Is the petri dish your crystal ball?

The root cause of death is life.
Let’s just take the evolution model, got a petri dish handy? I suppose you could cultivate a good sneeze to get the experiment going. If you don’t note a good battle (war) being waged after a few days, then introduce another party, any sundry bacilli will do. The war begins, survival of the fittest. Elementary my dear friend Watson. For the atheist in the crowd, I guess this is about as good as it is going to get, the petri dish is your crystal ball. For us in the monastery, we seek and understand a different model, but I won’t go into that now. And for the faithless, it’s as simple as birth, life, death. The bookends you have no control over, but life, just grab all the gusto you can, for if life is ultimately meaningless and finite, then why waste time and energy vexing oneself about wars and good guys and bad guys and all the other rot of the petri dish, when you could be partying.