A Rock’s Not Alive

The following came to us from our friend Dr. Phillip Eichman, who has a Ph.D. in biology.

For many years I began the courses that I taught in Fundamentals of Biology and General Biology by bringing two things to class: a rock and something living, usually a plant from the greenhouse. Most of the students had never seen me before and must have wondered why I brought those things to class. One day I surprised the students even more with a turtle that I rescued from the middle of the road. The point that I wanted to make is that there is a vast difference between a nonliving thing and a living thing. The expression “a rock’s not alive” comes from an old Sesame Street song and makes the same point.

A rock’s not alive. It is made up of the same chemical elements as the plant or the turtle, but that is where the similarity ends. Anyone who has taken a biology course will realize that even the simplest living thing has a complex organization. It is capable of taking in and using energy, growing and reproducing, and responding to the environment.

Obviously, something happened to make living things so different from nonliving matter. Either it is a big coincidence, or some higher intelligence planned and directed the formation of life on Earth. More than forty years of studying and teaching biology have convinced me that the latter of these is true. The world in which we live is not an accident, but rather the handiwork of a creator that we call God (Psalm 19:1).

— Phillip Eichman © 2021