Is life nothing more than a chemical reaction

[Audie]

Is an airplane nothing more than a collection of aluminum and steel shaped bits? I feel sad for anyone that cannot see that it is so much more then that. That it's value and wonder resides in the existential possibilities it generates, that had not existed, before. Not in it's source.

If there were any people like that we'd all
feel sorry for them.
Aircraft have applications to improve
lives or destroy them.
We have emotional reactions to those.
None of it changes what an airplane is.
It does not become more or less because
of how someone happens to feel about it.

The way that religionists use the word " just"
as rhetorical device may fool them, for all its transparency. " People are ' just' an animal"
( to them bad evolutionists) is a perennial fav.

People are people, aircraft are unchanged as aircraft with or without the emotive " just".

 

[PureX]

If there were any people like that we'd all
feel sorry for them.
Aircraft have applications to improve
lives or destroy them.
We have emotional reactions to those.
None of it changes what an airplane is.
It does not become more or less because
of how someone happens to feel about it.

The way that religionists use the word " just"
as rhetorical device may fool them, for all its transparency. " People are ' just' an animal"
( to them bad evolutionists) is a perennial fav.

People are people, aircraft are unchanged as aircraft with or without the emotive " just".

The point is that the existential value of the airplane is not in it's material make up or in the processes that enabled it's creation. It's value is in the extraordinary new range of possibilities it presents to us, and to reality though us. Likewise, the chemical reactions that enable life to happen do not define what life is. Because life is defined by the extraordinary range of new possibilities that become extant, though it. Matter and physics are to life what words on paper are to literature ... just a means of presenting something that is extraordinary.

 

[Colt]

What does IMOP mean?

In My OPinion

 

[Father Heathen]

That's what it is. Its nothing more than a chemical reaction.

Why tf would you ask who said what you said, knowing you said it?

"How does knowing the components or process behind something make that thing any less significant?"

Do you feel they same about evolution? Abiogenisis? Should we stop studying them.

Understanding how evolution, abiogenesis, or anything else works doesn't make them any less significant or special. Why would we stop studying them? Your questions are nonsensical.

 

[Audie]

The point is that the existential value of the airplane is not in it's material make up or in the processes that enabled it's creation. It's value is in the extraordinary new range of possibilities it presents to us, and to reality though us. Likewise, the chemical reactions that enable life to happen do not define what life is. Because life is defined by the extraordinary range of new possibilities that become extant, though it. Matter and physics are to life what words on paper are to literature ... just a means of presenting something that is extraordinary.

Just a wordy restatement of what i said.

But you fail to address the fact that how you
FEEL about an airplane doesn't change what it IS.

Aluminum, glass, etc. It's " just" an arrangement
of stuff.

Your contention that all of mass energy is
" just" a means to the extraordinary is, well extraordinary. Or, extraordinarily something.


Your new definition of life is also, btw, quite
extraordinary.

 

[F1fan]

Yes.
But this "chemistry" is so much more than chemistry
because it employs highly organized electrical systems.

Much like commercial aircraft.

 

[Revoltingest]

Much like commercial aircraft.

Those also have mechanical systems.

 

[PureX]

Just a wordy restatement of what i said.

But you fail to address the fact that how you
FEEL about an airplane doesn't change what it IS.

I never said it did.

Aluminum, glass, etc. It's " just" an arrangement
of stuff.

Everything is just "an arrangement of stuff". THIS arrangement of stuff is identified by the possibilities it brings into being.

Your contention that all of mass energy is
" just" a means to the extraordinary is, well extraordinary. Or, extraordinarily something.

It's the medium through which the possibilities become available. It's the possibilities that matter, not the medium.

Your new definition of life is also, btw, quite
extraordinary.

I'm an extraordinary fellow.

 

[exchemist]

What does IMOP mean?

In My Opinion, Peabrain?

 

[Alien826]

A teacher (junior school I think) asked me this. If you put a person in an enclosed vessel and he dies, what has gone from that person? His implication was that some esoteric something called "life" had departed. I didn't have an immediate answer, but I thought about it and, always too late! decided on this reply. If you put a running automobile in a enclosed vessel and it stops running what has gone from that automobile? Answer, nothing. It just stopped working.

I truly believe that if we could capture the entire environment of a person at the moment of death and analyze the components just before death and then later (have to let some time elapse, a body doesn't die all at once) we would find exactly the same physical material there, just rearranged. We probably have to include energy, btw.

How a collection of physical material can be arranged to write a symphony is the big and wonderful question, of course.

 

[Audie]

I never said it did.

Everything is just "an arrangement of stuff". THIS arrangement of stuff is identified by the possibilities it brings into being.

It's the medium through which the possibilities become available. It's the possibilities that matter, not the medium.

I'm an extraordinary fellow.

It's hard to tell what you mean under the layers
of " philosophy" jargon you inject and turgify
your prose therewith.

But you did say a airplane IS much more than
aluminum etc. And things you say it IS, are
all about emotive responses, feelings.

Medium, messages, feelings. What you happen to feel is important.

The contention that mass/ energy is just a medium
to what you find extraordinary is just about how you feel. Like how extraordinary you finds yourself to be.

 

[Audie]

A teacher (junior school I think) asked me this. If you put a person in an enclosed vessel and he dies, what has gone from that person? His implication was that some esoteric something called "life" had departed. I didn't have an immediate answer, but I thought about it and, always too late! decided on this reply. If you put a running automobile in a enclosed vessel and it stops running what has gone from that automobile? Answer, nothing. It just stopped working.

I truly believe that if we could capture the entire environment of a person at the moment of death and analyze the components just before death and then later (have to let some time elapse, a body doesn't die all at once) we would find exactly the same physical material there, just rearranged. We probably have to include energy, btw.

How a collection of physical material can be arranged to write a symphony is the big and wonderful question, of course.

A sy,mphony is a buncha vibration. Ive heard it. It felt good.

 

[Sandra Jayne]

Why tf would you ask who said what you said, knowing you said it?

Understanding how evolution, abiogenesis, or anything else works doesn't make them any less significant or special. Why would we stop studying them? Your questions are nonsensical.

They might understand abiogenesis but wasn't aware they have come close to proving how it resulted in life-and of course then there is the problem of chirality.

 

[PureX]

It's hard to tell what you mean under the layers
of " philosophy" jargon you inject and turgify
your prose therewith.

But you did say a airplane IS much more than
aluminum etc. And things you say it IS, are
all about emotive responses, feelings.

Medium, messages, feelings. What you happen to feel is important.

The contention that mass/ energy is just a medium
to what you find extraordinary is just about how you feel. Like how extraordinary you finds yourself to be.

Material physicality is absolutely moot without consciousness. It can't even be discussed it's so moot at that point. Yet for some reason you seem to want to ignore the experience of consciousness with it's "emotive responses and feelings" as being insignificant because it's immaterial.

 

[Audie]

Material physicality is absolutely moot without consciousness. It can't even be discussed it's so moot at that point. Yet for some reason you seem to want to ignore the experience of consciousness with it's "emotive responses and feelings" as being insignificant because it's immaterial.

What could " moot without consciousness"
possibly mean?

Obscurantistvnonsense followed by the excessively obvious aboutvthatvwhich isnt conscious notvtalking.

And from there you go on to make up utter nonsense about me

Qu8te a skow.

 

[PureX]

What could " moot without consciousness"
possibly mean?

Obscurantistvnonsense followed by the excessively obvious aboutvthatvwhich isnt conscious notvtalking.

And from there you go on to make up utter nonsense about me

Qu8te a skow.

It's interesting that when you can't understand something you assume that it has to be the other person that's confused. Could be that's WHY you can't understand.

 

[Audie]

It's interesting that when you can't understand something you assume that it has to be the other person that's confused. Could be that's WHY you can't understand.

Like a would be comedian who blames the audience when they don't find him amusing.

Like a person who habitually makes up things
about others, which may, by, the lowest form of
rhetoric, or other human interaction.

I doubt anyone here knows how mass / energy,
orv" material physicality" in obscurabtist jsrgon can be moot. That includes you, who can't explain what it means.

Or take responsibility for himself after making things up.

 

[exchemist]

They might understand abiogenesis but wasn't aware they have come close to proving how it resulted in life-and of course then there is the problem of chirality.

Science deals in evidence, never proof. (Demanding proof from science is a favourite creationist ploy, bred of either ignorance or deceitfulness.)

The origin of chiral selection in biochenistry is interesting, certainly. It is just one of many issues to be resolved, though actually I understand there are now some tentative hypotheses for accounting for it.

 

[We Never Know]

Why tf would you ask who said what you said, knowing you said it?

Understanding how evolution, abiogenesis, or anything else works doesn't make them any less significant or special. Why would we stop studying them? Your questions are nonsensical.

Uhm... You said "how does knowing the components or process behind something make that thing any less significant"

Me saying life is nothing more than a chemical reaction doesn't make it less or more significant.

Do you even understand how you add things to the comments of other that they didnt say or imply?

 

[PureX]

Uhm... You said "how does knowing the components or process behind something make that thing any less significant"

Me saying life is nothing more than a chemical reaction doesn't make it less or more significant.

Of course it does. The "nothing more than" is a pretty big hint, don't you think?