Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
It's worse than that. People who say that are trying to convince us that death is inevitable and so we should just give up all attempts to stave it off. As I pointed out in the other thread, every death has a cause, and we have made impressive strides in conquering many of these causes. We're working from birth forward, since from a project manager's perspective it's more effective to tackle the things that cause early death first, like the diseases of childhood and the violence of adolescence and early adulthood. Many people now feel that it's time to give up, since they cannot imagine us finding a way to prevent, delay, reverse or cure the brain cell degeneration that kills people when they reach the alleged "brick wall" around age 120. To which I say balderdash. Deport the Religious Redneck Retards back to Crawford and let us get on with our stem cell research, and we may well find a way to regenerate brain cells. Memory and consciousness are to a large extent holographic so replacing the cells one at a time may not result in turning you into "a different person."
Good for you. Death is nothing more or less than irreversible degradation of the synapses so they can no longer perform even rudimentary cognitive functions. This normally occurs after no more than five minutes without an oxygen supply. If we can keep blood flowing to the brain, the rest of the body is just an appurtenance.
We've had to update our definitions of a lot of concepts as science marches on. Why should "life" be any different?
Sure, but what do we do then when we encounter a thing that has some of those properties but not all of them? Could it be that "life" is *gasp* not an either-or quality, but a spectrum like so many qualities turn out to be when we leave the classroom and try to apply what we've learned there to the external universe?
An important way to examine a definition is by the contrapositive. Suppose you define "non-living" as the absence of all those properties. What are you going to say about a thing that has some of them? "Well it doesn't completely fulfill this definition so it must not be non-living." Absolutes work in mathematics, but not so well in nature.
Yes we've all seen this definition but that doesn't mean we accept it. We're not talking about some arcane scientific concept here where we should simply "shut up and leave it to the professionals." The definition of life is fundamental to our philosophy and our civilization, and non-scientists get to participate in the debate.
Duh? What are you, a Zen acolyte, insisting that the universe is nothing but a giant collection of sophomoric riddles? SciForums is a place of science. If you want to talk about philosophy, especially if you want to talk about it in oppostion to science, please take it to the Philosophy board. The Biology board is for people who practice the scientific method, not for skeptics who challenge everyone's assertions by reflex.
It is admittedly not possible to define the "moment of death" since we disagree on just how rudimentary the surviving brain processes can be and still call someone like Terry Schiavo "alive." But we can say unequivocally that someone whose brain has been deprived of oxygen for ten minutes is dead. And we can establish a perfectly good chain of cause-and-effect, working backward from the cessation of blood flow to the brain and tracing it to the bullet entering the heart, the poison entering the lungs, or the head smashing into the concrete at the foot of the stairs.
Same comment applies to you. Take that drenn to the Philosophy board where you can sit around examining your navels and accomplishing nothing but feeling really fulfilled about it. This is a gathering place for scientists, future scientists and people who want to discuss and learn science. From our perspective, it is spirituality that is still in "kindergarten" because it is a relic of the Stone Age. Please take your spirituality to the sandbox of Philosophy and leave the adults alone with our civilization, the result of a ten or twelve thousand year struggle to outgrow the philosophy of the Stone Age.
Unfortunately the Evolution Denialists have hijacked the ID movement. The essence of ID does not deny evolution, but merely abiogenesis. The leaders of most major religions have long ago made peace with the process of evolution. They simply ask how the first organic tissue appeared, from which all life evolved exactly as we say it did. Abiogenesis has not been "proven true beyond a reasonable doubt," to use layman's language, because there are still some major gaps in the theory, so it cannot in good faith be integrated into the scientific canon the way evolution can be.
The theory that the first life was created by a supernatural being is unscientific because it does not conform to the scientific method, but it is not antiscientific because it does not contradict the scientific canon without providing extraordinary substantiation. If and when abiogenesis is duplicated in a laboratory, at that point ID will become antiscientific. For now we have good cause so separate the anti-abiogenesis faction from the crackpot creationist movement and treat them with respect even if they're not scientists. Not everyone is after all.
