AOKid writes:
Well it is true. Read the three pages. Not one scientific definition of life was provided the OP writer until I provided one. Sad, sad, sad. If you think there was one prior then enlighten us all on it.
AZPaul3, post #6 writes:
Everyones own pet definition can be shown to harbor inconsistencies, anomalies, omissions and absurdities.
But since you asked:
Life is complex chemistry in continuous action.
frako, post #9 writes:
im guessin the simplest and closest exsplenation for a sientist would be
somthing is alive if it reproduces itself naturaly in some way
Dr Adequate, post #10 writes:
In the context of these boards, the convenient place is that point at which the (short) answer to any given question is "evolution". That is,
the significant features defining "life" should be reproduction with variation.
jar, message #25 writes:
It means that the thing seems to be something that reproduces by one of many different methods, capable of movement, that takes in some form of energy and expels some form of waste at least during part of its life cycle and that at some point can be said to be not alive.
Parasomnium, post #30 writes:
I believe Richard Dawkins said somewhere that
life is molecular information technology, and I think he was pretty much on the mark there.
Parasomnium, post #41 writes:
Ever since Darwin we know quite well what the driving force behind the increasing complexity of life on earth is: it's Darwinian evolution. This suggests another interesting way of defining life, for which I'll quote
Gerald Joyce (look under the heading "Proposed", a bit further down):
"
Life is a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution."
I guess now you're going to thank me, right?
... no?
AOKid writes:
No, the only falsehood in this thread is that life is undefinable, and that is religious equivocation.
Perhaps you could quote someone saying that "life is undefinable". Or perhaps you can't, since the only use of the word "undefinable" in this thread is in your post to which I am currently replying.
And science has defined life in one way shape or form since the beginning of the use of the term "biology".
In
several ways, shapes, and forms.
So ... viruses are not alive?
That seems to be the scientific concensus.
"Consensus" is too strong a term.
According to Nobel Laureate David Baltimore, for example: "There’s a running debate about whether viruses are alive or dead". It doesn't sound like he agrees with you that there's a consensus, but maybe you know better than him, what with you being such a non-eminent non-scientist and all.
More irrational thought processes. This is a category error.
No, that's what we scientific types call a "joke". You may have heard the term. Perhaps when you have a minute free you could look it up.
Nope, he does define IMPROVISATION.
And he says that in "In our current living systems, such changes can be achieved by a process of mutation plus selection that allows programs to be optimized". Which is a description of adaptive evolution by Darwinian processes.
In it he mentions mutation and natural selection, but this is just a portion of evolution.
And a portion of evolution is evolution, just as a portion of salami is salami.
Do you really mean to pretend that the optimization of organisms through mutation and selection isn't evolution, or are you just typing words at random?
Well first off your premise is false. No major creationist organization I know of denies that mutations and natural selection happens in living organisms. AIG, CMI, ICR, even Hovind agrees with mutation and natural selection happening in living creatures.
But creationists do often deny that they operate as an
optimizing force.
Take
this guy, for example:
Mutation, which acts on the complex information in the DNA in a random and unconscious manner, harms the DNA, and therefore harms the organism bearing the DNA. At best, it may have no effect at all. However, mutations can never add any new information to DNA, and do not make any kind of improvement in the organism. Not a single instance of this has ever been observed. [...] They modify what preexists, but they do so in disorder, no matter how� As soon as some disorder, even slight, appears in an organized being, sickness, then death follow.
Perhaps you should email this guy and tell him that he is a "rather deceitful strawman" constructed by me. He will be surprised, as will his parents.
So you have constructed a rather decietful strawman argument. Why do you do that?
Says the man who just read and quoted me saying that creationists often deny "
optimization by mutation and selection", and then pretended that I'd said that they deny mutation and selection.
Mind you don't choke to death on your own hypocrisy, now.
You inability to read and comprehend does not constitute me lying. The evos in this thread have purposely mislead the public that life is not definable. The reason those evos do that is they need the wiggle room of equivocation when it comes to the origin of life.
I didn't say "all evos don't define life." I said that "the only reason the evos won't attempt to define life ..." .
And you did
not say "the only reason the evos
on this thread won't attempt to define life ..."
If you wished only to lie about evolutionists on this thread and not evolutionists in general, you should have said so. There was nothing to indicate which lie you were trying to tell; and as both are equally false it was impossible to discover from context.
The evos in this thread have purposely mislead the public that life is not definable ... All of these athors do provide definitions of life contrary to what the equivocators in this forum are doing.
See, now
there your lie is clear and explicit. Well done!
But perhaps your posts would be even better if you would tell the truth. It's really quite painless, you should try it.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
™ Version 4.2