Perhaps I was not clear enough but I thought I made it obvious in my post, that this was just a "stream of thought" at the time, it is not a belief of mine. If you read the second half of my op, then it should be obvious that I am deeply questioning whether there is possibly no purpose at all and rather a result of random occurance.

This is kind of surprising but so far no one has really put forth any ideas in the area I was hoping for. What I'm really thinking about is the possibility that the drive to regenerate is really just a random mutation that happened in early life on earth and the will to survive/reproduce may be meaningless rather than purposeful as a result. The idea of survival/reproduction being inherently purposeful is clearly held by at least several posters on here believe since they thoughtfully answered my original inquiry on reproduction with "to survive, duh."

isn't this actually reproduction ? At least it uses the same device, so "human being" last 100 years because their cells reproduce. It's just more complex than orignial cell splitting.

Take a water soup with CO2 and N2, some electromagnetic processes to shake it up and wait a billion year. You'll get by luck (hence the "statistic" word) some unstable assembly of complex more or less stable molecules. Only a few of them (if not one) will turn out to reproduce themselves, and the unstable assembly can "last" because it is rebuilt at each stage. Stable structures (especially in water where electromagnetic binding is kind of weak) turn out to be either too simple or too small (crystal structures or small molecules).

If we take this reproducing mechanism as the definition of "life" (i challenge you to come up with something better), the stupid question of "why reproduction" has a stupid answer, which is "because of reproduction". That's my entire point, a trivial answer to a stupid question.

Obtaining stable beings is another debate, in several billions of years, we may come up with some super future monkey whose individuals can last long enough to colonize outer space. I don't know, and I don't care. But reproduction is far simpler (and funnier).

You dont know that, and its sort of silly to state it so matter of factly when you are arguing with someone for doing similar. It might be certain or inevitable.

No, this isn't the same as reproduction. Unless you want to very trivially define it this way. So, the only thing that doesn't count as reproduction is the single life span of a single-celled organism? By your definition, growth of multi-cellular organisms counts as "reproduction". You're being absurd here. There's a big difference between cellular "regeneration" and sexual reproduction. The cell activities are different.



You've begged the question and you're equivocating on "reproduce"...see above.

Because it feels so damn good.

The only way to make sense of this statement is to take some absurd requirement for "know". We have no reason to think that life is inevitable; we have no reason to think that beings can't have very long life times. On the other hand, we DO have reason to think that life is extremely unlikely; we have reason to think that beings CAN have very long life times.

So...what's your point, again?

Sure it "may" be logically possible that life is inevitable; that reproduction is inevitable...that doesn't really say anything, though. Mere logical possibility isn't what we're talking about.

There sure seems to be a lot more evidence for "presently living things cannot live longer than thousands of years" than "presently living things can live arbitrarily long," which is essentially what you're arguing elsewhere in this thread, so this smells like ridiculous bull****. While it's fine to say that reproduction is not a logical necessity because hypothetically you could have some undying living thing that has been around for billions of years, the point that living things as we know them eventually die does suggest that "living things reproduce because otherwise there wouldn't be any" is the answer to the question OP poses, at least about life on Earth as we know it. Feel free to troll away on "but what are living things and identity anyway, man?" if that floats your boat though.

No I'm not

That's not what you asked

RGT is one step down. Thou should be honest?

It's not trolling...it's a legitimate argument. Perhaps you should consider the merits of it more closely. If we hadn't known of a living thing lasting more than 100 years, imagine the shock of learning that something can live 1000 years...or 10000 years...or now 100000 years...that's 3 orders of magnitude away from what we thought was the oldest possible living being.

Durka/ its just a bit besides any interesting point. Mankind may become effectively immortal, some thiink quite soon. Maybe somehow they then lose interest in reproduction.

It doesn't change anything interesting, we can just change the argument to be about types of living organisms that persist far longer than any individual lifespan.

If some type persists beyond its individual lifespans then it either reproduces (ardvarks) or is the product of something that does persist (ravioli) . Recurse intelligently or descend to RGT.

How is it besides the point? And, further, how does discussing philosophy mean that one must "descend" to RGT? We discuss God a lot in philosophy, you know. But God has nothing to do with what we're talking about here.

The simple answer is there is no logically necessary reason for organisms to reproduce in order to still be here. Furthermore, the interesting point is whether it's physically (not merely logically) possible for this to be the case.

The latter is what we're discussing.

However, in order to have gotten there, we had to go through why it's logically possible for it to be the case (which disproves the logical necessity of reproduction...which was what I was originally responding to).

Sure but its no more interesting than saying that ravioli doesn't logically require a ravioli maker because there might be some indestructible pasta.

You've missed the point entirely, then...because the discussion had moved far past "logical possibility".

It's really not relevant in the context of the OP, though.

this doesn't answer your question, but I've come to think the reason humans have such an urge to reproduce is because 90% of them they're bored with their own lives, so they have kids.

pretty selfish iyam, especially nowadays.

No, because OP's question was very quickly "answered" because it didn't really need answering. This discussion is more interesting imo.

moved straight passed it to close to logical inevitability but so what?

but my apologies for interrupting. I never said you're point was wrong, just dull

while I'm straying off-topic.

Anyone seen the trailers for the new film on Darwin. Doesn't look like a geat film but I love the title.

What has moved to logical inevitability?

I was speaking of moving past the logical possibility of arbitrarily long living organisms. Others did what I think you're thinking of and moved too quickly to inevitability of reproductive organisms coming about...and that discussion was addressed early...but that isn't what's going on now.

the existence of long living organisms.

Now its just the exceedingly dull matter of contingent fact.

Perhaps you'd be better off in another forum?

You said that its NOT certain, its NOT inevitable. That it did not have to happen.

Thats an awfully bold claim, and one with some hefty implications, especially in RGT. I happen to agree with you, but I think you'd have a hard time actually logically supporting your claim. I know I do.

And thats without even getting into the whole "you being a nit about the logical possibility that things could live for billions of years" thing.

Really? It's awfully bold? No it's not if you're a naturalist. I kinda thought we were working on that assumption here if we're talking about evolution. Creationists aren't welcome in that discussion.

If something didn't reproduce we wouldn't call it life. We made it part of the definition. There are plenty of things that don't reproduce, we call them non-living.

How would any part of the op belong in RGT? If you bothered to actually read the whole of what I wrote, it is obvious I am talking about science/philosophy. It has nothing to do with religion or theology.

I get the feeling most of you just read the title and maybe the first few lines of posts while desperately waiting to say something yourselves before giving in to the temptation. You would learn more listening than intensely spamming out ideas and arguing/troll-raging philosophy forums. Though I guess I am just as big of a cosmic schmuck for saying that while knowing there is almost no chance someone like that would be willing to listen to such a suggestion.