One of the unexpected consequences of the lockdown ordered to curb the spread of coronavirus during the initial months was a shortage of toilet paper. It was probably just a glitch in the supply chain management, as a result of increased demand because of home confinement.

The problem disappeared as the suppliers caught up with the demand. This phenomenon made me wonder why God created all living species in such a way that they cannot convert all the food they consume directly into their necessary nutrients. Their only choice is to extract a part of the intake during the digestive process and discard the rest in the form of solid, liquid or gaseous waste.

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A rather large portion of the internal organs of any species is devoted to the execution of this digestive process. Surprisingly or perhaps not so surprisingly, many man-made engines, the ones powered by gasoline/diesel or coal, go through a similar process. They are fed with some substance which is basically a source of heat energy and only a part of that input is converted into useful work and the rest is exhausted as useless material. The fraction that is converted into energy is called the efficiency of the engine.

In fact, there is a law in physics, the second law of thermodynamics, which states that it is impossible to construct an engine with one hundred percent efficiency. It seems that a living machine like a human body must obey this law.

Even God did not create living beings who would violate this law. Of course, the second law of thermodynamics itself was formulated by God. So, God could have made this law more accommodating I.e., allowing engines with 100 percent efficiency and creating human beings (or other living beings) with no human waste.

God is consistent but I do not know why He made things so complicated. Just imagine what this earth would look like if all engines had perfect efficiency. There would be no exhaust gases and no global warming. Similarly, if living species did not exude any waste, the entire planet would be cleaner. I am sure that God has a purpose, but we just do not see it.

The common denominator in these conversion processes is that the input energy is heat and output is some form of mechanical work. The second law of thermodynamics applies to such processes.

I immediately thought of electric cars which convert electrical energy from car batteries to mechanical energy. There are no exhaust gases because the efficiency of electric engines is very high, and the second law is not violated. The efficiency is not 100 percent, however, because there are many losses related to friction, resistive heating and other dissipative forces.

Typically, efficiency of an electric car is around 60 per cent while that of a gasoline or diesel-powered car is around 20 per cent. Why cannot scientists come up with a new innovative digestive process whereby some form of energy other than calories in food can be converted into the energy our body needs for all its functions? If that happens there would be no need to eject any solid waste from our body. There will be no need for not only toilet paper but also for conventional toilets This is not really such a radical idea.

People who are in coma, for example, stay alive because they are fed all the nutrients and vitamins their bodies need intravenously. I have heard stories of holy men in India who survive for years without any food.

I do not know how they do it but the physicist inside me says that it has to be some direct conversion of energy from the person’s surrounding, atmospheric gases and sunlight in particular, into nutrients, much like an electric car. Even in the USA, there is a group called “Bretharians” who not only believes that it is possible to live without food but many claim that they have lived for weeks, months and even years doing just that.

They do take water and fruit juices, however. Comatose people still need to dispose of solid waste from their bodies and it is done using an attachment to a disposable bag. I can envision a world where people live without eating food and without going to toilet simply by carrying two bags with connecting needles inserted into their bodies, one full of chemicals for intake and another for disposal of waste.

Inventors and the medical community have not yet thought about anything like this presumably because it is cumbersome and inconvenient, not to mention that this scenario would deprive us of a large part of our living pleasure.

Just imagine the consequences if we do not have to eat or cook. There would be no need for grocery shopping, or for fancy kitchens with modern appliances or cooking utensils, or to serve food at a social get-together; no need for farming and agriculture or killing chickens, cows, fish, pigs and sheep. All restaurants would shut down and our tastebuds would sit idle. It is not just tastebuds, but much of our internal organs would be unnecessary (much like the engine of a Tesla car, compared to a gasoline car).

In fact, there would be no need for earning money (which is primarily for survival I.e. for buying food) and therefore no need to get education for the purpose of getting a job. The entire human body needs to be re-engineered if it does not have to process food.

I certainly believe that God could have done this re-engineering at the outset if His idea was to create living beings that could survive without food. For example, He could have incorporated some biological photo-voltaic cells within our body which could convert sunlight into electricity, and we could have used this electricity to move our body parts. Perhaps we could also use chemical energy from exothermic chemical reactions if our bodily fluid consisted of some special chemicals.

It appears to me that God’s concept of living on food was intended to create the “food chain”, to support the entire biological system and ecosystem on this planet. Grass and vegetable grow by extracting nutrients from mother earth. God created herbivore animals, birds and insects in such a way they can survive on the plants. Carnivorous mammals eat those animals and birds to survive. Human beings are omnivores who consume both vegetables and animal meat. T

his chain maintains the balance of lives in nature. If we can live on air and sun, we can devote all our time to other activities. These other activities can be creative and positive or destructive and negative. On the positive side, people can focus more on actions based on cerebral activities and spiritual/philosophical thoughts.

On the darker front, people can engage in crime and violence. God wanted to keep His children busy and not to live in a dark world full of negative thoughts and activities.

He did not want everyone to become pious and spiritual either; that would have meant this world becoming like heaven and defeated His plan of guiding people, step by step, to heaven through thousands of reincarnations. His purpose was to make sure that human beings go through life cycles as we know them; get educated to get a job, get a job to earn money, get married to have children, raise children, and spend earned money to feed everyone.

During this process, they go through the usual struggles of life and learn about love and kindness and raise themselves to a higher level of enlightenment for the next reincarnation. Why did God design such a long tedious journey?

The answer is perhaps quite simple. He is just playing a game, kind of like Solitaire or PacMan or Super Mario Brother. He has created the universe and now encourages all living beings to realize that this universe is just an illusion imagined by Him.

The ultimate purpose for all living creatures is to break through the illusion after experiencing difficulties and barriers in numerous reincarnations (much like repeated iterations in a video game with increasing difficulty level) and not only recognize Him as the creator
but somehow disappear in His brain! That is when the game ends! He obviously wants the game to be a long one. There is no point in making it short. He is all alone and has the eternity of time at his disposal!

The writer, a physicist who worked in academia and industry, is a Bengali settled in America.