What IS reproduction?

Isn't that just another way of distinguishing number 6 "Reproduction" from number 3 "Growth"? It doesn't seem like a new concept, just another way of describing reproduction.In fact I take it back; it doesn't really distinguish reproduction from growth at all. Growth for many organisms involves the reproduction of the core molecules, so that definition would be a subset of both growth and reproduction.Depending on how you viewed things, reproduction wouldn't necessarily require the duplication of the core molecules. If you view reproduction as when organisms split into individuals you could get really technical and mark the point when the DNA itself is split. The reproduction of the other half would then simply be growth; after all it is simply building on the core molecules that already existed in the new individual. A half-split DNA strand then could be half-individual, and growing.In any case, I view the definition of life as largely irrelevant. "Life" isn't an inherent quality of any organism, it is an emergent property we choose to define (very poorly). A proper definition is not required to understand anything about the organisms, etc.

It is both. For a single-celled organism it is simply the cell increasing in size/mass, but for a multicellular organism it includes the addition of new cells. You missed my point; you could technically view a reproducing cell halfway through copying DNA as half-individual, with an extraordinary level of resource sharing between those individuals. The purpose of doing that would be to distinguish growth from reproduction, by making the definition so particular that it turns normal cell reproduction into a nearly inextricable combination of reproduction and growth.Simplification of the terms then complicates our interpretation of the event. This leads into my last point... Whenever we decide it qualifies.Think of it like the colors red and yellow; at what point does red become yellow as you move up the spectrum? There are certain points where almost everyone will agree that it is red, or yellow, but in the middle it gets fuzzy. We might even subdivide it into the uncertain range being called orange, but then where does the transition between yellow and orange, or red and orange occur?Our subjective definition of colors is irrelevant to being able to get from one color to another through increasing or decreasing the frequency of the light. It is such an issue because creationists are making what amounts to an argument from incredulity, saying that life cannot come from unlife. This is tantamount to saying that red cannot come from yellow; the dividing line, or lines between subdivisions between those points, can be placed anywhere by the individual observer. In every case the separating point of that distinction would be overcome by an extremely slight modification of frequency.Coming up with a universal definition of colors so that definition can be made would be useless, as the color-creationists would simply reject it so that they could hang on to their belief that you cannot get from red to yellow. Instead we should point out that wherever you draw the line it is a very slight modification to get to the next step, so they will have to show a reasonably large void in the steps. If there was some large gap of light frequencies between red and yellow that could not exist, then they might have a point. The same holds true for creationist claims, if they could produce such a gap.Instead they cling to an unknown subjective definition of life which will travel like a greased-up deaf guy to avoid being nailed down, where the argument from incredulity can be destroyed. It is just a waste of time and we are better off doing something else.