It doesn't have the deepness to understand "I think therefore I am" or other such philosophical stuff. It feels pain, it knows hunger, but it doesn't have the deep thoughts that we humans do.
That's not relevant. You don't need to understand anything to feel. True, the deer may not understand that it feels and therefore it's alive, but since it would never be able to prove anything to us, it doesn't matter anyway. And we have no proof deers actually feel. We know they react a certain way but that's about it.
My beef with Descartes can be expressed in the words of the überphilosopher Bertrand Russel:
Quote from Bertrand Russell »
What, from [Descartes’] own point of view, he should profess to know is not ‘I think,’ but ‘there is thinking’.... I think we ought to admit that Descartes was justified in feeling sure that there was a certain occurrence, concerning which doubt was impossible; but he was not justified in bringing in the word ‘I’ in describing this occurrence.
Quote from Bertrand Russell »
‘I think’ is [Descartes’] ultimate premiss. Here the word ‘I’ is really illegitimate; He ought to state his ultimate premises in the form ‘there are thoughts’. The word ‘I’ is grammatically convenient, but does not describe a datum.
This is simultaneously my beef with trying to reach profound conclusions with philosophy alone. It is hardly justified to use language to reach conclusions that reach outside languages boundaries. Human language is terribly "idealistic", in the Platonian sense that language does not convey reality - it conveys the idea of reality.
Platon thought that behind every object is the idea of that object; this kind of reasoning has poisoned philosophy ever since. I'll give you an example.
For example there is the word "rabbit"; everyone can conjure an image of a rabbit in their mind - the idea of a rabbit. But that rabbit does not exist. Nor shall it ever.
What does exist is a large amount of different fluffy pointy-eared creatures that share the common name "rabbit" and in Platon's opinion are different representations of the idea of a rabbit.
None of the real rabbits are the essence of "rabbitness", none is more "rabbitier" than other. They're all different in minute ways. This is a perfect example of the downfall of using language as the guide to the world; it is painfully imprecise.
It is irrelevant whether there actually exists an idea of a rabbit (personally I'd say it does not exist beyond language) - the reality is non-idealistic. Human beings however are terrible idealists, simplifying concepts to ideas is a necessity for ordinary life to function - manifestation of this can be seen in various human languages. This can be observed by simply trying to explain various shades of color to other people without using hex codes or other reference systems - it is practically impossible beyond the few main colors.
However, there is no justification to bring that simplified idealism that is necessary for ordinary life into trying to learn more precise and less ordinary facts of the world.
If I'm not mistaken Descartes said "ego sum res cogitans" wich does not translate as I think therefore I exist but "I'am a thinking being, therefore I exist" and the idea he was trying to convey is that he was aware of himself that gave him the certainty of his existence... he needed a self validating fact to build his whole philosophy based on the methodical doubt.
strictly speaking, equinox is right, the only reason we accept external reality is because it's far more persistent and "solid" than fantasies and dreams, but there's no actual fact that demonstrates it exist beyond our own minds
I wasn't talking about my beef with Descartes as a person but the idea that was first coined by him. We can not deduce undeniably that we exist from the fact that thoughts exist.
And, that was not what I said. Receptors are not related to thoughts. Thoughts are in the brain. Receptor merely receives the fact of their exchange. You're arguing against "units of thought" and that's not what receptors are.
I do not want to be responsible for something Descartes said because I honestly have no idea what his full position was. I just know he said "I think therefore I am" which is hovering around what I'm trying to explain, which I find really hard to explain.
My argument was not about thoughts. It was, I believe, about something that's closest to sentience.
I think we can all agree rocks are dead. Or, say, random atoms of Carbon. Granted, there are some beliefs such as "all of nature is alive", which cannot be entirely rejected, but I find that unnecessary, and nature is rarely being unnecessary.
At some point, though, scientific life origin theory claims that a certain kind of chains of atoms became alive. Those chains eventually developed into us, according to evolution. Which means, according to evolution, somewhere, sometime, in the middle of that, sentience, a completely non-physical property, was acquired. Just by chemical chains. And over-technology had nothing to do with it. To which, I can only say, whaddaffuck.
Please, explain, how does a rock, non-sentient, become a bacteria, possibly sentient, and the bacteria becomes human, certainly sentient? How does evolution explain THAT? Exactly, it doesn't. It can't. It's outside the scope of our science for now and probably for the next few thousand years.
We may be part of a whole (or even imagining everything around us) that doesn't make us any less sentient tbh. Sentience is not about control, or thoughts, or accuracy of perception. Sitting in a Matrix, you're still sentient. The manner/system in which we are sentient doesn't really matter, just the very fact that we are, the fact that when you go on and torture some person (or animal) out there, there IS someone on the receiving end (assuming we're not surrounded by clones but I'm not that arrogant), which is why it matters vs it not mattering when you go on and kick around a rock.
Please, explain, how does a rock, non-sentient, become a bacteria, possibly sentient, and the bacteria becomes human, certainly sentient? How does evolution explain THAT? Exactly, it doesn't. It can't. It's outside the scope of our science for now and probably for the next few thousand years.
where did u ever get the idea that bacteria came from rocks?
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Remember the String of Ears
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
where did u ever get the idea that bacteria came from rocks?
Rocks are composed of elements. Bacteria is composed of elements. Point is, bacteria came from something that was not alive. Whether it was water, amino acid, or some other weird formation doesn't really matter.
I can only speak of the things that I (think to myself that) I know of;
I've read the Bible extensively and I've read a lot of comments/commentaries. One thing that really strikes me, knowing 'the best of both worlds', is that even though the scripture known as 'the Bible' is thousands of years old, you can't really find a single passage in this huge volume of text which 'gives it away' - by that I mean things such as: You would expect that such a huge volume of text would contain some obvious mistakes such as "and as we all know, the world is flat", or "we all know that dragons are for real" - Yes I know that these are cliché examples and I'm no pro.
But I think at least it's INTERESTING that this old book doesn't have any of that.
By the way: The phrase "Fear Not" is mentioned 365 times.
But...Genesis Chapter 1 directly contradicts Genesis Chapter 2... That's the very first part of the very first book dude...
As for Science not disproving religion, it's not the place of science to disprove religion, it is the place of religion to prove religion. If you went around disproving every crackpot theory, you would never get anywhere.
where did u ever get the idea that bacteria came from rocks?
Rocks are composed of elements. Bacteria is composed of elements. Point is, bacteria came from something that was not alive. Whether it was water, amino acid, or some other weird formation doesn't really matter.
But the problem is that Rocks are not carbon based, and every life form on Earth is carbon based.
But the problem is that Rocks are not carbon based, and every life form on Earth is carbon based.
Actually I believe there are carbon-containing rocky formations...
In any case, there is carbon out there that's not life. Somehow, that carbon suddenly became life (sentient). Evolution so far has not even scratched the surface of this question.
There are also good reasons why we breathe oxygen, are composed of carbon and are water-solvent.
There are actually no good reasons for any of that, except "it so happened". We don't know if it could have happened any other way, really. Biologists like to talk as if every single life has to be composed of cells and be Carbon based and I find that way of thinking really shortsighted. You cannot define life by the example of life that occurs strictly on our planet.
I honestly believe in God. The world is too complex for there not to be. I mean honestly think about it where will you go when you die, will we just close our eyes and sit in an eternity of blackness with no feelings for the rest of our lives? My answer is NO! We will eventually make it into either heaven or hell. No not that fiery doom and gloom place over run by minions of Satan, because well if you actually look at it Lucifer the fallen angel who is "Satan" is actually God's tester. He tests people if they are worthy or not of being in God's presence or if they fall to evil ways easily. Heaven and Hell are states of mind i believe. They are not actual places for their is no time in Heaven or Hell there is only now. So when you get there the world will already have ended and all will be waiting with you and while you are there it will either be a pleasant experience "heaven" or a terrible experience "hell". So with that I conclude that There is something out there greater than us who made us not the way the bible has put it because the bible is honestly a load of horse shit. IT is used to scare Christians Jews and Muslims into believing all this bullshit and come to them for guidance. I also believe no religion is wrong its a mix of many religions because they all stem from the Torah, the old testament of the bible, They all start with that one God who created a man and a woman and let them evolve to us today.
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Not even Death will save you from Diablo Bunny's Cuteness!
And whenever someone tells me that a complex world was created by a sadistic creature that throws its own creations into torment when they fail its narcissistic tests I roll my eyes. If such a creature does indeed exist that creature is forever and only our greatest enemy.
Our creator is neutral. He created Earth for whatever purpose and prefers to observe it. Everything that occurs, was intended to, and quite a lot of negative stuff occurs on Earth so the whole "god loves us" I'm not buying it. Loves as creations, sure, cares about how we feel, not really, he made tons of hoops and issues on purpose.
Whether that purpose is on Earth or beyond Earth is hard to know. But, trust me, when you die, you won't end up in an abstract called "heaven" and sit there for the rest of your existence chatting with god. You'll either cease to exist (hell), return back to Earth (hell), or you'll be doing something else somewhere else (heaven).
There's nothing great in the creator compared to us, as there is nothing great in a human compared to a dog. Superior intelligence and technology do not make one a better thing overall, merely a better equipped one, a more powerful one. That's why creator should never be worshiped. That's why there's no being "worthy" of its presence (or, at least, not anymore worthy than being in the presence of a great artist/scientist). It does what it does. We can accept it or reject it (however unsuccessfully). But it's not better than us, it's NOT us and it's not in our situation.
Actually I believe there are carbon-containing rocky formations...
In any case, there is carbon out there that's not life. Somehow, that carbon suddenly became life (sentient). Evolution so far has not even scratched the surface of this question.
Evolution is the explanation of the diversity of life, not where life came from.
And yes, there are rocks that have carbon in them and they are not alive. There is a lot of carbon that is not alive. Hell, the food you eat is most likely carbon based, and it isn't alive.
It's like the saying, "A square is always a rectangle, but a rectangle is not always a square." Life is always carbon based (On Earth) but carbon based objects are not always alive.
There's some amusing things that "give it out" - obvious errors in it. One of my own favorites is how the Bible tells us that Heaven is actually a lot hotter than Hell. For those interested, Biblical verses and proof below:
Isaiah 30:26 states: "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days."
One individual interpreted this passage as meaning that the radiation received by Heaven from the sun is 7 times 7 or 49 times as much as the earth does today. 1 Added to that is the contribution of the moon which would equal the present amount that the earth receives from the sun. Thus Heaven would receive (49 + 1) or 50 times the radiation as the earth does today.
The Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation links the temperature of an object with the amount of radiation received. It would predict that the temperature of heaven would be 498 degrees Celsius hotter than the earth is currently. Thus heaven would be about 525 °C or 977 °F.
However, this temperature would only be the "steady-state" temperature. Presumably Heaven was created shortly after Earth so that it would be ready for its first inhabitants: Abel, Adam and Eve.
Revelation 21:17 says that the walls of New Jerusalem are 144 cubits thick. This is about 66 meters or 216 feet. Such a thick wall would be an effective insulator. Heaven would thus have taken many months to reach its equilibrium temperature. But it presumably has reached about 525 °C today.
Hell's Temperature: Revelation 21:8 states
"But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone."
Brimstone is sulphur. In order for sulphur to be molten, its temperature must be at or below 444.6 °C or 832 °F.
Thus heaven is at least 80 °C or 145 °F hotter than Hell.
Assuming that the glorified bodies that the inhabitants have in Heaven are as sensitive to heat as our present earthly bodies, then they would suffer greatly; Heaven would become worse than Hell. Since that cannot happen, due to theological considerations, Heaven must have some very effective methods of air conditioning to handle the excess incoming radiation.
There are also good reasons why we breathe oxygen, are composed of carbon and are water-solvent.
There are actually no good reasons for any of that, except "it so happened". We don't know if it could have happened any other way, really. Biologists like to talk as if every single life has to be composed of cells and be Carbon based and I find that way of thinking really shortsighted. You cannot define life by the example of life that occurs strictly on our planet.
Actually many growing number of Biologists are talking about the idea that there could be life somewhere in the universe that is not Carbon based, but rather Nitrogen based. There are a few other elements but Nitrogen is the only one that comes to mind.
Evolution is the explanation of the diversity of life, not where life came from.
Evolution is the explanation of where humans (life) came from, so, yes, evolution is responsible for that little bit. Or it should stop claiming we came from monkeys/common ancestor with monkeys. Evolution may not be the explanation of the origin of life by the biologist definition, but I honestly do not care about that. I care about where WE came from.
Actually many growing number of Biologists are talking about the idea that there could be life somewhere in the universe that is not Carbon based, but rather Nitrogen based. There are a few other elements but Nitrogen is the only one that comes to mind.
And yet, pretty much any biology book will give you a list of life qualities (reproduction, growth, metabolism, homeostasis, and a few others) that are necessary to define something as life. Which, personally, is not something biologists can even remotely be aware of. Wonder if they still have trouble with viruses.
"Alive" has a specific meaning to me and also most people, even if they don't think about it directly. If you make a robot that fulfills the qualities of life, that doesn't make it life, it's still a robot. There's the distinction there. AI (assuming it's possible without sentience) is not alive, nor are self-replicating nanites, nor is Skynet.
They (bacteria and stuff) are organisms. Biological machines. Whether they're alive or not we'll probably never know. I don't see why they have to be.
Problem is, when biologists start to define bacteria as life and evolutionists say we evolved from said bacteria you run into the issue of where did it start where did it end, and how. Biologists, with their definition of life, claim life started with bacteria. So that whole step is skipped in evolution. But if you define life as being sentient, that may have been an acquired quality, and evolution doesn't explain that.
Evolution is the explanation of where humans (life) came from, so, yes, evolution is responsible for that little bit. Or it should stop claiming we came from monkeys/common ancestor with monkeys. Evolution may not be the explanation of the origin of life by the biologist definition, but I honestly do not care about that. I care about where WE came from.
Yes, the Theory of Evolution explains exactly where we, Homospians, came from. Pardon me for misreading what you said. Evolution explains our origin as a species, but not the origin of life on Earth. That is what I was trying to say.
And yes, we have a very good understanding of where we as a species came from.
So why is one combination of carbon (bacteria) more alive than another?
It's not. We humans are just as alive as a bacteria. We humans like to think we are special and that we are better, but we are not. We just happened to have evolved a different path then the bacteria did.
And yet, pretty much any biology book will give you a list of life qualities (reproduction, growth, metabolism, homeostasis, and a few others) that are necessary to define something as life. Which, personally, is not something biologists can even remotely be aware of. Wonder if they still have trouble with viruses.
Yea, I don't really trust most biology books. :/ Most of the information in them, even if they are new books, are old. And with things like the Texas Textbook crap, the new books are going to be worse then ever.
Don't get me wrong, biologists know what they are talking about, but what they are talking about is just not always in the text books. (If that makes sense, then you get a cookie! Yay cookie!)
"Alive" has a specific meaning to me and also most people, even if they don't think about it directly. If you make a robot that fulfills the qualities of life, that doesn't make it life, it's still a robot. There's the distinction there. AI (assuming it's possible without sentience) is not alive, nor are self-replicating nanites, nor is Skynet.
But now you are confusing personal views for scientific definitions. Your personal view is that X is not alive, but Y is alive. However, that does not change what life means. If a robot were to be able to think for itself, as in have real intelligence and not artificial intelligence, if it were able to act on it's own accord, then yes, it would be alive.
They (bacteria and stuff) are organisms. Biological machines. Whether they're alive or not we'll probably never know. I don't see why they have to be.
Problem is, when biologists start to define bacteria as life and evolutionists say we evolved from said bacteria you run into the issue of where did it start where did it end, and how. Biologists, with their definition of life, claim life started with bacteria. So that whole step is skipped in evolution. But if you define life as being sentient, that may have been an acquired quality, and evolution doesn't explain that.
I do not define life as being sentient. And Bacteria of today is a far cry from the primordial ooze of bacteria of billions of years ago.
virologists have a convention they go to every 5-6 years or so, and they argue to death about whether or not viruses are alive. i think they are nonliving.
bacteria are more alive then rocks, simply because they have compounds that are essential to metabolism.
and, biologists, with our definition of life, do not state that life began with bacteria. once again...old textbooks and 8th grade biology strikes!
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Remember the String of Ears
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
bacteria are more alive then rocks, simply because they have compounds that are essential to metabolism.
How does having metabolism magically makes you alive? Maybe metabolism is just a function of biological machines. I just can't understand where biologists get that.
and, biologists, with our definition of life, do not state that life began with bacteria. once again...old textbooks and 8th grade biology strikes!
This is college biology, although the specific organism may not have been bacteria, some other junk maybe. Low level junk, bacteria or not, doesn't matter to me. Liphi... lipho... phillies... something.
8th grade biology or not, are the requirements of life (reproduction, growth, metabolism, homeostasis, etc.) accepted by the "cool" smart biologists? If yes, my argument stands. If not, never mind, but they seriously need to change the program then, because that's completely unnecessary.
And you're contradicting yourself.
"bacteria are more alive then rocks, simply because they have compounds that are essential to metabolism."
Then you say life did not start with bacteria. And from what I know, the assumption is, it started with some low level organism. Bacteria is just the word I know but long story short you take a bunch of chemical chains that behave a certain way and call it life because it does.
And how can something be 'more' alive? It's either alive or it isn't.
I actually am a believer of a unique belief in the "what is life" category. In scientific regards, we are live because of the 7 traits of life that we follow, along with all the other kingdoms.
However, if you think of it literally, we are not alive. We can technically be just a really really complex rock. If you think about atomic properties and molecule behaviors, they are simply just input-output properties. So if say, you have a fire, water will get rid of it. It is a simple property. Yet, in chemistry, we learn that molecular compounds "team up" in a very natural way. Solutions are the simplest way to see this (salt water, etc).
Yet then we reach a cell. What is a cell? A cell is so many input-output effects that it reaches a new level of complexity. So complex, that it can literally fall apart if some of the input-output effects are not fully realized, causing "death". And then from cells, anyone with any sort of health knowledge knows the structure of life: cell -> tissue -> organ -> body system -> living body. So what are we? We can potentially not even be alive. We can just be so many molecular properties put together that it forms a compound so complex that it can create a "living" creature.
bacteria are more alive then rocks, simply because they have compounds that are essential to metabolism.
How does having metabolism magically makes you alive? Maybe metabolism is just a function of biological machines. I just can't understand where biologists get that.
and, biologists, with our definition of life, do not state that life began with bacteria. once again...old textbooks and 8th grade biology strikes!
This is college biology, although the specific organism may not have been bacteria, some other junk maybe. Low level junk, bacteria or not, doesn't matter to me. Liphi... lipho... phillies... something.
8th grade biology or not, are the requirements of life (reproduction, growth, metabolism, homeostasis, etc.) accepted by the "cool" smart biologists? If yes, my argument stands. If not, never mind, but they seriously need to change the program then, because that's completely unnecessary.
And you're contradicting yourself.
"bacteria are more alive then rocks, simply because they have compounds that are essential to metabolism."
Then you say life did not start with bacteria. And from what I know, the assumption is, it started with some low level organism. Bacteria is just the word I know but long story short you take a bunch of chemical chains that behave a certain way and call it life because it does.
And how can something be 'more' alive? It's either alive or it isn't.
i dont see how theres any contra. it most likely started with a single celled organism, some ancient relative of archae, but the word bacteria is the wrong one to use. thats why youre confused. biologists are now less concerned what the actual organism is nowadays, but more interested in what it did and how it did it; whats it made out of.
as for the definition of life, i simply said metabolism because we are going into a very complex subject. if i showed you a gel depicting early known autocatalytic nucleic acids and how over time, they increase rate and fidelity, would you understand exactly whats going on? metabolism is much more than some function of a cell. it means that the cell is somehow deciding what it needs to grow and replicate, its sensing when conditions are favourable to do so, and it somehow does this without some horrible error that kills the line before it ever propagates.
they teach these basic things that arnt very interesting and outdated things in the intro bio courses because you need the fundamentals before you can comprehend the advanced stuff.
edit: im not deeply religious but i was raised christian, and i know most of the gospels in the bible. but i still prefer science to religion, mostly because its more interesting.
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Remember the String of Ears
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
However, if you think of it literally, we are not alive. We can technically be just a really really complex rock.
Except we're sentient. If you go out there and torture a person, someone will feel it. It's not just some autonomous process somewhere. Someone WILL be in pain. That's what makes us alive.
it most likely started with a single celled organism, some ancient relative of archae, but the word bacteria is the wrong one to use. thats why youre confused.
I don't see how that changes anything. OK, sure, it's not bacteria, it's archae. Or zoidberg. That doesn't change my argument AT ALL. It's not important and the only reason it bothers you is because you're a biologist i suppose. Otherwise, all I know is that it was some pretty simple organism that was basically a bunch of carbon atoms put together in weird formations, and biologists decided it was life.
if i showed you a gel depicting early known autocatalytic nucleic acids and how over time, they increase rate and fidelity, would you understand exactly whats going on? metabolism is much more than some function of a cell. it means that the cell is somehow deciding what it needs to grow and replicate, its sensing when conditions are favourable to do so, and it somehow does this without some horrible error that kills the line before it ever propagates.
Sorry, none of this guarantees that the object is alive. It could still be a biomachine. It doesn't matter that it grows, replicates, or responds to stimuli.
they teach these basic things that arnt very interesting and outdated things in the intro bio courses because you need the fundamentals before you can comprehend the advanced stuff.
So you say I'm learning outdated things but in the paragaph above you mention the very things that I was taught:
Life is defined by metabolism, response to stimuly, reproduction, bla-bla, all that junk that's simply common to bioorganisms.
My question stands. a) How does any of that prove it's alive; b)why is any of that necessary for life.
However, if you think of it literally, we are not alive. We can technically be just a really really complex rock.
Except we're sentient. If you go out there and torture a person, someone will feel it. It's not just some autonomous process somewhere. Someone WILL be in pain. That's what makes us alive.
That still does not make it "alive", same as a metabolism. It is simply just a just a property of all the molecular processes that are going on inside you right now. Like the old saying goes, "pain is an illusion."
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Respectful is a strong word...
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See, problem is, I don't know that, and I can't know that. Hell, I don't know if YOU are alive. I only know I'm alive. You only know you're alive.
That's not relevant. You don't need to understand anything to feel. True, the deer may not understand that it feels and therefore it's alive, but since it would never be able to prove anything to us, it doesn't matter anyway. And we have no proof deers actually feel. We know they react a certain way but that's about it.
If I'm not mistaken Descartes said "ego sum res cogitans" wich does not translate as I think therefore I exist but "I'am a thinking being, therefore I exist" and the idea he was trying to convey is that he was aware of himself that gave him the certainty of his existence... he needed a self validating fact to build his whole philosophy based on the methodical doubt.
strictly speaking, equinox is right, the only reason we accept external reality is because it's far more persistent and "solid" than fantasies and dreams, but there's no actual fact that demonstrates it exist beyond our own minds
I do not want to be responsible for something Descartes said because I honestly have no idea what his full position was. I just know he said "I think therefore I am" which is hovering around what I'm trying to explain, which I find really hard to explain.
My argument was not about thoughts. It was, I believe, about something that's closest to sentience.
I think we can all agree rocks are dead. Or, say, random atoms of Carbon. Granted, there are some beliefs such as "all of nature is alive", which cannot be entirely rejected, but I find that unnecessary, and nature is rarely being unnecessary.
At some point, though, scientific life origin theory claims that a certain kind of chains of atoms became alive. Those chains eventually developed into us, according to evolution. Which means, according to evolution, somewhere, sometime, in the middle of that, sentience, a completely non-physical property, was acquired. Just by chemical chains. And over-technology had nothing to do with it. To which, I can only say, whaddaffuck.
Please, explain, how does a rock, non-sentient, become a bacteria, possibly sentient, and the bacteria becomes human, certainly sentient? How does evolution explain THAT? Exactly, it doesn't. It can't. It's outside the scope of our science for now and probably for the next few thousand years.
We may be part of a whole (or even imagining everything around us) that doesn't make us any less sentient tbh. Sentience is not about control, or thoughts, or accuracy of perception. Sitting in a Matrix, you're still sentient. The manner/system in which we are sentient doesn't really matter, just the very fact that we are, the fact that when you go on and torture some person (or animal) out there, there IS someone on the receiving end (assuming we're not surrounded by clones but I'm not that arrogant), which is why it matters vs it not mattering when you go on and kick around a rock.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
But...Genesis Chapter 1 directly contradicts Genesis Chapter 2... That's the very first part of the very first book dude...
As for Science not disproving religion, it's not the place of science to disprove religion, it is the place of religion to prove religion. If you went around disproving every crackpot theory, you would never get anywhere.
But the problem is that Rocks are not carbon based, and every life form on Earth is carbon based.
In any case, there is carbon out there that's not life. Somehow, that carbon suddenly became life (sentient). Evolution so far has not even scratched the surface of this question.
Our creator is neutral. He created Earth for whatever purpose and prefers to observe it. Everything that occurs, was intended to, and quite a lot of negative stuff occurs on Earth so the whole "god loves us" I'm not buying it. Loves as creations, sure, cares about how we feel, not really, he made tons of hoops and issues on purpose.
Whether that purpose is on Earth or beyond Earth is hard to know. But, trust me, when you die, you won't end up in an abstract called "heaven" and sit there for the rest of your existence chatting with god. You'll either cease to exist (hell), return back to Earth (hell), or you'll be doing something else somewhere else (heaven).
There's nothing great in the creator compared to us, as there is nothing great in a human compared to a dog. Superior intelligence and technology do not make one a better thing overall, merely a better equipped one, a more powerful one. That's why creator should never be worshiped. That's why there's no being "worthy" of its presence (or, at least, not anymore worthy than being in the presence of a great artist/scientist). It does what it does. We can accept it or reject it (however unsuccessfully). But it's not better than us, it's NOT us and it's not in our situation.
Evolution is the explanation of the diversity of life, not where life came from.
And yes, there are rocks that have carbon in them and they are not alive. There is a lot of carbon that is not alive. Hell, the food you eat is most likely carbon based, and it isn't alive.
It's like the saying, "A square is always a rectangle, but a rectangle is not always a square." Life is always carbon based (On Earth) but carbon based objects are not always alive.
Huzzah! Give 'em hell! (Pardon the pun!)
Actually many growing number of Biologists are talking about the idea that there could be life somewhere in the universe that is not Carbon based, but rather Nitrogen based. There are a few other elements but Nitrogen is the only one that comes to mind.
I am making an assumption that you are refrencing the Christian deity. The world is too complex for a god of the bible to exist, imo.
So why is one combination of carbon (bacteria) more alive than another?
And yet, pretty much any biology book will give you a list of life qualities (reproduction, growth, metabolism, homeostasis, and a few others) that are necessary to define something as life. Which, personally, is not something biologists can even remotely be aware of. Wonder if they still have trouble with viruses.
"Alive" has a specific meaning to me and also most people, even if they don't think about it directly. If you make a robot that fulfills the qualities of life, that doesn't make it life, it's still a robot. There's the distinction there. AI (assuming it's possible without sentience) is not alive, nor are self-replicating nanites, nor is Skynet.
They (bacteria and stuff) are organisms. Biological machines. Whether they're alive or not we'll probably never know. I don't see why they have to be.
Problem is, when biologists start to define bacteria as life and evolutionists say we evolved from said bacteria you run into the issue of where did it start where did it end, and how. Biologists, with their definition of life, claim life started with bacteria. So that whole step is skipped in evolution. But if you define life as being sentient, that may have been an acquired quality, and evolution doesn't explain that.
Agreed, lol.
Yes, the Theory of Evolution explains exactly where we, Homospians, came from. Pardon me for misreading what you said. Evolution explains our origin as a species, but not the origin of life on Earth. That is what I was trying to say.
And yes, we have a very good understanding of where we as a species came from.
It's not. We humans are just as alive as a bacteria. We humans like to think we are special and that we are better, but we are not. We just happened to have evolved a different path then the bacteria did.
Yea, I don't really trust most biology books. :/ Most of the information in them, even if they are new books, are old. And with things like the Texas Textbook crap, the new books are going to be worse then ever.
Don't get me wrong, biologists know what they are talking about, but what they are talking about is just not always in the text books. (If that makes sense, then you get a cookie! Yay cookie!)
But now you are confusing personal views for scientific definitions. Your personal view is that X is not alive, but Y is alive. However, that does not change what life means. If a robot were to be able to think for itself, as in have real intelligence and not artificial intelligence, if it were able to act on it's own accord, then yes, it would be alive.
I do not define life as being sentient. And Bacteria of today is a far cry from the primordial ooze of bacteria of billions of years ago.
Yay, somebody agreed with me for once!
bacteria are more alive then rocks, simply because they have compounds that are essential to metabolism.
and, biologists, with our definition of life, do not state that life began with bacteria. once again...old textbooks and 8th grade biology strikes!
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
This is college biology, although the specific organism may not have been bacteria, some other junk maybe. Low level junk, bacteria or not, doesn't matter to me. Liphi... lipho... phillies... something.
8th grade biology or not, are the requirements of life (reproduction, growth, metabolism, homeostasis, etc.) accepted by the "cool" smart biologists? If yes, my argument stands. If not, never mind, but they seriously need to change the program then, because that's completely unnecessary.
And you're contradicting yourself.
"bacteria are more alive then rocks, simply because they have compounds that are essential to metabolism."
Then you say life did not start with bacteria. And from what I know, the assumption is, it started with some low level organism. Bacteria is just the word I know but long story short you take a bunch of chemical chains that behave a certain way and call it life because it does.
And how can something be 'more' alive? It's either alive or it isn't.
However, if you think of it literally, we are not alive. We can technically be just a really really complex rock. If you think about atomic properties and molecule behaviors, they are simply just input-output properties. So if say, you have a fire, water will get rid of it. It is a simple property. Yet, in chemistry, we learn that molecular compounds "team up" in a very natural way. Solutions are the simplest way to see this (salt water, etc).
Yet then we reach a cell. What is a cell? A cell is so many input-output effects that it reaches a new level of complexity. So complex, that it can literally fall apart if some of the input-output effects are not fully realized, causing "death". And then from cells, anyone with any sort of health knowledge knows the structure of life: cell -> tissue -> organ -> body system -> living body. So what are we? We can potentially not even be alive. We can just be so many molecular properties put together that it forms a compound so complex that it can create a "living" creature.
as for the definition of life, i simply said metabolism because we are going into a very complex subject. if i showed you a gel depicting early known autocatalytic nucleic acids and how over time, they increase rate and fidelity, would you understand exactly whats going on? metabolism is much more than some function of a cell. it means that the cell is somehow deciding what it needs to grow and replicate, its sensing when conditions are favourable to do so, and it somehow does this without some horrible error that kills the line before it ever propagates.
they teach these basic things that arnt very interesting and outdated things in the intro bio courses because you need the fundamentals before you can comprehend the advanced stuff.
edit: im not deeply religious but i was raised christian, and i know most of the gospels in the bible. but i still prefer science to religion, mostly because its more interesting.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
Sorry, none of this guarantees that the object is alive. It could still be a biomachine. It doesn't matter that it grows, replicates, or responds to stimuli.
So you say I'm learning outdated things but in the paragaph above you mention the very things that I was taught:
Life is defined by metabolism, response to stimuly, reproduction, bla-bla, all that junk that's simply common to bioorganisms.
My question stands. a) How does any of that prove it's alive; b)why is any of that necessary for life.
That still does not make it "alive", same as a metabolism. It is simply just a just a property of all the molecular processes that are going on inside you right now. Like the old saying goes, "pain is an illusion."