Issue 1524 – Biological Clocks? – August 26, 2024

I once read an interesting little book about death, “Panati’s  Extraordinary Endings of Practically Everything and Everybody.” It examines people’s last words, extinctions, strange wills, and the like. 

It was an easy-to-read book filled with trivia and very short articles. It was far from a Christian book and totally secular; in fact, its bias tends to lean away from things Christian. It is heavily influenced by Darwinian evolution and posits an earth “billions of years old.”

Despite its bias, it does contain some interesting tidbits. You can pick it up, read a short piece, and put it down without having to worry about losing your place. It is fascinating in a way, and I would not want to cite it as an academic reference because, in some areas, it makes some pretty bold statements based on sketchy research and evidence. Still, it is fun nonetheless (in a morbid sort of way). 

I think I paid two-bits for it at a garage sale and it was worth all twenty five pennies. I cannot imagine paying the full retail price for it.

I did find one section very interesting. It claims to have as its source of information the book “In our Allotted Lifetime” by Harvard’s Stephen Jay Gould. Now, I have heard Gould’s name, but I have never read his book, so I cannot comment on its accuracy, but the section did make me think.

According to Panati’s book, Gould maintains that all mammals maintain the same basic biological pace in life. He calculated a constant of four heartbeats for every breath using a formula that included body weight, heart rate, and breath rate. That means that a shrew with a lifespan of less than two years has the same amount of time as an elephant with a lifespan of 115 years based on their respective biological clocks. It is an interesting thought, and I am not qualified to comment on its accuracy.

Panati goes on to say that Gould found one exception: people. “We live,” Gould estimates, “about three times as long as mammals our size should.” He further quotes Gould as offering a bit of an explanation, “I regard this excess of living as a happy consequence of neoteny – the preservation of adults of shapes and growth rates that characterize juvenile stages of ancestral primates.” 

My mind went numb as I tried to figure that out, but Panati explains, “That is, humans experience a delayed maturity; we arrive at all stages of life later than other mammals arrive at those same stages. We have a long gestation, extended and dependent infancy, a protracted childhood, a stalled sexual awakening, and in a like fashion, death itself is delayed, arriving years later than it should. About forty-eight years later!”

Gould’s theory is fascinating, and Panati’s explanation is interesting, but they both miss the point. To start with, we have no ancestral primates. We did not evolve from monkeys. The simple truth is that God created animals and people and hardwired people differently.

…then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. Genesis 2:7

God placed a special life in us, His own. He also planned that we should live together in the garden with Him and fellowship with Him. That changed with the fall. After the fall, we became so wicked that He intentionally put a ceiling on our lifespan.

Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” Genesis 6:3

We are still hardwired for eternity because of our spirit nature, but there are limits to the length of life in this world. We have a finite amount of time to choose our eternal destiny, whether heaven or hell. God has generally set an upper limit on people, but He also knows the number of our days, so we should choose wisely and soon.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. Psalm 139:16

Thanks, Gould, for your theory; it is fascinating. Thanks, Panati, for pointing it out and explaining, but I think I’ll stick with the Bible on this one. We are different than the animals by design and ruled over by a sovereign and loving God who seeks to have us spend eternity with Him.

Until next time, praise God that He made us different than the shrew and the elephant.

Be blessed

Hallelu Yah / Praise God 

Kevin

Gleanings From The Word

Experience an extraordinary God in ordinary life. 

Soli Deo Gloria (For the glory of God alone)

Never let the enemy tell you that you are worthless or insignificant. Your value in God’s eyes is so great that it was worth dying for. You are a blessing to the world. You are so precious to God that his plan for heaven will not be complete without you.

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Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are from the English Standard Version (ESV)

© K.F. “Kevin” Corbin 2024 – Used by permission – All rights reserved.