"We are all one" said my high school physics teacher during a lesson. Implications?

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I’m not sure which thread this question goes under…

I remember a long time ago in a high school physics class, my teacher went over a chapter stating that everyone and everything that ever existed/still exists in the universe share the same cells. This was at a Catholic school. My teacher said that we even shared the same cells as Jesus.

A textbook called “Conceptual Physics” 6th edition by Paul G. Hewitt was the book material if I recall.

The book said something along the lines of “We all share the same cells. Therefore, in a way, we are all one!”

Back then I didn’t really think much of it, but now I realized this sounds a lot like pantheism.

I guess this brings two questions:
  1. Do we all share the same cells?
  2. And if yes, does that conflict with everyone being its own individual thing?
 
  1. Do we all share the same cells?
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  1. And if yes, does that conflict with everyone being its own individual thing?
Click to expand...
We share the same kind of cells, but not the same cells. My cells aren’t in your body, and your cells aren’t in my body, and this is rather evident.

If this were true, diseases would spead incredibly fast!

However, your teacher and textbook seems to be saying, in a rather scientificalismistic way, that we are all human, of the same kind. This isn’t pantheistic at all. It’s like saying that you and the rest of your family are in a way the same since you share genes, but on a universal scale rather than a familiar one.

Pantheism, on the other hand, argues that everything, including God, has the same nature, which is not what your teacher is saying at all. Remember, saying that the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, St. John, and all the saints are one in Christ is perfectly orthodox, and not pantheistic at all, unless you make it so.

Christi pax,

Lucretius
 
Ben_Sinner said:
I’m not sure which thread this question goes under…

I remember a long time ago in a high school physics class, my teacher went over a chapter stating that everyone and everything that ever existed/still exists in the universe share the same cells. This was at a Catholic school. My teacher said that we even shared the same cells as Jesus.

A textbook called “Conceptual Physics” 6th edition by Paul G. Hewitt was the book material if I recall.

The book said something along the lines of “We all share the same cells. Therefore, in a way, we are all one!”

Back then I didn’t really think much of it, but now I realized this sounds a lot like pantheism.

I guess this brings two questions:
  1. Do we all share the same cells?
  2. And if yes, does that conflict with everyone being its own individual thing?
Click to expand...
This is not your question exactly, but does this mean we all get the exact same physics grade?
 
Ben_Sinner said:
  1. Do we all share the same cells?
  2. And if yes, does that conflict with everyone being its own individual thing?
Click to expand...
I think you’re remembering him wrong. He probably said “we all share the same molecules,” which is true. We certainly don’t all share the same cells…

I don’t think he was making a philosophical or religious comment here. Regardless, pantheism says everything is divine–if you absolutely have to interpret a deeper meaning into saying we all share the same molecules, it would probably be something more like naturalism.

This is an interesting point in another sense. Not only do all things with water for example share identical water molecules, because water molecules don’t tend to change chemically–the same molecules just move around the surface of the planet–we might actually share literally the same water molecules.
…if we assume the average historical human drank a liter of water per day for 40 years,[8] then our species has drunk about 100 trillion liters of water in total.
100 trillion liters (100 km3) is still very little compared to even the volume of all rivers (1,200 km3). This means that, since our drinking water passes through the water cycle and is quickly diluted by rivers and oceans, the majority of the water molecules we drink have never been drunk by any other human.
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…
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If we assume Jurassic dinosaur water requirements were similar to mammal ones,[13] then this suggests dinosaurs drank something like 10^22 or 10^23 liters of water during the Mesozoic era—more than the total volume of the oceans (10^21 liters).
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The average “residence time” of water in the oceans—the amount of time a water molecule spends there before moving into another part of the water cycle—is about 3,000 years,[14] and no part of the water cycle traps water for more than a few hundred thousand years. This means we can assume that, over timescales of millions of years, Earth’s water is thoroughly mixed—and dinosaurs had plenty of time to drink it all many times over.
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This means that while the chances are that most of the water in your soda has never been in another soda, almost all of it has been drunk by at least one dinosaur. what-if.xkcd.com/74/
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Each one of us is composed of human soma cells; but these cells are not biochemically the same; that is why transplant patients have so much trouble. If our cells were all the same, rejection issues would not occur.

ICXC NIKA
 
“Peter and Paul are persons, two distinct persons. Each of them is an independent subject and a totality to which we attribute human nature, existence, activity. Each of them says “I”, “me.” This fact differentiates the person as a primary subject of attribution from all that is fitting to him, and the person cannot be attributed to another subject. We say: “Peter is a man, Peter exists, Peter speaks well.” But we cannot attribute Peter to another subject. He himself is the primary subject of attribution existing and functioning as a separate entity.
It follows that our personality, or that by which every being endowed with reason is an independent subject, an entity to which its nature, its existence, and its operations are attributed, cannot be formally constituted by anything which is attributed to it as a part. *Our basic personality can therefore not be formally constituted either by our body, or even by our soul, that is, by either of the two parts of the nature which is attributed to us, nor by any one of our faculties or our acts.” *
  • Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, ‘Our Saviour and His Love for Us’
 
Gregory_Olson said:
This is an interesting point in another sense. Not only do all things with water for example share identical water molecules, because water molecules don’t tend to change chemically–the same molecules just move around the surface of the planet–we might actually share literally the same water molecules.
If we assume Jurassic dinosaur water requirements were similar to mammal ones,[13] then this suggests dinosaurs drank something like 10^22 or 10^23 liters of water during the Mesozoic era—more than the total volume of the oceans (10^21 liters).
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So we’re all drinking dinosaur pee? :eek:
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Gregory_Olson said:
I think you’re remembering him wrong. He probably said “we all share the same molecules,” which is true. We certainly don’t all share the same cells…

I don’t think he was making a philosophical or religious comment here. Regardless, pantheism says everything is divine–if you absolutely have to interpret a deeper meaning into saying we all share the same molecules, it would probably be something more like naturalism.

This is an interesting point in another sense. Not only do all things with water for example share identical water molecules, because water molecules don’t tend to change chemically–the same molecules just move around the surface of the planet–we might actually share literally the same water molecules.
Click to expand...
Share the same atoms, yes, molecules are more complex and will not sustain. I prefer the statement, " We are all made of starstuff…" All the atoms above hydrogen have been generated in the fusion and eventual supernova explosions of stars.

It would be safe to say that God is very effective at recycling!
 
Ben_Sinner said:
I’m not sure which thread this question goes under…

I remember a long time ago in a high school physics class, my teacher went over a chapter stating that everyone and everything that ever existed/still exists in the universe share the same cells. This was at a Catholic school. My teacher said that we even shared the same cells as Jesus.

A textbook called “Conceptual Physics” 6th edition by Paul G. Hewitt was the book material if I recall.

The book said something along the lines of “We all share the same cells. Therefore, in a way, we are all one!”

Back then I didn’t really think much of it, but now I realized this sounds a lot like pantheism.

I guess this brings two questions:
  1. Do we all share the same cells?
  2. And if yes, does that conflict with everyone being its own individual thing?
Click to expand...
The implication of everyone sharing the same cells goes back to the supposed original cell according to the theory of evolution. The first cell would divide into two cells but each of them would have some information and material from the original. The two would divide into four, but each of those would still contain information from the two and thus from the first. Even when the mutations take place that allegedly create enough differences for selection of one over the other organism to create a new species (still evolution theory), they would have had to come from previous living cells in order to continue to reproduce.

Biological cells are made of atoms and molecules and there is exchange into the environment as others have noted above:D. However, we should keep in mind that persons who believe in special direct creation of humans by God have a significantly different point of view of whether we are all one with nature in every physical aspect. And no matter our beliefs in physical evolution, Christians believe in the spiritual differences between man and the rest of physical nature.
 
Gregory_Olson said:
I think you’re remembering him wrong. He probably said “we all share the same molecules,” which is true. We certainly don’t all share the same cells…

I don’t think he was making a philosophical or religious comment here. Regardless, pantheism says everything is divine–if you absolutely have to interpret a deeper meaning into saying we all share the same molecules, it would probably be something more like naturalism.

This is an interesting point in another sense. Not only do all things with water for example share identical water molecules, because water molecules don’t tend to change chemically–the same molecules just move around the surface of the planet–we might actually share literally the same water molecules.
Click to expand...
Gregory, I think you pretty well nailed it – molecules, not cells. It is my long-held belief that each of us has thousands, maybe even millions or billions, of water molecules and carbon and oxygen atoms incorporated into our own bodies that at one time two millennia ago had been incorporated into the physical body of Jesus. There’s nothing metaphysical about that; it’s just the natural way that those units get reused and moved around.
 
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Ben_Sinner said:
I’m not sure which thread this question goes under…

I remember a long time ago in a high school physics class, my teacher went over a chapter stating that everyone and everything that ever existed/still exists in the universe share the same cells. This was at a Catholic school. My teacher said that we even shared the same cells as Jesus.

A textbook called “Conceptual Physics” 6th edition by Paul G. Hewitt was the book material if I recall.

The book said something along the lines of “We all share the same cells. Therefore, in a way, we are all one!”

Back then I didn’t really think much of it, but now I realized this sounds a lot like pantheism.

I guess this brings two questions:
  1. Do we all share the same cells?
  2. And if yes, does that conflict with everyone being its own individual thing?
Click to expand...
It’s a scientific statement not a religious one.
These are two different perspectives, I think. We may share the same cells but that does not mean we share the same soul. Science makes no claim with respect to the latter, only the former.
 
I would like to send you to a link where you can see an important molecule from a cell. The molecule is called ATP Synthase (ATP sin-thase). The picture is at a database for proteins. Proteins do the work of the cell. The first sentence of the description of this molecule is, “ATP synthase is one of the wonders of the molecular world.” This picture is from “Molecule of the Month” by David Goodsell,

pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/72 .

ATP Synthase is in all organisms (except viruses which are parasites). It is called an energy machine because it compresses two molecules to make one higher energy molecule which is critical to cell metabolism. It is composed of several different shapes of proteins which all have to be made in the right order of their sub-units called amino acids. There are 20 types of amino acids used in the cell. These parts are made of hundreds of amino acids and in E. Coli, a bacteria, there are over 6000 total amino acids that have to be in correct order (according to their type) just for this molecule to work. ATP Synthase works in coordination with other molecules which set up an electrical gradient across a membrane so that hydrogen protons can go through it and turn the arms that compress the ADP and phosphate molecules.

The above link is from Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB) and Protein Data Bank (PDB). Their home page is here:

pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/motm-by-title .

I do not believe the molecules for one working cell could have come about and started working together by chance even in billions of years. That means that not even one cell could have formed by chance in billions of years.

You can see many more remarkable and striking proteins from this page if you want, starting on this page:

pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/motm-by-title .
 
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