Unreal: Inorganic

          Are the living and the dead really different?

          We living creatures seem to have the ability to move “on our own.” Plants grow, animals walk or fly or swim or slither. People flap their lips. Wiggling, reproducing, seemingly self-interested cells comprise living organisms.

          The dead – rocks, chemicals, air, things – seem to just sit there unless some external force acts on them. Gravity pulls a rock, chemicals are combined, air is blown around. It's just inert stuff.

          Or is it?

          I feel the traditional biochemical distinction between organic and inorganic – between living and dead – diverts our eyes from deeper truths the way a poorly calibrated set of gun sights results in off-target shots. This has resulted in a wild west of ideology where bystanders with objective perspectives fall to the dust riddled with logic holes by dogmatic gunslingers aiming to bring the entire world into their mental courtrooms “dead or alive.”

          Henceforth I'm the new Sheriff in town. I'm going to bring the irresponsible and the dogmatic to justice. You can decide their fate in your own mental courtroom.

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          A single fact unites the living and the dead: energy.

          Scientists have shown that energy and matter are equivalent. One morphs into the other under many circumstances. Chemical reactions release or absorb energy, nuclear reactions do the same. Mechanical devices can convert one to the other as a byproduct, for instance via friction.

          Biological – living – processes convert energy and matter back and forth as well.

Albert Einstein formally announced the amount of potential energy in matter and the amount of matter energy can create in his famous equation Energy [E] equals Matter [M] times the speed of light [C] squared. Whether this equation will turn out to perfectly measure the amounts involved may never be known. But instead of haggling over the tenth decimal place, let's recognize the fact that energy and matter are just two forms of the same thing. Over a hundred years of data from physics, chemistry and engineering support this.

          Furthermore, this force of nature we call alternately energy or matter never goes out of existence. It changes forms, but lives on perpetually.

          You don't need to do something to matter to create energy from it. Experiments from physics and chemistry have demonstrated that “inert” matter in fact consists of particles/waves in constant motion. When you push against a rock, its energy fields push back. Meanwhile, billions of electrons in the rock swirl amongst its atoms. The rock is alive with energy.

          So are we. The thing is, the energy in us and the energy in matter are the same energy.

          Energy in our food “fuels” our muscles, our senses, our brains. This food ultimately comes from minerals in the soil and air reacting with sunlight. From this “inert” energy/matter we derive our life.

          A philosophical view called “Vitalism” contradicts my take on “things.” This view holds that some ineffable vital spirit inhabits the organic, while the inorganic lacks this spirit. As a key piece of evidence the Vitalists point to our present inability to explain the origin of life.

          Yet physicists and chemists inadvertently provide a much stronger piece of evidence against Vitalism: scientists simply can't tell you where life begins and inert matter ends. No existing definition of “life” gets around the fact that living and “dead” matter do the same thing.

          Chemists define “organic” substances as those containing both carbon and hydrogen. But carbon and hydrogen are “inorganic” chemicals. We can combine carbon and hydrogen in a lab. Is this creating life? Hardly.

          Biologists point to reproduction as an essential ingredient of all known life. But “reproducing” versus “non reproducing” matter-energy is a nonsense distinction. The matter and energy don't reproduce themselves. As the Conservation of Energy/Matter law teaches us, matter and energy only change forms. Nothing comes into or goes out of existence. Some chemicals may be grouped in one configuration today, in another tomorrow.

          In fact “inorganic” chemical reactions are self-reproducing too, so long as the necessary chemicals and energy remain available. Smoke goes on reproducing itself from firewood as long as the firewood lasts.

          How does this differ from animals, plants, or any other living organism reproducing their kind so long as food, water and air remain available?

          Both we and the rocks have a “will of our own.” Stub your toe on a rock and you'll see what I mean.  The rock doesn't appear to have consciousness, but neither do some people I've met.

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          Nonetheless I agree with Vitalism in certain respects.

          A Spirit does inhabit us. We do have souls. But we share this Spirit with all of existence.

          At present Spirit appears to manifest as energy/matter. I'm almost certain this won't be able to explain everything. For example how this energy-matter-unity gives rise to my subjective experience, my “mind,” I don't know. I doubt anyone ever will (I'd love to be wrong on this).

          I've come to understand that I don't and won't completely understand the world beyond my perceptions of it. Humans don't have a God's eye view. Mysteries will always remain, and I choose to call some of these mysteries God.

          But as I indicated in my last post, no properly analyzed facts show us to be separate from the universe or from each other. A Separatist view relies on unexamined appearances.

          So the next time you see an ugly, “dead,” unmoving patch of dirt, ask yourself whether you can't commune with it. You might just come away enriched with Divine Spirit.