Death is the natural end of life.

"Death . . . is an integral part of our lives," says the book Death—The Final Stage of Growth. Comments like this reflect the belief that death is normal, the natural ending of all living organisms. In turn, such a belief has fostered a nihilistic philosophy and opportunistic behavior in many.

But is death really the natural end of life? Not all researchers believe so. For instance, Calvin Harley, a biologist who studies human aging, said in an interview that he does not believe that humans "have a program to die." Immunologist William Clark observed: "Death is not inextricably intertwined with the definition of life." And Seymour Benzer, of the California Institute of Technology, muses that "aging can be better described not as a clock but as a scenario, which we can hope to edit."

When scientists study the design of humans, they are baffled. They find that we have been endowed with resources and capabilities that far exceed the needs of our 70- to 80-year life span. For example, scientists have found that the human brain has immense memory capacity. One researcher estimated that our brain can hold information that "would fill some twenty million volumes, as many as in the world's largest libraries." Some neuroscientists figure that during an average lifetime, a person uses only 1/100 of 1 percent (.0001) of his potential brain capacity. It is appropriate to ask, 'Why do we have a brain with such a large capacity when we utilize only a tiny fraction of it in an average lifetime?'

Consider also how unnaturally humans react to death! For the majority, the death of a wife, a husband, or a child can be the most upsetting experience of a lifetime. People's entire emotional makeup is often jarred for a long time after the death of a person dearly loved. Even those who claim that death is natural to humans find it hard to accept the idea that their own death will mean the end of everything. The British Medical Journal spoke of "a common expert presumption that everybody wants to live as long as possible."

The problem with fear of death is that it can paralyze one's ability to enjoy life

In view of man's general reaction to death, his amazing potential for remembering and learning, and his inward longing for eternity, is it not clear that he was made to live? Indeed, God created humans, not with death as the natural outcome, but with the prospect of living on indefinitely. Note what God set before the first human pair as their future: "Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it, and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living creature that is moving upon the earth." 

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