ANSWERS: 15
  • To become a part of the food chain?
  • Good question. I know, from Christian teachings that humans die as a symbol of the much worse spiritual death. But, I guess God will tell me one day, so I'm prepared to wait.
  • the food supply increases arithmetically, while the population increases geometrically; basically if we dont die we run out of food, go hungry and starve. even if we couldn't die would you really want to live with the constant feeling of hunger. as well the amount of space in the world is limited, this isnt a very big planet and we are already living on otp of eachother. Death is just a part of the balance, God made a world where everything is in equilibrium, death is a balancer, but its not like death is the end. Death makes room for new life%2
  • the food supply increases arithmetically, while the population increases geometrically; basically if we dont die we run out of food, go hungry and starve. even if we couldn't die would you really want to live with the constant feeling of hunger. as well the amount of space in the world is limited, this isn't a very big planet and we are already living on top of each other. Death is just a part of the balance, God made a world where everything is in equilibrium, death is a balancer, but its not like death is the end. Death makes room for new life, and there are rewards for one after death.
  • because nothing and no one last forever.
  • Living things die because they live. This sounds trite, but it is true. The only way to prevent death is to not have life. The old makes way for the new in the cycles of the entire universe, not just in the idea of "living" beings. Things are created, and they degrade, and new things replace them. The death of one thing sustains the life of another (circle of life...food chain). As soon as you are born (actually, before), organisms begin to attack you (bacteria, virus, etc) in order to sustain their life and propogate their species/life form.
  • Probably because if they didn't die and just lived forever, we would want them to be dead. It's a fact of life: People will only realize the worth of something when it isn't there.
  • If no one died, no one could be born. You would not exist if the first living creatures did not die. Life would not be sustainable on this planet with a constantly growing, never decreasing population. So I suppose the real question is, why do we exist at all? By harboring conscious existence you submit yourself to death. Without having existed you wouldn't need to die.
  • Several different reasons. 1. It is impossible to stop things being killed, by predators or by accidents. 2. For nature as for humans, making something that never wears out is very hard. Faults accumulate. better to throw away the old model and get a new one at intervals. 3. Things that do not die and get replaced cannot evolve. Things that evolve will outdo things that don't. 4. Life is a mixture of good times and bad times. In the bad times, things die - see reason 1. In the good times, things that can breed fast can take more advantage of the bonanza, and will shove aside things that breed slowly. So every species needs a birthrate higher than the unavoidable death rate, so that when the good times come, it can cash in. But that means that when it is not boom time, something has to die to avoid overpopulation.
  • This might be more of a philosophical question than a science question, because for some dying things, science doesn't' have the answers. Like for humans, scientists look at the cell regeneration and repairing systems built into the body and they don't know why it finally breaks down and dies. They know why diseases kill people but not why the body dies. It's kind of like how cats purr. They don't know.
  • Animals NEED to die because the evolutionary process (which makes continued life possible) requires that you are born, reshuffle your genes (i.e. breed) and then die TO MAKE ROOM for the individuals you've bred. If nothing died, there would be no resources for younger generations. This is the mode animals have chosen to adopt: high breeding rates and shorter lifespans. And then there are plants - who have so many enemies they can afford to be practically immortal... and are in the end only killed by the limitations and destruction of the shapes they have grown, or some disease/something eating them. Plants aren't killed by cancer or parasites living in them, and if bits of them break off, most can simply grow new ones or survive without them... plants themselves are not 'programmed' to die in the way we are. Blame your animal ancestors for the fact you're programmed to start withering and becoming reproductively inferior after about 40-50 Earth circuits of the Sun as a survival mechanism, and have a delicate and highly specialised body that can't recover from significant harm or regrow its organs or limbs. We also apparently NEED to die because we have very little self-controlling instinct. There are already far too many human beings than the Earth can support without a significant change in our consuming habits. Very soon we will deplete all the natural resources if we aren't kicked into touch. When there are too many animals in a given population, the natural solution is that the majority of them starve to death.
  • Hmm yet through living the cells naturally evolve. Some examples are antibodies, growth stages, etc. The living thing is degrading constantly yet its being replenished at a far faster rate through replication of the cells. I mean its like over every 2 months you have a completely new body. Which explains memory loss somewhat. Yet death doesn't make sense since reproducing would take far too long going up through the growth stages and generating antibodies as well as gathering neccessities of life. Some other form of "evolving" could easily yield better results. The new being created through reproduction is made out of the hosts material therefor should die at the same time not live longer. Death does not make sense. A better form for this question would be "What causes cell failure such as aging and cancer?"
  • Because the world would become too crowded.
  • Cause I said so.
  • We've come to see that natural evolution (influences and environment) causes the genome to mutate and adapt to the surroundings, over the short span of a couple centuries. Eyeless fish in caves, birds incapable of flight that can swim Olympic style, and fish that can breathe out of water. The human being progresses with too many variations in too wide an environment to adapt of change to any one specific environmental condition. To be blunt, our genes see no need to change. Overpopulated, over indulged, our genes without help of modern medicine, would have us all dying faster and faster like a runaway freight train. If we could control our environmental influences, and stop saying "Oh it's human nature" when we give into animalistic urges, and instead wait out the diseases and see which of us lasts the longest, and using those genes, impregnate the population, we would ever longingly increase our longevity, eliminate all genetic diseases and increase the strength, endurance, and health of our future. Instead, our kids breed younger and younger, ensuring that our population dies quicker and quicker. And now, in the words of the majority of the population, I shall depreciate my intelligence and end this comment, "Good bye Ya-all!" By the way, I'm not the smartest cookie here. :)

Copyright 2023, Wired Ivy, LLC

Answerbag | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy