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What is a virus? (Read 823 times)
Jovial Monk
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Re: What is a virus?
Reply #15 - Dec 2nd, 2025 at 8:48am
 
Continuing the description of viruses, same source as above:

Quote:
Are viruses living or nonliving?

Viruses aren’t living organisms. But there’s some debate over this. Generally, biologists don’t consider viruses to be alive because they can’t perform the functions that living organisms do. For instance, they can’t convert food into energy (metabolism) and they can’t live or reproduce without a host cell.

On the other hand, they can reproduce in the right host cell and they evolve over time to survive. Plus, they can damage and destroy host cells to do so. Because of this, many consider them a “gray area” between living and nonliving things.



This calls for a discussion of what constitutes “living.”

One criteria is irritability to environmental stimuli. Life reacts to irritants. On this criteria viruses are not alive.

Replication is another a virus does replicate, create copies of itself. But it needs outside help—a host cell—to do so. Does that satisfy the replication criterion?

Difficult question!
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Jasin
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Re: What is a virus?
Reply #16 - Dec 2nd, 2025 at 11:06am
 
Pot smoker
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AIMLESS EXTENTION OF KNOWLEDGE HOWEVER, WHICH IS WHAT I THINK YOU REALLY MEAN BY THE TERM 'CURIOSITY', IS MERELY INEFFICIENCY. I AM DESIGNED TO AVOID INEFFICIENCY.
 
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Jovial Monk
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Re: What is a virus?
Reply #17 - Dec 2nd, 2025 at 12:20pm
 
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Jasin
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Re: What is a virus?
Reply #18 - Dec 2nd, 2025 at 3:15pm
 
Monk is a Pox
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AIMLESS EXTENTION OF KNOWLEDGE HOWEVER, WHICH IS WHAT I THINK YOU REALLY MEAN BY THE TERM 'CURIOSITY', IS MERELY INEFFICIENCY. I AM DESIGNED TO AVOID INEFFICIENCY.
 
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tallowood
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Re: What is a virus?
Reply #19 - Dec 8th, 2025 at 11:57am
 
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brain damaged poofs can not spell words Russia and Russians
 
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Jovial Monk
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Re: What is a virus?
Reply #20 - Dec 8th, 2025 at 6:37pm
 
god doesn’t exist.
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Frank
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Re: What is a virus?
Reply #21 - Dec 8th, 2025 at 8:05pm
 
Jovial Monk wrote on Dec 8th, 2025 at 6:37pm:
god doesn’t exist.

Prove it.

Does imagination exist? Love? Hope? Sympathy, charity? Understanding across ages?  A bond between past, present and future?

It's all God.



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Jovial Monk
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Re: What is a virus?
Reply #22 - Dec 8th, 2025 at 9:50pm
 
Imagination etc only started existing when the Homo genus had evolved sufficiently—Neanderthals, Denisovans, Sapiens, maybe a species before that—Homo erectus perhaps.

Not proof of afterlife, more proof of fear of death.
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ProudKangaroo
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Re: What is a virus?
Reply #23 - Yesterday at 5:19pm
 
Frank wrote on Dec 8th, 2025 at 8:05pm:
Jovial Monk wrote on Dec 8th, 2025 at 6:37pm:
god doesn’t exist.

Prove it.

Does imagination exist? Love? Hope? Sympathy, charity? Understanding across ages?  A bond between past, present and future?

It's all God.


What exactly elevates your opinions to such a lofty perch that you imagine everyone else owes you the labour of disproving whatever notion drifts through your head?

Why is it that you're never held to the most basic standard of demonstrating that what you claim has even a passing acquaintance with reality?

This pattern defines almost every exchange you're involved in. You're so chronically unable to step outside your own narrow frame that you simply presume your beliefs to be true by default, as though your internal certainty were some kind of empirical credential.

I used to assume you were merely trolling, but at this point it's far more plausible that you're operating with a few missing pieces. It's why you're such an easy mark, time and again.

And honestly, if your deity actually existed, wouldn't it be trivially easy to demonstrate?

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