Are we made in God's image?

[Write4U]

Yes, filum are the thread-like anatomical structures of the living eukaryotic cells in your cited video, which never once shows solely chemical behavior independent of a living organism.

I think you need to think this through. Seems you are confusing the axopodia with filum.

Actinosphaerium nucleofilum Barrett, 1958

Actinosphaerium nucleofilum – a habitus; b nucleus – Ferry Siemensma, 1991

Diagnosis: with small and numerous nuclei, 4-8 µm in diameter, with peripherally located nucleolar substance, and with a cyst wall incorporating spherical siliceous elements.
Dimensions: My measurements 230-400 µm.
Ecology: Freshwater

Remarks. Barrett (1958) distinguished this species from A. eichhornii because in A. nucleofilum some axopodia terminate on the surface of nuclei, and the nuclei have the nucleolar material located peripherally. The diameter of the nuclei is very small. The cysts have spherical siliceous elements in the wall (Patterson and Thompson 1981).

Actinosphaerium nucleofilum – a specimen with strongly bend axopodia; b detail; c specimen with preyed rotifer; d A. eichhornii compared with e A. nucleofilum – drawing Ferry Siemensma, 1991

https://www.arcella.nl/actinosphaerium-nucleofilum/

 

[Write4U]

Are we now in the realm of god looks like microtubules?

I've really been trying to avoid using the term. But when we speak about purely chemical dynamical pseudo-living behaviors, it's unavoidable.

It's the curse of being absolutely fundamental to the homeostasis of living organisms.

 

[Michael 345]

I've really been trying to avoid using the term. But when we speak about purely chemical dynamical pseudo-living behaviors, it's unavoidable.

It's the curse of being absolutely fundamental to living organisms. A "common dynamic electro-chemical information processor". MTs can't help being part of (or causal to) abiogenesis.

But when we speak about purely chemical dynamical pseudo-living behaviors, it's unavoidable

BUT we are not posting about the above

OR

It's the curse of being absolutely fundamental to living organisms. A "common dynamic electro-chemical information processor". MTs can't help being part of (or causal to) abiogenesis

but more posting about

Are we made in God's image?

I admit I stray from the straight and narrow at times but not to the extent of (as this post of mine is) of charging the thread

While not keeping track my gut says I pull myself up (or James nudges ✓) and I toddle back to the thread subject

However since no answers have been forthcoming for a number of post I will suggest
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_&_Friends

as a god image who stays on track

 

[Write4U]

But when we speak about purely chemical dynamical pseudo-living behaviors, it's unavoidable

BUT we are not posting about the above

Define what's in god's image....

 

[Michael 345]

Define what's in god's image....

Are we made - in god's image

:

 

[Write4U]

Are we made - in god's image

:

I have no clue, never met the guy, and I say guy, because no woman would ever screw things up the way this guy has (stolen from the philosopher George Carlin).

On second thought, if God created man in his image, then when the question is posed if we are made in god's image by god, it would be appropriate to discuss what we are made of and how we got here, starting from a dynamic reciprocal chemical reaction which produced the first instance of motility and potential for life, to a single celled pseudo-living organism able to move and capture prey by chemical signals, to modern day near infinite variety of evolutionary biological expressions just in the past 4 b years on Earth alone, not counting the untold species thriving on other Cinderella planets in far flung regions of the universe, before we could begin to image God in relation to the human species.

God has many images and Death is one of them. Do humans resemble that image? You bet we do.

Darwin demonstrated the evolution of man and in doing so, painted God's image in the process....

What part of this evolutionary chronology shaped our image and how would that equate to god's image?
Is God is an evolved abstract being, or a mathematically evolving atomic pattern occupying some dynamic local spacetime coordinate pattern?
Are humans?

 

[Michael 345]

God created man in his image, then when the question is posted if we are made in god's image, by god, it would be appropriate to discuss what we are made of and how we got here,

Don't think so

Question ask about IMAGE, not ingredients or assembly, IMAGE

So first we need to find a accurate image of god for comparison. That should be easy

As for the US we would have a few billion to choose from

Most of the depictions (images) I have seen fit into 4 groups

• baby
• young man
• dead elderly man
• old man

There are other depictions but 4 good enough for me

I contend the 4 groups can be cut down to 1 (young man) based on depictions of Adam

Google Biblical Adam first man
you get Adam Mk 001

Good enough for me

Apparently the above was made from

Google Mud images

you get this

Don't think this is Adam Mk 002 since us puny Minions make our offspring far easier, and have not got abiogenesis up and running - YET

So far have covered

• image and
• composition (not a Microtubule in sight)

All needed now is to average out the few billion, currently alive males, and hope any image obtained matches up to the depiction posted here

Any volunteers?

 

[Michael 345]

Is it me or does Adam 001 depiction look a little 'off'?

 

[Tiassa]

Is God is an evolved abstract being, or a mathematically evolving atomic pattern occupying some dynamic local spacetime coordinate pattern?

A fine question, to be certain, but off-topic↗. This thread was actually created specifically to get away those considerations:

I have noticed that some of the definitions that theists have given have essentially defined God as "whatever it was that caused the universe to begin". While it is debatable as to whether the universe needs a cause in the first place - something I don't want to discuss in the current thread - this raises a separate question for me.

I have noticed that some of the definitions that theists have given have essentially defined God as "whatever it was that caused the universe to begin". While it is debatable as to whether the universe needs a cause in the first place - something I don't want to discuss in the current thread - this raises a separate question for me.

This version of God, as defined, doesn't appear to describe the God of the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) very well at all. It is a sort of abstract god, a god removed from human concerns. This god, as defined, doesn't have any obvious human-like attributes. It could be just about anything - an abstract force or even a tinkering alien computer programmer creating a virtual world on a whim.

If we read the bible, say, then we are told that God created human beings in his own image. But that doesn't sound much like this abstract whatever-it-may-be that is needed to start the universe going.

 

[Yazata]

In another thread, I have been collecting definitions of God from both theists and atheists.

I have noticed that some of the definitions that theists have given have essentially defined God as "whatever it was that caused the universe to begin".

Yes. It isn't just the theists, that's one of the ways I might define it as well.

While it is debatable as to whether the universe needs a cause in the first place - something I don't want to discuss in the current thread - this raises a separate question for me.

This version of God, as defined, doesn't appear to describe the God of the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) very well at all.

It isn't necessary to conceive of God in an 'Abrahamic' manner, derived from ancient Hebrew mythology. It isn't necessary to base everything on the Bible. Atheists certainly shouldn't always behave as if they are crypto-Christians.

It is a sort of abstract god, a god removed from human concerns. This god, as defined, doesn't have any obvious human-like attributes.

Yes, very true. The God of natural theology is basically whatever it is that performs certain metaphysical functions. Many people probably find that kind of God too intellectualized and difficult to relate to emotionally. It isn't clear why one would Worship it, for example. It isn't clear why we should consider it Holy or associate it with Good.

So there's part of the answer to your question right there. People will tend to bestow their concept of the divine with qualities that they find emotionally resonant. And that might be a big part of the motivation for imagining God as a person. People are instinctively primed by their evolutionary history to be able to relate emotionally to other people. We are, by our nature, social animals.

If we read the bible, say, then we are told that God created human beings in his own image. But that doesn't sound much like this abstract whatever-it-may-be that is needed to start the universe going.

Maybe. The philosophical theologians would probably point to the fact that whatever the reason is for the universe being orderly and rational (something that physics just assumes as a-priori) must itself be at least equally rational. If the universe seems to behave in accordance with logic, then whatever the Source of the universe is must be the origin of logic as well.

Human beings are able to use language, able to reason in abstractions, able to comprehend mathematics. So in that sense we seem to have something in common not only with the universe, but (arguably) with whatever the universe's Source is. These ideas were very big in the Platonic tradition that gave rise to so much Christian and Islamic philosophical theology. It's a big part of what motivated the idea of man as the uniquely rational animal and why the philosophical theologians thought that reason was a feeble and easily corrupted image of divinity in man.

Another big part of it is the idea that human beings have some sense of right and wrong. Our sense of right and wrong is imperfect certainly, and easily defeated. But if we really want to think of God as the Good, as many of the Christian and Islamic Neoplatonists did, and if humans really do have some intuitive appreciation for good, then that's arguably another image.

 

[Write4U]

Question ask about IMAGE, not ingredients or assembly, IMAGE

Yep, here we run into selection of interpretation. Which definition to use with a certain term;
image, noun

1)

a physical likeness or representation of a person, animal, or thing, photographed, painted, sculptured, or otherwise made visible.
2) an optical counterpart or appearance of an object, as is produced by reflection from a mirror, refraction by a lens, or the passage of luminous rays through a small aperture and their reception on a surface.
3) a mental representation; idea; conception.

Psychology.

a mental representation of something previously perceived, in the absence of the original stimulus.
verb (used with object), im·aged, im·ag·ing.
1) to picture or represent in the mind; imagine; conceive.
2) to make an image of; portray in sculpture, painting, etc.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/image

 

[Write4U]

Is it me or does Adam 001 depiction look a little 'off'?

I like his shaved legs, and that well turned ankle, and that demure countenance,
very elegant....

 

[Write4U]

When I think of an image which symbolizes creation, I see this:


https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csxlmm

Tiny little gods, containing all the information of what our image will be 9 months from now. We are made in the image of a sperm........

 

[river]

Are we made - in god's image

:

Mentally and/or Physically ?

 

[Vociferous]

And which eukaryotic cell is that? E nucleofilum is not an organisms but a microtubule?
The behavior of the pseudopodia are purely electrochemical responses to external conditions.

Wow, talk about an exemplar of Dunning-Kruger. Apparently you can't even manage to listen to what the video you cited says.
From your video:

01:13 The protozoan, Echinospherum nucleofilum is a model system for the investigation of microtubules.
01:21 This is a multinucleate organism, measuring about a hundred microns in diameter.
02:02 The Echinospherum feeds on other protozoa or on rotifers.​

Echinospherum is a protozoa and a multinucleated organism. Note: the Echinospherum feeds, not its filum, which are essentially just the arms of the living organism Echinospherum.

Protozoa (also protozoan, plural protozoans) is an informal term for single-celled eukaryotes, either free-living or parasitic, which feed on organic matter such as other microorganisms or organic tissues and debris.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protozoa​

So yes, Echinospherum are eukaryotes.

Since a filum is a "threadlike anatomical structure", it should be obvious to any intelligent person that Echinospherum nucleofilum are the threadlike anatomical structures of Echinospherum. The multinucleated eukaryote certainly isn't a "threadlike anatomical structure". All of the protrusions from the eukaryote are axopodia.
Again, as per your own video:

01:34 A large number of slender, rigid but elastic structures called axopodia project from the spherical body.​

The axopodia are the filum, which contain microtubules enveloped in cytoplasm.

Chaos carolinense, an amoeboid having lobopodia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_(genus)

Chaos is a genus of amoebae, in the family Amoebidae. The largest and best-known species, the so-called "giant amoeba" (Chaos carolinense), can reach lengths of 5 mm, although most specimens fall between 1 and 3 mm.​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba

An amoeba or ameba (/əˈmiːbə/; rarely spelt amœba; plural am(o)ebas or am(o)ebae /əˈmiːbi/),[1] often called an amoeboid, is a type of cell or unicellular organism which has the ability to alter its shape, primarily by extending and retracting pseudopods.​

So everything you've offered, so far, are already living organisms.

Via extracellular cue,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudopodia

p.s. bacteria actually communicate via a chemical language, as do non-living viruses.
This mode of chemical communication is called "quorum sensing" and you do not have to be alive to react to chemical "messages".

Completely non sequitur to your ignorant claim that Echinospherum are neither eukaryotes nor alive.

OK, Eukaryotic cells are 'barely" alive, they evolved from the Prokaryotic cells that came before and are even closer
to non-living purely dynamic chemical patterns.

Anything more primitive than that gets into the bacteria and viruses and viruses are not considered alive . There is you missing link!!

Oh, now you admit that eukaryotes are alive, huh?

Yet no one has created a eukaryote. Hence your claims are ignorant bs. Trying to hedge your bets, with unscientific crap like "barely alive" and trying to conflate living bacteria with non-living viruses, is just demonstrating your intellectual dishonesty or ignorance.

IMO

You've proven your opinion to be woefully uneducated.

You see the little portrusions at the surface? In the E nucleofilum, these little chemical patterns are replaced by the pseodopodia. Alive or notalive, that is the question. And if we need to ask that it is evidence that we are observing an intermediate stage of abiogenesis, the emergence of life from non-living chemical patterns...

We don't need to ask because, as shown, your ignorance is the only reason you ask.

OK, your turn.
Is this chemical pattern of the E nucleofilum, which is a deadly invader of living organisms, alive or not alive?

If it is not alive but exhibits some characteristics of living oeganisms, then it MUST be the intermediate state from a purely non-living bio-chemical pattern into a living biological biome.

Again, you're just ignorant of the science you try to tout. Echinospherum is a multinucleated eukaryote (living organism) that has axopodia (filum) composed of microtubules.

I think you need to think this through. Seems you are confusing the axopodia with filum.

Actinosphaerium nucleofilum Barrett, 1958

Actinosphaerium nucleofilum – a habitus; b nucleus – Ferry Siemensma, 1991

Actinosphaerium nucleofilum – a specimen with strongly bend axopodia; b detail; c specimen with preyed rotifer; d A. eichhornii compared with e A. nucleofilum – drawing Ferry Siemensma, 1991

https://www.arcella.nl/actinosphaerium-nucleofilum/

Sure, I'll try to explain it to you again, using another species as example.

Axopodia are filum. Go take an actual class on the subject.
Actinosphaerium nucleofilum is a living species of actinophryids.

The actinophryids are an order of heliozoa. They are the most common heliozoa in fresh water and can also be found in marine and soil habitats. Actinophryids are unicellular and roughly spherical in shape, with many axopodia that radiate outward from the cell body. Axopodia are a type of pseudopodia that are supported by hundreds of microtubules arranged in a needle-like internal structure. These axopods adhere to passing prey and assist with cell movement, as well as playing a part in cell division and cell fusion.
...
This behavior has been documented in many species, including Actinosphaerium nucleofilum, Actinophrys sol, and Raphidiophrys contractilis.
...
There are several genera included within this classification. Actinophrys are smaller and have a single, central nucleus.[9] Most have a cell body 40-50 micrometer in diameter with axopods around 100 μm in length, though this varies significantly. Actinosphaerium are several times larger, from 200-1000 μm in diameter, with many nuclei[9] and are found exclusively in fresh water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actinophryid​

I'll repeat that bit for your benefit:

Actinophryids are unicellular and roughly spherical in shape, with many axopodia that radiate outward from the cell body. Axopodia are a type of pseudopodia that are supported by hundreds of microtubules arranged in a needle-like internal structure.​

Sinking in yet? Actinophryids are unicellular, spherical organisms. They have many axopodia. And those axopodia are supported by microtubules.
Actinophryids nor Echinospherum are microtubules nor only filum. They are living organisms that you are stupidly trying to claim as evidence of life from the inanimate.

Try to actually learn something about the science you parrot without comprehension.

 

[Vociferous]

Bumped for Write4U's benefit. Since he indicated missing the above >here.

 

[paddoboy]

Wow, talk about an exemplar of Dunning-Kruger.
Try to actually learn something about the science you parrot without comprehension.

 

[Write4U]

Bumped for

Write4U's benefit. Since he indicated missing the above >here.

While you are bumping my posts, why don't you answer the question posed in the OP title. You claim to have the answer, so enlighten me instead of trying to discredit me.

The blurry line between life, nonlife.

Iron oxide, which gives the water and rocks its red hues, may be more than a mere mineral, according to geobiologists. (NASA) By Colin Nickerson
Globe Correspondent / January 12, 2009

Geobiology

CAMBRIDGE - It's new science - so new that its name has barely taken hold - and it's brimming with notions that only a few years back would have been laughed off as lurid science fiction.
Geobiology, it's mostly called, although some of its leading lights stick to their old professional dogtags, such as biologist, geologist, hydrologist, biochemist. Others prefer more cosmic nomenclature: Astrobiology.
Geobiology is, in part, about looking for life or life's graffito - and finding it - in unusual places: deep in ancient rock, in super-heated waters of undersea volcanic vents, and beneath the ice of Greenland.

But geobiology can also be about fashioning crude "proto-cells" from chemical goop resembling primeval ooze, work done recently in the Harvard/Massachusetts General Hospital laboratory of geneticist Jack W. Szostak to study how lifelike entities might have arisen in the extreme environment 3.5 billion years ago. The emergent field rests on the idea that the dividing line between life and nonlife is blurrier than science has long believed. And that the minerals and chemicals of the earth are constantly interacting with living things in unexpected ways.

That means the origins of life can only be understood as shaped by the larger environment, and - by the same token - the nonliving environment can be understood only in the context of the fast-multiplying organisms that shaped it right back.

"Evolution is not something that happened solely to organisms," said Robert Hazen, a research scientist with Washington's Carnegie Institution. "There has been co-evolution of the geosphere and the biosphere."

Said geobiologist Lisa M. Pratt of Indiana University: "Turns out, establishing where geochemistry ends and life begins isn't always so easy. We know surprisingly little about the origin, evolution, and limits for life on earth. But we're on the cusp of dramatic new understandings."

Twitches of life are showing up where life shouldn't exist. In southern Africa, for example, scientists burrowed 2 miles beneath the earth's surface, discovering bacteria that feed on radioactive rocks.
"That's crazier than any science fiction," said Pratt, part of the team that made the 2006 discovery. "This is life that shouldn't be there. Except it is."

In the minds of some geobiologists, including Pratt, the existence of these "extremophile" microbes hints that life is such sturdy stuff that it might seed itself on any planet possessing a bit of water.
"Stardust contains all the [chemical] building blocks of life," she said, referring to primal matter forged by the Big Bang. "And it rains down on all planets. Life may be commonplace [on other planets], not some rare event. Earth may be singular only in that life has proved highly durable, hanging on through various cataclysms to evolve into sophisticated forms."Continued...

http://archive.boston.com/news/science/articles/2009/01/12/the_blurry_line_between_life_nonlife/

So where in this Geobiology does the image of God appear?

 

[Xelasnave.1947]

The blurry line between life, nonlife

As we have not created life in the lab it seems so the accumulated science means nothing however we can outline the two beliefs as to how life started...on the one hand via chemistry which has already has shown compelling reasons to think abiogenesis is most certain or on the other we can take it from a book written by folk who did not know where the Sun went at night that their invented but unevidenced God somehow created life in some non specific magical way..although we do have more detail for the creation of a human, that being that this unevidenced god modelled that human out of clay and "breathed" life into it...two ideas, two approaches...if I had to bet my house on which is the most likely I don't think I would be listening to the guys who did not know where the Sun went at night.
You won't get a definition of God presumably because old laughing gorilla does not wish to talk about himself.
Alex

 

[Write4U]

Would we even know when something biochemical becomes a living thing? Pure biochemistry can certainly be dynamic. We "know" there is a transition from pure chemistry to bio-chemistry and from there biology and we know the mechanism how this happens. We just don't know for sure when a dynamical biochemical pattern becomes a biological lifeform or what are the absolute minimum functional requirements to be "fully" alive.

Is a virus alive? Technically it is not a living organism.
Are viruses dead or alive?

Let’s compare viruses to the 7 criteria researchers have set to determine if something is alive.

Viruses are not made out of cells, they can't keep themselves in a stable state, they don't grow, and they can't make their own energy. Even though they definitely replicate and adapt to their environment, viruses are more like androids than real living organisms.

Clearly, viruses are an intermediate biological pattern, not really alive but exhibiting some same behaviors as living organisms.

Can there be more convincing evolutionary evidence for abiogenesis than a virus? A virus is not alive, it is a quasi-living pattern.
Life: Quasi-Life

All forms of life are based on Ribonucleic acid (RNA), the extraordinary molecule that can both replicate genetic material and act as a catalyst (ribozyme) for many chemical processes in the cell. However, there are structures that contain RNA (or DNA) that are life-like in some important respects but are not quite life. The RNA molecule can shed fragments of itself, and these incomplete bits can approximate some kinds of life functions. But crucially, quasi-life forms are able to replicate themselves by pirating the machinery of living cells. Since they cannot survive independently, they are technically non-life structures.

Virus. The most familiar quasi-life form is the RNA fragment called a virus. This is a portion of genetic material from either RNA or DNA (but not both) with a minimal protein coat. The virus replicates itself by invading taking over the translation mechanism in living cells.

Although they appropriate the machinery of living cells, not all viruses are dangerous. Some forms attack only bacteria, others select only plants, and others attack animals. Each virus selects one or more species, but never all.

Flu epidemics and diseases such as AIDS have demonstrated that some viruses are able to jump from one species to another: from fowl or monkeys, for example, to humans. Because they are genetically minimal, viruses can mutate rapidly and resist destruction.

How and when viruses evolved is unknown, but since RNA does shed fragments of itself it is reasonable to assume that viruses developed in tandem with living cells. Viruses are found in the genomes of all creatures and also in fossils...more .

http://www.scienceforthepublic.org/things-to-know/life/life-quasi-life

As Hazen posits, there may be several different paths how the transition from purely non-living chemical to living bio-chemical patterns happens, but from the available data, they should all follow a common evolutionary process", from quasi-living micro patterns to complex living macro patterns.

Remember, the more you observe the organism, the more sure you can be. Many living things have stages that make them resemble members of another kingdom.

https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bioslabs/studies/invertebrates/kingdoms.html