(April 30, 2010 at 6:30 am)Ace Wrote: *snip*
Some decent points, but still lacking in evidence. Even if there were rivers on Mars/Venus it doesn't say anything about life. Life takes a long time to develop from simple chains of molecules up to to something like DNA... and before DNA (or something similar), you can't even be talking about life as DNA is in that grey area on the life scale (and of course this is one of the areas where theists have a problem, they see the definition of life as something binary, not subtle shades).
So, maybe there were rivers.... for even thousands of years.... but maybe not enough time for life to develop. Here is another point. Some of the problems with abiogenisis is that current earth conditions would not allow the spontaneous creation of life (of course worthy of a debate all by itself), and that only early earth conditions allowed it... but we have rivers. Who is to say that early Venus/Mars had the right conditions, even though they possibly had rivers.
Unfortunately, while I am excited about this possibility, its still too unclear to make firm statements that life existed on Venus and/or Mars. I'll have to be agnostic regarding this until more facts are discovered.
(April 30, 2010 at 6:21 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: *snip*
As per my point above. Many people view life as a binary concept. Either something is alive, or it isnt. I remember reading many years ago about one definition of life which included something like 7 requirements before something was considered alive.... these requirements basically would not have covered lower lifeforms such as microbes.
I can't remember them all but some of them were: reproduction/replication, energy absorption (food), excretion, locomotion (this one is stupid i know... trees are the first thing that comes to mind), and something like ability to make decisions.
It wouldn't surprise me if this definition was thought up by some religious group considering the animal (even human) centric requirements.
So what are the exact requirements to be considered life?
Are viruii life?
Are viroids life?
Are single cells alive? (is a single cell from your body alive?)
Is DNA life?
Is RNA life?
To my mind, each stage of complexity brings differing levels of lifelikeness to the equation. There is no on/off switch for life. Simply steps on the road from simple chemical bonds to complex organisms like ourselves, and who knows, maybe even more complex beings that are higher lifeforms than mammals.... we are not necessarily the most advanced forms of life in the universe.
Did i ramble too much? Been drinking.... sorry.
A finite number of monkeys with a finite number of typewriters and a finite amount of time could eventually reproduce 4chan.