The definition of life has long been a challenge for scientists and philosophers, with many varied definitions put forward. This is partially because life is a process, not a substance.
Living organisms are composed of lifeless molecules. When these molecules are isolated and examined individually, they conform to all the physical and chemical laws that describe the behavior of inanimate matter. Yet living organisms possess extraordinary attributes not shown by any random collection of molecules….
What distinguishes all living organisms from all inanimate objects?
First, they are structurally complicated and highly organized. They possess intricate internal structures and contain many kinds of complex molecules.
This requires work, or force, to organize in the first place, and next to oppose the force of entropy / decay, and then to duplicate, transform and construct ever larger structures.
By contrast, the inanimate matter in our environment-clay, sand, rocks, seawater-usually consists of mixtures of relatively simple chemical compounds.
Second, living organisms extract, transform, and use energy from their environment…This energy enables living organisms to build and maintain their own intricate structures and to do mechanical, chemical, osmotic, and other types of work.
By contrast, inanimate matter does not use energy in a systematic way to maintain structure or to do work. Inanimate matter tends to decay toward a more disordered state, to come to equilibrium with its surroundings.
Throughout the ages magicians and scientists practicing traditions like alchemy have been trying to create, maintain, and restart life. So far, success has been claimed by using stem cells to create an organism or transferring DNA into a living cell to create a designer cell.
However, these methods don’t create life. The starter cell was already alive. Despite amazing advances in understanding and manipulating cellular composition and processes, science has been unable to spark life into a cell, let alone an organ or an entire organism, or to maintain life beyond a certain point.
So without “The vital principle or animating force within living beings” there can be no purely materialistic evolution.
The theory of evolution…neither provides, nor requires, an explanation for the origin of life…Evolution…studies the pathways and mechanisms…following the origin of life.
However, there can be no mechanisms of organic change without life. That only leaves the option of an infinite Energy converting part of E into m and transferring more E to make a living being. It’s just that, as detailed in the post Scientific Proof Is A Myth, the forces we experience everyday, including life, are not studied by the physical sciences because infinity / c2 cannot be accounted for in their measurements of substance.
According to NASA:
Living things…have the ability to take in energy from the environment and transform it for growth and reproduction.
NASA’s definition clearly draws from E=mc2.
And NASA’s definition of life matches the biblical definition as interaction of the:
- hyper dimensional spirit life energy
- to the unending Singularity source of energy that creates mass.
- physical body
- to necessary resources of oxygen, water, food, etc.
- soul, i.e. personality and character stored as memories in the brain,
- to social relationships.
This validates the religious revelation, not found in any religious revelation except the Bible, that the life force, AKA spirit, comes from the Singularity / YHVH / Creator.
And the LORD God
- formed [past tense] man of the dust of the ground – material body
- and breathed [past tense] into his nostrils the breath of life – energized the body
- and man became [future action] a living soul (Genesis 2:7)
The material body is the least important aspect of a human being, tearing itself down and reconstructing itself daily throughout life, and being absorbed back into the elements of the earth at death.
- “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was:
- and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” (Ecclesiastes12:7)
The soul is the essential part of the unique human being. Like the body, it is formed throughout one’s lifetime by its experiences perceived through the body. This allows the soul to transform its personality and character during life through social interaction.
At the death of the body the soul is no longer able to interact in social relationships, so by both NASA’s and the Bible’s definitions of life, becomes a dead soul by virtue of becoming utterly isolated, not because it stops existing, which, as energy, it can’t.
Paradoxically, the same action of eating the fruit that brought death crashing down on the Woman brought life through Adam. Plotted as it was by Satan, his action was certainly condemned by Satan – and legalistic religionists – but was it condemned by God?
Re-read the only law given to the first humans. It is not a moral law. It is a simple statement of a law of nature – “if you eat the fruit, you die.” No different from “if you drink poison, you die.” This was a consequence, inevitable physical effects from Adam’s action in the physical realm, but do we misinterpret these as punishments?
Eating the fruit broke a natural law and caused an unstoppable chain reaction of physical effects, but eating the fruit wasn’t the sin. The sin was separating from relationship with God. This was the reason the woman ate the fruit, to become independent of God.
Adam, on the other hand, died to self in order to obey God’s word for him to be “one flesh” with his spouse. With this understanding we realize that, even though he broke the physical law, Adam did not break the moral law. He did not lose his relationship with God.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose…and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified…As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:28-39)
When Adam faced a choice to respond to his wife’s crisis, he freely chose to act for the benefit of his wife, at the expense of his own welfare, even to death. By this act of love he began to develop God’s likeness, and it was only by mastering his own domain that he began to develop the ability to have dominion over anything else.
As he inadvertently did again later in the Garden of Gethsemane, instead of wrecking God’s plan in the Garden of Eden, the Adversary actually became the agent to realize God’s plan – by providing choices.
The first rule of war is “know your enemy.”
Lucifer miscalculated both Adam’s and God’s responses. They both acted out of love and mercy, and used their power for the benefit of others. Lucifer couldn’t anticipate Adam’s love for his wife and God’s love for his children because he doesn’t know love.
“In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil…he that loveth not his brother. For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” (I John 3:10-11)
The penultimate YHVH’s Anointed had to go through this same developmental process before he was made the King of the World.
“And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.” Luke 22:41-43)
The following dogma, claimed as uniquely Christian from the 1st century AD, is just as fully applicable to the first two humans on the first day of time.
“I am crucified [executed by tree] with the Chosen One / Christ: nevertheless I live! the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
- Adam also “was the son of God” (Luke 3:38).
- Adam was YHVH’s first Chosen One / Messiah / Christ.
- “For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world.” (Hebrews 2:5-6)
- Adam willingly chose to share the judgment and punishment of the tree with the first fallen human.
- Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree. (I Peter 2:24)
- Adam redeemed the woman from the curse of utter isolation that defines death, when he joined her in the experience of separation from YHVH to a desperate struggle for survival.
- YHVH’s Chosen One / Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” (Galatians 3:13)
- Adam saved his wife from the power of darkness when he chose to experience death with her.
- “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear son…
- Adam is without question the firstborn son of God. (Genesis 1:26)
- Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature…
- Adam, by keeping faith with God’s Primary Directive to have dominion and to cleave to his wife, made peace with God for the Woman through the blood of his cross / tree.
- you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: (Colossians 1:13-22)
The greatest evidence of Adam giving life to his wife is that his change from immortal to mortal allowed the two original humans to reproduce into countless generations of children extending, in a new modality, the life of the original parents.
“And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived…And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living..” (Genesis 4:1, 3:20)
The Christian concept of what Jesus’ death on the cross accomplished for humanity can be best understood by Eve’s singular experience. This is the same experience of each individual who truly grasps the meaning of salvation from death to life.
“For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by HIS life” (Romans 5:10)
- “For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren [family],
- Adam could have repudiated his wife and declared himself too good to identify with her, assuming the Creator could just clone another companion for him.
- Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren / family, in the midst of the congregation of believers / church will I sing praise unto thee.
- Can you not imagine Adam reassuring his wife that “I love you, and I’ll never turn my back on you.” I’m not asking you to speak from experience, mind. Maybe from a movie or romance novel…
- And again, I will put my trust in him.
- Can you not imagine Adam reassuring his wife that “Our Father will fix this, I don’t know how but I know he will.” Granted, given the type of fatherhood most people experience, that is hard for some people to imagine.
- And again, Behold I and the children [of God, family] which God hath given me.
- Adam reassuring his wife “We’ll still be able to have children, I’m sure of it.”
Forasmuch then as the [human] children [of God] are partakers of flesh and blood, he [Son of God / Adam / Jesus Christ] also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;” (Hebrews 2:11-15)
- Can you not imaging Adam comforting his wife when she is seized by the shock of the death throughout her entire body? If not from experience, from the scene in the Titanic?
In God’s kingdom, to have dominion means to lovingly care for those entrusted to us.
Too often we equate “dominion” with “dominate.” Too many leaders are psychopaths whose idea of power is to transform free men and women into slaves and sycophants by instilling fear through oppression, abuse, death and destruction.
It’s easy to hate and compel. It takes real power to love and create new life. It’s easy to isolate from people and exploit them as subjects. It takes real power to engage in relationship and and to transform fearful oppressed peoples into free and successful men and women through role modeling forgiveness, kindness, and support of their personal growth and development.
It’s easy for religions to demand women to submit to male authority, and many women do tolerate abuse to maintain access to the basic necessities of life. That’s not what the Bible teaches. It’s rare to find men who will sacrifice their prerogatives and advantages to meet the needs of their companions like Adam and Jesus Christ did.
“Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, even as The Chosen One/Messiah/Christ also loved the congregation of believers / church, and gave himself for it…So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church / congregation of believers.” (Ephesians 5:21-29)
The reason bad things happen to good people is that we are interdependent, so we are affected for good or ill by the choices made by our family, employers, politicians, etc. But the circumstances imposed by others aren’t what define us.
Our responses to circumstances – good and bad – transforms who we are becoming throughout our lifetime, until the point of death in which we are locked into our eternal destiny.
Adults become increasingly more other- or self- centered throughout our lives as we choose to sacrifice one of two options: self-indulgence or others’ needs. We become more or less loving or hateful, educated or illiterate, wise or foolish, righteous or wicked by the choices we make in response to the experiences we face. The evidence of how we relate to others becomes apparent in the relationships we nurture or pursue, and can most easily be recognized through caring for the vulnerable and powerless members of society in positions like underpaid teachers, nurses, social workers, and unpaid parents versus one’s pursuit of wealth, power or social admiration in business, politics, religion or entertainment.
We qualify to rule when we develop God’s likeness, or attributes, of right-eousness, doing the right thing. We’ve experienced doing the wrong thing through bad cooking, driving accidents, relationship breakdowns, and major disasters regardless of the intention to do good or bad. Just extrapolate what kind of damage can be caused universe-wide by someone who doesn’t function in the full knowledge and understanding of the truth.
Kingdom Come 