The reality is carbon based life forms only live so long. Scientists are working very hard to change the rules that govern this reality.

I’m sorry for your loss, and I wish I knew the answer to your question.

Its just how it works you live you produce new life you pass on its a way to safeguard the species if we didn’t die we wouldn’t produce young and could get wiped out this way the human species will go one.

That is a big question and not easy to answer particularly when you have just lost someone. It is inexplicable, mysterious and painful that someone can be here with us one day and gone the next never to return. You can hold them forever in your memory and it helps to talk about it with others who knew her but every death is unique and the only consolation I can offer is that I am sure your husband’s grandma would not want you to be unhappy and the pain you feel will fade in time.

Energy can not be created or destroyed, so if life went on forever there would eventually be no new life.

More importantly, I am very sorry for your loss.

@TheOnlyNeffie id forgotten about that

I’ve always been comforted by the notion that mortality is the price we pay for evolution. Single celled organisms that can replicate themselves live forever. The price for diversity, for passion, for language, for philosophy and art… is death.

Parts wear out. Anyway, it would really suck to live forever.
@crazyivan In return (and much more wet-blankety), “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.”

@TheOnlyNeffie

Minor correction . . . it’s MATTER can not be created or destroyed :)

At least, that’s what I learned in Chem I

@mrrich724 really? I really thought that it applied to energy, as well… but I could be mistaken.

Here is a way that we live forever in each other. Argon gas only exsist in the atmosphere up to six feet off the ground. It is also a finite resouce that is breathed in by all life and absorbed into our bodies, Which as you may know that we replace every cell in our body every seven years. So in essensce your grandma is with you right now.

We are also energy which many believe that continues forever. As we all came from one bang we are all infinitely tied together. Hopefully someday we will all learn that but until then she lives with us as long as you remember.

Its a general way of life. Were born, we live, and then we die.

“Why do we have to die?”

I don’t think that’s asking for the mechanics of life and death, or even for the meaning of life and/or death.

I think that’s a plaintive cry of mourning. It is the despair of facing something you can do nothing about. It is the loss of something like and arm or a leg. It sends phantom signals to your brain. You live as if the limb was still there, and it feels like the limb is still there, and it is a constant surprise to find it is gone.

The only possible response, as inadequate as it is, is “I’m sorry for your loss.”

I can’t imagine what your loss is like. All I know is the ones in my life, and I trust that we feel pretty much the same when we lose someone close to us, as I am about to do. A dear friend is at the end of brain cancer. We knew he had cancer, but we had no idea it was going this fast.

There’s a psychic emptiness that fills that space of the phantom person or phantom limb, and it’s an emptiness that can never, ever be filled. The loss is permanent.

“Why do we have to die?”

There’s no satisfying answer. There’s nothing that can tell us how to avoid the pain. There’s nothing that will bring him or her back. But why? Why? Why do they have to die?

We die because evolution has not yet discovered the secret to immortality. Humans are lucky to be one of the longest lived species, but we still yearn to live longer and longer.

If you are looking for some cosmic reason, there isn’t one. All we can do is appreciate the life that was, and accept that death will one day be our fate too.

@mrrich724 and @TheOnlyNeffie The more fundamental conservation law is that of mass-energy, since quantum mechanics makes no distinction between the two. You are both right.

Note: This is probably not helpful for the OP at this time overcoming their loss, but it is quite interesting philosophically for other users.

There is an interesting theory of why we die in The Selfish Gene. It suggests that because we only pass on our genes mostly before the age of 40 (before women run out of eggs) that genes that are adaptive for longer living are not naturally selected (because they have no effect). He also suggests that we may artificially extend life by increasing the age span where we can conceive. I forget how he suggested to do this, but it was interesting.

This is an awful summary and I have missed lots due to poor memory, but I just wanted to get across the main idea.

The earth would get too overpopulated and it would completely destroy the environment.

I’m usually not one for prose, but; “That it will never come again. Is what makes life so sweet – Emily Dickinson”

@wundayatta – you have an exceptional ability! I found a lot of solace in your words.

sorry, but how many humans do you want in this world?

Death is an inevitability. All multicellular organisms eventually perish.
Bacteria split into two new daughter bacteria and are thus, technically, immortal.
We lost this ability by going multi cellular.

In some ways, death is better then some other things that can happen. My mother has Alzheimer’s disease, and today I found out that she now has forgotten how to get out of bed, and is being transferred from her hostel to a nursing home. For her, death would be better, rather than slowly fading away. I don’t know your view on eternity or origin of life, but I take comfort in the fact that one day I’ll see my mother again as she once was. Sorry if this offends you, as I don’t mean to preach. It is just that this is what makes sense of death and disease for me. I hope you find comfort in your loss.

I’m sorry for your loss. Years ago, my mother lost her mother, husband and best friend, the latter to suicide, all in the same year. I don’t know how she made it through. To answer your question, medically speaking, our bodies and minds just plain wear out. Evolutionarily and societally speaking, it’s a way of making room for future generations.

Because eventually, we are all dressed funny and ugly.

Nature takes care of that problem.

@ChazMaz So death is natures way of keeping the knee-high sock population in check? I like it.

Thank God we do!

My condolences for your loss.

Life is temporary so that we don’t take it for granted.

@ChazMaz LOL!

Thanks for all the answers. I enjoy reading both the scientific and religious view points. It’s a bummer that life is temporary, but I suppose it is in our best interest that it is.

i am sorry to hear that.
but because of birth, so death is inevitable.

Your husbands Grandmother will one day be the twinkle in the eyes of a new born child on a planet not yet capable of sustaining life. A trillion years from now.

@ChazMaz Stars might do that, but Earth sits in a pretty gravity well, circling a star that won’t explode.

I thought the same thing when my brother died. I recently got his name tattooed on my ankle. I drove out to San Fransisco (where he died) and I live in Idaho. It was a two-day drive. I miss him a lot. Dieing is a terrible thing to encounter. But it is also a blessing in disguise.

My brother was heavily into drugs, and he always told me how much he hated drugs. He was trying to quit constantly, but found himself unable to stay off them for too long. He was off heroine for a while, but found out that his girlfriend had an abortion and his friend died. So he went back to it, which is when he overdosed. As sad as it is, he is now free of the life of drugs that he hated. It is a blessing in disguise because I know he is happier now.

However, given your religious views, you may see it differently. Either way, I’m sorry for your loss and hope this somewhat helped.

Because it was beneficial to the survival of our species. Sexual reproduction creates innovative combinations coping with an ever changing environment. Compare this to a homo erectus living 500,000 years and having three kids.

Biblically, death is presented as the more likely exit from a sinful world.

@mattbrowne That’s the kind of crap that makes it impossible for me to respect evolutionary biologists. “Oh, let’s just make an answer that fits the known facts!”

@Nullo – There are scientific and spiritual answers to this question. In my post above I was talking about a scientific answer and I’m unclear why you call it crap. Sex got invented for a reason 1.5 billion years ago.

When we look at the deeper meaning of life and death only spiritual answers will help. And there are quite different ones out there for example if you compare Christianity with Hinduism.

@mattbrowne I was referring more generally to the tendency in such sciences as are prefixed with ‘evolution’ to essentially BS. You pose them a question and they reply, “because in the primitive environment, that’s why.” Irritating.

@Nullo I’m not sure if I’m missing some sarcasm here, but were you actually coming out against answers that fit in to the known facts?

@crazyivan I’m against the sloppiness, against made-up answers that fit the known facts. You missed the “make” in the above post, I take it.
It is impossible to research these things thoroughly (since there was nobody there to observe or record), so all answers are going to be at least partially conjecture. It galls me that they present them without any indication of that necessary uncertainty.

I don’t know… I guess you could apply that to everything. I mean, when I say “I’m hungry” what I really mean is “The best information I have available is being interpreted by my brain in such a way that I believe I am hungry”. There is uncertainty in every statement, even this one.

It seems like by your argument scientists should just throw up there hands and admit defeat. We come closer and closer to definitive truth by narrowing the uncertainty. I mean, I can’t imagine that their is an evolutionary biologist anywhere in the world that would not abandon his notions of evolution if credible evidence came up to contradict it or call it into doubt.

I think the real problem is that people apply their own certainty to science. People of faith, for example, approach the world with bulletproof certitude and assume that others feel the same way about their own beliefs. Rationalists know that all things are uncertain to varying degrees and thus don’t feel the need to remind everybody of the underlying uncertainty in preamble to every statement.

@Nullo – I don’t think I was being sloppy here. It is possible to imagine an immortal life form competing with mortal life forms on some planet. Now as this planet undergoes significant changes how would both types of life forms deal with the changes? My point was that death does help the survival of a species.

Not everything can be explained by looking at evolution. But death can. Or the differences of lifespans between species.

I know you support evolution so I’m a bit surprised about your irritation.

“Why do we have to die?”
Because just like everything else. We also erode.

Because if we could all live forever AND be able to have kids, we’d end up overpopulating until we have to live on/in a shit/piss-covered planet.

To be with our creator (our God) and the loved ones whom have already left us.. : )

Sorry for your loss though. You’ll see her again, one day! : )

@mattbrowne In fact, I’m a variant of the stock young-Earth Creationist. I accept that natural selection no doubt played a part in the ensuing millennia (you need only look at how the average height has increased over the centuries to see that), but do not believe that it carried us from a mess of mutated amoebas to our present state.
More in line with the original question, I see death – temporal death, mind you – as God’s way of keeping us from being stuck in a fallen world forever.