Book excerpt: Annotation. "What is life? What does it means to be alive? Is the Earth a super-organism? Is God necessary? In Biology and the Riddle of Life Charles Birch confronts these fundamental questions at a time when such topics as genetic engineering, cloning and ecology have been prominent in the news. Birch confronts the impression that modern biology has answers to all that there is to be known about life. We need to move towards an understanding of living creatures as subjects, and not only as objects, in order to probe life's hidden secrets - what it is to be alive, what it is to experience pain, and what it is to be in love. The answer must include the meaning of life for us as individuals. Birch proposes a new perspective to bring subject and object together. This is the black box he has opened."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.