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And who said anything about caring how biology studies life?

Again, if you're going to discuss life, it behooves you to understand the framework in which it's studied; the framework developed by people who dedicate their careers to studying it. Anything less is ignorant jabbering at the level biology was hundreds of years ago when the discipline knew as much about life as the non-biologist knows today.

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alright I can understand most of your arguments in this thread, but this paragraph really pissed me off man. LIFE is not science's realm. Science may study it, and think they understand it make up names and words for different parts of things in nature, but LIFE is beyond the grasp of any scientist. LIFE is unexplainable, and as such it lies in the realms of God. When a sciencetist acts like it better understands LIFE than a normal person they are saying they better know GOD. Do you see MYSTICS running around telling physicists(a PRACTICAL science) how to make nuclear reactors, or what to call a nuclear reaction? No because for the average believer physics is out of their realm.

Science cannot and will not ever be able to answer everything. Do not fool youself.

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Saying that a rock is alive is what people said in the middle ages. Today we know better. Why not start the discussion at the state of the art instead of where we were a thousand years ago?

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Starting at teh state of the art is what most mystics do that really pisses you guys off for one thing, and there is no garuntee "the state of the art" is going to be "true" only a few years from now. You science folk have a bad habit of always being sure, and immediate amnesia of any of your past. These two do not go together well. I have never said a rock is alive only that it can be affected by and is connected to the life which lives on it.

I read science news every single day, they are very interesting here is one of my fav sites www.livescience.com the articles are well written. Because one uses and understands sciences practicality does not contradict one believing in the unprovable.

here is a good Einstien quote

"Religion without science is blind, but science without religion is lame."

Einstien believed in God, it was this belief that was the driving force behind his greatest SCIENTIFIC achievments. He aspired to create a theory of everything because he felt it would put humans closer to God. something to think about man. peace

blaze2

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Although there is no universal agreement on the definition of life, the generally accepted biological manifestations are that life exhibits the following phenomena:

Organization - Living things are comprised of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.

Metabolism - Metabolism produces energy by converting nonliving material into cellular components (synthesis) and decomposing organic matter (catalysis). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.

Growth - Growth results from a higher rate of synthesis than catalysis. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.

Adaptation - Adaption is the accommodation of a living organism to its environment. It is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the individual's heredity.

Response to stimuli - A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism when touched to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. Plants also respond to stimuli, but usually in ways very different from animals. A response is often expressed by motion: the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun or an animal chasing its prey.

Reproduction - The division of one cell to form two new cells is reproduction. Usually the term is applied to the production of a new individual (either asexually, from a single parent organism, or sexually, from two differing parent organisms), although strictly speaking it also describes the production of new cells in the process of growth.

All life on Earth is based on the chemistry of carbon compounds. Some assert that this must be the case for all possible forms of life throughout the universe; others describe this position as 'carbon chauvinism'.


Exceptions to the conventional definition

It is important to note that life is a definition that applies at the level of species, so even though many individuals of any given species do not reproduce, possibly because they belong to specialised sterile castes (such as ant workers), these are still considered forms of life. One could say that the property of life is inherited; hence, sterile hybrid species such as the mule are considered life although not themselves capable of reproduction. It is also worth noting that non-reproducing individuals may still help the spread of their genes through such mechanisms as kin selection.

For similar reasons, viruses and aberrant prion proteins are often considered replicators rather than forms of life: they cannot reproduce without very specialised substrates such as host cells or proteins, respectively. However, most forms of life rely on foods produced by other species, or at least the specific chemistry of the Earth.

Viruses reproduce, flames grow, some software programs mutate and evolve, future software programs will probably evince (even high-order) behavior, machines move, and some form of proto-life consisting of metabolizing cells without the ability to reproduce presumably existed. Still, some would not call these entities alive. Generally, all six characteristics are required for a population to be considered a lifeform.

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