Modularity, A distinguishing property of life

More semantics... Obviously I'm referring to smoothing out the gravel and making a level surface.pave
  /peɪv/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [peyv] Show IPA verb (used with object), paved, pav⋅ing.
Use paved in a Sentence
1. to cover or lay (a road, walk, etc.) with concrete, stones, bricks, tiles, wood, or the like, so as to make a firm, level surface.

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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

Putrid - "in a state of foul decay or decomposition, as animal or vegetable matter; rotten."That is a rather circular argument, claiming that rock does not decay like life does because it does not decay in a manner that specifically defines animal and vegetable. For me, it seems inevitable that as we understand more of the processes which makes what we call life, eventually we will end up with an unbroken line of understood processes. Where we draw the line, if we draw the line at all, would then be a matter of opinion.If you are looking for a "First Cause" then I suspect you won't find it in abiogenesis; you would eventually throw up your hands and say "Well now where did all these atoms come from if they are so predisposed toward life!?" At that point we will start talking about our theories about the Big Bang and how heavier elements were created, and we will admit that we don't understand things prior to around 40 ms after the Big Bang event. Theists will shift their gods into this remaining ignorance and claim "Aha, you don't know *everything* so our bearded savior could still be hiding over here!" Scientists will be forced to tip their hats and acknowledge their lack of omniscience, and then ignore their cries as they steadily push the limits of knowledge. 30 ms, 20 ms, 10 ms...Eventually we may find that the Big Bang event was part of a larger process, in which case the gods retreat even farther and the theistic claims ring a little more shrilly. Who knows? We, scientifically minded peopled, don't know. But, we are pretty darn sure theists don't know anything at all.

A gravel parking lot is not covered with concrete, stones, bricks, tiles, wood, or anything of the like. It is covered with gravel.This isn't semantics, it is frikkin' gravel. You spread it out, there ya' go.Edited by Phage0070, : Background

Is it? Do rocks decay in a foul decomposition, as animal or vegetable matter? Your own definition seems to distinguish. Well, that is the purpose of science. Hope that comes to fruition too. That's what I meant by an infinite regression. Answering one question just leads to another, and another, another, until we finally arrive at the ultimate question about where energy, time, space, or matter came from.

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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

*sighs*I'm not even going to dignify something this asinine by explaining why it's so asinine.

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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

"Foul" decomposition? You are basing your definition of life on aesthetics? Seriously? Then argue that point directly, instead of some false point about getting life from non-living matter. Those debating in this thread are talking about the origin of LIFE, which we understand came from non-living matter through processes which science can explain. The origin of the universe is another topic, and to equate ignorance in one area with ignorance in another makes little sense.

Then it appears we are at an impasse. On one side is a willing debater offering a helpful analogy, the other refusing to converse based on the stupidity of rocks spread on the ground.Honestly, who could stand such a thing, spreading rocks on the ground and doing nothing else to them. For shame!Edited by Phage0070, : No reason given.

I don't even know how to respond to this it's so petty..... Phage.... please follow along.... This was coming from the definition that YOU posted. Okay? YOU posted it from YOUR source. What do I have to do with it except maybe to marvel at why you would post something that refutes your own claim? If you follow the dialogue, I asked what the point was in continuing on with this thread since there is not much to contend with any longer. I stated that abiogenesis was not a proven fact. Others agreed that the only question it didn't answer was "how." So without any crucial details, it seems like it's just talking points with little to no headway.So I further commented that if we continue splitting hairs, eventually the conversation will be reduced to an unanswerable and infinite regression. I'm not arguing that point. I'm just commenting on how we might arrive there.All I'm trying to do is take Percy's advice by peaceably discussing the science. So I then responded to Devil's Advocate who brought up a good point about rocks and organic material.I'm trying to bring the topic back on track. The only problem is that certain people keep focusing on asinine analogies that don't explain anything useful, and then instead of defending the use of the analogy, they'd rather debate the analogy's literal meaning.Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

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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

How about YOU follow along? You claim rock does not decompose BECAUSE it does not "putrify". I then point out that: I point out here that putrefaction only applies to things that are already defined as being alive, and that you claim was essentially "rock is not alive because it is not alive". That is circular logic, so don't try to foist it off on me.To make it more clear, because apparently I have to: You claim that decomposition defines life, but modify the definition of decomposition so that it requires a specific descriptor that only applies to the decomposition of once-living material. Such a dividing line is simply a declaration.I suggest that if you insist on being offensively incorrect on one thing in your posts, you should make longer posts so we can glean something of worth.

No, it's just one evidence in a long line of evidence showing that it's not living matter. Either quote me writing anything along the lines of a "rock does not decompose BECAUSE it does not "putrify" or stop slandering me with baseless accusations.Or even better you can stop being petty so that we can continue. Do you want to talk about something substantive or do you want to talk about things as asinine as defining "is." That's how definitions come to be! People take notice of things, like rocks aren't alive, and assign meaning to words. What do you want me to do about that? I've never said anything remotely akin to what you are describing. You fabricated this whole thing by presenting a false dichotomy. All you are doing is playing word games and you know it. Like Percy already said, I was clearly referring to biological decay. Devil's Advocate is now saying that there is essentially no difference in what type of decay as it's all ultimately molecular.I am trying to debate that peacefully, meanwhile you're trolling and intentionally goading me. I keep trying to start over but you're insistent on a fight. That's funny, I was thinking the same of you. Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

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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

Fine, lets start over. What is a distinguishing property of life? Not decay, because it is all the same. Any other ideas?

Hyroglyphx,Please let the moderators moderate the discussion. Do not attempt to do this yourself. Keep your focus on the topic. If you need moderator assistance then post a note to Report discussion problems here: No.2.--Percy

Except that you were using decay as one of these qualifiers to distinguish life from non-life. That is called circular reasoning.BTW, all life does not putrify. Do ameoba's putrify? How about bacteria? No. Why? Because only multicellular organisms putrify and bacteriar are the things that are causing the putrification. Therefore your use of putrification aka decay as a distinction between life and non-life is like saying the difference between life and non-life is life. It makes absolutely no sense. Actually I did not originally bring up the topic of radiological decay but yes it is present both in living organisms and non-living things. That was my original point in that at the most basic level decay results in the same end products and thus cannot be used as a distinctive qualifier between life and non-life. You are mixing up terms. Organic matter does not equal life and inorganic matter does not equal nonlife. Organic material is created by the biological processes of living organisms whereas inorganic material is not. Both organic and inorganic matter can be found in and outside living organisms. In other words organic matter is the product of living organisms not the defining qualifiers of what living organisms are. No that is unequivocally so unless you believe in the magical appearance of life out of nothing, no matter but pure nothing. Neither can you be sure of anything else if you call this into question, including your own existence or whether you are on the Earth orbiting an G2 class star called the Sun for that matter. How far are we going to go with this? No, it is just you want everything to be painted in your 100% black and white fantasy world and that is not how science paints reality. I am trying to make the poignant point that the terms you throw about here i.e. life and non-life are not as clear cut as you make them out to be.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : Missing symbols, replaced with words.

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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

Thank you very much. I know we've got off on the wrong foot, which is very unfortunate. I wish that never happened. I realize that I can be uppity and sarcastic and I'm sure that doesn't help, so I apologize to you for that. Well, I'm interested in where Devil's Advocate is going with his line of argumentation. I am going to respond to him tomorrow, which may be today for you by the time you read this. Based on my response to him, you can voice your objections and we'll pick it up from there.

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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

Given Newton's writings on the Bible, I would doubt that if he was asked the question ''How did life appear on earth?'' he would have given a naturalistic explanation. He would have probably started with ''in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth ...''. But as you've said, his idea of 'how it all started' never influenced his capacity of doing operational science, which was my point. I agree, and I already knew that hehe (I'm not that non-knowledgeable on the subject). But is the sequence of nucleotides, for example, directed or random ? Since the fact that the molecules only bond in certain ways doesn't affect the sequence. (or I'm missing something)And for proteins, the folding is almost random (since there are thousands of possible foldings for one chain of amino-acids, if i'm not mistaken), unless there is a chaperon to help it fold right. So we know there is a way to have a directed folding, but it can't be a chaperon since iti is itself a protein. Is there a mechanism that could have made the folding non-random besides a chaperon ?PS I'll read that post on self-replicating molecules. Hope its not overly complicatedEdited by slevesque, : No reason given.