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To: Physicist
"RNA viruses and prions are not cells and they do not contain DNA, but they do qualify as life-forms in the broadest sense."

If we limit this discussion to cellular life-forms (thus bypassing the on-going debate about whether or not viri are considered Life), can we agree with each other that Watson's math applies?

126 posted on 03/06/2002 9:35:47 PM PST by Southack
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To: Southack
If we limit this discussion to cellular life-forms (thus bypassing the on-going debate about whether or not viri are considered Life), can we agree with each other that Watson's math applies?

Once more, we cannot. Mammalian red blood cells show that his assumption about the minimum number of genes needed for a living cell is flat-out wrong. Cells can survive without genes.

You're trying very hard to go down the path I outlined in post #74, but I'm not going to follow you there.

128 posted on 03/07/2002 3:01:23 AM PST by Physicist
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To: Southack
"RNA viruses and prions are not cells and they do not contain DNA, but they do qualify as life-forms in the broadest sense." -- Physicist

If we limit this discussion to cellular life-forms (thus bypassing the on-going debate about whether or not viri are considered Life), can we agree with each other that Watson's math applies?

No, because then the math is completely irrelevant. You would claim that Watson demonstrates that no DNA-based single-celled organism could spontaneously arise. But who cares? Nobody suggests that such a thing happens - its a strawman. Those non-DNA life forms (RNA cells, mitochondrial cells, etc.) are all examples of what the PRECURSORS to DNA-based cells might have been like.

Because life did not spontaneously appear as a fully formed DNA-based cell, but rather arose through a process of selection and chemistry, Watson's math is irrelevant.

But then, you knew that. It's been pointed out for three threads now, and you haven't answered it. You've just ignored it and moved on, brazenly repeating your assertions.

131 posted on 03/07/2002 4:51:05 AM PST by cracker
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