Posted by Übermenschİ at southcity-24.107.180.105.charter-stl.com on March 23, 2004 at 22:33:38:
In Reply to: Semantics posted by Runshouse21 on March 23, 2004 at 22:22:53:
I'll tell you how you're wrong. Science has developed the cell theory of life but is devoted to, you guessed it, cellular life but it has yet to actually define life. If you can do that, then you've outsmarted the entirety of the scientific community.
I can argue that a virus is alive just as well as I can argue that it is not. The fact remains that what we call life exists as a gradient from simple to complex and there is no good place to put a marker stating, "Everything on the right is alive, everything on the left is non-alive." This has interesting consequences on biogenesis obviously.
: :Ok. Are viruses alive? They procreate and consume resources.
: Yes but they can not procreate without using the reproductive organelle from another cell. So they are missing one of the requirements if you are using the strict definition of life.
Viruses are parasites that invade cells and take over that cell's machinery to replicate its genetic code. A virus is nothing more than some DNA or RNA with protein (and possibly a lipid membrane) but is quite capable of reproduction (with the aid of a host).