Living vs. non-living god

How utterly silly all of this sounds! Scientifically, life refers to a specific phenomenon. Whether something's "living" or "non-living" is, by definition, contingent upon whether it carries out a specific set of processes (e.g. response, respiration, excretion, digestion, reproduction). Trying to define God as "living" in the scientific sense seems silly unless you're claiming that He carries out these processes. If you're not making that particular claim, then God is not a "living" thing by the scientific definition. Whether God is "living" in some other sense is irrelevant. In any case the point is entirely trivial and semantic. --Escuerdo(talk)

You may be intrested in looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living . By the way, according to your logic, male mules that are sterile are not alive, impotent men are not alive and viruses are not alive because they do not grow (oh wait you left out growth even though wikipedia states that In biology, an entity has traditionally been considered to be alive if it exhibits growth). Wikipedia admits that what determines something as being alive is a lot more difficult then what Escuerdo would have you think, and even shows the flaws in a conventional definition from a biology stand point. The following is copied from the above link of wikipedia "How can one tell when an entity is a living thing? It would be relatively straightforward to offer a practical set of guidelines if one's only concern were life on Earth as we know it (see biosphere), but as soon as one considers questions about life's origins on Earth, or the possibility of extraterrestrial life, or the concept of artificial life, it becomes clear that the question is fundamentally difficult and comparable in many respects to the problem of defining intelligence."..."All life on Earth is based on the chemistry of carbon compounds. Some assert that this must be the case for all possible forms of life throughout the universe; others describe this position as 'carbon chauvinism'." The following is copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_%28disambiguation%29 Life is a multi-faceted concept with no simple definition, in part because the word is often used in an intentionally open-ended way, as exemplified by phrases such as "eternal life", "artificial life", and "extraterrestrial life". In fact, WordNet identifies fourteen different senses of the word "life" and the Longman Web Dictionary enumerates thirty-five. As the World Book Encyclopedia put it: "Rather than trying to define life precisely, biologists concentrate on deepening their understanding of life by studying living things." How do they know what to study? Another quote from wikipedia "Since life itself is poorly defined, there is no acceptable scientific consensus on how it must "always" come about. In a real sense, there is always integration of "non-living" substances into living beings and the "agency" of life is not required for this to occur since much of the integration occurs by the laws of chemistry which are completely independent from the definition of life." Escuerdo, I am curious to know, are you a materialist and also do you consider impotent men, male mules and viruses to not be alive? PhoteK

It's a fair point that life has several definitions. I was definitely oversimplifying when I said that there is a single scientific definition. There is indeed a cluster of definitions, both scientific and casual. By some, the reproduction criterion (I would also say "products of reproduction" would satisfy the criterion to avoid that problem) would prevent some things from being considered alive, and others are more inclusive than many would like.

This is all irrelevant to my main point, though. The debate's entirely trivial and semantic and depends on one's meaning of the word "life". This isn't just referring to your comments, by the way. The original comment that "abiogenesis is true anyway" seems beside the point and should probably be removed. While the creation theory may technically be an "abiogenesis" theory (again, depending on the definition of "life" used in choosing that label), I don't see how it's relevant.

In reply to your questions, yes I'm a materialist, and whether I consider various things to be "alive" depends on the definition one's using, and is a matter of semantics, not belief or opinion.

As a side-note, it would be helpful if you'd sign your comments (not just with me, but in general) to help serve as a sort of demarcation between them. --Escuerdo(talk)

Actually, now that I have looked over the article, I'll have to think about how to fix that. It does seem "not quite right" to me without a good, working definition of "life" at the very least (without using a precise definition the assertion's kind of empty). I can't give it much thought at the moment, as I've stuff to do, but if you or anyone else has an idea as to how to fix it, be my guest. Or, perhaps you have some suggestions as to how to work out the introduction? --Escuerdo(talk)

The reason I even spoke about the creation event being biogenesis and not abiogenesis is because one of the articles that Thomas suggested for Sam to read, included a article which has a responce that states that abiogenesis is true since God created. Just like you said though, depending on what someone considers life, this may be true or it may not be. Even in biology or science in general, there has been a very big struggle with trying to define life scientifically. Some scientific definitions allow things such as fire to be considered alive and male mules and impotent men to not be alive. Most would agree that fire is not alive. I would like to talk about this more, but I am going to eat for now. PhoteK 04:51, 24 Jun 2005 (BST)

I started reading this page which talks about the definition of life from a scientific stand point which I found to be pretty intresting. http://baharna.com/philos/life.htm , the author basically looks at various definitions other biologist and scientist have given over the past 30 years and looks at where they fail and where they don't. The authors goal is to "We will be searching for a definition of life that is useful. In order to be useful, the definition should meet the following criteria, so far as possible:" and then the author lists the criteria which the definition should meet. PhoteK 07:30, 24 Jun 2005 (BST)

For the time being I have removed the paragraphs that claim universal agreement that abiogenesis occurred. One counterexample that's robust with respect to one's chosen definition of life is the Raeliean creationist movement. They believe that not just life, but human life in particular exists in an infinite cycle. Also, I think that this somewhat parallels the discussion of whether we should call "abiogenesis" and "spontaneous generation" the same thing. If we were to go by literal meaning, spontaneous generation would be a form of abiogenesis, and so might Biblical creation (very definition dependent). Furthermore, what is commonly meant by "abiogenesis" would indeed be literally both "spontaneous" and "generation". However, since these names refer to DIFFERENT theories, they should be kept separate, and I don't think that the word "abiogenesis" should be read as too inclusive just because of its literal meaning. --Escuerdo(talk)

I restored the paragraphs, because I think they clarify some issues that inevitably come up regarding abiogenesis, and they tie into the history of the subject. As far as universal acceptance of abiogenesis occuring, you have a point, but Raelians are not exactly mainstream. Nevertheless, "universal" means everybody, and if this statement were framed in a non-scientific context then I would agree with removing it.

Main Nighet1 Nighet2 abiogen1 abiogen2 abiogen3 abiogen4 abiogen5

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