XPost: alt.paranormal, alt.atheism, alt.conspiracy   
   XPost: alt.religion.christian, alt.russian.z1   
   From: jtem01@gmail.com   
      
   On 9/18/25 9:13 PM, Oleg Smirnov wrote:   
      
   > There's a great lot of sources where "characteristics" of   
   > life are being described / discussed, but they don't qualify   
   > as criteria for distinguishment.   
      
   I'm not sure what the argument is. The absence of the criteria   
   would qualify is non-life, the presence would be construed as   
   life.   
      
   > If there were such clear formalizable criteria then it'd be   
   > fundamentally possible to design a technical device that might   
   > accurately detect what is alive and what is not alive.   
      
   There's the field of Astrobiology/Exobiology and the identification   
   of biosignatures.   
      
   It's true that no one biosignature is by itself confirmation of   
   life. You have to think of biosignatures as more like evidence   
   entered into a murder trial, as opposed to a confession.   
      
   You can prove that a suspect was at the location of a murder but,   
   in almost any circumstance you can think of, the same would be   
   true of others... perhaps a great many others. So that one piece   
   of evidence BY ITSELF is virtually meaningless. No, what you look   
   for in such a trial would be A CONVERGENCE OF EVIDENCE:  Various   
   pieces of evidence which are all consistent with guilt, nothing   
   that conclusively establishes innocence.   
      
   So biosignatures are the same way. You'd look for them on a planet   
   that's within what we believe is the "Goldilocks Zone." We'd look   
   for them in the presence of evidence for things like liquid water.   
   We'd look for them in association of other biosignatures...   
      
   >    
   >    
   >    
      
   Calling this "Abiogenesis" is like taking the bricks from a   
   school house and using them to build an exact replica of a   
   brick tower, and then claiming that the tower was spontaneously   
   formed.   
      
   >> If scientists managed to produce life from non life under laboratory   
   >> conditions, it would be intelligent beings creating life by design.   
      
   > It's rather a wishful sophistry.   
      
   Not at all. It's an active pursuit.   
      
      
      
      
   --   
   https://jtem.tumblr.com/tagged/The%20Book%20of%20JTEM/page/5   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)