Answer my question though, virus is life? If so, how so, and if so, is it time to re-define life?
Evolution question.
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Not quite Juan. Even I have to draw the line there. Science is made up of facts and speculation, theory and confirmation. Not all is speculation in science. Then again, not all is speculation in religion.You will not find me in denial of this.
Which leaves us with yet another similarity between the two disciplines of science and religion.Both are educated speculation. Neither is "fact," nor cast in stone.
I guess some of us are willing to entertain both areas, in order to find the truth... eh?
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Tao_Equus
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In my opinion a virus is without question life. Its method of reproduction and its dependence on cellular organisms, which viruses in the distant past most likely created, may make it a different class of life but none the less they are RNA/DNA based organisms with genomes and life cycles and well honed and highly effective reproductive processes. The diversity within the Viral Kingdom
is greater than all other life forms we know of put together and their ability to mutate, borrow or steal DNA code from other viruses and cells make them the most adaptable and evolutionary "fit" class of life we know. And, contrary to popular perception, they are not only parasitic but as I said above...8% of your "working" genome is viral.. without viruses you would not be here.
tao
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
But see, this stills bears upon the nature of "truth."Not quite Juan. Even I have to draw the line there. Science is made up of facts and speculation, theory and confirmation. Not all is speculation in science. Then again, not all is speculation in religion.
What was truth for a people ten thousand years ago is not necessarily what is truth for a people two thousand years ago is not necessarily truth for people today.
The validity of a theorem is as a working model that allows for confirmation and falsification, but particularly if that theorem is still in development (and outside of mathematics, what theorem isn't?) it cannot rightly be called truth or fact.
A simple history of the development of western science makes this very plain. What was the nature of electricity to people three hundred years ago? Two hundred? One hundred? Electricity is still the same, but our understanding of it has changed radically. What will we understand about electricity one hundred years from now? Two hundred? Three? Do you really think that knowledge will remain static?
Reality is reality. Fact is fact. We often confuse our POV with reality or fact, which is probably the greatest problem underlying what I have tried for years to convey. Because we hold a theorem that works today, does not make it a fact. It is still a theorem. Generations from now will use a different working model, that to them will appear as fact but will still be theorem.
Newtonian physics still work. So do Einsteinian physics. As do Quantum physics. None are fact, all are working models used to describe the fact and reality that surrounds us, but all fall short at various points of reference. Vajra is fond of saying that apples did not suspend in midair when Einsteinian physics superceded Newtonian physics. This is true, but equally true is that the old school physical scientists were able to work using Newtonian physics to great advantage until they ran into its limitations. The industrial revolution was built on Newtonian physics. Newtonian physics seemed to be the "fact" of the day, until a Swiss patent clerk came along and told them all they were full of sh!t. Imagine how that was first received! Two hundred years and more of industrial progress, overturned overnight? Not hardly. Newtonian physics is still in use today, along with Einsteinian and increasingly Quantum physics, because each of these are working models for solving problems and developing solutions.
But none of these are of themselves, or even collectively, "truth."
Lord help us when we get to the soft sciences including biology and anthropology where this problem is actually inflated...in all respects. It seems the more incomplete and variable the theorem, the more tenaciously some people cling and seek validation and justification. ToE is a great working model, but it is just that, a working model. It is not truth, it is not fact. It is an attempt to understand the reality around us. It is educated speculation, and nothing more.
Likewise religion is a working model, trying to understand the reality around us. The nature of the question is different, yes. Why? as opposed to How? But religion too is educated speculation, more often informed by a far longer tradition than that of science.
But Gould was correct. It is erroneous for religion to assert itself over the How? questions. And it is just as erroneous for science to assert itself over the Why? questions. In each case, the discipline is acting outside of its purview, outside of its operating parameters.
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Tao_Equus
Guest
A single organism ecosystem at a depth of 2.5 miles into solid rock.
BBC NEWS | World | Planet's loneliest bug revealed
BBC NEWS | World | Planet's loneliest bug revealed
T
The Dude
Guest
I want to know where the evidence is that God created the Universe all forms of life in one week? LOL.
ps - Tao you need a new name. In the current culture of the day you demean the Tao by associating it with the perverse behavior of the main character from the play Equus. No offense.
ps - Tao you need a new name. In the current culture of the day you demean the Tao by associating it with the perverse behavior of the main character from the play Equus. No offense.
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Tao_Equus
Guest
Welcome to CR..or Interfaith organ or Borg... or whatever we call this place these days.
It sort of translates as "Way of the Horse", though I am sure one or two round here would like to poke my eyes out
tao
Bruno's logic
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Evolution is a process,
Evolution has no end; hence there was no beginning…..
One could say that humanity had their beginning on this world, but that is only a partial truth.
One could also say that humanity had its beginning in this universe, but that is not really true either.
One could also say that humanity will continue on after this universe… But that truth is deceiving.
Evolution is change…
Change is another way of describing evolution.
Change is eternal, infinite and the only constant law, in and of, existence.
In a billion years humans will be unrecognizable to their ancestors (us) and that evolved state of humanity will be ancient history someday too…. but that is the nature of evolution
You can’t fight it…
You can only accept it….
There may, or may not, be a God or Gods but if they do indeed exist then they too are evolving…. Changing ….. adrift in the perpetual motion that is existence.
Still, I’m going to miss this time… this understanding of reality as it appears to me now, for something in me realizes that this time, this stage of evolution, is special.
~Bruno
Evolution has no end; hence there was no beginning…..
One could say that humanity had their beginning on this world, but that is only a partial truth.
One could also say that humanity had its beginning in this universe, but that is not really true either.
One could also say that humanity will continue on after this universe… But that truth is deceiving.
Evolution is change…
Change is another way of describing evolution.
Change is eternal, infinite and the only constant law, in and of, existence.
In a billion years humans will be unrecognizable to their ancestors (us) and that evolved state of humanity will be ancient history someday too…. but that is the nature of evolution
You can’t fight it…
You can only accept it….
There may, or may not, be a God or Gods but if they do indeed exist then they too are evolving…. Changing ….. adrift in the perpetual motion that is existence.
Still, I’m going to miss this time… this understanding of reality as it appears to me now, for something in me realizes that this time, this stage of evolution, is special.
~Bruno
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Tao_Equus
Guest
Nice way of looking at it....
Such a shame so many spend their lives in petty, mundane and wholly illogical constructs of the imagination when what is really all around them is so majestic.
tao
Such a shame so many spend their lives in petty, mundane and wholly illogical constructs of the imagination when what is really all around them is so majestic.
tao
T
Tao_Equus
Guest
And more on viruses..
Viruses that infect other viruses are a vital step in what I touched upon above, the suggestion that it was viruses that created the first cells. Here is direct evidence that viruses can and do infect other viruses.
Even Viruses Catch Viruses | LiveScience
tao
Viruses that infect other viruses are a vital step in what I touched upon above, the suggestion that it was viruses that created the first cells. Here is direct evidence that viruses can and do infect other viruses.
Even Viruses Catch Viruses | LiveScience
tao
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
This isn't the first I've heard if this, it's actually pretty well known there are gadzillions of single-celled organisms living quite happily along veins within the rock structure miles down. I've even heard of some living within oil deposits. But old mines seem to be where researchers have the most fun playing with them; salt mines, gold mines, coal mines, seems these critters are everywhere. And that's not counting what they have found lurking in the volcanic smokers at the bottom of the sea!
All that they taught us in grade school about the sun being the source of *all* energy turns out to not be correct...all of these critters we are talking about have lived for aeons without benefit of sunlight.
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Tao_Equus
Guest
Would you take a bet against them finding bacteria dormant or clearly fossilised on a space rock? I think that will happen pretty soon. (I know about the disputed Martian ones).
tao
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
Well, that's *the* big question, isn't it? Surviving for how long in near absolute zero, and then surviving the intense heat of re-entry without burning up (presuming the rock even survives that), and after all of that being in some shape to exist in a foreign environment well enough to thrive and procreate.
I suppose there is always an outside possibility, certainly there are microbes that can exist in *one* or *another* extreme, but you gotta admit it is a huge challenge to swing from one extreme to the other and survive, even for microbes. The old "Andromeda Strain" scenario.
Of course it begs the question...where did the microbes come from to begin with...
Could that be the basis of the Jedi religion?
T
Tao_Equus
Guest
Well, that's *the* big question, isn't it? Surviving for how long in near absolute zero, and then surviving the intense heat of re-entry without burning up (presuming the rock even survives that), and after all of that being in some shape to exist in a foreign environment well enough to thrive and procreate.
I suppose there is always an outside possibility, certainly there are microbes that can exist in *one* or *another* extreme, but you gotta admit it is a huge challenge to swing from one extreme to the other and survive, even for microbes. The old "Andromeda Strain" scenario.
Of course it begs the question...where did the microbes come from to begin with...
There was a recent experiment where some microbe bearing sedimentary rock was sent up into space glued onto a satellite launch rocket and came back down again. The piece was too small to expect the live microbes to survive but the fossil microbes in the rock did survive well enough to be identified. But for interstellar space travel I think we will find it is not microbes but viruses and phage's that can and do make that journey and they can then start the chain of evolution anew.
tao
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
OK, but even so they had to come from somewhere...unless they spontaneously generate? We still have to account for abiogenesis.
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Tao_Equus
Guest
Do we? Why does there have to be a creation point? The only reason we think that way at all is because of millennia of creation mythology. Maybe its time to think outside the box?
tao
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
Actually, I am. Any way one cares to slice it, there must be a beginning.
Spontaneous generation is every bit as hard to *believe* as any religious myth...the numbers just aren't there. Now we have to factor in spontaneous generation *in space?* Spontaneous generation of a pseudo-lifeform that *also* has to survive an atmospheric re-entry after being in a near absolute zero and oxygen (or *any* gas) deprived condition. At this point it just seems to me as believable as any other fractured fairytale. All for the convenience of seeding a watery world around an insignificant star at the outer fringes of the milky way galaxy?
It just seems a bit...convenient?...or do I mean "contrived?" I'm not sure. It is great to speculate, but I will reserve my opinion until I see something that better supports it.
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Tao_Equus
Guest
No you are not, you are still thinking there must be a creation point. You say "any way you slice it", that is not outside the box but as conventional as afternoon tea. Since all of physics agrees and science has demonstrated time to be an illusion, and since it now seems equally certain there are other dimensions we cannot see, what meaning does "start point" actually have? Imposing a start point is natural given our linear experience of reality but that is only our experience, it is not the actual reality.
How can a boson spin clockwise and anti-clockwise at the same time? Its not possible in our atomic scale reality but its happening billions of times within your body at this moment. What if the coding in all these left handed amino acids, (that are detectable throughout the visible universe in spectrographic analysis), that are vital for life carry subatomic coding that predisposes them to blossom into living organisms?
In truth I believe there to be many versions of reality based upon the scale and dimensions you include in your thinking. Each year that goes by, each piece of data that becomes available that is pertinent to this thought, only strengthens this belief. In just the past couple of months there has been enough science published to, (for a neutral observer such as I), completely overthrow what we think we know about life itself, its beginnings here on Earth and even the nature of universal time. We are as yet primitives with few answers but surely the most ridiculous of them all is that some omnipresent super being created it all from nothing. To start with it is just such an anthropocentric notion that it would have to have a huge body of evidence to even consider it, and that evidence is simply not there.
tao
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Tao_Equus
Guest
Here is a "blast from the past" on that iconic experiment in the 1950's that sought to recreate the conditions on early Earth. Seems it was far more successful than Stanley Millar, the research graduate who conducted the experiments, ever realised.
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | New spark in classic experiments
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | New spark in classic experiments
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
Yes, and what, pray tell, would you call the "Big Bang?" I would call it a beginning.
Does it, really?
Seems to me the Law of Diminishing Returns, known also as "friction" in Newtonian Physics, disagrees.
Ah, so illusion is real and reality is illusion...sounds like philosophy to me, not science.
Why? Because of some abstract math and unsubstantiated speculation? And you call religion a farce? I'm sorry, but I see absolutely *no* difference on this matter, between a fanciful scientific *heaven* of multi-verses and a mythical unsubstantiated heaven of a religious text.
Certainly a possibility I am not willing to dismiss, but neither is it something I am willing to take on faith.
Sounds like the Big Bang to me...verbatim. Just ask Hawking.
BTW, I sense an attempt to attach a religious connotation to the term "abiogenesis." That would be an error...it is a decidedly scientific term that has nothing to do, at all, with religion or mythology...that is, unless you agree that science is another religious attempt to understand reality,
Cheers!
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