Destiny is also an invented construct. Unless the future is real in some sort of physical way other than unrealized potential collapsing of probabilities, destiny doesn't exist any more than purpose does.

To put it another way, plenty of other species have gone extinct. Just because we haven't yet and can actually think about it, try to infer some greater meaning into it, doesn't mean we are marked for specialness or that there IS a greater meaning.

Its the existential conundrum.

Or to put it ANOTHER another way, survival is what life forms ARE, its not what they DO.

I suppose I'm being enlightened here, I didn't know that a cloned neanderthal would be carried and birthed as a normal child, but still, not from an egg and sperm, but from bits and pieces of DNA. Playing God, shouldn't be done. By using DNA to form a living being, we're bypassing our Creator, the giver of souls, which is wrong any way you stack it.

Lol...that's absurd. God created them both. If that is problematic, let's say Nature created them both, but not the clone.

Because we have stepped on His toes, creation of life is His territory.

I also don't like the ethical quandaries this raises, and I'm one who generally supports fringe ideas such as this. But there's a difference between harvesting stem cells from embryos and creating a living, breathing, THINKING creature. It's not like a mouse which has no understanding of what's going on around it. Neanderthals did pretty much everything we did, and I know I wouldn't want to have been brought into life just to be poked and prodded.

Speak for yourself. WE didn't do anything.

Your God sure seems to have a problem with us playing with the tools he gave us. Maybe he shouldn't have left them lying around. There is no reason an omnipotent power would have to allow us the capability to do these things in the first place except that apparently He wants us to.

The Jews figured this out a long time ago. Talk to a Jewish scholar and he will probably tell you that stem cells, genetic engineering, are GIFTS from the Creator. Don't quote me on it though.

Myles, that is a purpose you gave it. Life itself doesn't care. If it doesn't reproduce, it doesn't reproduce. The universe doesn't have an opinion on it and most life is too stupid to see that that is what its doing - it just does.

Bacteria don't CHOOSE to survive. They just do.

How about an army of Dick Cheneys?

Just imagine, if they can clone a neanderthal..what they could do with a good DNA sample from Hitler or Stalin?

No matter what, it will give copy and paste a whole new meaning. But apparently they have had it here in the south for years, they just call it 'cousins'.

Ah, the universe=/=life. Life does care, life does reproduce, life does have an opinion. Look at any primate. It will let it's offspring die so that it may survive and produce more offspring in the future. It's a painful choice in the process of survival.

The universe will go on until it's end(however that may be, this isn't that dicussion), life will not. Life actively tries to continue it's existence, it certainly does care.

So.... he's been banging my (now) ex-wife and later two girlfriends?

I knew it.... The biology lessons in school were all bollocks.

Anyway, got an address for this fella? I'd like to know where I can forward the claims for child support to.

Myles, when you can demonstrate how a bacterium cares, in the usual sense of the word, an emotional interest, in whether it lives or dies, then I will admit that life has a 'purpose' other than just a 'defining characteristic'.

How you will do this when its just a bag of self-copying chemistry, I have no idea.

You seem caught up in the process of rationalization and understanding, which I agree animals other than ourselves lack(debatable, some animals have varying levels of awareness and understanding).

Tell you what, if it didn't reproduce, would you still call it life?

So how can a trait that is inextricably linked with what it is be called a purpose. Its like calling the purpose of grass, GREEN.

Snowy, you are hilarious!!! 

Everything life does is to survive. Grass is green so that is can survive, thus survival is is purpose. If grass were red it would have harder time getting energy from the sun, but it's purpose is to survive, so it's green.

Purpose explains why things do what they do. Life does things to survive, thus that is it's purpose.

Purpose does not require rational thought. All it requires is is external forces. Asteriods have no intended 'purpose', they were left around for no reason other than they were extra. Life has no intended purpose from the unverise, however, because it is aware, in however small of amount, it has created it's own purpose - survival.

If life didn't do things to survive, life wouldn't BE. Survival is what grass is. Green is what grass is. If survival wasn't what grass is, grass wouldn't BE. If photosynthesizing wasn't what grass is, grass also wouldn't be. It would be something else.

If life didn't survive, it wouldn't be life.

Purpose is something you have attributed to it. A reason. It doesn't exist outside of your head.

A hammer has a purpose which we gave it. Pounding nails. If I took away that purpose, it would still be a hammer - meaning a shaft of wood connected to a blunt metal headpiece.

(Not trying to change your mind about it, just explaining myself)

When a complex animal such as the female shark will asexually reproduce when it has no mate, I would say that that was life doing what it had to survive. That every species cannot do the same does not mean it does not want to survive as well. Some just adapt better than others.

I agree, but if they didn't DO it, they wouldn't be alive. So its not like its some additional trait added on after the fact to give us a reason for them, for why they do the things they do. Its just what they ARE already, independent of what we may think of it.

Life is essentially defined by the ability to reproduce. Of course the line between it and fire is pretty narrow. There are other traits but reproduction is the biggie.

(fire eats fuel, excretes ash, breathes air, exhales CO2, grows and multiplies, etc.. etc.. etc..)

Now is where I say The PURPOSE of fire is BURNING.

I get what you're trying to say. However, it's a difference in philosophy. Life created itself with a purpose, to reproduce and survive. The universe doesn't care - it will apathetically destroy you in one of millions of ways on a whim. You're right in that with no conciseness, you can't understand purpose. But because we, and animals, are conciseness on some level, we do have a purpose even if it isn't one demanded by the universe 

Also...a mother protecting her young is insuring survival of the species. A mother mourning her  young is acknowledging the loss and that it didn't survive.

"Life created itself with a purpose, to reproduce and survive."

Tell me, in all your experience, have you ever seen something 'create itself' with a purpose in mind before it was created and thus able to conceive of that purpose for which it created itself?

To me, life's defining characteristic is that life can augment the world around it to make it better for survival. Fire doesn't/can't do that.

"Fire doesn't/can't do that."

The original life killed itself off by creating oxygen as a waste product. I'm not sure I would say that those primordial organisms weren't alive.

If you were to ask me (and you haven't) I would say the difference is the degree of organization. Life can be viewed as a slow fire, that carefully regulates itself in order to maintain its own internal environment. It responds to the environment in order to maintain itself. Fire doesn't have that level of regulatory control.

Actually, yes, we did. There was a short span of Human History where we, Modern Humans, and Cro-Magnon man, co-existed. We forcibly hunted them down and wiped them out and also interbred with them. Occasionally, even today, genetic throw-backs are born. Have you ever been walking down the street and seen a person with a very pronounced and sloping forehead? This is a recessive trait and that re-asserted its-self.

For a brief period though, Neanderthals did exist at the same time as modern humans.

Ok, being a Redneck, I'm sure you've heard of the Cloned Sheep named "Dolly". So, does Dolly not have a soul? Is it a soul-less monster that is shunned by other sheep? No. The other sheep accept her and treat her as any other sheep. If we have souls, so do animals. I happen to love my pets very much and I refuse to believe that they don't have a soul just because they are a "animal". We Humans are animals too.

Ok, before I say this, let me say I am NOT a Racist or Nazi in any way-shape-or form. Anyway, on to my point...

Hitler was a Genius. He was a Political Genius. He was an oratory Genius. Arguably he was a Military Genius as well, though personally I think he made a Huge Blunder by invading Russia. Had he not invaded Russia and he and Stallin would have "Allied", I imagine the "Third Reich" would still be alive and well today. Hitler betrayed Stallin when he launched the invasion of Russia. Although the Americans and British like to think "They" defeated the Nazis, without the Russians pressing from the Eastern front, the western forces would have had a much bigger fight on thier hands and might not have won had Hitler have had access to all the forces he lost fighting the Russians.

Again, I'm NOT defending Hitler or what he did. Even though he was considered a Genius in some aspects, he was still crazy and a mass-murdering, racist, psychopath. By the end of the war he had broken down to the point where any "Genius" that was left was swallowed up by paranoia and schizophrenia.

If "God" didn't want us to have the knowledge he would limit our understanding, wouldn't he? Why would "God" let us Clone anything if he didn't want us to? Why would he let us drop Atomic Bombs and Kill Million of People unless he wanted us to? Free Will? Our own bad decision making? If Man-kind was created by God, in His image, then that would only lead to reason that all the knowledge we have was given to us By God. Perhaps "Made in His Image" means more then just "looking like" God. Maybe "in His Image" means we posses All the knowledge of God as well, we just haven't learned how to use it correctly yet.

Then again, according to the Bible. We were all stupid until Eve bit into the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. God didn't want that to happen though, did he? No!!! He forbade Adam and Eve from tasting of the fruit of knowledge. Why? Didn't God want us to think for our-selves? Or did God want a bunch of mindless followers?