Everything living in the physical realm has a lifespan.

I used to believe there were trees that lived forever. Now I've learned that's a mistaken concept.

Even trees days are numbered. Including the oldest trees on earth.

If they have a lifespan, is there anything living that doesn't?

Because I can't think of another thing like a majestic tree that even comes close. Redwoods have been in residence in coastal California for more than 2,000 years. Yet they still have a lifespan.

So ... if all living things have a lifespan, why not omnipotent almighty God?

Is it possible if indeed we have a Creator who created the heavens and earth, that he too has a lifespan? That's assuming he is a living organism in his own right.

Just some musings on a key of life ....

I am curious, Amyjo, is there any reason you believed that some trees lived forever?

They live longer than we do. Some trees have been around hundreds of years or longer, like the Redwood trees.

Unless they are overcome by disease or insect infestation, or used for wood products, I assumed a healthy tree could live forever.

Beyond the Redwoods, learned recently that the oldest living organism is found in central Utah. It's a root system of an aspen clone that may have been growing there for over 50,000 years. Some scientists believe it may be 80,000 years old. It's all just one gigantic root from one tree that has produced an entire forest of aspen trees - all of them interconnected to the primary root.

Fascinating.

"The world’s largest and possibly oldest living organism is Pando, a Quaking Aspen clone in Utah. Karen Mock, Professor of Molecular Ecology at Utah State University tells host Steve Curwood that precise estimates about the age of Pando are not currently possible, but it may be many thousands of years old. But according to Paul Rogers of the Western Aspen Alliance, over grazing from deer and elk are now threatening the massive tree's existence.

CURWOOD: Quick quiz. Now what’s the largest living organism on Earth? No, it’s not a blue whale. It’s a tree, a Quaking Aspen. That's right, a single Quaking Aspen in Utah covers 106 acres of land and is estimated to weigh more than 6,000 metric tonnes.

Aspen trees flourish in much of North America, but in the western US a genetic adaptation allows them to propagate not by seed, but by cloning. By some estimations the Aspen grove known as Pando, that's Latin for I spread, could be shoots from a clone as much as 80,000 years old."

http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=13-P13-00005&segmentID=7

Thanks to the glorious Correlation program I have been conditioned since I learned in Nursery that the Cheerios are true to fully accept without questioning that the Church's teachings are All Truth, period. Well in D&C 77:6 we learn that the age of the earth will be 7000 years. Thus your statement of 50,000 years is very much not in compliance with official church doctrine. That sacred book does not stand for Delusions & Crap but for doctrines & covenants. Only a person who thinks it's a book of delusions could possibly honestly entertain any idea suggesting that the earth or any of its objects could be over 7000 years old.

I would keep an open mind myself on this topic if it weren't for how well indoctrinated I am to be wary of Doubts. And besides how would I ever have time to focus on such thoughts when the Lord's middlemen keep us so tremendously busy in all sorts of activities so that our lives can be fully focused on building the kingdom. Not much time to investigate anything when the chapel toilets need scrubbing.

Mormons settled Utah where the world's oldest living organism is known to exist (Pando Clone.)

Another from ancient times lake exists in southeastern Idaho, on the border of Utah and Idaho known as Bear Lake.

It is estimated to be well more than 250,000 years old. Is unique in the sediment its soil consists of. And its fish - several species of them - are unique only to that lake in the entire world. Rainbow trout are farmed into the lake to placate local fishermen. Mormons also settled and pioneered the Bear Lake country (albeit the Native American Indians were there before the pioneers were, as Utah.)

And who blabbed?

Depending on your definition clonal organisms such as Pando in UT have had a continuous existence though individuals die. There's still continuity as a whole.

These are good musings, Amyjo...

Something I learned last year:

In 1963 there was a scientist named Donald Currey who was scientifically dating the oldest trees in California. He was having difficulty dating one particular tree (the individual, scientifically-designated, "name" of this particular tree was WPN-114), and---having no success using the normal scientific methods of tree dating---he finally cut it down.

It was only THEN that he realized the tree was nearly 5,000 years old...which made it (before he cut it down) the world's oldest known, living thing (a living thing which he had, obviously, just killed).

Despite this tree's untimely end, this tree did have a kind of "forever" lifetime---at least in my opinion. :)

Humans. Sheesh.

Can't figure something out, so kill it.

Anyway...anything that begins to exist can end existing. Based on everything we've learned, anyway. The only possible exception is energy -- but even it usually ends up (after doing work) in a form (heat) that can dissipate so widely as to be useless for doing any more work, which is pretty much the same as ceasing to exist.

I don't see any reason to think there's a being ('god' or anything else) that gets around that. Entropy always wins.

"The only possible exception is energy -- but even it usually ends up (after doing work) in a form (heat) that can dissipate so widely as to be useless for doing any more work, which is pretty much the same as ceasing to exist.

I don't see any reason to think there's a being ('god' or anything else) that gets around that. Entropy always wins."

COMMENT: Here are just some musings about this. Of course, "energy" is not of itself a living system, but all living systems, including God, would need energy in order to process information. So, an eternal God, would need some source of eternal energy.

Now, the cosmic microwave background radiation as a remnant of the big bang permeates the universe. But at only 3 degrees above absolute zero, it is very cold, and it dissipates as the universe expands. Thus, very high entropy. Not much use, it would seem. However, it is still energy, and thus still capable of doing work in some context. Maybe there is some system in the universe (quantum, or whatever) that could tap into this energy. That might perpetuate the system for a very long time. There is also the vacuum energy, but that cashes out to zero. But, what if we live in a multiverse, such that every existing universe originated from some sort of big bang, or other cosmic event, leaving behind additional cosmic radiation. More hydrogen and helium? Matter? Stars. In short, in a continually expanding universe that continually creates bubble universes, might there not be a continuing, perhaps infinite, source of energy?

Now, this is all well beyond my pay grade, so I better quit.

I think you covered most of the possibilities.

Awful lot of ifs and maybes and such in there.
Which is why I'll stick with what we know, and looking for facts about what we don't know (which is a lot), and won't pick a possibility just 'cause I like how it sounds! :)

5,000 years is a long life span, for a tree.

Too bad he became impatient and chopped it down.

It took 5,000 years for it to grow.

In one fell swoop he takes it out.

That's the American way.

I had a teacher once (he was LDS but a scientific leaning one,) who firmly believed all things have souls. For him that included a doorknob, or a rock. Certainly a tree would have one in his book.

They give us shade in the summertime. Oxygen is generated by their leaves. They bring us beauty and warmth. A tree has stature, grace, and is a picture poem.

It represents life as in "Tree of Life." On one of my great grandpa's tombstones I had engraved "Blessed are those who trust in the Lord. They are like trees planted by the water, with roots that reach deep," taken from Jeremiah 17:7-8. When I was looking for something inspirational to put on his tombstone, as I was sitting in synagogue one Saturday morning right following the rabbi's sermon, on the same page in the written commentary there that scripture was. For some reason it just stuck with me. Later that day or the next day or two was when I placed the final order for the inscription and was able to include that for his marker. He'd gone 127 years without a tombstone. In that amount of time, his posterity that he didn't live to see procreate, could fill a family tree and then some.

Trees have special meaning in scripture as well. Supposing God made them too. They were here before we were. And they'll be here after we're extinct.

"So ... if all living things have a lifespan, why not omnipotent almighty God?

Is it possible if indeed we have a Creator who created the heavens and earth, that he too has a lifespan? That's assuming he is a living organism in his own right."
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You started out in op by stating 'physical living things' then switched at the last.

If 'your' god is 'physical' yes I believe it will die!

If God is 'spiritual' who can claim God or we (spiritual us) will die?

Well, it says in Genesis we are made in his image. Not only *his* image, but *their* image. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Gen1:26

He didn't call himself a spirit being, or us. We were physical from the beginning of creation, created in his likeness, and the likeness of "them," as in others.

There aren't any references elsewhere to who those others are. It's fair to say he wasn't alone, and is/was a delegator of authority.

He gave us every plant and tree yielding its seed and fruit to us for our sustenance. Begging the question: which came first? Eden was before there was an Adam and Eve. He had to set up house before there were people to inhabit his planet.

Physical beings require as much.

OH, so 'you' believe the man made 'bible', with all it's questionable things, to be the infallible word of 'God'?? And all 'religions' that follow the bible totally differently to be true?

I don't!!! Too much 'anecdotal' and for me 'personal experience' evidence against the bible and many of it's doctrine and teachings.

But it is all good ---- truth is truth and we will both be subject to it.

The reading in Genesis I liken to an allegory of man and creation, a meeting between heaven and earth.

Eve represents Mother Earth. Adam humankind.

The bible stories were instructional in purpose rather than grounded in fact, many times. But then there is the genealogy and the history of the Jewish people interwoven throughout. That part is not anecdotal so much as a historical record of a several thousand year old nomadic tribe's wanderings, and its people (and their God they follow.)

To be made in God's image would not be a departure from spiritual or physical realms, because we consist of both. So is God matter? I would say by his own definition in the Jewish bible that He is.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2018 11:36PM by Amyjo.

"If God in all His wisdom, gave us everything found in, on, under and above the earth, He is one seriously screwed up deity... Or he failed to follow the directions on the box."
- - Judic West, from his pamphlet, "Harmony and Oats"

A fabulous pamphlet not to be confused with the best selling

"Lichen and Moss I have known and loved" by Rebecca Bigstrum

Collins available at all Golden Key Book stores.

watch yourself, missy... best adjust your britches to your stride!



(I have no idea where that come from, but I love it: "Yea, and the lord did whisper unto his servant Judic West, 'Do not buy britches too big (or too small?) for your stride', and Judic hearkened unto the lord and ordered Wranglers shorts, with the Tech Pocket, and the lord was pleased. And so it continued until the third generator broke.)

the final solution :

Buy me more britches but sans tech pocket.