
Originally Posted by
williampinn
Let's assume that Darwin's theory is true, that life seamlessly evolved in infinitesimally small steps from non-living materials. One question you might ask is what came just before the generation of the simplest life form you can think of?
You can ask yourself that question william, of course you can, but there is no need to assume the truth of Darwin's theory to do so. What
is required before you ask yourself that question is that you should have a very clear idea of what is a life form. It seems obvious to me that you cannot ask yourself,
What came just before the... simplest life form you can think of? until you have a clear idea of what a life form is. Otherwise, how do you know which is the simplest life form you can think of?
Your first step is to figure out what is, and what is not, on the tree of life; you need a definition of what life is. Earlier in this thread mitchellmckain had a go at this and he said it was:

Originally Posted by
mitchellmckain
It [life] is a self-organizing dynamic structure of cyclical processes.
Which seems to me to be a pretty reasonable place to at least start the discussion. You replied to this...

Originally Posted by
williampinn
That sounds like a description of the inner workings of the sun, or perhaps the weather. In fact that description is so general, it could fit many non-living systems.
And, generally, that is your problem here. Any definition of life you can come up with will include things that aren't really alive in the sense in which we mean life.
Later on you said...

Originally Posted by
williampinn
the term "life" can be used liberally in speech to describe the "life" cycle of a hurricane, so it is not a stretch to consider it at least partially living?
Another good illustration of your difficulty. The word "life" is commonly used in contexts that don't really apply to your current debate; manufactured goods have a life cycle but there is no sense in which any of us would consider a calculator to be "alive". So the questions just get harder: If all things that have life-cycles can be assumed to be alive in some sense for that very reason, what is the difference between the sense in which we mean a hurricane is alive and the sense in which we mean a calculator is alive?
You can't answer that question until you have properly answered the original question, what exactly do we mean by alive, or more importantly, since you are the one asking the question, what do you mean by alive?
But then you say...

Originally Posted by
williampinn
Yes, the division between life and non-life is a relative judgment. Thank you!
Which reads to me as though you are saying that the answer to the definition of life is purely subjective; the question does not have a scientific answer but a philosophical answer.

Originally Posted by
williampinn
You can prove or falsify anything if your definitions are clear.
Precisely. My mathematics tutor had a dictum that he hammered into me through constant repetition; first, define your terms.
That's jolly good advice, and I would encourage you to start there. Skeptic had a go at encouraging you to define life but you simply quoted Webster's dictionary and said that everything is alive to some degree as though, as Scifor Refugee pointed out, "aliveness" were a fundamental property of all things. Well okay, you can believe that if you want, but if that is what you believe then your original question makes no sense whatsoever, because for you there is nothing at all that comes before the simplest life form you can imagine.
What you really need to do is make a choice:
- Are all things alive in some sense? If you answer this with a yes your original question makes no sense at all.
- If at least some things are not alive, what do you mean by life?
p.s. Since you like to include scientific sounding terminology and pseudo-logical inferences into your posts it might not be a bad idea to start learning what those terms mean and some basic rules of logical inference. For example, you say...

Originally Posted by
williampinn
My God, on the other hand, can be easily proven with a simple theorem:
1. God is nature--premise.
2. Nature exists--premise.
3. God exists--transitive property and conclusion.
Your first premise assumes the very existence of that which you seek to prove. Your conclusion is based on the logical inference that
If 1) is true, and
If 2) is true, then 3) follows. So all this says is...
God exists because I assumed he does, and all it proves is that you don't yet understand the nature of proof.
Personally, I think you have more chance of learning how to write a logically correct proof than you have of defining life, but I wouldn't care to bet on you ever being able to do either.