Quote Originally Posted by mhailey View Post
As far as support that only life begets life, please see the birth of my daughters, your birth, the birth of the robin in my back yard, the birth of the maggot on some rotten food in Kentucky. There has never been a documented observation of life coming from non-life. If you have one, please show it. You have some very abstract theories, which at their core rely upon creating a new definition of "life."

Matt
your examples indeed prove that life begets life. they do not prove that ONLY life begets life. and as my sources showed, I am not the only one who thinks we need a better definition of life.

it's easy to tell if some things are alive... a cow is alive, a beaker of acid is not. a dog is alive, a rock is not, etc. but what about things like virii? they exhibit many classical signs of life, but are technically not alive, by the old definition of life.

what about prions? freeform RNA? there are many things that are not technically "alive" by the classical definition, but display many lifelike behaviors. it is cases such as these that bring the scientific definition of "alive" into question. many scientists think that self replication is the ONLY proper definition of life, and if that is so, many things (virii, prions, etc) are very much alive.

perhaps, life is not so cut and dry. maybe it's an analog definition and not a digital one. maybe the transition was gradual, and things gradually became more alive. maybe not. I don't claim to know, I just think it's a logical theory, and I am curious to learn more as experimentation is done to prove or disprove the repeatability. it's the joy of science!

on the other hand, maybe it didn't happen that way. maybe your imaginary pal DID create life. I can't disprove it. you can't prove it. it's completely unprovable one way or another. so, I have made a philosophicial choice to follow the path that lets me use my imagination, my intellect and my logic, and see where it takes me. I wish you the same happiness and fulfillment on your path that I have found on mine, and I thank you for your gentlemanly conduct thus far.