Yes, that’s got to be the explanation:
Bartlett, working with astrobiologist Michael Wong of the University of Washington in Seattle, argues that we need to escape the straitjacket of Earth-based thinking about life. They propose introducing a broader category called “lyfe” (pronounced, in an oddly West Country fashion, as “loif”), of which life as we know it is just one variation. “Our proposal attempts to break free of some of the potential prejudices due to us being part of this one instantiation of lyfe,” says Bartlett.
Philip Ball, “Are aliens hiding in plain sight?” at The Guardian
The researchers offer four criteria for “lyfe” and add:
The two researchers say there are “sublyfe” systems that only meet some of these criteria, and also perhaps “superlyfe” that meets additional ones: lyfe forms that have capabilities beyond ours and that might look on us as we do on complex but non-living processes such as crystal growth.
Philip Ball, “Are aliens hiding in plain sight?” at The Guardian
Don’t like that explanation? We have others:
Seven reasons (so far) why the aliens never show up: Some experts think they became AI, some that they were killed by their AI, and others say they never existed. Who’s most likely right? Science fiction writer Matt Williams delves into seven hypotheses into which scientists and science fiction writers have put a lot of thought.
Always remember, as long as there’s an Out There out there, They’ll be Out There. Two key certainties guarantee it: wishful thinking and the human imagination.
I just Face palmed when I read this
Don’t read the comments in the Guardian article, Aaron, or you will do yourself a hurt with repeated face-palms.
After reading the whole article…. It’s too bad they played stupid word-games. Their list of criteria actually makes sense, and they also state firmly that life doesn’t have to follow Darwinian evolution. They’re closer to the ID side of the fence.
As to:
It seems quite disingenuous for me that Darwinists would try to squeeze their false Darwinian narrative into any basic definition of life that they try to put forth in their article (so as to ‘free their imaginations’).
When discussing the sheer impossibility of any naturalistic Origin of Life (OOL), I don’t know how many times I have been told, by Darwinists themselves, that that impossibility against a naturalistic OOL does not count against Darwinian evolution itself being feasible since Darwinian evolution, i.e. Natural Selection, supposedly does not kick in until after you have life.
Thus, according to the Darwinists themselves, any basic definition of life that we may put forth is apparently not dependent on Darwinian evolution in order for life to be defined properly.
They mentioned Sara Walker in passing in their article,,
I have a sneaking suspicion that Sara Walker may be more than a little perturbed that the article gave her such a short say on the subject. Sara Walker and Paul Davies wrote a very informative article that equated the problem of properly defining life to the ‘Hard Problem of Consciousness’. In fact, they called it the ‘Hard Problem of Life’.
And as Robert Shedinger, via Paul Davies, noted, “Since living organisms consistently resist the ravages of entropy that all forms of inanimate matter are subject to, there must be some non-physical principle allowing living matter to consistently defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And for (Paul) Davies there is; the demon in the machine turns out to be information.”
Finding immaterial information, (not natural selection), to be integral to any definition of life that we may put forth, (so as to enable life to resist the ‘ravages of entropy’), is simply devastating to any possible materialistic definition for life that Darwinists may try to put forth.
Here are a few comments along that line of thought:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-fourth-law-of-thermodynamics-as-natures-steepest-entropy-ascent/#comment-705065
One final note, although the author(s) tried to disingenuously include Darwinian evolution, i.e. natural selection, into every definition of life that they put forth in their article, the fact of the matter is that Natural Selection is now found to be grossly inadequate as the supposed ‘designer substitute’ as Darwinists falsely imagine it to be.
In short and in conclusion, Darwinists, whether they like it or not, are forced to look ‘higher’ than reductive materialism and/or natural selection for any proper definition of life they may try to put forth.
I have a suggestion for them as to where they can look for that proper definition of life:
@belfast
To late, but I guess not to worry because I knocked myself out after the 3rd facepalm
Aaron, you might get a kick out of this gif:
https://tenor.com/view/rage-keyboard-angry-death-cold-gif-5190869
This has to be a joke. We can not agree that a human pregnancy results in a human being (thanks “materialism!”) but we can agree about this “lyfe” thing??
@ ba77
Yup yup yup! Exactly me
I laughed my butt off