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Thank you so much for your reply! However, I have no interest in such things as "energy crystals and copper bracelets".

So you say, but the post to which b_sharp was replying read like a completely nutty piece of new-age mysticism. Perhaps that wasn't your intention but it wasn't just b_s who noticed it.

I've not come across this considered-to-be-mysterious "will to live" thing before, and now it has appeared at least twice in one thread. Resources are limited, organisms which struggle for existence will tend to displace those that don't struggle. All modern living things are descended from a line of millions of successful reproducers in a world where there will never be enough resources for most organisms to manage that. Call it the evolutionary tautology if you will (survival of the fittest, where the fittest are those who survive). Why is that presented as some kind of metaphysical mystery?

The "will to live" thing is just the "you haven't figured out abiogenesis yet" argument coming in by the back door.

Thank you for your reply!

I said: A metaphor for what your correspondents are saying is that Einstein's theory of relavity was not complex because it was written on paper with ink.

The proteins and genes are complex - not because of the bio/chemistry - but because of (a) the semiosis - the language itself and the encoding/decoding of it (b) the autonomy of the information/semiosis by organism and species, (c) the functions integrated within the whole organism towards the singular purpose, the will to live and (d) the permeation of both the information and the will to live in the biosphere and/or universe!

b_sharp replied: Alamo-Girl, did you forget to mention the energy crystals and copper bracelets?

you replied: So you say, but the post to which b_sharp was replying read like a completely nutty piece of new-age mysticism. Perhaps that wasn't your intention but it wasn't just b_s who noticed it.

I've not come across this considered-to-be-mysterious "will to live" thing before, and now it has appeared at least twice in one thread. Resources are limited, organisms which struggle for existence will tend to displace those that don't struggle. All modern living things are descended from a line of millions of successful reproducers in a world where there will never be enough resources for most organisms to manage that. Call it the evolutionary tautology if you will (survival of the fittest, where the fittest are those who survive). Why is that presented as some kind of metaphysical mystery?

The “will to live” is not a new subject on the forum; moreover, it is a subject of current scientific investigation due to its field-like property. Here is a brief description of the "will to live" from post 40 of the Does Science Point to God? thread:

The “will to live” permeates the entire biosphere and perhaps the entire universe. For that reason, we assert that it is field-like (existing in all points of space/time). It is observed in plants and animals, in creatures which go into dormant phases of their life cycle. It is observed in the simplest of life forms (cell intelligence, amoeba). It is also observed in collectives of organisms which act as if one mind (ants, bees, etc.). The “will to live” also permeates throughout the molecular machinery of higher organisms. For instance, if a part of the heart dies (myocardial infarction) – the molecular machinery will continue to struggle to survive, routing blood flow around the dead tissue. A person can be “brain dead” and yet the rest of the body will struggle to survive and will succeed if a machine (respirator) is used to simulate the cyclic instruction of the brain.

The "will to live" is the subject of a new article, Can the Monist View Explain “What Is Life?, which was written in response to discussion from a previous thread: Behe Jumps the Shark beginning around post 492 and continuing to the end. As js1138 suggests, the "will to live" is related to a prior investigation of abiogenesis On Plato thread, post 491 is a status and summary of the investigation.

Of course, all of the above threads are populated with authoritative source articles, excerpts and links - rigorous debates and arguments such as yours, counter-arguments, etc.

For Lurkers interested in broaching the subject of the “will to live” - here are some articles to introduce the concepts of semiosis, autonomy, complexity and information theory:

H H Pattee: The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut

Luis Rocha: Syntactic Autonomy: Or Why There is no Autonomy Without Symbols and how Self-Organizing Systems Might Evolve Them

Tom Schneider: Theory of Molecular Machines

Chris Adami: Information Theory and Molecular Biology

NECSI: Complex Systems (two basic types of complexity)

Complexity is ...[the abstract notion of complexity has been captured in many different ways. Most, if not all of these, are related to each other and they fall into two classes of definitions]:

1) ...the (minimal) length of a description of the system.

2) ...the (minimal) amount of time it takes to create the system.

The length of a description is measured in units of information. The former definition is closely related to Shannon information theory and algorithmic complexity, and the latter is related to computational complexity.

NIST: Kolmogorov Complexity

Wikipedia: Cellular Automata (aka Self-Organizing Complexity)

Adami: Physical Complexity

NECSI: Functional Complexity

Wikipedia: Irreducible Complexity

Specified Complexity

Principia Cybernetica: Metatransition (a kind of punctuated equilibrium)