Evolution, why us?

[faye]

what, you seen it happening? right before your very eyes, like.?

[roadrunner]

It is observable. The guppy spot experiment is one of many examples

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolib.../artificial_01

[Mayana]

Well, take a moth. Moths have been driven by natural selection to blend in with the bark of trees or other forms of camouflage from predators.

Without this ability to blend with their surrounding, they would have a much smaller lifespan.

So evolution has improved its longevity.

As for humans, after reproduction there's not a whole lot of point from an evolutionary point of view. Having humans live longer would only drain resources and not introduce anything better into the gene pool. So perhaps if people were able to live till 400, natural selection would find ways of reducing this value.

Indeed, there are 'adaptations' in all organisms that help them survive. But your very own example, a moth, is attracted to light. If they didn't have this behavioral trait, they would have an even bigger life span - no doubt, natural selection could have selected for a life without senescence, however, senescence is a genetically programmed event. Why?

And on top of that, natural selection does not have a sense of population size - if such longevity could be achieved, it could be achieved by a different allocation of resources, as well. What you are referring to is the population level model to explain senescence, but this explanation does not account for the fact that national selection does not depend on population size. Lack of resources is not the reason for senescence - it's in the genes. Even if you put a population in an environment with unlimited resources, senescence would still occur, why?

[faye]

many fish do this all the time. i have watched some fish over sand, they have a plain or sandy appearance, then if they go to a grassy patch they get a mottled pattern to blend in, or over coral, they blend in with their instant camouflage. if they stayed in the one environment they could just change their colouring to suit. i have seen siganus, rabbit fish, actually mimic a different species of fish, that it was parked next to. i've seen asiganus, which i previously thought was a fish i did not know, turn from black to silver, as i followed it. the same kind of fish, hanging out with yellow fish, took on a yellow hue.

[Notorious Pashtana]

Too many articles being copy/pasted!

In a few simple words, it's all about survival needs and surroundings.

1) Fish have always been in the same water, eating the same food, living the same life, atmosphere, temperature, etc. So apart from a few new "types" of fish, fish remain the same. Except of course they die or migrate according to pollution in certain rivers/streams etc.

2) Humans on the other hand have always had the intelligence to invent and progress, and that’s what they've been doing from beginning of their time on earth. Other animals also live on dry land but are less affected by the changes as they haven't changed their lifestyles! Except humans of course, and instead of explaining changes in every part of the body I’ll just give one part. Teeth!

Teeth for example have changed over time as the need for ripping raw meat vanished. Our "wisdom" teeth for example are no use today and taken out, centuries ago however, our front teeth would be worn out and would fall off, and the wisdom teeth would come in handy as a new set making way, and so forth (a bit like how shark teeth function). So denture structure therefore changed/evolved with time.

And similarly there are reasons for why all parts of our bodies have changed over time (though not dramatically, we were NOT ever apes nor monkeys!)

[roadrunner]

Sorry was squirming over this for a while.

Indeed, there are 'adaptations' in all organisms that help them survive. But your very own example, a moth, is attracted to light. If they didn't have this behavioral trait, they would have an even bigger life span -

It's possible flying towards light is the usual response to getting out of danger when outside in the wild (towards the moon).

So when a light comes on, and a human arrives, the head for the moon, because that's where they usually will go. And when they get to the light bulb, they wonder where to go now.

So they could possibly evolve a bit more. Artificial light might be a recent occurrence in an evolutionary time-frame.

no doubt, natural selection could have selected for a life without senescence, however, senescence is a genetically programmed event. Why?

Some species of turtle don't have any senescence. Hydra also.

In negligible senescence species, reproductive rate doesnt drop with age. In humans reproductive rate does drop. It's thought that senescence confers more vigour towards early reproduction (less mutations perhaps).

But why negligible senescence occurs is a good question. Negligible senenscence has been observed in some species. I think the theory is something like this.

You have a group of organisms, perhaps different species, all adults. Near to these adults are another species of non senescent individuals. Some fanciful mathematics can show that natural selection would favour the presence of these non-senescent "seeds" to replace and maintain the strength of the group quickly.

http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/...l.pcbi.0030256

(this probably explains it better)

The evolution of negligible senescence « Ouroboros

And on top of that, natural selection does not have a sense of population size - if such longevity could be achieved, it could be achieved by a different allocation of resources, as well. What you are referring to is the population level model to explain senescence, but this explanation does not account for the fact that national selection does not depend on population size. Lack of resources is not the reason for senescence - it's in the genes. Even if you put a population in an environment with unlimited resources, senescence would still occur, why?

There's a theory called the Disposable Soma Theory.

The aim of Natural Selection, one of which is reproduction, are best served by having energy spent on reproductive phases, such as gestation, not when organisms are unlikely to reproduce.

So if food is limited, non-senescent individuals would be limiting the number of offspring. Would you say a possibility?

[طالب]

if everything is supposedly energy isn't that alive. i call that life.

Well, of course it is your right to define life that way, but it seems pretty useless and most of all confusing. By that definition, all energy in the universe is life. The Sun is life and a human being is life. Sorry but that definition is simply useless (I mean who on earth would ever consider the Sun, a sphere of hot plasma, an animate object?) and when I talk about "living things", "life" or things being "alive" I go by a definition much closer to the one laid out by wikipedia:

Life (cf. biota) is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes (i. e., living organisms) from those that do not,[1][2] either because such functions have ceased (death), or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate.[3][4] Biology is the science concerned with the study of life.

E.g. a human being is life, a single celled organism is life, a rock is not life.

a lot of what is called science is speculation that is put forward as fact.

Actually everything called science is speculation. Nothing is known 100%, everything is just theories. There is nothing wrong with that, that's how science works! The only facts in science are observations. E.g. you can drop a ball from a certain height and observe it fall to the ground with a certain speed. Those observations are facts.

But what about the theory of gravity, is that a fact? No it isn't, it's a theory. It has just been so thoroughly supported throughout history (We've never observed a ball fly out into space when dropped), that it has come to be regarded as fact by the scientific community.

Thus gravity and indeed evolution have by most people in the scientific community come to be regarded as facts. Read this, I posted it before but you might have skipped over it:

"Science does not proceed by demonstrating that certain theories are irrefutably true. It demonstrates by repeated testing that they are not false. The more a theory is confirmed, the stronger the probability that the explanation it offers is correct. This process produces what amounts to the explanation which best fits the facts we have collected (even if the fit is not always complete). And how does such confirmation proceed? There are two main tests. The first is to make a series of predictions based on the theory and then to explore the validity of those predictions. If a prediction holds, the theory has been confirmed; if not, then the theory has been challenged, perhaps even disproved. The second method of confirmation is to see how the theory accounts for new, unexpected discoveries. Can these be explained in terms of the theory? If so, then the theory has been confirmed; if not, then the theory has been challenged or disproved. By these two tests, the theory of evolution is spectacularly successful: it has been confirmed countless times over the past three centuries (at least). It would take only one discovery to discredit the entire theory (e.g., the existence of a mammal fossil in the lowest rock layers). That has never occurred.

This aspect of scientific explanation gives the method its unique power. Unlike some other knowledge claims (like many of those based on scripture), discrediting or disproving a scientific theory does no harm to scientific enquiry itself. Quite the contrary. It forces scientists to come up with a more refined or a different theory which can better account for the anomaly, and hence it strengthens the explanatory power of science and of particular scientific theories, like evolution.

A number of objectors make a case that goes something like this: Here's a problem that evolution has not yet explained in detail to my satisfaction (e.g., origin of life, evolution of a particular animal species or organ). Therefore, the whole theory is clearly wrong or invalid or "merely" a hypothesis. But no rational mind rejects an entire theory just because it is not complete. Physics is just as incomplete as biology (in the sense that there are many basic problems left to explain), yet no one objecting to evolution on these grounds makes similar complaints about Newton's Laws. In fact, every time people drive their cars or ride in a plane they are demonstrating their absolute faith in those laws. To object that because a scientific theory cannot explain everything, it therefore explains nothing makes as much sense as claiming that because someone does not know every word in the English language, nothing he says in English is worth attending to."

how can you say with the evolution theory, we will just start here, mountain goat, and not at the supposed beginning?

Because questions about the origin of life are red herrings. Evolution (i.e. the development of animal and plant species out of other species not at all like them) concerns itself with the diversity of species once life is established on earth, not with how life first began.

I don't have to lay out any evidence whatsoever for the origin of life in order for my case for evolution to stand. Maybe life was created, maybe aliens brought life from another planet, maybe a magic wizard from Oz erupted from the earths core and conjured the first single celled organism. I don't know and it doesn't matter, all I know is:

1. 3.8 billion years ago single celled organism existed on earth, but there were no humans.

2. Today there are humans.

The origin of life is another, although somewhat related discussion.

so surely the theory of evolution has to begin at the supposed origin.

Well first of all let me state that I'm not talking about the theory of evolution, I'm talking about the fact of evolution. The fact of evolution, the observation that life has changed greatly over time, is explained by the theory of evolution, which is a much larger concept.

The reason evolution doesn't start before the first living organism, is because evolution deals with life, not inanimate objects. I showed you the sequence of events in my picture. First there was a rock, then, somehow, there was life. When life "arrived", it started to evolve. How it arrived is irrelevant.

if a theory is not fitting with what is considered 'science' it is invalidated.

Wrong, if a theory does not fit with observations of the natural world it is changed, and only in the worst of cases is it invalidated.

a few bones here and there and the possibility that some bones may have disintegrated by now, does not prove the theory to me.

A few bones here and there? That's what you call the fossil record? A few bones? There are probably billions of fossils around the world, how on earth is that "a few bones" to you? I urge you to go to a natural history museum and, if possible, speak to a paleontologist who can educate you on the immensity of the fossil record.

...a few bones he said...I have been traumatized...

maybe there is magic which created everything but of course that is not science but it is still a possibility.

Exactly, that's not science and that's why it isn't written in the biology books.

there are many theories about creation and assumptions in the theory of evolution.

I'm not talking about the theory of evolution, I'm talking about evolution. And there is only one statement of evolution: that animal and plant species developed out of other species not at all like them .

the aboriginals in australia believe they were created by the rainbow serpent. who knows, maybe they were but the scientists will tell them they weren't and the creatonists will tell them they weren't but who can prove they were not?

Wrong, scientists won't tell them they weren't. Scientists will tell them that based on current observations it is not very likely at all that they were created by the rainbow serpent. But scientists will admit that they don't know 100% and are always open to new observations and evidence to the contrary.

Creationists will say with 100% conviction that there is no such thing as a rainbow serpent, there is only one God.

That's the difference between religion and science.

what, you seen it happening? right before your very eyes, like.?

I posted the answer to this objection just a few pages back:

Others reject the notion of evolution outright (without reference to the argument) with the simple claim that it cannot be true because no one has ever seen a complete transformation of one distinct species into another (e.g., fish to reptiles). There may have been all sorts of minor developments of one species into another distinct but closely related species (an established scientific finding), but without such visual experience of a major transformation, so they say, evolution is just a "theory."

Well, of course evolution is a theory, just as atomic structures, black holes, electricity, relativity, DNA, magnetism, and so on are "just theories." But so what? We do not have direct visual evidence of these things with our own eyes (who has ever seen an electron or a molecule or a gene with the naked eye?). What we do observe, often with the aid of very sophisticated machines, are larger events which we explain as effects of those theoretical components. Most scientific theories involve natural elements that we cannot see. Those who seriously believe that this objection carries any weight need to become more familiar with the nature of scientific enquiry and the meaning of a scientific "proof."
Science does not proceed by demonstrating that certain theories are irrefutably true. It demonstrates by repeated testing that they are not false. The more a theory is confirmed, the stronger the probability that the explanation it offers is correct. This process produces what amounts to the explanation which best fits the facts we have collected (even if the fit is not always complete). And how does such confirmation proceed? There are two main tests. The first is to make a series of predictions based on the theory and then to explore the validity of those predictions. If a prediction holds, the theory has been confirmed; if not, then the theory has been challenged, perhaps even disproved. The second method of confirmation is to see how the theory accounts for new, unexpected discoveries. Can these be explained in terms of the theory? If so, then the theory has been confirmed; if not, then the theory has been challenged or disproved. By these two tests, the theory of evolution is spectacularly successful: it has been confirmed countless times over the past three centuries (at least). It would take only one discovery to discredit the entire theory (e.g., the existence of a mammal fossil in the lowest rock layers). That has never occurred.

[Mayana]

It's possible flying towards light is the usual response to getting out of danger when outside in the wild (towards the moon).

By that logic, they're flying into fire too, which is much more tangible and dangerous than the moon..

So when a light comes on, and a human arrives, the head for the moon, because that's where they usually will go. And when they get to the light bulb, they wonder where to go now.

But it still holds truth that they are genetically attracted to light and genetically programmed to grow old and die.

Some species of turtle don't have any senescence. Hydra also.

Haven't heard of any non-senescent organisms but I've heard of the potentially immortal jellyfish.. but that's because it goes through transdifferentiation from being sexually mature to being sexually immature. Basically it turns into a polyp and from a polyp to a jellyfish and form a jellyfish to a polyp again. They can turn into polyps again at any given point in time, hence leading to potential biological immortality (excluding external factors such as predators etc.)

In negligible senescence species, reproductive rate doesnt drop with age. In humans reproductive rate does drop. It's thought that senescence confers more vigour towards early reproduction (less mutations perhaps).

Very good point.

You have a group of organisms, perhaps different species, all adults. Near to these adults are another species of non senescent individuals. Some fanciful mathematics can show that natural selection would favour the presence of these non-senescent "seeds" to replace and maintain the strength of the group quickly.

But reality proves otherwise - senescence is present and inevitable. There is no single fountain of youth gene, no single gene that causes aging. If anything, it is a polygenic "trait". Even if an individual is kept in an ideal environment, without predators, without any dangers, the individual will grow old and die.

The aim of Natural Selection, one of which is reproduction, are best served by having energy spent on reproductive phases, such as gestation, not when organisms are unlikely to reproduce.

But what is the point of infinite reproduction? Again, from a strictly biological perspective, why are we born just to grow old and die? And no matter how much we reproduce, all the offspring will grow old and die as well.

So if food is limited, non-senescent individuals would be limiting the number of offspring. Would you say a possibility?

If they are non-senescent, they would not be limiting the number of offspring - they would be increasing the number of offspring. The limiting factor are the resources, not the increased amount of sexual reproduction. But that still does not account for senescence. That would not be a natural death, that would be starving. Why would we grow old, it's not like natural selection can psychicly foresee that resources will be limited so Joe is going to start aging as soon as he hits 40.

[graveyardofempires]

Here, I have made a picture for you in order to make it simple:


Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Radiometric dating. It doesn't matter if it was 3.7, 3.8 or 3.9. It was billions of years before human beings existed on earth. Do you disagree that the earth is billions of years old? Do you disagree that human beings did not exist on earth 4 billion years ago?



The fossil record. There is not a single fossil of a vertebrate animal, including human beings, dated to 4 billion years ago on earth. There has not been found a fossil of a human being dating to 3 billion years ago either. Or 2 billion, or 1 billion, or 500 million or 300 million years ago.



The fossil record shows single celled organisms dating as far back as 3.5 billion years.



So where did human beings come from? Don't say creation, that is not science. You have to use a scientific, natural explanation.



Where did they come from then? Did they appear by magic? 3.5 billion years ago there were no vertebrates. Now there are vertebrates. Where did they come from? The scientific explanation is that they must have come from single celled organisms because living things have only been observed to come from living things. Have you observed anything else?



1. Living things come from living things. EVIDENCE: Happens every day. We have never seen anything else.

2. Living things are different from each other. EVIDENCE: Some living things are vertebrates, others are not.

3. Simple animals and plants existed on earth long before complex ones. EVIDENCE: Fossil record shows that invertebrates existed on earth billions of years before vertebrates. Not a single case has been found to deny this

Conclusion: Humans must come from simple organisms. Why? Because living things come from living things.



You said they were created by a creator. That is not science. Why? Because we have never seen the creator, we have never seen an animal been created suddenly by a creator. There are no observations in the natural world of such a thing occuring. Therefore it is not science.



I'm not the one defining it, that's how science works! Science can only talk about the natural world. It cannot talk about miracles, and magic, and God and ghosts. Why? Because we have never seen it. It has never been observed in the modern world. If it was ever observed, YES science could talk about it, but it hasn't that's why science doesn't talk about it.

That's the difference between science and religion, the natural and the supernatural. Don't you understand?

It doesn't mean that those things don't exist. It only means that science can not talk about it because it has never been observed. We are limited, science tries to explain things from what we can observe using our limited senses.



The theory of evolution is a scientific theory. You cannot include God in a scientific theory.



Here is the detailed answer to your objection:

"Others reject the notion of evolution outright (without reference to the argument) with the simple claim that it cannot be true because no one has ever seen a complete transformation of one distinct species into another (e.g., fish to reptiles). There may have been all sorts of minor developments of one species into another distinct but closely related species (an established scientific finding), but without such visual experience of a major transformation, so they say, evolution is just a "theory."

Well, of course evolution is a theory, just as atomic structures, black holes, electricity, relativity, DNA, magnetism, and so on are "just theories." But so what? We do not have direct visual evidence of these things with our own eyes (who has ever seen an electron or a molecule or a gene with the naked eye?). What we do observe, often with the aid of very sophisticated machines, are larger events which we explain as effects of those theoretical components. Most scientific theories involve natural elements that we cannot see. Those who seriously believe that this objection carries any weight need to become more familiar with the nature of scientific enquiry and the meaning of a scientific "proof."

Science does not proceed by demonstrating that certain theories are irrefutably true. It demonstrates by repeated testing that they are not false. The more a theory is confirmed, the stronger the probability that the explanation it offers is correct. This process produces what amounts to the explanation which best fits the facts we have collected (even if the fit is not always complete). And how does such confirmation proceed? There are two main tests. The first is to make a series of predictions based on the theory and then to explore the validity of those predictions. If a prediction holds, the theory has been confirmed; if not, then the theory has been challenged, perhaps even disproved. The second method of confirmation is to see how the theory accounts for new, unexpected discoveries. Can these be explained in terms of the theory? If so, then the theory has been confirmed; if not, then the theory has been challenged or disproved. By these two tests, the theory of evolution is spectacularly successful: it has been confirmed countless times over the past three centuries (at least). It would take only one discovery to discredit the entire theory (e.g., the existence of a mammal fossil in the lowest rock layers). That has never occurred.

This aspect of scientific explanation gives the method its unique power. Unlike some other knowledge claims (like many of those based on scripture), discrediting or disproving a scientific theory does no harm to scientific enquiry itself. Quite the contrary. It forces scientists to come up with a more refined or a different theory which can better account for the anomaly, and hence it strengthens the explanatory power of science and of particular scientific theories, like evolution.

A number of objectors make a case that goes something like this: Here's a problem that evolution has not yet explained in detail to my satisfaction (e.g., origin of life, evolution of a particular animal species or organ). Therefore, the whole theory is clearly wrong or invalid or "merely" a hypothesis. But no rational mind rejects an entire theory just because it is not complete. Physics is just as incomplete as biology (in the sense that there are many basic problems left to explain), yet no one objecting to evolution on these grounds makes similar complaints about Newton's Laws. In fact, every time people drive their cars or ride in a plane they are demonstrating their absolute faith in those laws. To object that because a scientific theory cannot explain everything, it therefore explains nothing makes as much sense as claiming that because someone does not know every word in the English language, nothing he says in English is worth attending to.

What seems clear in such cases is that the thinking process which produces such objections has nothing to do with a reasonable analysis of a scientific argument; it stems from an absolute refusal to accept that argument's conclusions and from a search (often rather desperate) for anything that looks like an apparent justification for such a refusal. One is perfectly free to reject the conclusion of a scientific argument, of course--after all, it is a free country--but to pretend that the incompleteness of some of the explanations offered by the theory is an adequate scientific reason for doing so is erroneous.

Finally, to argue, as some readers do, that just because we haven't found complex vertebrate fossils (including human beings) in the lower strata doesn't mean they are not there and that thus we should not consider evolution valid indicates a complete failure to understand the nature of scientific reasoning. Should we throw out the theory of gravity just because, for all we know, some day a stone dropped out of a window might fly upward?"



Yes it does, and we can measure it. We can observe it.



Here is another detailed answer:

"Why, many people claim, are scientists not more receptive to creationism. They state that their method invites rival theories, but shut the door on any meaningful discussion. Well, scientists are, in general, very open minded and ready to listen and argue about various theories (although often slow to get involved). But there are two caveats. First, the theory being proposed must be a scientific theory (i.e., capable of producing predictions which can be tested, without any appeals to supernatural causation, and so on). If it is not, then scientists will say that such a claim lies outside of their jurisdiction (i.e., science has no way of assessing the validity or usefulness of the theory). The theory might well be true (whatever that means exactly), but it is not science. This was part of the judge's ruling in the recent (2005) Dover School case which decided that Intelligent Design had no place in the science curriculum (a decision endorsed by the Vatican).

The second caveat is that theory being proposed should not be one which scientists have already discredited, even though the theory might well meet the criteria of a scientific argument. Few scientists, I suspect, would be very interested nowadays in debating whether the sun or the earth is the focal point for our solar system or whether phlogiston is involved in combustion.

Of course, sometimes old theories, once discarded, can make something of a comeback. For example, the inheritance of acquired characteristics, a key element in Lamarck's theory of evolution (and a view shared by Charles Darwin), was rejected in the 19th century after various experiments. However, in recent decades it has appeared again in studies of how environmental factors can affect mutation rates.

When critics complain that scientists are too dogmatic about evolution, they rather miss the point. Within the scientific community there is virtually no argument about evolution as the key metaphor in the development of life of earth, because there is no other scientific theory with the same explanatory power available. The same holds true for theories about our solar system. But I have yet to hear such critics complaining about the fact that Newton's cosmology is too dogmatic and that we need to make room for theories about Elijah's making the sun stand still. The persuasiveness of science arises, after all, because, unlike other systems of understanding the world, it does resolve some issues once and for all."



What deceptions have I given? Please point them out.



Transitional fossils have nothing, whatsoever to do with my argument. Even if there were no transitional fossils my argument would still stand.

Living things come from living things, therefore humans must come from other living things. How the process occured is irrelevant.

didnt read all that but the stupid illustration and your last sentence which says "living things came from living things" made it obvious that you are dodgy again.
living things coming rom living things means they were born of living things not evolved from one another.
so you failed in explaining but hiding behind a sentence.

[طالب]

didnt read all that

I can't force you to read my responses, but I now have an idea of why you fail to understand the point I'm making.

but the stupid illustration and your last sentence which says "living things came from living things" made it obvious that you are dodgy again.
living things coming rom living things means they were born of living things not evolved from one another.
so you failed in explaining but hiding behind a sentence.

The fact that living things come from living things is used to support evolution. It is a part of the evidence substantiating evolution. Another part is the fact that living things are different from each other and a third part is that the fossil record shows that simple organisms existed on earth before more complex ones.

Now if you try to wrap your head around those facts for while, how would you scientifically explain where we human beings came from?

The only rational explanation is that we came from those simple organisms 3.8 billion years ago. Unless you want to put forward the notion that we appeared by magic, or that we were born by a rock or arose from sand?

Sadly we have never observed life magically appearing or being born by inanimate objects, we've only observed life being born by life.

Therefore we must have come from life before us, which, 3.8 billion years ago, was a single celled organism.

[faye]

mountain goat. if you consider energy, the big bang and the sun etc. not alive or inanimate, then that is yours and sciences choice.
i beg to differ, so therefore what i say is useless. i did not say the theory you believe in is not true but i do question it.

[طالب]

Of course, that is your right. I'm happy you question the theory, that's the number one rule in science. If people did not question they would never learn.

[Fahd]

^so u bealive in this evolution things :p
and thats why u think u were Mountain Goat
lol why u screaming in ur avi :p looooool

[faye]

so, only things which reproduce are considered by science to be alive. is that correct?
an atom is not alive even thought many moving things are involved in the structure of an atom.
the definition from wiki is not the only one there.
now you are asking 'who on earth would consider the sun etc alive? well, i do. i think i am not the only one.
you consider my idea about that as useless, where i would consider that sciences definition of 'life' is limited.

[طالب]

so, only things which reproduce are considered by science to be alive. is that correct?

Well, if you really want to go into it, the definition of life is complex. It's difficult to define, and there is no unequivocal definition of life, but in biology the current understanding is that organisms that are alive exhibit most or all of the phenomena:

1. Homeostasis
2. Organization
3. Metabolism
4. Growth
5. Adaptation
6. Response to stimuli
7. Reproduction

So reproduction is one, fundamental, feature of life.

an atom is not alive even thought many moving things are involved in the structure of an atom.

Correct. An atom does not meet many of the phenomena listed above, e.g. reproduction.

the definition from wiki is not the only one there.

No, but it encompasses what most people in this world consider life. I guarantee you that if you ask random people on the street, most people will not consider a rock to be alive, but they will consider a human being, or a single celled organism to be alive.

now you are asking 'who on earth would consider the sun etc alive? well, i do. i think i am not the only one.

Hahaha, but why? The Sun doesn't reproduce, it doesn't have any cellular components. It's a ball of plasma! Who told you the Sun was alive? What about the Moon, is it alive too? Do the Sun and the Moon talk to each other? Maybe they invite Mars over for some chapli kebab?

you consider my idea about that as useless, where i would consider that sciences definition of 'life' is limited.

Well if you've been working on a better definition be sure to let the scientific community know. Actually let me hear it as well, I'd be happy to!