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Pastimes : History's effect on Religion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Volsi Mimir who wrote (30)	5/5/2003 8:48:41 PM
From: Volsi Mimir	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 520

The correspondence between early embryonic cells and tumor cells has fascinated researchers for many years. A great deal has been learned about the death of cells by studying cells that have somehow evaded it. And it is inescapably true that the death of human being begins with, and is ultimately entirely explainable by, the death of individual cells. The two deaths cannot be separated from one another; they are the same death, whether we write on hospital chart that death came from a "heart attack" or "cancer" or simply "old age." Yet as we have seen death is not, a priori, a requirement of life. Somatic cells --- and thus the need for compulsory somatic cell death --- arose only after DNA began making copies of itself that would be used for purposes other than reproduction. For humans this means that once a reasonable number of our germ cells have been given a chance to impart their reproductive DNA to the next generation, the rest of us --- our somatic selves --- becomes so much excess baggage. That is the biological origin of senescence and death. From a human point of view, it is our somatic selves --- embedded in which are things like mind, personality, love, will --- that we cherish most and that define us, to ourselves and to others. We think of reproduction as only one of many activities we can choose to engage in. Perhaps this is not surprising, since it is a point of view arising in the somatic part of ourselves --- in our minds. We have used our minds to invent complex belief systems to explain death. None of these paint a picture of ourselves as excess baggage; none cast us simply as tools for transmitting DNA. Yet when we trace the origin of our death beyond mind and belief, to its true beginnings --- the death of individual cells -- we come to a rather harsh and unflattering conclusion: the irrelevance, in the grander scheme of the universe, of our somatic selves. No wonder belief so often triumphs over reason. Pg 103-104 Chapter 4:From Sex to Death Sex & the Origins of Death by William R. Clark I got this book in 1999 as some reading about life and death when I spent the spring helping my sister care for her hubby who was dying of cancer. Just got around reading it. Did read or was read to many parts of the Bible during that time, it was about hope and fear and no time to reason. Still haven't finished Zen and The Brain by Austin --- read 200 pages of 870--- it was the cats that bugged me. maybe I'll look at it again.