Chiron

Albert: "But you are arguing a conclusion that is merely a restatement of your materialistic assumptions here:
Chiron 'If an amoeba is alive and it takes in nonliving material to create more living amoebas, then yes, there is more life now than before.'"
It's a thing of definitions. If we accept the definition that life equals living material, then basic algebra shows more living material to equal more life. So yeah, I guess I am using my conclusion as a premise.
However, as I tried to make clear in the rest of my post, definitions are a sticking point for me. My questions about where the self ends were meant to demonstrate that, because it's hard to say where I end and everything else begins, assigning the property of life to me is difficult to back up.

More on definitions: life is "1. Biology. a. The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism. b. The characteristic state or condition of a living organism."
Living, on the other hand, is "1. Possessing life: famous living painters; transplanted living tissue." (Both of these definitions are from the American Heritage Electronic Dictionary of the English Language Third Edition; the only difference between them and Dictionary.com's definitions is the omission of the Biology flag, because Dictionary.com harvested the AH Fourth Edition.)
So if something is living, then it possesses life, which means it is living, which means it possesses life. (I feel like Arthur in HHGttG: Help: see Advice. Advice: see Help.)
If life is instead an immortal spark (which is owned not by the living but by god) -- an actual thing -- then it would seem to me that there should be a way to measure it. However, it appears that all life we know of consists of colossally complex sets and veritable networks of chemical reactions and plain ol' atoms.

I'd rather set metaphysics aside because it seems to me that the idea of life having a separate value apart from mechanical is superfluous, and as we know, that sort of hypothesis is as suds before the Razor. I have no doubts that we will create self-replicating molecules in the laboratory, and I also have no doubts that we will create neural networks that are, for all purposes, intelligent.

"If some speck of matter acts as if it is alive, that is, behaves as if it were free, it would exceed my exceedingly low standards of being alive."
Does a mustard seed in a water-filled, covered petri dish count?

It is now sleepy time. Till we discourse again,
-Chiron
The last is only half in jest, I think.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Skydiver,
You indict yourself by saying: That’s your wrong turn: “real evidence.” If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re looking for God in all the wrong places. You might as well look for true love in the arms of whores.

Why is it so hard to drop the pretense that, when it comes to the question of God, only empirical evidence need apply? Surely, you don’t have such stringent standards when it comes to your love interests.

A wink and a nod will do. The tone of her voice or even a fleeting expression in her eyes can convince even the most rigorous scientist that she loves him. And he doesn’t mind acting on such flimsy data. And he gets shut down for it, for misinterpreting bogus data again and again. Yet he employs the same non-evidentiary modus operandi again and again until successful.

If otherwise intelligent people can approach twits so unscientifically, why can’t they approach God that way, too? Why are you guys so shy about letting your intuition or subjectivity rule?

The operative word is your last word, “children.” Whatever we were taught as children cannot stand up to our adult mentality. Hell, even the Euclidian Geometry I was taught as a teenager can’t stand up to my adult world view of non-Euclidian Geometry. So what chance did your religious education have of standing up to your adult inquiry when you knew all along that some eager but uneducated volunteer do-gooder dolled it out, no doubt?

Your loss of faith may be sinful enough without you gilding that turd with the intellectual pride of having triumphed over your weakingly childhood religious education. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Kevbo

Albert - What does any of this have to do with the original post? Do you want to start your own topic on the definition of life?

This topic is on the common ancestry of humans and other primates as described by the process of organic evolution. Do you have anything to say about that?

Albert Cipriani

Dear Kevbo,
A more careful reading of this thread will reveal that I’ve mostly just answered questions you guys have put to me. So your question, “What does any of this have to do with the original post?” would be better directed to those who have been so inquisitive.

You ask:
Sure I do, and I already said it… tho WinAce has not deigned to respond to me. Indeed, my question to him is one of the few questions in this thread that has gone begging for an answer. Yet you find the time to criticize me for unraveling this thread from the eye of WinAce’s incisive needle?! You have your crust. – Albert the Traditional Catholic

Kevbo

Perhaps your question was not answered because it does not relate to the subject at hand, namely, the common Human/Chimp ancestry as is predicted by the theory of organic evolution?

WinAce

Yeah, I didn't see anything on-topic to reply to. Did I miss anything?

Albert Cipriani

Dear Kevbo and WinAce,
You say:
I asked: Let’s see, my question includes the “Human/Chimp” subject along with the object of “genetics” all in a nine-word sentence tied together with the verb “indicates” by way of asking WinAce to extrapolate upon the significance thereof. But my question doesn’t rise to your high standards of what a question ought to be in these rarified realms. Sorry, I’ll try harder next time.

For what it’s worth, when a theist asserts evidence for the biblical flood, for example, its fair game to ask him to extrapolate with such questions as:
1) Does that mean that all the animals except those in the ark perished?
or
2) Does that mean Noah and family practiced incest to perpetuate the human race?

By the way, did you see the cartoon-movie “Roger Rabbit”? -- Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Doubting Didymus

Albert, the evidence that winace presents is much more than a simple genetic comparison. We are genetically similar to apes in such a way that is compatible only with common ancestry.

For example, we share with apes striking genetic similarity even in those parts of our DNA that are only junk, and do not code for anything. This is one of the areas where the argument that humans and apes are similar in their DNA because they are similar morphologically starts to break down. It is quite clear that our genome is somehow an exact copy of an apes, with some 5% changes made to it. The evolutionary explaination is simple: we have the same genome (even in the illegible functionless junk) because we both got it from the same ancestral species. The Theistic evolutionist has the same anwer at his disposal: god has chosen the forces of natural selection and common descent to bring life into the world.

However you choose to explain it, that both our and the apes genomes are derived from the exact same source is quite clear. Special creation is not consistant with that fact, though I have seen attempts to reconcile it before: apparently creating things with a minimum amount of effort, that is, simply scribbling a few changes on an existing blueprint, is the most perfect way to work. I hope that you are sharp enough to see that god in his omnipotence would have no interest in minimising his workload.

WinAce

Sorry, I must have missed it.

It's not the similarities themselves between apes and humans that count as evidence of evolution, but the patterns of similarity. The double-nested hierarchy of life, for one. The increasingly similar fossils of humans and apes that converge on the same morphology as you go farther back in time.

The elements in our genome that are the result of natural processes like crippling mutations and viral insertions that are totally consistent with evolutionary predictions and actually falsify an independent origin of species. That kinda thing.

lpetrich

There is, of course, Philip Gosse's hypothesis of created appearance.