It depends whether the stat is correct or false. While the life forms on earth are made of the components of this earth is valid, we can say similarly that the universe is made of the universe components; the latter only validates the former, as opposed negating it. Thus it is not so broad as to make the statement non-credible or exaggerated. It is a valid statement.
Of course it's
valid. The validity of the statement isn't the problem.
The problem is that it's
meaningless, like saying "People are made from stuff."
There's no way people could actually exist, even in imagination fairy-tale land, that would not validate that statement. If people were actually made out of
moon dust or random gas from Jupiter or bits from the rings of Saturn or
ice cream, absolutely all of those would equally satisfy the interpretation of "dust of the Earth" you're applying.
The definition is so broad that it fits
everything. Airplanes are made of the "dust of the Earth," as are computers and fish and birds and asteroids and planets and Suns and
everything else made from baryonic matter, whether it has any relation to "Earth" or not.
If you used that interpretation to explain to a person what people were made of, they wouldn't understand the composition of human beings any more than before you explained it. It;s word salad. it's meaningless. You;ve widened the aperture of the definition until it;s so wide that it fits
everything, and so by using it as part of an explanation you actually explain
nothing.
If an explanation doesn't tell you what a thing is
not made of, then it cannot possibly tell you what it
is made of either.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers