The debate not only between Darwinists vs ID continues:
Are viruses dead or alive?
If viruses are dead, what makes them “animated”?
If viruses are alive, are they another life form?
142 thoughts on “Are viruses dead or alive?”
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The admins ignored few of my last OPs on COVID19 because they presented the views of experts with the alternative views of the pandemic…
I figured that the best way to make TSZ visitors to see the issue, is to look at the pandemic starting from the foundation of the problem: the origin and function of viruses.
What fucking debate? You are not capable of such.
Take a glance at what the educated consider a suitable format for a debate.
https://outspokenela.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/the-oxford-union-guide-to-schools-debating-copy.pdf
Fuckwit.
The origin of viriuses were that they were designed, right? And the function, apparently, is to kill people because that’s what your designer/god/invisible man in the sky wants.
Any other questions?
Fuckwit?
They were not ignored. They were discussed, and a decision was made that it would be wiser to not publish them at this time.
Yet you address neither of those in your “OP”. As usual IDists want others to do their work for them.
According to J-Mac, what is the origin and function of viruses? That would be the least an honest interlocutor would provide in such an OP.
Out of interest, have you heard of chemistry?
Censorship!
J-Mac. Take a leaf out of one of your intellectual soulmates book and start your own blog and post your OPs on that instead rather then hitching on others coattails.
http://intelligentreasoning.blogspot.com/
In fact, why don’t you drop JoeG a line and ask if you can do your OP’s as guest OP’s on his blog. It seems to me that it’s a much more suitable venue for your particular “output” rather then constantly posting OP’s that make no sense and which you typically don’t even bother to engage with once posted!
If viruses are alive, are they another life form?
J-Mac. April 12th, 2020
In my reading, everyone who has attempted to define “life” has come up with some list of attributes such that it’s possible to find what everyone agrees is alive but doesn’t qualify according to that list, and/or something that is fully qualified but everyone agrees isn’t alive.
Viruses are the minimalist parasites – they can’t reproduce on their own, but they certainly can evolve – they have genes. Google helpfully informs us that viruses can be killed in numerous ways, but they can’t die because they were never alive! So what happens to viruses deprived of living cells to conscript as reproducers? Do they just hang out indefinitely, or do they have some time limit after which they deteriorate? There are probably people here who know.
‘Dead’ or ‘Alive’. Next comes the definition war, and the whole stupid word-game starts. All over again. All for precisely zero purpose.
Oh, it’s 5 o’clock already?
5 o’clock it is…😉
And the reasons for not publishing them at the time were… the usual ones…?
Seems like a natural fit for BIO-Complexity, or maybe The Blyth Institute.
Designed by God so that people would have something to thank him for when it’s all over.
The central link of all life is nucleic acid replication. So on those grounds, yes, alive, although it replicates in a curious way, by hijacking the replication mechanism of another organism. Of course, many people hate this ‘DNA-centric’ view of life (I know, it’s RNA in this instance), so argue their asses off about how nucleic acids are a mere tool of ‘the system’, incapable of replication without it.
Viruses are very similar to certain transposons – in fact, the one may be derived from the other, in one direction or the other. They exist at a fuzzy boundary between discrete, self-contained entities and ‘selfish’ genome fragments.
Some can survive for quite a long time, others deteriorate quite rapidly. RNA is a less stable material than DNA, especially single stranded, so Coronaviruses are among the shorter-‘lived’ types – a few days max, depending on environment, though their RNA has been found on Diamond Princess after 17 days. That doesn’t mean viable virus, of course.
Basically, all nucleic acids are subject to constant attrition – UV light, hydrolysis, spontaneous isomerisation. One could see the ‘central directive’ of all nucleic acid to be to get replicated before this attrition takes it beyond viability. Because you get exponential growth from a few rounds of replication, the ‘message’ is thereby more likely to survive the attrition of any given instance of the ‘medium’.
Allan Miller,
This is very disappointing, Allan. You have raised the tone so well, I’m hesitant to mock!
There seem to be more important questions about viruses than whether they fit a definition of living or dead. Are they good or evil? What colour are they? How do they smell? (Terrible!)
We could have a poll.
Alan Fox,
I did kick off with a mock! And I’m sure there’ll be plenty more opportunity.
The OP is not about a virus but about language.
Because faded_Glory is completely right: What makes you say that viruses are “animated”?
Are viruses dead or alive?
Empty cockle shells on a beach are dead objects, but viruses cannot be compared to these.
Viruses are made up of living substances and so I would say they are alive. But when we think of viruses we cannot pick a virus at any one moment in time and declare that to be the virus. We must look at its life cycle as a whole. A virus is not just an inert object, it is a living process. It goes through stages of being active and of being dormant.
Here we have a polar opposite, sinister version of the tale of Sleeping Beauty. They are woken up by the kiss of the host cell which unleashes their destructive activity.
Unattached viruses are not dead, just sleeping.
Good. Let’s not do that then.
How are you defining ‘living substance’, non-circularly?
This is my read, too. As such, I lean towards “alive”. I will note, however, that whether one calls any particular virus ‘dead’ or ‘alive’ has absolutely zero bearing on what the virus does or is. It is a purely semantic debate regarding the meaning one ascribes to the word ‘alive’. The virus is unaffected.
Yes, as Allan has noted, they will decay through a variety of processes. Enveloped viruses (responsible for most viral infections of humans except the common cold) are rather more fragile, falling apart under heat, dessication, or detergents.
Hence the hand-washing advice.
Substances that are observed to be formed within or by living beings. Proteins and nucleic acids are living substances. All viruses are born within living organisms.
… and which have “inner activity”, if I recall correctly. We discussed this, including how the artificial synthesis of organic compounds discredited the concept of vitalism a long time ago.
In that thread I also linked to a reasonable definition of life. Viruses do not meet it.
J-Mac is welcome to try and shoot holes in that definition, but I would appreciate if he motivates his reasons.
This is pure ignorance…embarrassing…
This is an argument from ignorance…
Are cars evil? They kill people, which must mean they weren’t designed and therefore evolved? 😉
J-Mac,
Not sure you have strong ground to stand on.
Many were observed:
unfolding phage tail fibers latching on to bacterium
piercing the membranes of cells with its extending tail and injecting its DNA/RNA
Viruses look and behave like microscopic machines…
I attach a video so that 5 o’clocks hopefully get it, though it is extremely doubtful…😉
That’s circular though.
It’s a joke (at your expense; I don’t expect you to get it).
Really?
You may have jumped the gun…
Nothing new. You can just pretend that nothing happened, just like our beloved admins and the rest of Darwinists here…😉
Who cares?
You spoke for more than few here, including many 5 o’clocks and those who don’t want the “pink dress”…😉
I agree
So we did. From your first link:
They then list seven properties: organisation, metabolism, homeostasis, growth, reproduction, response and evolution. All of these can be observed as belonging to the history and lifecycles of viruses.
To define life is an impossible task. All we can do is describe the attributes that we find life to possess. To speak about the life cycle of viruses is to assume that they are living entities.
Those are bacteriophages. What about viruses in general?
Get what? What is the point you are trying to make?
Is it your position that viruses are alive? If so, why not just make that case?
Ah, finally you get off the fence. So you believe viruses are not designed because they kill people, and your designer would not do such a thing?
So, where to viruses come from? And how is it that viruses can defeat the will of your deity and do what it does not want to happen?
Once you step off the fence you will find life gets much more difficult. You will then have a position to defend. Presumably this is why you don’t want to step off the fence, you know you cannot mount a credible defense.
Growth? Not sure I get you, can you be more specific?
But that’s the argument you seem to be making. If viruses were not designed by god, where did they come from?
Like I said, life is impossible to define. Like love it is above the restrictions imposed by definition. We can ask, ‘what is life’? But the answer given will never be complete.
A little further down viruses are discussed:
Not life then, at least according to this definition, but I’ll agree that viruses are well into the gray area.
As long as those attributes are clearly observable (which “inner activity” is not), I am fine with that.
A virus replicates within the host by means of its genome. Replicating any genome is a growth process, it has to be built up piece by piece.
And machines need a creator to make them, right? So therefore viruses are designed by your deity to do exactly what they are doing?
If not, why not? Where is the flaw in the logic? According to J-Mac where to viruses come from? These microscopic machines, as you say, must originate from somewhere. So where?
They did not evolve, you seem sure about that. So from whence they came? Perhaps they came from the same place you pulled this OP?
But that’s not ‘growth’ that’s replication.
Differentiate growth and reproduction. Or note why they appear twice but mean the same thing.
You can use comparisons and ask:
Do viruses resemble any life forms we know, like bacteria, that they infect? The answer would have to be clearly NO. They are missing many fundamental components of life as we know it. And yet, viruses are clearly animated, performing functions resembling machinery…
I think I can spot a watchmaker.
Phoodoo once argued that living organisms are machines. Do you agree with him?
Clearly, the answer is YES. They share the same genetic code, the RNA strand behaving in the same way as cell messenger-RNA