God Arises
Argument for the Life Hereafter
~ 179 ~
Why does death occur? About two hundred
explanations have been put forward as to its causes.
Organic decay in the body; the exhaustion of
constituents; the atrophying of veins; the
replacement of dynamic albumens by less dynamic
ones; the wearing out of the tissues; the secretion of
poison by intestinal bacteria, which is spread
throughout the body, and so on.
The concept of bodily decay would appear to be
correct. Machines, shoes, garments and all such
material things do wear out with the passage of
time. There is, ostensibly, the possibility of our body
wearing out too, sooner or later, just as a garment
does. But science only partially supports this view
of bodily decay, for the human body is very
different from a garment, a machine or a piece of
rock. It should be likened, rather to, a river which
has been flowing for thousands and thousands of
years and continues to flow in the same fashion
even today. Can we really say that a river becomes
old or stagnates? An American chemist, Dr. Carl
Linus Pauling (b. 1901), recipient of two Noble
Prizes, one of Chemistry in 1954 and the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1962, has pointed out that,
