Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

If an entity is complex and specified like life, but just too different, what would we call it?

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In “A new, lower estimate for exoplanets that could support life,” it wwas noted that “The basic problem seems to be that a planet, even in the habitable zone, can mostly be a gasball with a thick, very high pressure atmosphere that would inhibit life as we know it.” But also,

Granted, we have had problems recently coming up with a definition of life. But the definition, if it succeeded, was meant to unify categories of entities that we already agree are alive. Jury’s out on whether nothing or something completely different from that could inhabit these Keplers. Nothing that we now recognize as life would likely live there.

Which raises a question: What if we found something that seemed like life, in terms of its specified complexity, can we think of a name?

How about a rock that does not have an aging process and has negligible metabolism, but does have a brain composed of non-living elements? (Whether it reproduces is unclear; we actually don’t know how it came to be where it is at the point when we must decide how to classify it.) To avoid needless novelization, let’s assume that it is of low, not high intelligence, something like that of a turtle. It is not ET. It is not at all like a bacterium either. Only its organized complexity and ome level of intelligence causes us to think it to be alive.

See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (origin of life)

Comments
Is the Holy Spirit alive? I believe God the Father is beyond existence - Not of this World. Jesus existed for a brief time before "joining" God the Father. And the Holy Spirit remains, "entangled" in Man's Universe. But is this "entanglement" alive? Current research indicates experiencing the Holy Spirit can impact us epigenetically. Impact our "offspring" too. Maybe the VMAT2 "God Gene" plays a part:) Is the Holy Spirit considered Life? Or a level above Life? Eternal Consciousness without Matter/Life?ppolish
February 27, 2014
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