|
|
Post by Lobstrosity on Jan 18, 2006 19:31:33 GMT -5
It seems to me that my biology teacher and most other students in my school all believe that a virus is a non-living thing. They reached this conclusion because a virus shares very few traits with livng things. It doesn't eat, or produce waste, and it doesn't even have any cells. It's just a protein with DNA.
So a virus does not meet all criteria for being a living thing. But these criteria were obviously created by some idiot scientist who thinks he's all that and knows what life is about. Well I intend to prove that viruses are indeed alive, even though they meet none of the criteria.
First consider this: If a virus is indeed non-living then why would it reproduce? No living things care for a second about anything. So why does a supposedly non-living virus want to infect cells and create more phages?
The only way around that question is to say a virus is a non-living thing whose sole purpose is to kill. An object that exists to corrupt and destroy living matter. How could such a thing exist? Where would it come from and why? The only logical answer I see here is that it could exist to balance populations, keep them from getting too large, and make sure only the strong survive. If that is so, then where did they come from? They can't have been created by God, because the existence of God contradicts all of science. Well my only other theory is that viruses are an evolutionary response, probably by some ancient bacteria (archaea) in order to keep their own population in check. But even this, being my best theory, does not make any sense. No organism would evolve a mechanism such as a virus designed specifically for their own destruction. But the destruction of some individuals might keep the population from growning too quickly, eating up the resources, and then going extinct. If you really want to believe that viruses are non-living, then this theory is your best bet. However it is a long shot, considering no organism on the face of the planet has ever had the knowledge and the foresight to predict that exponential growth may lead to a massive population die off. So it's not likely that viruses were an evolutionary response for this reason.
Now consider this: A virus is a living thing, although very simple. And living things all reproduce. That's what viruses do. So everything is explained.
|
|
|
|
Post by xXMidori-ToraXx on Jan 18, 2006 20:26:40 GMT -5
If viruses were meant to destroy cells, and they reproduce in those cells and cannot survive outside of them, are they killing temselves too? If it is their goal to kill, then they kill themselves too when they do. So maybe their goal (if they have one) is to kill themselves by killing their life support? I was too lazy to read all that you said so if I left something out or something, let me know.
|
|
|
|
Post by Azan on Jan 18, 2006 20:35:16 GMT -5
If viruses were meant to destroy cells, and they reproduce in those cells and cannot survive outside of them, are they killing temselves too? If it is their goal to kill, then they kill themselves too when they do. So maybe their goal (if they have one) is to kill themselves by killing their life support? I was too lazy to read all that you said so if I left something out or something, let me know. I personaly would say that their "goal" is not to kill, just to reproduce as quickly as possible, the death of the cell is just a bi-product... however this does only help proove that they are indeed alive as its the same with humans too.  It seems to me that my biology teacher and most other students in my school all believe that a virus is a non-living thing. They reached this conclusion because a virus shares very few traits with livng things. It doesn't eat, or produce waste, and it doesn't even have any cells. It's just a protein with DNA. So a virus does not meet all criteria for being a living thing. But these criteria were obviously created by some idiot scientist who thinks he's all that and knows what life is about. Well I intend to prove that viruses are indeed alive, even though they meet none of the criteria. First consider this: If a virus is indeed non-living then why would it reproduce? No living things care for a second about anything. So why does a supposedly non-living virus want to infect cells and create more phages? The only way around that question is to say a virus is a non-living thing whose sole purpose is to kill. An object that exists to corrupt and destroy living matter. How could such a thing exist? Where would it come from and why? The only logical answer I see here is that it could exist to balance populations, keep them from getting too large, and make sure only the strong survive. If that is so, then where did they come from? They can't have been created by God, because the existence of God contradicts all of science. Well my only other theory is that viruses are an evolutionary response, probably by some ancient bacteria (archaea) in order to keep their own population in check. But even this, being my best theory, does not make any sense. No organism would evolve a mechanism such as a virus designed specifically for their own destruction. But the destruction of some individuals might keep the population from growning too quickly, eating up the resources, and then going extinct. If you really want to believe that viruses are non-living, then this theory is your best bet. However it is a long shot, considering no organism on the face of the planet has ever had the knowledge and the foresight to predict that exponential growth may lead to a massive population die off. So it's not likely that viruses were an evolutionary response for this reason. Now consider this: A virus is a living thing, although very simple. And living things all reproduce. That's what viruses do. So everything is explained. Living is just a term used by scientists for when organisms meet certain cryteria, viruses meet some of these cryteria so they are considered to be "Half living"... kindof like undead things... Now heres an example, if I were to write a computer program that could reproduce itself, it would go about and infect computers, each time the computer finds the virus and deletes it another copy has been made in another location, it attempts to spread elsewhere too, and the code even changes a bit each time it replicates to confuse the computer. Is this program alive? Perhaps you could call it artificial life, but its pushing it. And in response to where they came from, the book gave one answer, that they must have just started as bare nucleic acid, no protein coat and that they could only get into damaged bacteria cells, over time they evolved to have a protein coat... or something along those lines... Crackpots have another answer, once there was a race people who were like humans, they were very intelligent and one day left their galaxy and came to Earth, eventually a "hitler" type person wanted to wipe them all out, so he made viruses, the peoples imune systems could do nothing against it so they created a new spiecies from their own DNA, only modified with memory cells so the race could resist viruses, the rest of the people died out and here we are. Heh, I have no idea why I posted that, its just something I saw on TV along time ago... Now dont get me wrong, I agree with you viruses cannot be "non-living" but whether we should say they are completely alive is another thing... then again saying they are "half alive" is a bit odd too, but if I was given a choice between non-living and living though I would say living... you know they are alot like zombies... perhaps we should call viruses undead  . |
|
|
|
Post by Lobstrosity on Jan 19, 2006 15:55:33 GMT -5
no, that's just stupid. . . Just like whoever came up with the criteria for what makes something a living thing. Also computer virus is just a program, so it is analogous to a virus but it doesn't prove anything.
But Midori-Tora made a good counterpoint. . . I said that a virus' goal is to kill, but if a virus killed all other cells, they would not be able to reproduce and therefore killing everything would be their own demise. So I guess their purpose would be to kill some, but not all other cells. So then you just refer back to my post to see why that's just plain stupid.
|
|
|
|
Post by Azan on Jan 19, 2006 16:07:37 GMT -5
no, that's just stupid. . . Just like whoever came up with the criteria for what makes something a living thing. Dont get me wrong I agree with you, its just that if you were to take the criteria it would be "non-living" so we need to change the definition of life, it should be anything that can reproduce and evolve. Also computer virus is just a program, so it is analogous to a virus but it doesn't prove anything. Ahh but its the same, I dont see how they are different other than what they infect and what they are made of, they even reproduce in the same manner. I could say that a virus was just a biological program, and it technically is. And I could even say that we are biological programs, but I would say that viruses are the most basic and simplest of all life so its easy to compare them to a program. But Midori-Tora made a good counterpoint. . . I said that a virus' goal is to kill, but if a virus killed all other cells, they would not be able to reproduce and therefore killing everything would be their own demise. So I guess their purpose would be to kill some, but not all other cells. So then you just refer back to my post to see why that's just plain stupid. Viruses exist purely because of an abundance of "prey" which has little to no immunity against them, their goal is to just keep reproducing as it is for all other life, natural selection just balances everything out (usually). If there was some sort of virus that just mutated into a super virus and they were vertually unstoppable they could wipe out all other life, and so quickly that they probably wouldnt have time to evolve to reproduce on their own or to not kill all bacteria. |
|
|
|
Post by Lobstrosity on Jan 19, 2006 17:27:18 GMT -5
I know all that, I'm just trying to say viruses are alive.
|
|
PowerMad
Silver Member
OBJECTION!
Posts: 127
|
Post by PowerMad on Feb 6, 2006 17:00:16 GMT -5
When you go very deep down they do live, but when you just take into account the humans need to survive, they really arn't a form of life we want.
|
|
|
|
Post by Lobstrosity on Feb 24, 2006 0:11:12 GMT -5
It all comes down to the criteria. Viruses are not alive by the commonly accepted criteria, but they are alive by my criteria.
It's still a very interesting debate to discuss the evolution of the virus though, but maybe it's only interesting to me.
|
|
.
