The Official Perfection KOs Creationism Thread!

[Secular]

possibly i'm just being slow after being awake all night but i'm not getting this. Virus' are created and die and multiply at horrific rates.. but they're really rocks in disgues?

that came off a bit more sarcastic than intended but i really don't understand

 

[classical_hero]

Basically virus are not classified as life. That is what you really need to know.

 

[Secular]

Basically virus are not classified as life. That is what you really need to know.

suppose i'll wait for wolf head avatar guy to repsond then, likes explaining

 

[Secular]

and this http://www.beyondbooks.com/lif72/2c.asp says that can't be determined whether they are alive or not, not that they arn't. kinda like god they can't prove either way.

 

[Secular]

and one last article then i'm done for the night http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/comp-bio/1992-July/000225.html

 

[classical_hero]

Well the vast majority of Scientists do not consider viruses to be life.

 

[Sidhe]

I thought my post made it abundently clear but obviously not: 5 criteria meet all five and you get a prize it's called classification as a living organism fail on any one and you get relegated to the chemicle chain league. Virus's at least those we call retro viruses(such as AIDS) are little more than non Self replicating strips of RNA/DNA. If I removed a human cell from your body and extracted the RNA from the mitochondria or created RNA in a petri dish would you say it was alive? For a second matter Viruses don't move of there own accord or respond to external stimuli, they simply chemicaly interact when in the right environment. You can call a man alive but if you blow him inot a million pieces of DNA you don't call that life.

http://cvr.bio.uci.edu/learn.html

Go here it'll tell you in intimate detail why science does not consider Viruses as life.

 

[Sahkuhnder]

Please feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken but didn't the catholic church recognize evolution as an accepted scientific theory, supported by a great body of evidence?

 

[Sidhe]

The pope Said famously that evolution was more than just a hypothesis but the churches position is hardly pro evolution as such

http://parablemania.ektopos.com/archives/2005/07/evolution_and_t.html

An interesting discussion on the topic.

They kind of acknowledge it grudgingly on one hand but dispute it's verracity on the other.

 

[fung3]

I thought ny post made it abundently clear but obviously not: 5 criteria meet all five and you get a prize it's called classification as a living organism fail on any one and you get relegated to the chemicle chain league. Virus's at least those we call retro viruses(such as AIDS) are little more than non Self replicating strips of RNA/DNA. If I removed a human cell from your body and extracted the RNA from the mitochondria or created RNA in a petri dish would you say it was alive? For a second matter Viruses don't move of there own accord or respond to external stimuli, they simply chemicaly interact when in the right environment. You can call a man alive but if you blow him inot a million pieces of DNA you don't call that life.

If the RNA exhibited the following attributes I would say it was alive, if it did not I would say it was not alive.

1.Motion

2.Reproduction

3.Consumption

4.Growth

5.Stimulus response

Q1. When a virus changes/mutates and as a result is better equiped to thrive in a given environment is it responding to an external stimuli (it's environment) or is it random mutation or is it both or is it neither?

 

[sanabas]

possibly i'm just being slow after being awake all night but i'm not getting this. Virus' are created and die and multiply at horrific rates.. but they're really rocks in disgues?

that came off a bit more sarcastic than intended but i really don't understand

Basically it's hard to come up with a rigorous definitionof what's alive and what's not. Going by the consensus definition, viruses don't qualify as life.

However, whether they're alive or not doesn't actually make a difference to whether you can use them as an example of cumulative selection/evolution. They're a great example. They replicate, they don't always replicate exactly, some of those changes are better at replicating, that results in large changes over multiple generations. That's what viruses do, that's what live organisms do. Just because they don't meet the definition of alive isn't a reason to ignore them as an example of cumulative selection.

As for the 2nd law of thermodynamics, I'd suggest doing some more reading. It's not a universal law that applies to everything. It's an approximation that only works for certain systems. Evolution doesn't violate it, sun, earth and the rest of the solar system forming due to gravitational forces doesn't violate it, because the 2nd law of thermodynamics doesn't apply to those systems.

 

[Sidhe]

If the RNA exhibited the following attributes I would say it was alive, if it did not I would say it was not alive.

1.Motion

2.Reproduction

3.Consumption

4.Growth

5.Stimulus response

Q1. When a virus changes/mutates and as a result is better equiped to thrive in a given environment is it responding to an external stimuli (it's environment) or is it random mutation or is it both or is it neither?

I'd say it's just randomingly doing what it's programmed to do, with no direction whatsoever. Anyway look at the website I posted, it explains the scientific view of virsuses as being non life far better than I could in particular look at the pdf file 'are viruses alive' it'll make it all clear.

 

[fung3]

My favoured view in this debacle is that yes evolution is taking place coupled with intelligent design. Any takers?

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Basically virus are not classified as life.

This is EXACTLY what my biology teacher said.
She also said - this does not mean it's a rock, but viruses cannot be put in the same group as the other life-forms. It is a completely separate category - VIRUSES (NOT parasitic lifeforms). They are on the border between lifeless and life.

 

[MrCynical]

I'm not sure that it's relevant to the discussion of evolution whether viruses are alive or not. If a small percentage of the viruses are more resistant to antibiotics due to some mutation, and hence are more likely to survive and replicate, that is still an example of natural selection. I'd have thought anything which can replicate (with a certain degree of error) could undergo evolution whether it is alive or not.

As to arguments about the 2nd law of thermodynamics, Earth and the Solar system are not closed systems, so entropically unfavourable processes can occur.

 

[fung3]

I am a virus. The other day some virus mates and I were chillin' out smokin' 'erb and listening to Bob 'the Prophet' Marley. We started getting deep on what defined life. You see when we get into our replication stuff we sure miss out on the fun part but hey at the end of the day there are more of us so we have reproduced. OK so lack of legs or flagella make voluntary movement a bit tricky. We decided that you don't have to move to show you're alive. We have a list of life criteria similar to the human model, though it does differ slightly. Please take our views into account during future group debates.

 

[Renata]

As for the 2nd law of thermodynamics, I'd suggest doing some more reading. It's not a universal law that applies to everything. It's an approximation that only works for certain systems. Evolution doesn't violate it, sun, earth and the rest of the solar system forming due to gravitational forces doesn't violate it, because the 2nd law of thermodynamics doesn't apply to those systems.

*cringe* Sorry, sanabas, but you need to do a little more reading yourself! The second law of thermodynamics is in fact universal. You're probably thinking of the distinction drawn between open and closed systems, but it doesn't work the way you say it does. What it boils down to in practice is that you can't ever get an increase in "organization" in a system unless you put more energy into it. With a closed system (no energy or mass in or out), increases in order are therefore prohibited. But the earth isn't a closed system; it gets energy from the sun. So the argument against increases in organization doesn't work. (In the universe as a whole (counting the earth *and* the sun), "organization" does have to decrease.)

The really pathetic thing about this stupid argument, though, is that you don't need to resort to thermodynamics to disprove it. Just look around. Increases in order are everywhere. Are creationists prepared to deny the condensation of water vapor to make more-organized liquid water? Deny the creation of snow from atmospheric water? Or of diamond from carbon under pressure?

It's all just smoke and mirrors.

(Increase in "order" or "organization" is a very bad approximation of the meaning of "decrease in entropy" in any case, but that's irrelevent to debunking the argument.)

 

[Sidhe]

I am a virus. The other day some virus mates and I were chillin' out smokin' 'erb and listening to Bob 'the Prophet' Marley. We started getting deep on what defined life. You see when we get into our replication stuff we sure miss out on the fun part but hey at the end of the day there are more of us so we have reproduced. OK so lack of legs or flagella make voluntary movement a bit tricky. We decided that you don't have to move to show you're alive. We have a list of life criteria similar to the human model, though it does differ slightly. Please take our views into account during future group debates.

Not quite

Reproductive: still OK all be it with a much reduced ability to do so

Motile: still able to move if necessary, to get some munchies if nothing else

Responsive to stimuli: well if the police busted in I'm sure your response to stimuli would have been proven

Consumption: I'm guessing here that your consumption increased 'smoke and a pancake' hob knob raids, snacks etc.

Growth: difficult to tell but I'd imagine you where exibiting signs of growth as usual particularly mentally

 

[Abaddon]

Well virus are pretty much the most basic thing that can replicate, and replicate with errors.... which is a good trigger for evo, but NOT creationism

 

[Abaddon]

-wow- a discussion thread which reached 1000 posts without getting locked for spamming/trolling/flaming etc.. Perf!