How is a life-form accurately and rationally defined?
What rational logic is there to suggest that there are not alternative forms of life?


How is it decided that a rock cannot be alive or have intelligence?


Simply because we cannot fathom how to communicate with a rock?

Is it because rocks do not have a will of their own, to move and interact with their environment without additional external interaction?

Is it because rocks lack biological organs and flesh?

I am trying to hold a serious discussion, so please, only post logical comments to which rationally prove that rocks lack any signs of life.


What is the objective standard of qualification for a "life-form", and most importantly, why?

Rocks don't breathe, they don't maintain their internal environment, they don't grow, and they don't consume or produce.

That's why they aren't alive.

they dont breathe, maintain internal environment ("invironment"? :3), grow, consume, or produce at an observable rate on our frequency of observation.


That is not to say that they do none of those over the course of eons.


After all, the earth is a MUCH larger body than a human body.


How is it not a unique (as though "alien") Life-form?

Earth itself?

Living organisms undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, possess a capacity to grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce and through natural selection, adapt to their environment in successive generations. I don't really know what other criteria there could be. A rock's not alive because it doesn't do anything.

With all due respect, show me the rock that has grown over the past 2.6 billion years (or however old the oldest rock we've found is), with sufficient evidence that it is growing consistently in small quantities from its own cell division, and I will eat my words with a dressing of vomit on them. Now, I saw the post that prompted this, and I will admit that there is a possibility that something could live composed of cells that are fundamentally structured off the same atoms that our rocks are, but our rocks aren't composed of cells or alive. Any change on them has been seismic, meteorologic, or human.

Sorry...but your pet rock is just a rock, not a pet.

Elkrazar: Magma.




DO we know how long the earth took to form? how long it takes to mature? weather or not it has reached maturation? how long it might live?
What resources might it consume, or have consumed? what about comets and asteroids hitting the earth and contributing more soil?

Not terribly much different than a human being eating food.

What about the magnetic and gravitational properties of the earth, what all do we really know about that?

The ability to support life.... hmmm... isnt that kind of along the lines of what hte human body does for it's cells?

no one body is alone or not composed of smaller bodies?


So why do we draw the line at our frequency of survivability as the otherwise only qualification for life?


Why cant we look into the lifespans of "inanimate" objects?


After all, there is NOTHING within our galaxy that is independent of the galaxy's resources... just as nothing within our body is independent of our body's resources... do we even know if the galaxy requires external resources from the big bang, which i do not fully support, but the logic if it follows patterns seen in nature, but the nature of the big bang might not be entirely "beginning of the universe/creation".

Also, there are types of rocks that do grow.



EVERY SINGLE INTERACTION between chemicals, elements, molecules, organs, bodies, wavelengths, patterns, and so on and so forth is a type of communication.


HOW IS THAT NOT ALIVE?

Because it doesn't die. It's not born. It's just there.

it doesnt die within our span of life. work with me here, we arent on one universal lifetime. it doesnt die within our lifetime, or hte lifetimes of a billion generations, but that is not to say that it will never die, or that it was always in existence, for that matter.



I hear that we have a completely new set of cells every month or two... from the perspective of a person as small as a cell, they would say we do not die.

I understand what you're getting at here. At some level the Earth, as a supportive environment, can be considered alive; it maintains an internal environment, it sustains 'cells' (organisms that perform different functions), passively responds to stellar phenomena that don't overwhelm it (and let's hope those phenomena don't happen anytime soon...), and has evolved over time.

We have an estimate of about 4.6byo for Earth's age; Mother Earth's bountiful milk sacks aren't sagging anytime soon, it appears. Has it reached maturation? -- we may never really know. How long will it live? Probably until the sun expands and consumes it.

Still, you're throwing me a Red Herring here. Interdependence is reasonable to assume -- rocks being living organisms is not. Rocks that 'grow' is a matter of precipitation or outside forces, not a matter of cells multiplying within the rocks. Rocks are inert.

Also, interaction =/= communication. Communication is stimuli sent and received to evoke a certain reaction. Chemicals are used in communication. Organs use hormones to communicate. Bodies use various methods to communicate. Wavelengths and patterns, these can be utilized for certain forms of communication, but are not inherently so.