Modularity, A distinguishing property of life

Tell you what... Show me a rock that decays and we'll talk more. Until you can do that, I'm not interested in continuing a conversation that's being reduced to absurdities.

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"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson

The way I'm reading what Mr Jack is saying, and I would agree with this is that abiogenesis is akin to evelution in that "Evolution" is a fact, but the Theory of Evolution is still being studied and refined as we get more evidence. In this case "Abiogenesis" is a fact in that there is life here and there was no life at some point. NO matter how you slice it (with the possible exceptions of time travel paradoxes or multiple universes that can be crossed to or from) life came from non-life. Even if God or the supernatural did it, it didn't come from life as we define it.So, abiogenesis is a fact, the Theory of Abiogenesis (the materialistic one) is still being studied and refined.Edited by Perdition, : spelling

What would you call a hunk of radioactive plutonium?

I agree with Mr Jack, too. I objected not because I disagree with him, but because Hyroglyphx will inevitably misunderstand. We're already having a great deal of difficulty helping him to understand what we're trying to say, and asking him to grasp yet another subtle distinction is unlikely to help things.Spelling things out more, not less, is the direction we should be going. Once we've gotten to the point where we're confident that Hyroglyphx won't respond to declarations like "Abiogenesis is a fact!" with "What gets under my skin is the surety with which some speak about things that have not been concluded," and "All I ever asked for was concession that abiogenesis still hasn't been proven," and so forth, then maybe we can start using more abbreviated forms of expression.--Percy

And to DevilsAdvocate, too... Isn't biological decay the clear context? And if DevilsAdvocate wasn't thinking along the same lines as you, then I have no idea what he's thinking of when he says rocks decay. That they weather, maybe? That's not biological, either.Hyroglyphx doesn't have a valid point, but claiming that rocks decay in the same way as life doesn't seem like a valid rebuttal, either.--Percy

Normal decomposition of say, a plant, follows this general pattern: The loss of water, followed by the physical breakup of the plant, which then leads to microbial attack which chemically alters the remains.Compare this to say, iron ore which having dried up and then physically broken down through weathering (much like the plant), is then attacked by an entire class of microbes called "lithotrophs" ( Lithotroph - Wikipedia ). These microbes literally eat rocks.Do you see the similarity?

I've tracked this down, and the "Rocks (inorganic) don't decay" claim comes from Message 130, where Hyroglyphx was agreeing with RAZD, and he clearly identified the context as being biological. DevilsAdvocate was taking the issue in a completely different direction.It's interesting to learn that there are microbes that eat rocks, I'll bet many of us (including me) didn't know this, but I don't think this has anything to do with Hyroglyphx's line of argument in Message 130.--Percy

You're right. I let frustration get the better of me.However, Hyroglyphx almost seems to be consciously interpreting things wrong, such as the example of the seed that sits on a shelf and could either be used to grow a plant (alive) or cannot be used in such a way any more(dead) and the fact that you can't tell the difference until you plant them and thus can't tell when death occurred. He simply waved his hand and said the example didn't count. If he can't tell the difference between the living seed and the dead seed, how can he continue to assert that you can tell the difference between living and non-living matter in all cases?

Cuttings prove you wrong. And in case you think that this is some obscure case I'm plucking out of nowhere, I'd point out that bananas are exclusively grown from cuttings. So you grant my point. Thank you. Yes. But we can still assert with a very high degree of confidence that non-living matter did, at some time 3.8-4.3 billion years ago give rise to life. In other words: abiogenesis happens. Woah there, Nelly! You can't elide the difference between organic and inorganic matter and living and dead things like that! Organic matter means something quite specific, and, yes, it's easily identifiable - but it also includes dead animals, and molecules produced entirely separately of any living thing.

Well, I disagree with the statement that rocks do not decay. It is a process that is not unique to "living" things, so it is inappropriate to consider it a defining quality of life. Then it seems appropriate that I did not reply to Message 130. I replied to Message 136 where it had everything to do with the line of argument.

Yes, I know, I already said that I'd figured out that it was DevilsAdvocate who initiated the digression. I'm just trying to minimize the digressions because of the ease with which Hyroglyphx is distracted from his main point about how confident we are that abiogenesis happened. I guess it makes sense that we'd have trouble maintaining a topic that's off-topic. --Percy

Why make it up when you could look it up. Taking Percy's Message 140 into account I hid my contribution on decaying rock. So, if I go out and cut a flower, when is it dead?

• When I show it the knife?
• When I sever the stem?
• When the petals begin to fall off three days later?
• When my mum throws them away after a week?

Can you tell if my great-grandfather is dead? judging by the smell, he's well past the petels-falling-off stage.Edited by lyx2no, : My grandfather can still catch me.Edited by lyx2no, : Swept some dirt under the rug.

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.

On a molecular and atomic scale what is the difference between oxidation of organic molecules and inorganic molecules in life forms and oxidation of organic and inorganic molecules outside of life forms? The affect is the same on the microscopic level though on a macroscopic level they may be different.Rock's decay at a much slower rate than life forms but they do decay through oxidation (rust), weathering by the elements, and radioactive decay.If I am wrong on this let me know and I will concede.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

I am sorry but I think this point is very relavent. Hyroglyphx is using the term decay as a distinction between life and non-life when scientifically this is not as black and white as he would like us to believe.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

I agree with you completely, and I'd love to see Hyroglyphx pressed on this exact point. The digression had to do with whether rocks "decay".--Percy