"If living things didnÂ ’ t reproduce , then life would quickly disappear : and since life has existed continuously on Earth for nearly four billions years , then life must be able to reproduce ."
"While that may be true of life in general , all it really logically entails is that SOME Â– not all Â– organisms throughout all of lifeÂ ’ s history were able to reproduce . And at a smaller scale , it does not apply to any individual organism : it doesnÂ ’ t tell us that in order for organism X to be considered living that it must reproduce ( take for example , mules ) . Must All Living Organisms Die ? An implicit assumption in the last several arguments is that all living things must die . After all , if a living organism didnÂ ’ t die , then it wouldnÂ ’ t need to reproduce in order to persist , even for 4 billion years . We need to ask , Â “ Does this assumption of universal death hold ? Â ” Yes , well , at least for all instances of life that we currently know of . Thus , it is a conclusion based on induction , not on necessity . Consider a species capable of repairing itself indefinitely . Sound far fetched ? Well , we humans ourselves are desiring to do just that . And to an extremely limited degree , we have succeeded . Of course , we still have an enormous distance left before fully succeeding , but if we were to eventually do so , then could it really be said that reproduction is a requirement to consider humans as being alive ? No . WeÂ ’ d be like Â “ immortal mulesÂ ” : weÂ ’ d be alive , yet incapable of reproducing Â… but unlike mules , we wouldnÂ ’ t need to be continually replaced by reproduction . After all , we could stop reproducing ( women might really like that idea ! ) and instead focus on repairing those that currently exist . Perhaps , though , we Â “ immortal mulesÂ ” , by simply repairing ourselves and maintaining the status quo , would still somehow die : after all , nature shows us that those organisms that donÂ ’ t adapt to the ever changing conditions on Earth just donÂ ’ t last . Perhaps the changes in our environment would be too dramatic to be handled by simply replacing what is damaged with a new part . This line of reasoning fails since our intent is not simply to repair ourselves , but to improve ourselves as well . Humans intend to direct their own bodily evolution , either via installed hardware or through genetic manipulations , adapting our bodies to changes in the environment . And if we ever reach this ultimate goal ( is it a good goal ? ! ) , then we could save energy by modifying our bodies to eliminate the no-longer-required processes involved in reproduction . Conclusion Based on the above lines of reason , I assert that reproduction is not an absolute requirement of life : that something could be considered to be alive without it necessarily needing to be able to reproduce ."
"continuously on Earth for nearly four billions years , then life must be able to reproduce ."
"that something could be considered to be alive without it necessarily needing to be able to reproduce ."