Why do we (or any other living thing) age?

Question

Please note, I am not asking HOW we age- science has a pretty good grip on that. Nor am I asking for the negative consequences of not aging.

If you study the theory of evolution, then you understand survival of the fittest. All living things evolved survival advantages which make us what we are, yet NOTHING has developed the obvious advantage of "not aging".

Can anybody explain this?

Does this notion perhaps suggest the existence of a "supreme being" or "intelligent designer"?

Answer 1

You make reference to the "obvious advantage of "not aging"", but I don't see such an advantage.  Evolution occurs at the level of the gene.  Individuals are really just packages for carrying genes around.  Each time DNA replicates there is a chance for mistakes.  The older DNA is, the more radiation and chemicals it will be exposed to, creating mutations.  Because most mutations will have deleterious effects, thus reducing the probability of the organism carrying them from passing on its genes, it is not in the genes' best interest for individuals to not age.  It is more advantageous for the gene to have a renewal system of reproduction where they get passed on a a new starting point in a new individual.

Answer 2

evolution dosen't care what happens to you after your kids can take care of themselves.

Answer 3

Why would the fact that we age be evidence for god - if god is supposed to be this super intelligent, super perfect creator of biology, then why has he made so many mistakes in his designs, mere humans can see these flaws for what they are (appendix!? - blood vessels infront of the light sensitive cells of the eye!? the fact that the human head is limited in diametric size by the width of the female pelvis ... ), so either god is stupid, malevolent - or both.

Now, suppose we have two species, species [B] which ages and dies on a regular time scale and the other, species [A] - an exact duplicate of species [B] except that they don't age and only die through accident or starvation.

Species B will experience a higher turn-over rate for new individuals - thus species B has the potential for a much higher mutation rate than A, since A will only reproduce when they have resources free to support a new individual, and will essentially only reproduce when one of them dies (maintaining the highest, comfortable, population level they can, individuals are replaced on basically a 1:1 basis, but this occurs far less often than in species B as there is no regular turn-over).

Now, species A could deliberately starve older individuals to free up resources for the young - but then, that basically is just taking the place of "aging" on a functional basis, so we conclude for the sake of argument that they don't do this, otherwise the comparison is basically meaningless as "not aging" is in no way a characteristic which is either beneficial or non-beneficial to species A as they will die at a comparatively similar rate to species B as they age.

The result is that B has a far higher potential to evolve than species A and is thus far more likely to survive and improve - though it's not necessarily the case that any improvements in either species will be seen, or that species A might not get really lucky and have a beneficial mutation occur - but the odds are stacked against them as they will experience far fewer reproductive mutations than B.

Edit: Yeah, I think I did actually O_O, corrections are in []'s