Ya know what..that makes sense...you technically..i'd say bravo arty

If you don't mind IAMS..can you show me?? thanks

I'd like to understand that better too IAMS

I would be happy to BM. Are you ready to take the necessary steps?

Like I replied in an earlier post:



But if you're ready to take the steps, I outlined them in a reply to Con:



If you honestly take the steps, you will see.

This is something that seems transparently obvious to me... become part of something greater than yourself if you want part of yourself to go on

If you want to see the rings of Saturn you do have to take specifics steps but the rings exist and are there to be seen



fullywired

Your point being?

The obvious one



fullywired

I brought up the theory (terraforming) that it may be possible to transform a lifeless planet into one that could support any and all forms of life, but unfortunately my post was completely looked over by everyone.

The Earth is a source of nourishment and a habitat for the life upon it, but I cannot in all honesty agree that it is alive in the biological sense of the word.

For there to balance in nature there must be that which consumes and that which is consumed. But, there are elements that are consumed by all lifeforms which are not necessary for survival and are therefore rejected as waste. A crude example would be, if the whole of Earth were life sustaining, then one could eat handfuls of dirt and still survive. It's quite apparent that that is not the case.

The Earth itself is not in the strictest sense alive.

It is, however, teaming with life. And that's good enough for me.

I thought you where going to present proof LOL but ok i'll take the steps..as long as I dont have to pick up a bible..yea go for it ....

"go for it"? I don't do anything. You have to honestly take the steps.

Ah Geri, you are such a nuts and bolts kinda gal! I can envison you tying your shoes ready to do some walking. I do like that about you.

You know, I think what IamsSon is refering to, is something you already do, but in a different sort of way. Girly, you have your own drummer, and that's ok.

LOL i'll try anything once


Ok im having a brain fart but what are the steps IAMS?? seriously I am kinna stumped on this....so don't laugh LOL

have i missed something? are you from essex?

idont think that theearth is alive but there is
lifeon earth

It's OK, BM. MissMels is right though, I think you already KNOW God's real, you followed different steps though. But I don't want you to think I don't want to answer you, so here you go:

First, you (this is the universal "you") have to acknowledge that your willful decisions to disobey have separated you from God, then you need to understand that this separation, if left unrepaired will lead to eternal death, then you have to accept that you can't do anything to repair this separation, then you have to accept that God took care of the repair and left it for you to accept it as a gift, and THEN you have to accept the gift. These are not steps you can successfully fake, because the only ones who are truly aware of whether you followed them are you and God.

AH! But it's a rock that has life on it breathing & breeding.

yes you have missed something....the little part under my name that states exactly where I am from..and its nowhere near essex..looks as though you had a brain fart yourself lol

Brain fart........I LOVE IT !!!!!!!! ROFL !!

I absolutely agree with you...

For those who think this planet isn't alive:
The Earth belches, spews, electrifies, roars, rends, sears, quivers and quakes. It causes upheaval and destruction... It births, it kills and it consumes. It blows and sucks. It weeps. What about these traits aren't animate?

Geological forces do not a living entity make.

All of the things you described are the result of plate tectonics, cyclic variations in the Earth's spin, extreme climactic changes, and a myriad of other natural occurrences. These forces act upon the Earth causing the dramatic changes you listed, and are not the result of the planet scratching an itch, as it were.

Also, your use of the word 'inanimate' is misleading. While it's true that the earth moves, so too does a car, but a car is not considered a living thing (emotional ties to one's auto not withstanding).

Consider this; If the Earth is alive then everything must be alive, and if everything is alive then it follows that there is no such thing as death.

IMNSHO, this way of thinking makes anything with the true spark of life meaningless.

I've always wondered, what if chaotic viruses were created by the Earth in order to control life on itself. Now that would be a good reason to stop global warming

this is one of those woman things, secret code for something, im gonna have to read the bible to figure this one out

I didn't use the word "inanimate"....



<vBg> Well, you're talking with someone who doesn't believe in "death" as in dead = ceasing to exist. Life is all about cycles...and death is part of it.

The Moody Blues sing it best: From The Threshold of a Dream: in part --

Remember then, that summer birds with wings of fire flaying
Came to witness springs new hope, born of leaves decaying.

The planet recycles - new life comes from death...



...and I believe the opposite. Many fear death and see it as an absolute end. It's not, imo. Just another chapter in the book of life cycles.

When a you don’t water a plant what happens? It dies. The same with grass flowers. There is no way that life can come from something that is dead. When the life span of a tree or something else dies it goes back in to the earth & is reborn.

Sorry, my mistake.

Even so, I still stick by my car analogy.



And those are the key words - New Life. Not re-animated or reborn life, but new life feeding and nourishing itself off the dead.



My point is that to all life there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. This may be a bit morbid, but take for example the mouse and snake mentioned earlier in the thread. Are you saying that after it's been consumed the mouse still lives on within the snake?

I get what you're saying...but, don't let forensics hear that life can't come from something dead. Dead bodies are a haven for hosting insect larvae. : )

Yesterday, on the National Geographic channel (iirc), there was a program on microbes, millions, if not billions, of years old, that were found in pockets of water within ice, which came from deep within the ice core. The ice was melted, the microbes released and put into a bath of nutrients... those microbes reanimated. Long before our time were they trapped in ice - now, today, they live in a lab somewhere. Fascinating stuff. So, while the life form may be "new" to us...it's ancient by our time standard.
Many life forms can lie dormant for years before becoming reanimated again...



Geez -- that would be a form of hell, wouldn't it? : ) No, I'm not saying the mouse would live on in the snake. However, when the snake relieves itself of the mouse - those droppings will feed and nourish something into life... So, in essence, the mouse does go on, just in a different form. Reconstituted, if you will...

Fascinating indeed. I've read about that before and I find it amazing how some forms of life can endure for so long. Unfortunately, being frozen for millennia wouldn't be the type of immortality I'd find very pleasant.



While this is true, the point of discussion was new life from death. That's still interesting info BTW.



Would you agree, however, that the mouse is dead? All that went into making that critter eat, breath, reproduce, etc., are no longer contained in that neat little rodent package.

If I were to gather all of the raw elements and compounds that a make up a mouse's body and put them in a flask I still wouldn't have a mouse. That material would have to be organized at the molecular level by a complex genetic code and would also require the "spark of life" (whatever that may be) to be considered alive.

IMHO the raw elements are a part of life, but not life itself.

It was actually on the Discovery channel. "Miracle Planet" was the title of the show. It repeated last night.



Then we're back to the mouse and snake...



Yes, the mouse, in the form we recognize it, is dead.



The parts in the flask are unrecognizable as a mouse...agreed.
That said -- if a cell fell from my body and a geneticist took that cell he could actually clone me. From a single cell. The geneticist is the "spark of life" that cell would require to be recognized as a human again.
The cell is a tiny part of the sum total... by losing a cell I don't lose myself. My cell can become me, although that cell is not recognized as me. (edited to add bolded word)

I think the difference being that the geneticist is not the spark of life, because as you've stated he is taking a single cell. The cell is already alive as a result of whatever ingredients, process, mechanisms took place to form the life that the cell was retrieved.

Even if we go down farther to actual stem cells we are still dealing with life already formed.

Lotta great posts in this thread!!!

After reading i have a question though. If the Earth is a living organism then we should be able to compare it to other lifeforms in order to figure a minimal designation of what a lifeform is.

One thing that sticks out is the quantity of non-living matter on and of Earth. If we compare to anyother lifeforms say Humans, we'll notice that Humans have almost no nonliving matter as part of our physiology. The Earth consists of non-living matter as its physiology, with life strewn through it.

I can't think of any lifeform that has non-living matter as its physiology

That, and what Siara said earlier (that the Earth can be seen as behaving similarly to a single organism, but can be broken down in to smaller independent components) are two of the main reasons why it is not considered to be an organism.

I think a problem in understanding is that some people seem to believe that life is a "spark", a sort of fundamental property that organisms have and other thing's don't; that it means to have a soul. In reality, "life" is just a word that we stick on any naturally occuring system that displays certain characteristics (growth, reproduction, metabolism etc. etc.)

I agree that there is no actually spark, recognizable lifeforms are nothing more then chains and clumps and getherings of other living things whose environment stipulates the manner in which they congregate......the manner and degree that they congregate stipulates what they form as a result of their collaboration.....not under "direction", but "luck".

QUOTE
My point is that to all life there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. This may be a bit morbid, but take for example the mouse and snake mentioned earlier in the thread. Are you saying that after it's been consumed the mouse still lives on within the snake?

the snake after( I am paraphrasing using my own words here) digesting the mouse would leave behind which it can't use for nutrients then bacteria would further decompose the remains extracting whatever nutrients are there and returning them to the earth......there is no beginnings and middles and ends it only appears that way ( as a way to catagorize and define the material..... there is never waste either there is use for all things , there is an innate symbiosis that exists amongst all of life.... that mouse feeds the snake that whole circle of life analogy...... it is interesting to me that so few have basic understanding of the process of life and its not a dig or personal against anyone its the lack in the whole system (education that is) also, all things are integral and viable to the whole.. this is about 4th grade science..

The radical notion that Earth itself is a living organism can easily be dispelled.

I don't know how many times I can restate this...

Replication- The Earth cannot replicate. Saying the moon is some sort of offspring of the Earth due to the collision from Mars is not different from saying that an arm that was chopped off a human being is it's offspring. Its utter nonsense.
DNA- Life needs to have something that can store the code for making life. We know this to be DNA in all forms of current known life. The earth doesn't have anyway to do this, DNA or some other means.
Metabolism- The earth doesn't have any biochemical metabolic or catabolic pathway.
Stimulus- The Earth cannot respond in any sort of way to an external stimulus that arouses the 5 senses of life.

Anything that doesn't display these criteria in addition to a few others are not living. Its that simple.

That being stated, there are different forms of the Gaia hypothesis, and it is very important to state, which one you are 'believing' in. The one I discredited above, is of course, the most radical and nonsensical one.

I may be wrong, it's been a while and I didn't check before posting, but aren't hair and finger/toe nails made up of non-living matter?

They are structural proteins.

.....Son its made of keratin its organic....

How can you be so positive the Earth cannot replicate? Just because we haven't seen it? That's not proof. Seriously, going beyond the tongue-in-cheek portion of this thread, what proof do you have, other than we have not witnessed yet, that the Earth does not replicate?

Its obvious that it doesn't replicate.

1. It cannot produce gametes, which is a characteristic of sexual reproduction.
2. It doesn't have any sort of apparatus for a asexual reproduction to take place. It doesn't produce spores. It doesn't bud. It doesn't undergo binary fission. etc.

Lastly, it doesn't even have genetic information. That is evidence enough. Something can't replicate without genetic information. There is no need for reproduction if there is no genetic information.

Its that simple.

Yes, that is simple. If the Earth is alive, then it doesn't replicate in the way the living organisms which live on the Earth do.

It can't replicate, which is one sign indicating that it is not alive.

I am sitting here telling you that it can't, stating the biological principles of reproduction and replication. Any other biologist or scientist can tell you this. Explain to me, a hypothesis in which the Earth can replicate and I'll tell you if it is possible or not.

And I am stating, that I agree with you. The Earth, if it is a living entity, does not appear to replicate in any of the ways in which living organisms ON Earth do, or at least it has not done so to date. That IS all we KNOW, right?

I am not trying to argue against the mechanics of an ecosystem. Life forms consuming other life forms in order to survive is a part of life.

What I find absurd is the notion that after a life form has been consumed is that it is still in a sense considered alive; that it somehow passes it's life onto the organism that ate it. It does not pass on it's life. What does happen is that it's nutritional compounds are utilized by other life forms in order to sustain their own existence. But for all practical purposes the thing is DEAD.

Also, the phrase "spark of life" was a poor choice of words on my part. What I was trying to get at is that even if science could synthesize all of the raw material in the flask into an exact replica of the mouse, it still wouldn't be alive. This is similar to the ridiculous notion in sci fi movies where clones reach full maturity in a matter of days and still retain all of the memories from the DNA donor.

All of this was my unnecessarily roundabout way of trying to show that the Earth is not alive in any biological sense of the word. It is a habitat that is supportive of life, but other than the creatures that scurry along it's surface, it is but a great stone in space. And remember the old chestnut "You can't squeeze blood out of a stone."

I agree. Except I said: The geneticist is the "spark of life" that cell would require to be recognized as a human again. The cell isn't recognized as human...that's in the geneticists hands.

Well, what if there are lifeforms that we don't, and can't, recognize as lifeforms? Maybe we can't measure, or understand, everything about this planet... We're fallible beings.

its a living system it supports life.. it can sustain life it is life producing...I am not being rude this is new for alot of us..since global warming many of the things i had been taught are in error or based in a limited understanding......, i am fortunate to be involved in a program and do volunteer work to re learn the ecosystem...its no longer referred to as survival of the fittest its called cooperatiion amougnst life forms... we once thought the earth was flat and cigarettes won't harm or kill you and now that many of our ideas on the system have been based in evolution's origin of the species and survival of the fittest...i would recommend studiying the biomes( to get a quick overview) it gives a very clear picture or vist your local nature center it does an incredible job of helping ot understand life in a deeper way.. this si now how science will be taught much is changing.... i was really sahring information not rassing ya i loves ya source....and respond as your posts are interesting and articulate...

if i get a chance I''ll post some stuff from my curricula later today and some of the lectures i have taken...............did you see an inconvenient truth .. the problem I see a lot on here is: many use incremental and category as a framework this is very limiting..... instead of seeing the inter connectedness of all systems, all ideas they are all interrelated one supports the other... but many filter through a separatist framework...or an either or....


Cimber, what is your focus of study, I do not recognize the data you use......thanks...just curious..

Hi Sheri,
I am currently pursuing a phD in bioinformatics, the statistical analysis of gene expression, in cancer on the cellular levels.
My course studies have been centered around all aspects of biology however, especially evolution and molecular genetics.

The problem with the Gaia Hypothesis is that not only if it was true, it would mean that all of Biology is wrong, but most of the statements regarded as proof are nothing more than a metaphorical explanation in a teleological sense. One can make the assumption that we once thought the Earth was flat and that cigarettes won't harm us, but these are seemingly isolated and specific occurrences that happened early in scientific thought. The development of physics disproved the flat earth, and the development of Biology and chemical research has allowed us to see the harmful effects of cigarettes.

Nothing in Biology makes sense, except in terms of evolution. It is impossible for altruism on a global scale to exist. It would require planning by all organisms, and organisms don't plan for this. This is why evolution by natural selection is true and why organisms can't work in concert, on a global scale.

Thanks, Cimber it seems its very plausable alot of things are limited, based in understandings at the time.. Evolution though not proof it has(darwin, wallace) good supporting arguments and i personally feel it makes good sound sense... In the 1859 the origins of species was a more plausible explanation than creationism, interesting also how it was creationism that originially pursued the idea of evolution ( Cuvier) yet molded it to suit the religious society at the time so the idea was around long before Darwin hit the stands with his blockbuster origins of species...." the ole fossil argument started in the 1800 and is still in tack today same M?O well anyways its a most delightful course and a gas to attend.......


I am not savvy on the Gaia hypothesis, can you recommend quality data to explore or even a course..I am currently taking the theory of evolution A history of controversy, possibly you have taken it, i just finished up a particle physics course, i am working on a teaching degree.... Really for no other reason then to home school my kid (3rd year now)

i felt you were in a specialized field, your posts are brilliant, just wasn't jumping out at me LOL also not to derail the thread we should take this to pm .. i am very interested in learning more about your field.......

Will look forward to your future posts and having someone to talk with ans learn with hopefully.. thanks very much.....