount of education will give it to them. I think that the best would be to select those who do have the spark. Unfortunatley our whole education system and IQ testing is based on false premises and when you erect a structure on false premises you get a Religion - not a practical technology. Keith

[ldsoftwaresteve]

BIOCHEMREX:

The more PhDs hte slower the progress. Progress is made by creative people. PhDs are made by conformists. and conformists will never discover anything new and htey will just degrade us back to the caves. Does Bill Gates have a PhD? Look at the record. All the brilliant discoveries are made by drop outs. Keith

Little too broad of a brush there rex, although there is some truth to what you say.

 

Some of the dumbest people I've ever worked with had degrees. But some of the brightest did too. I've had math majors work for me that didn't understand how to use formulas. But perhaps the strangest thing I've ever seen was a case where we were developing something totally new and a graduate asked for the manual and what class it was taught in!!!

 

But how does this relate to the subject of aging and whether or not we are 'designed' and destined to do so? Are you saying that only non PHDs will find out how to extend our lives and turn off the aging gene/mechanism/s?

 

The true subject here boils down to the term 'designed'. That implies a designer. That implies God. Can chance and accident actually result in life? And if so, why do we age? what is it about aging that makes living possible. Maybe death is more entwined with life than we know.