WHAT IS LIFE?
Moreover, why has the answer to life managed to elude the might of modern science with apparent ease? It is because life is invisible to science (up to now). Life is the image of the Holy Trinity in the cell. But what exactly is the image of the Holy Trinity, and why is it life? Scroll down for the secret of life.
Organisms are NOT life
When you look at a dog, a flower, or a bird flying in the sky, you are not looking at life, you are looking at an organism. The biggest misconception about life is that organisms - or certain organic properties such as reproduction or growth - are life. However, organisms are not life, rather organisms are the direct consequence of the life which exists within them. Since life exists within organisms, we need to look inside organisms to find life.
Cells CONTAIN life
You will never see life floating freely throughout nature. Life does not and cannot exist by itself. Life is housed in an organic receptacle: the cell. This explains why the cell is the basic physical unit of biology - why organisms are composed of cells. Life is not something spread-out across the trillions of cells of a multicellular organism. Life is quantised - it exists in each and every cell of an organism. An organism is alive because of the sum total of life within its individual cells.
Life MAKES proteins
There is no life without death. The reason why life exists is because cells are degenerating objects. Cells are composed of proteins which degrade and become useless relatively quickly. If cells had no mechanism to counteract this degeneration, cells would quickly descend into a downward spiral of degradation and eventually death. This does not happen, because life sustains the cell by continuously producing new proteins to replenish old ones. Contrary to popular perception, there is nothing vague or abstract about life at all - life is a protein generator.
Life is DNA, RNA, Protein
Proteins are molecules, but life is not a chemical reaction, or a set of reactions. Proteins are informational molecules -they require information for their construction. Life, therefore, is not chemistry, but communication. Proteins do not store their own information, rather DNA stores the information to make proteins. But while DNA stores genetic information, DNA is unable to communicate it to proteins. The communication is performed by a combination of RNA and (paradoxically) other proteins. The protein generator is therefore the triadic communication system: DNA, RNA and protein. This communication system is life itself.
The origin of life was SUPERNATURAL
No answer to life is complete without knowing the answer to the origin of life - something must have given rise to the DNA, RNA, protein system. That means being the origin of huge molecular machines, vast quantities of genetic information, the genetic code and, generally speaking, a revolution in the fabric of the universe: molecules which communicate with one another. That's not all. The DNA, RNA, protein system is an inseparable whole - the molecular machinery which performs the communication are products of the communication themselves. The DNA, RNA, protein system is not the result of a gradual, step-wise, evolutionary process, its origin was instantaneous. Nothing in this universe could possibly have produced the spark of life. Which leaves only one rational conclusion: the origin of life was supernatural.
Life is the IMAGE
of the Holy Trinity
You may, or may not, have wondered why the three persons of the Trinity have the particular names Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Either way, notice how the Father and the Son have similar names based on familial relations, whereas the Holy Spirit's name is curiously different. This is not random, it is due to the communication structure of the Trinity. Now, look at the names of the three informational macromolecules which comprise life: DNA, RNA, protein. What do you notice? DNA and RNA are very similar, whereas protein is clearly different from the other two. In other words, the names of DNA, RNA and protein have precisely the same pattern as the names of the persons in the Holy Trinity. Again, this is not a fantastic stroke of luck, DNA, RNA and protein are the image of the Holy Trinity. And image implies origin.
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The image of the living God in living cells
What do you think?
The answer to life strikes a balance between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the natural and the supernatural, a God who is both pure spirit, infinite, eternal and beyond all comprehension, yet also finite and surprisingly down-to-earth. Beauty can be a good test of scientific ideas and one of central characteristics of beauty is symmetry. This answer to life has clear symmetry: biological life is the image of divine life. It is exudes beauty. But beauty is also in the eye of the beholder. So, what do you think of all this? What do you think about having the image of God inside each of your cells? Do you find this convincing? Can you see any flaws?
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