Spastic Ink

“The water is notexternal and properly constitutes the rock itself.” Then please feel freeto squeeze some water out of rocks. Comes in handy when stuck on an island. Thereis no h2o in the intrinsic composition of any rock. You still have a lot tolearn before you can partake in these discussions. “Ice chunks can cracktoo when subjected to temperature change.” Already addressedhere by another member. Google is your friend for all these simple sciencequestions. Repetition does not bring refuted arguments to “life”. “my blood andinternal oxygen are external agents contacting my leg causing it to move?” Oxygen is intrinsic to flesh (chno). No oxygen, no flesh. Furthermore, oxygen is part of thecarcass of a dead animal. Furthermore, pump any amount of oxygen you want into a dead being. They surely won't get up and start walking again. For that would be a cure for "death". And that killsyour line of argumentation. This has already been addressed. Why do you continue to repeat the same contradictorystatements? You are so done, lol.

“so long as you holdnon-living compositions to the same standard” Sure we have to.That’s why we also have to point out that a dead man does indeed have oxygenatoms in his body, yet this oxygen is not moving his body. But regardless,theorizing why a thing is alive has to do with the theory of abiogenesis. Youcan theorize how atoms come together to form a living thing, but you need todefine what a living thing is before you can do that, otherwise you have noclue what you are theorizing about. “freeze and thawcycles over time cause a rock to crack and fall apart” Sure they do, but theexternal agent responsible is water. All these questions can be answered withsome minimum research on the science, the geology, etc. behind it. Look up“weathering” in wikipedia: “When waterthat has entered the joints freezes, the ice formed strains the walls of thejoints and causes the joints to deepen and widen. When the ice thaws, water canflow further into the rock. Repeated freeze-thaw cycles weaken the rocks which,over time, break up along the joints into angular pieces.” The rock can be broken downinto sand just as it does at the beach, but the rock didn’t do this by itself,like a human does when he mutilates his body to pieces. Rocks cannot move by themselves.What seems magical (ie. Rock turning into sand) can be understood by doing someresearch on the topic. You should educate yourself on these simple topicsbefore throwing them into the discussion as unknown magical phenomena. “I do not believe Iever said living things always react unpredictably.” “4. Livingthings react unpredictably and environment provides metabolic indicators neededto maintain this reaction. #4 is my advice I humbly submit for critique.” That’s what you saidand I critiqued it as per your request. First you said they react unpredictably.Then you changed your mind after I pointed out that your statements show themas reacting predictably. Now you say they react unpredictably sometimes,whenever you want them depending on your argument. You are being inconsistentwhich leads to contradictions as I pointed out.

“Oxygen will come incontact with my legs” All you’ve said isthat your leg is comprised of components, like atoms. You are not talking aboutthe leg object anymore, but about what comprises it. You conveniently switchedcontexts to go off in an irrelevant tangent. Your leg does not comein contact with what comprises it. Contact only happens between externalentities. Oxygen in your blood may come in contact with iron atoms, etc. Butnot with your leg. Only a soccer ball can do that. A house can come in contact witha baseball, but not with the brick that comprises it. The brick is in contactwith other bricks, mortar, etc. You can either point to the house or the brick,but not both at the same time and in the same sense/context. Only a separateentity can come in contact with the house. You are confusing composition (manyentities) with discreteness (a single entity). In a vacuum no oxygenor other entity is coming in contact with your bare legs and moving them onyour behalf. Your body moves on its own in space without the influence of anyother object. And this is what refutes your claim. You are free to theorize howliving things move, but this is after the fact and irrelevant to actuallydefining what alive means. “Deprived of oxygenmy legs go numb and stop moving.” Is this yet anotherprediction (other than the knife stabbing the heart) that refutes yourdefinition of what is alive? You said living things react unpredictably, yetnow you are claiming they react predictably. Quite contradictory.

“ Imake the case for prediction as an objective indicator of life” Circular as itrequires a living thing to predict as explained several times before. A livingthing is not that which requires another living thing to predict. Repetition isnot an argument. Sorry. “If you move on yourown, and nothing whatsoever externally moves your legs, then you should notrequire more oxygen from the environment when you run at full speed.” Oxygen does not comein contact with and push/pull (move) your legs. You can move your legs byyourself when you are sealed in a vacuum or floating in outer space. At least I can, even if you refuse to do so in order to advance your claim. Thissimple test refutes your claim that an object is moving your legs on yourbehalf and forcing you to walk to work against your will. “You see, I do notmove by myself but to move I must absorb nutrients and breathe air.” Before you can absorb(action) or perform any other action you’d like to use as an excuse to avoidthe inevitable, you must move on your own to do it. Before you reproduce youmust move on your own. Before you intake food you must move on your own. Beforeyou respire you must move on your own. Before you X, where X is any verb, youmust move on your own. It’s inescapable no matter how hard you try to weaselyour way out of it. This is so fundamental that it's impossible to argue otherwise. But keep trying, we can do this forever. That’s why you couldn’t provide me with a single example(as I asked) of a living thing that cannot move on its own. Rocks don’t move ontheir own as they require another thing to either push or pull them.

“the prediction is made by a nonliving entity (a mechanical tool). Indeed if I qualified "living entity" had to do the prediction, my definition is quite circular.” All tools are built and deterministically programmed by living entities for a specific purpose. And you don’t need to qualify this by a “living entity” since tools can only be made by living entities. So of course this is circular as it entails a living entity to deterministically instruct how the prediction should proceed. “I claim the predictable behavior is one of the behaviors a living being must possess.” The fact of the matter is that we can predict that a man whose heart is cut will collapse and die. This is a prediction which according to your definition makes the man not alive before he was stabbed. And this simple test refutes your definition. “That is not all it does” What it “does” is an action by itself against gravity. It doesn’t matter if it “does” one or many actions. It does them by itself and against gravity. So you are certainly using this criteria (which you claim is vague without justification) in your own definition of living. Isn’t that ironic? Perhaps you didn’t realize it before and that’s ok. But I have pointed it out for you. It’s obvious. “ So when something moves on its own, what do you mean?” Just that. That it moves on its own without another object pushing or pulling it, as I said several times before. What is so extremely difficult to understand about “moving by itself”? For example, you walk on your own without me having to grab your legs and move them for you and force you to take your steps, do you not? Simple. Nothing vague about it. If you disagree, then please tell me what other object is grabbing your legs and moving them for you so that you can walk to work. I would certainly like to know if someone or something (perhaps a ghost) is grabbing my legs without my knowledge, making walking motions with them and forcing me to go to work. Perhaps my creditors? “I do not think something can move "on its own".” For nonliving things, sure. All living things move on their own. In fact, you cannot give any example of a living thing that cannot move on its own. “That is obvious if you accept cells must be alive. I would argue wood is made of cells, but wood is dead.” There are living cells and dead ones (that lived once), just as there are living people and dead people. That tree was once alive but the wood and its cells lying on the ground are now dead. So? How does that kill the definition presented here? “I only suggest cells do not have to be alive” Of course they don’t. And such cells cannot be classified as living. But they were certainly alive once. Now they are dead. The point is: the cell itself is not a criterion for “living” because a living cell is not made up of other cells. So that’s where it fails. Such a definition of “living” cannot be ascribed to a cell since it doesn’t consist of other cells as per your requirement. Adding a clause with the word cell to the definition is contradictory at best. “What about a drone aircraft makes it not alive?” I just ran it through the definition presented and it makes sense: Living is a term that refers to a natural object moving by itself against the gravitational pull from all the other objects Drone aircrafts aren’t natural objects. We don’t call something alive just because it moves. If that were the case, then every single object in the universe would be alive. Everything moves. Some will ask: why don’t we just label everything alive and be done with it? I mean, we don’t have to concern ourselves with whether that man in the morgue is living or dead, right? Let’s just say he’s alive and even the insurance company will be happy as they don’t have to pay out that policy. Well, if it makes them happy we can all agree to this universal irrationality. As long as they’re happy in the end, that’s all that matters.

“The original premise was that things moving against gravity constitute being alive.” Sorry, but you didn’t have that discussion with me. That’s not the definition of alive I copy/pasted a few comments ago. “4. Living things react unpredictably and environment provides metabolic indicators needed to maintain this reaction. #4 is my advice I humbly submit for critique.” Your definition is observer dependent. It depends on another living entity that should not be able to “predict” how said living entity can react. It invokes another living entity to define what a living entity is. It is saying that living thing is one which requires another living thing to assess unpredictability. This is a fine example of a circular definition. Even putting this circularity aside, if one can predict how it reacts, then said entity is not alive. For example, before we stab someone in the heart and slice through it, all we need to do is predict that they will collapse to the ground and die. And if we run this experiment and our prediction comes to fruition, then it automatically contradicts your definition because it concludes that this person was not alive before we stabbed him. It’s a self-refuting definition. But ultimately, you are basing your definition on an action – react. The entity in question must move by itself against gravity to “react” and be deemed alive. This is your dependency. So it’s obvious that you cannot escape the definition provided by the article no matter how much you complain that you disagree with it for personal reasons. All you are doing is just trying to add more redundant attributes or descriptions to the definition on top of what was provided by the article. “1. The living things must move "on their own". To me, #1 is vague and meaningless” You haven’t shown that. In fact, you’ve obviously used it in your definition with the term “react” as explained above. So it’s evidently meaningful to you, otherwise you wouldn’t use a single verb/action in your definition of a living thing. “2. The living things must not be artificial constructs. #2 is arbitrary and circular (artificial means byproduct of a lifeform, and lifeform means non-artificial)” The term “artificial” is again your strawman attempt as it is not part of the definition provided. I addressed this specific issue for you previously and you had no argument against it. Simply ignoring my response and repeating what you posted is not an argument. “The living things must be made of cells.” A cell is already alive. So such a statement is circular because you are saying a living thing must be made up of living things.

Well then let’s not take anything seriously. Let’s agreethat everybody is correct and everything is true. That includes the details of allahand jesus. Besides, it’s better to make love instead of war. I’m perfectly fine withthat. And before you push that ball and talk about elasticity,shape and what not, you had better be alive. A dead man can’t push anything byhimself. He needs another person to grab his cold dead hand and push on hisbehalf.

“Resisting was used as a clarifying word in the discussion.” Using out of context terms having nothing to do with the definition presented and attempting to clarify them in your own mind to make an out of context point, is a classic strawman. We need to stick with what is presented and in context. “then it is inescapable that all matter is alive” This was the definition supplied from the article: Living: a term that refers to a natural object moving by itself against the gravitational pull from all the other objects When we test your claim that all matter is alive, we see that the cup on the table is not moving by itself. Sit there and wait for it to move by itself. It will never do so. Only another object can move it. Your claim obviously fails. “All matter has microscopic parts that move on their own.” Let’s test this claim. Take a hammer and smash the cup to dust. None of those parts move on their own. They can only move when another object either pulls or pushes them by various physical means, be it direct contact, gravity, magnetism, ionization, etc. We don’t see cups and their parts walking down the street or sprouting from the soil. This shouldn’t be news to anyone. “No, not on your own. You also kicked a pebble on the ground.” When you kicked or performed any action, it was you who did it on your own. It wasn’t a ghost or any other object that grabbed your foot and moved it on your behalf to make it kick that pebble. Your statement is contradictory as any action you perform, you perform on your own unless another entity forced you to perform it. “you didn't do it "on your own" but with traction and force-assistance of nearby matter” So if one is floating in outer space before their air supply runs out and dies, they cannot move their arm or foot because there isn’t a pavement with traction out there? Obviously, when they die they can’t move any limb as they are no longer alive. Again, your statement is contradictory. “your fart gas now adds a secondary motion and there is not just one thing (you) moving "on your own". There are two things moving, you and some fart gas half a mile away.” The fart or ball you threw is not moving on its own. That entity was pushed by another object, ie. you. It is you who moved on your own and can move any way you like whereas the fart or ball cannot except in the direction it was pushed, until influenced by another entity. You are alive, the ball isn’t. “My continued motion through space does not qualify me as "alive".” Of course. A dead body in a grave moves as the Earth moves around the Sun. Motion alone is not a criteria for being alive. Again, the ball moves because it was either pushed or pulled by another object, not because the ball did it on its own. The ball is not alive. You are alive because you are a natural entity moving on your own against the gravitational pull of all objects. You can fight the pull of the Earth and the Sun by merely moving a limb or batting an eye lash. A ball cannot do that. “Life is that which reacts in unpredictable ways, and through that process of unpredictable reaction it can recognize patterns of behavior that improve its chances of continuing to exist.” Your definition is observer dependent. It depends on another living entity that should not be able to predict how said living entity can react. It invokes another living entity to define what a living entity is. This is a good example of a circular definition. And even still, if one can predict how it reacts, then said entity is not alive. For example, before we stab someone in the heart and slice through it, all we need to do is predict that they will collapse to the ground and die. And if we run this experiment and our prediction comes to fruition, then it automatically contradicts your definition because it concludes that this person was not alive before we stabbed him. It’s self-refuting. What do you predict will happen if we run this experiment on someone?

"It would seem by using words like "resisting" I didn't see this term resisting in the definition of alive. You are attacking a strawman, not the definition presented in this thread. It's very easy to kill strawmen instead of arguments. "we could do nothing but kick our feet in space and never move" But if you kick your feet, you are certainly moving. Elementary. You contradicted yourself. "Nothing can ever move "on its own" I just walked to work. I moved on my own. Try it sometime instead of taking the tram. But even if you take the tram, you still moved on your own to board the tram, among other motions you did while inside the tram. That's quite the predicament you're in. "The idea of using "motion" to define life seems inconsistent and filled with circular reference." You clearly haven't shown that. And what do you mean by "life"? Cuz if you can't tell us, then your statement is meaningless.

“a self-replication-inducing molecular system (a factory of cells)” It’s called abiogenesis. All living entities are made up of atoms. There was no maker who used tweezers to pick up individual atoms and painstakingly assemble humans. “then, by this silly definition of life, none of us is alive.” No, you obviously didn’t read the definition.

“So natural process leads to life, and life defines what we call natural. It is circular definition.” Already addressed above. You are obviously looking at some other definition of life. You also don’t understand what a circular definition is. The definition of life defines the meaning of the term life, not the meaning of the term natural. You don’t seem to understand what a definition is. “In order to call something alive, we must consider whether it grew "naturally" The ability to grow has nothing to do with the definition of life. “To call something natural, we must consider whether a lifeform built it.” I don’t know where you pulled that line from, but it certainly wasn’t anywhere in this thread. A natural object is defined as one forged by the environment. Where do you see the phrase “lifeform built it” in the definition of natural? “I do not agree with ANY of these definitions” Nobody really cares what you agree with. Definitions stand on their own and aren’t subject to agreement, for if they were, all one has to do is recruit more people to agree with a definition than you can recruit to disagree with it. We can certainly payout people and buy definitions if what you say is the case. So your agreement/disagreement emotional plea is utterly laughable.

“And to know what isartificial we must know whether it is a byproduct of a living thing” I don’t see the terms artificial & living as part of the definition of living. Are you reading the samedefinition on page 1? “We have a circularreference.” No, a circular ref is of the form: A is defined as “B and Cand A”. The word to be defined needs tobe invoked in the definition itself.

“Is a bird's nest assembled by nature?” An artificial object is a second-hand object, one made by a living entity, usually for a specific purpose rather than as a byproduct of its internal metabolic/physiological processes. Nests, houses and phones are artificial objects. “So what makes a volcano non-living?” What do you mean by living? When you are able to define the term, take its context opposite and you’ve answered your own question. If you can categorize a volcano as living, then we can both go to the Census Bureau and convince them to include volcanoes as living citizens of the state. Let's hope they will put them to work to pay their fair share of taxes and help out the economy.

"hybrid animals/plants, artificial insemination,etc.? Some of those may be considered "not assembled naturally"" These things aren't assembled artificially from their parts (atoms/molecules/cells) like a robot is assembled by humans. Nature does all the work.

The folks at the atheist experience show are advocating to get all your vaccinations, including swine flue and what not. They will chew your head off if you say anything to the contrary.