An Oxymoron and Mystery Which Bugs Me

(Make note that I am not sure whether this would be more suited to "Metaphysics and Philosophy"..since the subject might well span over to those areas ...)

This is a mystery which makes me think for a while already:

OXYGEN is an element which is *extremely* damaging to all organic matters, eg. cells.

Oxygen is the reason why food spoils, bodies rot. It turns a healthy looking fruit ugly brown in a matter of an hour or two. We preserve foods by shutting off oxygen supply, eg. by packing foods into sealed foil

Oxygen is so "strong" that it not only is extremely DAMAGING to cells and everything organic, it can even destroy Iron and turn it into a pile of reddish rust.

It had been found that so called "Anti-Oxidants" can preserve the live of cells, in essence "Anti-Oxidants" work against the action of oxygen. Fruits/tea, vitamin C etc. being anti-oxidants can literally prolong lives since they prevent damage oxygen inevitable does to all living matter.

For me it is a big mystery and paradox that exactly this most harmful all elements is the same our body NEEDS to even live. If we, our brains do not get oxygen for 20 seconds we are about to die.

Our entire body is made that we "take in" the extremely damaging oxygen and distribute it in the bloodstream to any single cell in the body. HOW DOES THIS MAKE SENSE?

It's a "pervert" mechanism at work which at some point decided that one of the most harmful elements out there is at the same time the one we urgently require with any breath. Why is that? What is the logic behind there?

It doesn't matter whether one believes in a creator or just having evolution do it's work, the result is puzzling no matter what school of thought someone "belongs to".

If we assume a creator, why did he/she/it made us that way that we need something which ULTIMATELY kills us?
If we assume evolution is the driving factor where organisms adapted to their environment, the puzzle is not less perplexing:

Wouldn't it make much more sense if our bodies in millions of years developed a protection mechanism or "filter" of some kind instead which would prevent oxygen entering our bodies in the first place? Why do we not require any other element from our atmosphere to "breathe" which would not cause any damage to cells? Why from all things the one element which is poison to all organic matter?

What this means, simply spoken, in a certain way, is that LIFE ITSELF already has "death" programmed into it. While we require to breath and to bring oxygen to every single cell to even exist, this fact alone is also the reason for deterioration and ultimately death: What makes us live is what kills us.

Anyone else see this as paradox and pretty bizarre?

With evolution you could argue that fruit that outlives its purpose (to spread it's seeds) becomes pointless and resource-draining for it's source. So quickly dying off has its uses and can encourage quicker growth in the long run. As for iron being destroyed by oxygen, you could say it just alters its chemical composition to iron oxide, thus it creates something new.

reply to post by NoRulesAllowed


The number 1 cause of death is life.

Think about that.

Theres a difference between O (monoOxygen), O2 (diOxygen) and O3 (triOxygen) or ozone. O is unstable and is a free radical or onstable which causes damage to the body. O2 is stable and is what we breath.

reply to post by NoRulesAllowed


Op, you made an interesting point. I never thought about oxygen the way you described it. I have to add that oxygen also feeds fires.

A lot of negative aspects with oxygen when you really think about it. It really is an oxymoron!

Not oxygen alone...we also depend on the universal solvent to function as well...water
Given enough time. water will dissolve anything,,,yet we must have it or we die.

Perhaps it is because we are not meant to live forever.
We are made with a built-in expiration date & if you try to buck the system...well...then you just expire sooner.

reply to post by NoRulesAllowed


Comprising 78% of the air we breath - nitrogen could have played a greater role in human respiration.

If my memory serves me its the very reactive nature of oxygen that makes it more suitable - *





*disclaimer = I am well out of my comfort zone

reply to post by NoRulesAllowed


Oxygen is highly reactive and the reason it is used as a fuel source by the body. The brain needs oxygen to fuel it's electrical impulses. Cells needs oxygen to fuel metabolic function and why they are in a constant state of death/regeneration. If not for burning this fuel . . . we couldn't live because we really wouldn't be "alive".

We would just be organic statues. Well, until oxygen, water, and the nitrogen breathing bacteria reduced us to sludge . . .

I agree with Soloman here.

Oxygen basically works as a catalyst. It enables any living organism increase their metabolism exponentially increase the amount of energy that cab be used from any given forum of fuel.

This includes bacteria, viruses and other organism too. That means your water Melon gets molded faster. As even woold will benefit from an ozygen moolecule

Things erode. It isn't just because of the oxygen in the air. That's the natural cycle of life. Back when plants were the primary life they created oxygen. It's a byproduct of photosynthesis. It is the reason that all non plant life exists. It's in the water we drink and air we breath. Anything can be poisonous if used improperly. It's kind of relative. Don't forget the air is about 78% nitrogen and just 21% oxygen. If we breathed pure oxygen we would not be able to handle it. It's all about balance.

Originally posted by NoRulesAllowed
If we assume a creator, why did he/she/it made us that way that we need something which ULTIMATELY kills us?

The missing point in many of these discussions about creationism is that God did not create the Earth we live in to be perfect. The Earth is the way it is because we sinned, and God cast us out of Eden. This planet is flawed.

I don't have the real details on this, but the whole Eden thing has generated a lot of thought in my little head. This is how I think it worked. When we were created, we were in Heaven, and the Garden of Eden was also in Heaven. It was also called Earth, at least the bigger part of Heaven that we were created in. Then, when we sinned, we were cast out of Eden and onto the Earth that we know today. Did this Earth exist before we sinned? That's the part I don't really understand. It may be that the whole evolution thing played out in this reality before we ever showed up.

There are many NDE's that give some credence to this. In the book "Heaven is for Real", Colton reports seeing the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. This implies that Eden is still in Heaven.

It leads me to believe that what really happened when we sinned is that we were transformed into the creatures we see today, dependent on air, and you actually bring out a very good point. Death was introduced at that same point, and the dependency on oxygen may have been part of this plan. We were never meant to live forever in these bodies. We were never meant to live in this Earth. We "need" to die to get back to our place of origin.

The Earth also may have transformed with us, or God created a new version of the Earth where we would have to live out our days. There are also NDE's that indicate there are other versions of Earth as well, all coexisting in the same space, and that Heaven is all around us right now, we just can't see it.

So bottom line, don't ask why this Earth or human bodies are less than perfect. God told us why many years ago. Sin.

reply to post by NoRulesAllowed

I'm not convinced that oxygen kills us, since there're anti-oxidants. It might be that with the right kind of cells and the right kind of diet and/or nutrition we will not die. However, I think I've read that cells cannot live past 120 years or something to that effect. I've also read hte brain could live hundreds of years? It all seems to be a matter of the system working perfectly (or not).

It's not a paradox to me that what we need is what kills us. We need time and time kills us, right? We need to live and yet the risk inherent in living eventually kills us, even if we didn't age. I remember reading that even if we didn't age at all we'd still die within a matter of 200-300 years because of accidents and pathogens and other unpredictable agents. Life is a gauntlet.

If it wasn't oxygen that'd kill us, it'd be something else! We're born to die. Perhaps our mortality keeps us on our toes and makes life somehow more meaningful? Maybe.

reply to post by NoRulesAllowed


Arsenic is a poison yet our body also needs small amounts of it, for instance.

And food spoils because of bacteria and yeast. Bacteria and yeast need oxygen. Oxygen does not spoil food directly.

A while back I remember seeing the term "hunger game". Supposedly, our life on this planet is a hunger game. We need food and water and shelter and exercise and community and other things too. Because we're not perfect, we sometimes fail to meet our needs and over time it kills us.

The cells in our body are collectively playing the same game, as is all life.

Of course, I don't believe this reality is a game. Conventional games aren't about dying or feeling pain. Games focus almost entirely on enjoyment and avoid its opposite. If somebody wants to term it a game then they have to redefine it to include pain and death as gameplay components.

Sometimes I reflect on pain and anguish and how they add "weight" to everything. If nobody felt pain or anxiety then what would there be to stop them from harming others? Doesn't crime happen because people feel they can avoid serious consequences? What serious consequences? Things like pain and despair and loss of control over your life! Fear is meaningless without something to lose. Ironically, because we know pain, we do not want others we care for to experience it. I think they call this empathy. Imagine a world where you can do anything you want with no consequences? There'd be no such thing as a good choice or a bad choice. Nobody could be smart or ethical in that world because there'd be no means to assess their choices - choices have no weight.

When I imagine human society becoming so controlled that we no longer are allowed to feel pain or anxiety then I can only see us either collapsing or entering into a matrix where we're allowed to experience pain or anxiety. I see us everyday always trying to reduce pain and anxiety. The irony, of course, is one day we might be seeking pain and anxiety because we've removed so much of it. The other consideration is evolution. A species survives by tackling new challenges and taking on risk. If a species is so protected from pain and anxiety then it's unlikely to confront risks and will not evolve. So if this hypothetical human society stayed in its matrix universe, it'd eventually be destroyed, unless it could de-couple from its source universe or be frozen in time somehow.

(So a species that avoids pain and anxiety also avoids freedom because freedom is risky.)

A while back somebody referred me to an interesting idea. What would happen if you were a species that had colonized the entire universe and could no longer expand? What would happen if we were stuck and there was no where to go and nothing new to learn? The poster suggested we'd "forget" everything we know by merging ourselves into inferior species and re-experiencing life all over again.

What we breathe in is not wholly oxygen, we breathe in different types of gasses too.
Jesus said not to treasure things that rust away, get eaten by moths, perishable things. Moreover Jesus said that if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. These bodies are temporary, they weren't meant to last very long.
James 4:14 You don't even know what your life tomorrow will be! You are like a puff of smoke, which appears for a moment and then disappears.
Heaven and earth will pass away, but Jesus' words will never pass away.
Tell me, is the world good, or is it bad? Same argument, different scenario.

Oxygen is a very, very good terminal electron acceptor..