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To: betty boop; js1138
Thank you so much for your excellent essay!!!

When you see that configuration of attributes, chances are what you are looking at is a living system, not an inanimate, man-built machine. The fact that it is possible to build a machine that can mimic these qualities goes to the credit of machine's builder, not to the machine itself. Or so it seems to me.

I strongly agree.

There is another kind of "manufacturing" which is liable to come up anyway, so I'll raise it here - that is the manufacturing of life in a test tube, e.g. the polio virus.

The virus was indeed alive [Shannon and/or Bauer] - the reason we know it was artificially constructed is that we knew the origins of it. However, it was constructed from other biological material, whose origins are not known, i.e. they occur in "nature."

Likewise, tinkering with living creatures through altering DNA, cloning, massive transplants and the ilk does not diminish the fact that the creature is alive before (and often) after the tinkering.

796 posted on 01/16/2005 12:25:46 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl; betty boop; js1138
Consider the possibilty of von Neumann probes. Would they be alive? If not, why not?
797 posted on 01/16/2005 12:37:35 PM PST by PatrickHenry (<-- Click on my name. The List-O-Links for evolution threads is at my freeper homepage.)
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