CNN Gets 'Synthetic Life' Right in the Headlines

[Tiberius]

Again, you are not being charitable, instead you're finding out ways to rule out my definition rather than seeing the obvious exception to my definition. so much for some guy that got accepted to cambridge. lol

Wow. Nice ad hominem. *claps*

You're the one that started this conservation by treating me as if I was stupid, so don't you dare emphasize my snide remark towards the end as if I'm the one being rude and ugly.

I haven't treated you as stupid; I've treated you as being wrong and using bad definitions of "life". I don't see how beauty and ugliness comes into it.

Twice now have you accused me of 'stupidity' already
1. accused me of not knowing the meaning of conservation of energy
2. almost accused me of being a creationist while accusing me of arguing that the validity of creating life is reducible if the matter that makes up the life isn't created from scratch, which again is accusing me of not understanding the law of conservation of energy

1) No, I said you failed to understand the conservation of energy when saying that creating stuff "from scratch" involved not using any pre-made parts.

2) I never accused you of being a creationist.

You do know that this is a discussion forum right? All posts are stored forever. To validate your claims (or in this case invalidate) all you have to do is look back over the thread. I haven't edited my posts since I posted them, and anyone who wants to check what I said can do just that.

And finally:

@Saerules:

1) Your language example still requires a brain and an understanding (at least on a basic level) of how languages work. All languages will be similar in some way, since they are all based off the same understanding of how they work (and how we communicate).

2) They did use already-made chemicals, and yes, I understand there are two ways of looking at the definition. In my original post on the subject, I said they'd created synthetic life "from scratch", and indeed they had (the meaning being "written the entire life code themselves"). TSF complained, and showed the scientists denying they had created life "from scratch" (his meaning being "creating something from nothing"). With this I agree with him; they did not create something from nothing. I also, however, pointed out that such creation is impossible, and so complaining about the wording is ridiculous in this situation.

To put it in perspective, if I say a statement "I can fly" that has two or more meanings, one of them impossible (i.e. "I can fly unassisted" vs "I can fly...in an airplane"), then it is quite obvious that I meant the possible meaning rather than the impossible. If someone tells you they can fly, you don't automatically think they can do so on their own; you think "Haha, he means with a plane and he's trying to be funny."

3) Dead-DNA based life doesn't have self-replication. Hence, it is clearly not life.