Abioism

The cover for Libb Thims' draft-stage Abioism: No Thing is Alive, a historical on the defunct theory of life query, from Fernel (1548) to Sherrington (1938), to the "abandon the world alive" (Crick, 1966) advise, to the "life does not exist" view (Dowling, 1998), to the 2009 to 2013 debates, to the coining of "abioism" (Thims, 2015), to life terminology reform, and the present.

In terms, abioism (TR:50) (LH:57) (TL:107), from a- meaning "not, without, or opposite", + bio- (NE:282), the secret name of the "diameter of solar circle with circumference of 888 units", + -ism meaning "doctrine or idea", is the view, doctrine, or conclusion that the conceptualized thing, property, or conjectured state known as "life" (aka bio, vita, or alive) does NOT exist (Thims, 2007), aka the "life does not exist" (Rogers, 2013) ideology, or "nothing is alive" (Benovsky, 2017) viewpoint.

Abioism is categorized, among the six main "life theory" alternatives, as follows:

1. Creationism (god created life on day three)
2. Bioism (certain things are alive; origin not discussed)
3. Emergent bioism (life emerged at a certain point)
4. Gradual bioism (life gradually arose)
5. Panbioism (all things are alive)
6. Abioism (no things are alive)

Correctly, "movement", "reactions", and change do exist; but to classify CHNOPS+ species, e.g. bacteria, plants, animals, and humans, as being "living" species, is but anthropism, with no foundational basis. Abioism, means there is no "bio" or "life" emergence point, in the universe, between the formation of the hydrogen atom, which is not alive, and the human, but rather only increasing forms of powered animation. The term "abioism" was coined in 2015 by Libb Thims as a table header label for this overall viewpoint, logic, discernment, or belief.

Overview

a depiction of abioism, from a-bio-ism, meaning disbelief in the existence of life, showing different proton-electron configurations, with confused "alive" vs "not alive" labels

According to abioism, what was formerly defined as being "alive", e.g. plants, animals, and humans, etc., as contrasted with grey areas of life definitions, e.g. virus or robot, is redefined (Thims, 2015) as a movement or animation property unique to the CH+ or CHNOPS+ group of elements, when heated or powered, in so-called "habitable zone" systems or environments. Basically, certain types of elements have certain characteristic "animation" properties, when heated or powered.

God synonyms

An image of "unlearn", showing the process wherein a person has to unlearn the belief that they are: alive, they die, that "living" vs non-living exists, or that "life exists" (compare: life does not exist).

The scientific god synonym page, gives an overview of where, historically, "abioism" arose, namely as a reaction or counter to the various god-based mythical or magical terms attempted in the last three centuries. Abioism, in short, is belief that there is NO “life / non-life” (German) or “bio / non-bio” (Greek) divide between the formation of hydrogen, which by scientific definition is not alive, and the formation of a human, which is but an atomic derivative of the latter; moreover, neither is there any sort of "emergent" bioism, i.e. life emerged at one point, or "gradual" bioism, wherein one has to concede that the hydrogen atom is "sort of alive", which is "objectionable nonsense" (Einstein, 1932).

The abioism view particularly becomes apparent when one goes searching for the purported "origin of life" in the context and continuity of the "great chain of being", "molecular evolution table", "evolution timeline", or various hydrogen to human mechanism schemes, as hydrogen atoms (or subatomic particles) transform, over spacetime, into humans.

The term "abioism", in short, is the view that, from a physico-chemical point of view, there is NO magical, "emergent", or divine "dividing line" that separates the transition from "inanimate" to "animate" (see: animate things), but rather, the onset of observed "forced", "energized", or "powered" dynamical geometric movement is but a "property" of the proton-electron and photon interactions dynamics of column 14 elements of the periodic table, a "human" defined explicitly as a powered CHNOPS+20E existent.

Publications

The following are the top abioism publications, ordered chronologically; those sections bolded are core reading:

#	Name	Year	Person
	Grammar of Science (§9: Life)	1892	Karl Pearson
	Elements of Physical Biology (§1: Regarding Definitions)	1925	Alfred Lotka
	Man on His Nature	1938	Charles Sherrington
	Molecules and Men	1966	Francis Crick
	Abioism: No Thing is Alive	66AE	Libb Thims

Early views

In the 16th to 18th century, some began to question the presumed status quo and accepted definition of “life”, say as compared to nonlife; one of the earliest was Jean Fernal, who began to question Aristotle:

“The stone selenite holds the image of the moon even to her very phases. The magnet-stone points to the pole star. These are dead things, says Brutus, do living things likewise draw influences from the sky. Did not Aristotle well and truly say, and leave it written for all posterity, that: ‘Heat is the condition of life’?”

— Jean Fernel (1548), On the Hidden Causes of Things

The “defunct theory of life” article summarizes the dozens of thinkers, in the the 400-year progress of this kernel of thought, from Fernal (1548), to Lotka (1925), Sherrington (1938), to Crick (1966).

Agnostic abioism

In 2016, Chad Vance, a philosophy professor at University of Colorado Boulder, in his "The Definition of Life" handout, for his spring class Philosophy 150: the Philosophy of Life and Death, outlined what can be classified as "agnostic abioism", i.e. an undecidedness as to whether believe in abioism (nothing is alive) or bioism (all is alive), having become disillusioned all the semi-modern post Darwin attempts to defined "life", scientifically; the following is the main section:

“There seems to be no definition of life on offer that is not subject to counterexamples. Many of these counterexamples are borderline cases (e.g., viruses, spores, computative models). There seems to be some “gray area” between the living and the non-living that makes it difficult (impossible?) to define what life is exactly. This is known as vagueness. Should vagueness trouble us? Some might think that if there is vagueness then we are driven to the conclusion that either everything is alive or else nothing is. For, if there is no clear cut-off point—no clear division—between inert matter and a living organism, then we might be forced to conclude that there is no distinction to be made at all—in which case NOTHING is alive (or else, EVERYTHING is!)”

— Chad Vance (2016), “The Definition of Life”, Spring

This type of view, however, traces back to the writings of Denis Diderot and Johann Goethe, among other. Libb Thims, of note, floated his mind in this area in 2007, ruminating on the panbioism option up until 2009, at which point it was rejected, as the absurdities began to bloat out of control..

Abioism | Explicit

The following are known "independent" abioists:

1. Dowling

A photo of Dowling (2013) holding a copy of his Schrodinger's Killer App, in which (pgs. 429-30) he describes his abioism position, namely that things such as: Stephen Hawking, DNA, viruses, prions, and crystals are each different types of interesting chemical reactions, and that to draw some "arbitrary line" in an attempt to call one class "alive" and the rest "nonliving" is but a case of "metaphysical silliness".

In 1998 to 2004, Jonathan Dowling, while working at NASA, began to float the idea to his colleagues that, from the point of view of atoms, DNA and entropy, “there is NO line” that separates what we have been accustomed to distinguish as “living” from “nonliving”, particularly when it comes to the measured search for so-called “extraterrestrial” life and theories about making "life-detection systems".

In 2013, Dowling, in his Schrödinger's Killer App: Race to Build the World's First Quantum Computer, eventually published a note on his so-called "there is no line" view:

“When, in 1998 to 2004, I was at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, we would have endless discussions on the definition of life. What is life? The discussions were always hinged on the metaphysical and religiously-infused idea that there should be a ‘line’ [?] — things on one side of the line were alive and things on the other were not. The game was to "find that line". People argued and continue to argue about this endlessly. Should it ‘reproduce’, ‘reduce the entropy’ of its environment, ‘have DNA’, or what? For example, viruses are infectious, reproduce, and have DNA and most vote they are alive (but some not). Prions, which cause mad cow disease, are malevolent proteins that reproduce, are infectious, but have no DNA. Most say they are not alive and say we should draw the line of life between prions and viruses.

My response to these discussions was, there is no such thing as life! There are interesting chemical reactions, like Stephen Hawking, and less interesting chemical reactions, like salt crystals growing in a glass of salt water. There is no line, no ‘breath of life’ separating living from nonliving. That is a metaphysical bit of silliness. We should focus on interesting over boring chemical reactions and forget about this line that does not exist except in our own minds.”

— Jonathan Dowling (2013), Schrödinger's Killer App: Race to Build the World's First Quantum Computer (ref. #88, pgs. 429-30)

This argument, as shown, is but a published a footnote on this, as found in his Schrodinger's Killer App, which is where his argument ended. Nevertheless, he does look quite happy holding a copy of his published book, as shown adjacent.

Here, we can compare the similarly-themed 1956 extraterrestrial life debates of discussed by James Lovelock, while working at NASA as a consultant for a planned voyager mission to Mars, wherein he suggested that to be able to detect “life” on Mars, one would have to “look for an entropy reduction” and or analyze the “chemical composition of a planetary atmosphere” to look for the “equilibrium chemistry” products associated with life. This later prompted Lovelock, in the direction of panbioism, i.e. everything is alive ideology, the direct opposite of abioism. Namely, in his 1974 "Atmospheric Homeostasis by and for the Biosphere: the Gaia hypothesis" article, co-authored with Lynn Margulis, postulated the so-called "Gaia hypothesis", the conjecture that the "earth is alive", and that the atmosphere is kind of like the lungs of the "living earth".

2. Thims

In 2005, Thims made a molecular evolution table, after which the question of which row is "alive" became problematic?

In 2002, Libb Thims, while penning draft chapter ‘What Happens When You Die?’, to his then three-volume Human Thermodynamics manuscript, following thoughts on what exactly is the ‘totality of a person’ at the moment they cease to exist, calculated the 26-element human molecular formula, following several months of study about human mass composition, dietary patterns, and elemental function in humans research. Sometime hereafter, the seeds for what would eventually be called "abioism" (Thims, 2015) began to take root.

In 2005, Thims, building on his former molecular formula calculation of a human, began to calculated "molecular formulas" for all things humans were said to have evolved from over time, down the so-called "great chain of being", and therein made a “molecular evolution table”, showing the molecular development of humans from hydrogen and subatomic particles in about 30-steps, the question of which element "rows" in this table, one is to assign as being "alive" becomes problematic?

In 17 Feb 2006 to 4 Sep 2007, Thims, during the period of drafting Human Chemistry, in the ‘molecular evolution’ chapter (§5), the question of where to assign or define the so-called ‘life start point’, in respect to defining ‘life to be any type of animate molecule’ (pg. 123), be it at the ‘exact second the sun ignited’, before that, e.g. reactions in the gas cloud formed before then sun formed, or in subatomic particle physics reaction before the big bang, or after that point, e.g. in the ‘spark’ of Darwin’s hypothesized warm bond (1871), unraveled into ‘backwards logic’ (pg. 130) and ‘clearly ridiculous’ statements, e.g. that RNA is ‘alive’ by that aspartic acid is ‘not alive’, culminating in the following reconciliation hypothesis:

“There is NO such reality as their being a specific energy-filled ‘spark day’ in the earth’s past in which molecules suddenly became lifelike, alive, or imbued with life, etc., as it is currently believed.”

— Libb Thims (2007), Human Chemistry, Volume One (§5: Molecular Evolution, pg. 131)

In 2009, Thims began to probe Georgi Gladyshev, author of Thermodynamic Theory of the Evolution of Living Beings (1997), with the premise, which he disagreed with, but could not explain thermodynamically how "life" started on a particular day. This turned into an email, then in a published JHT article, that “life” is a defunct theory, as per thermodynamics, chemistry, and physics define things. This initiated a public "defunct theory of life debate", which remained "heated" for about five-years.

On 28 Jun 2016, Libb Thims, referencing Alfred Lotka's 1925 "Regarding Definitions" chapter, gave a talk entitled “Lotka’s Jabberwock: On the ‘Bio’ of BioPhysical Economics”, at the University of District of Columbia, Washington, DC, during the 7th BioPhysical Economics Conference.

3. Rogers

Alfred Rogers (A61/2016) on his “life does not exist” view.

In 1990s, Alfred Rogers began to collect a shoebox of philosophical notes on the idea that “life does not exist”; eventually publishing, in 2013 (WBA: Aug 20), website LifeDoesNotExist.com, wherein he outlined his views about the non-existence of life also commenting on afterlife; the following his his main statement:

“Life does not exist in the sense that ‘life’ is not absolutely different from ‘non-life’. The difference between life and non-life is like the difference between plants and animals. A recent article in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that bacteria locked in Antarctic ice for 100,000 to 8-million years resumed growing when given warmth and nutrients. Could they have been alive for all that time? Could any life processes been going on for that period? If not, can a living thing spend an intermittent part of its life as a non-living thing? I think this is incongruous with life and non-life being absolutely different. During the frozen period all the conditions for life, including the DNA existed, but life did not exist. More commonly many seeds remain viable for many years under certain conditions. They go through a life cycle in part of which they are not alive. Can a living thing be not alive during part of its life?”

— Alfred Rogers (2012), “Life Does Not Exist”

In 2014, Thims found Rogers website, contacted him, began to exchange emails, and suggested that Rogers present his theory at the 2016 BioPhysical Economics conference, Washington, DC. Rogers, however, was unable to attend, owing to a scheduled surgery, and made a recorded video talk, shown adjacent, which Thims first presented as an Atheism Reviews video, co-hosted with Inderjit Singh, as shown adjacent, played at the conference.

4. Jabr

In 2013, Ferris Jabr, in his Scientific American blog article “Why Life Does Not Really Exist”, explained how, in reference to his cat and a K'Nex roller-coaster, that the life/non-life divide is an anthropomorphism, and that in reality, life does not exist.

5. Benovsky

In 2017, Jiri Benovsky, a Swiss eliminative reductionist philosopher, in his “Nothing is Alive (we only say so)” article, penned for the "Alone in the Universe? Conference", Collège de Saussure, Switzerland argued that no thing is truly alive, that being alive is not a property of things, but only a human invention, but without basis; the following is his abstract:

“Finding an adequate definition of ‘life’ has proven to be a tricky affair. In this article, I discuss the idea that nothing is really alive: we only say so. I shall argue that ‘being alive’ is not a genuine property of things, and that it only reflects the way we think and talk about things. An eliminativist strategy will then allow us to free ourselves from the burden of having to find a definition of life, and will allow us to focus on the genuinely interesting properties of living (and non-living) entities.”

— Jiri Benovsky (2017), “Nothing is Alive (we only say so)”

Benovsky argues that we can rid ourselves of belief in life using the "eliminativist strategy". Here, we see a version abioism arisen from thoughts on the idea of "extraterrestrial life", and what exactly this term means, similar to Lovelock (1956) and Dowling (1998).

6. FreakyBit

In 2020, FreakyBit, an anon blogger, in his “I’m Less Alive than Elon Musk”, seemingly inspired by pandemic-laden thoughts on the corona virus, argued, via what seems to be independent thought, that no thing is alive:

“Here is the thing - organisms are by definition ‘living’ things and whether viruses are alive or not is a matter of debate. What do you mean? How is this possible that we do not know if something is alive? Quite simple. Our definition of being alive is not derived from first principles. What is the conclusion from all that? That we do not really know what it means to be ‘alive’. Maybe viruses cause us so much problems because they prove that the thing that we are looking for does not exist in the first place. We assumed that the state of ‘alive’ is a given, that’s our axiom. What if it was wrong all this time? Being alive is a lie. How could we miss that? Nothing is alive. Being alive does not exist. Wait just a moment! - the crowd shouts. This is all BS. You are presenting no evidence, this is just pure speculation, totally unscientific! The angry mob would be right. This is not a scientific theory. Here is the thing - neither is the current theory of ‘alive’. No magical moment happened in evolution at which the spark of god came upon us. I exist. I feel. If I’m unlucky, one day I will stop. We are the same as everything else, just further up the scale.”

— FreakyBit (2020), “I’m Less Alive than Elon Musk”

Thims reached out to this person, but no response was returned; presumably they desire to remain anonymous?

Coining

The 4 Jul 2015 header column, from the atheism types by denial and belief page, showing the six main “denials” (or disbeliefs), as compared to six main “creeds” (or disbeliefs), of the top 30 atheism-inclining philosophers of all time, amid which “abioism”, as a new term, was introduced, in reference to those who “deny life” or deny that life exists.

On 4 Jul 2015 (edit version 25), Libb Thims, while making the 17-column by 33-row "atheism types by denial and belief" table, coined the term “abioism”, as a result of a need to have a concise "term-ism" label for the fourth disbelief column, as shown below adjacent, meaning "disbelief in the existence of life" or "deny life".

On 22 Sep 2015, according to WBA crawls, the term was still un-hyperlinked, i.e. undefined beyond "deny life".

all of which are listed below, in order of chronological arrival, not by term coining date, but by when people began to state or publish views to that affect:

1. Atheism | Disbelief in the existence of god | Coined: Polydore Vergil (1534)
2. Ahereafterism | Disbelief in the afterlife | Coined: Libb Thims (2021) (66AE)
3. Aspiritism | Disbelief in the existence of spirit | Coined: Libb Thims (2015)
4. Achristism | Disbelief in the existence of christ | Coined: Philip Henry (1694)
5. Asoulism | Disbelief in the existence of the soul | Coined: David Weisman (2010)
6. Abioism | Disbelief in the existence of life | Coined: Libb Thims (2015)

These, in short, are the six main types or branches of atheology.

Conferences

In 1946, at Harvard, there was some sort of debate, meeting, or possibly conference of some sort, focused on the topic: “what is life in terms of physics and chemistry”, involving Percy Bridgman and Leon Brillouin, and presumably others. The debate, presumably, was a reaction to Schrodinger’s 1943 What is Life? lecture-turned-book. The result of the debate, was the “Bridgman paradox”, i.e. how to compute the entropy of a person, without burning them.

On 17-19 Jun 2011, Nathan Brown, of UC Davis, and Peter Milat, of MaMa, organized a symposium, at the Multimedia Institute, Zagreb, entitled “To have Done with Life: Vitalism and Antivitalism in Contemporary Philosophy”; conference synopsis:

“‘Life’ is the site of a formidable lacuna. There is no firmly established scientific account of its constitutive properties or the process of its genesis. Varieties of “vital materialism” prone to describing physical forces in terms of an inherent “life of things” have done little to clarify the problematic nature of the concept, and insofar as “life” functions as an empty signifier concealing an absence of theoretical coherence we might be better to have done with it.”

On 28 Jun 2016, Libb Thims, referencing Alfred Lotka's 1925 "Regarding Definitions" chapter, gave a talk entitled “Lotka’s Jabberwock: On the ‘Bio’ of BioPhysical Economics”, at the University of District of Columbia, Washington, DC, during the 7th BioPhysical Economics Conference.

In 2018, Jiri Benovsky, at the "Alone in the Universe?" conference, College de Saussure, Switzerland, gave a talk on “Nothing is Alive (we only say so)”.

Abioism | Book

The six "independent" abioism philosophers, as the 11 Oct 66AE publication of Abioism, by Libb Thims, published the 66th anniversary of the day atoms first seen by humans. The date aligning with the numbers "111" and "666", which are at the magic square and isopsephy root the the term "bio" (NE:282), the circumference of a circle with a diameter of "888".

See main: Abioism: No Thing is Alive

The book Abioism: No Thing is Alive, is scheduled to be published, if all goes as planned, on 11 Oct 66AE (2021AD), the 66th anniversary of the day that humans saw atoms.

Quotes

The following are related quotes:

“If atoms are not alive and humans are made of atoms, then humans are not alive.”

— Joey Lawsin (2000), Originemology (pg. #)

“5,000 years ago people, e.g. Egyptians (3100BC), believed the sun was ‘alive’, now we don’t. 300 years ago people, e.g. Carl Linnaeus (1735), believed that stones are alive, now we don’t. 100 years ago people, e.g. Henry Bray (1910), used to believe the universe was ‘alive’, now we don’t. 50 years ago people, e.g. James Lovelock (1965), used to believe the earth was ‘alive’, now we don’t. 10 years ago all people used to believe they are alive, now a growing number of people, e.g. Jonathan Dowling (1998), Alfred Rogers (2010), Ferris Jabr (2013), Inderjit Singh (2014), among others, don’t. ‘What everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow’ (Crick, 1966).”

— Libb Thims (2016), Note posted in the description section of the Alfred Rogers Abioism video, Jun 23

“I have always considered thermodynamics to be the most beautiful subject that I have come across. I independently thought of an idea linking life and thermodynamics when I was going through a difficult time during my early twenties. I later discovered that Schrodinger had the same idea 60-years earlier, essentially the idea was that life evades the decay to thermodynamic equilibrium by maintaining negative entropy in an open system. Thanks to you I now understand my previous line of thinking to be flawed, and I appreciate the content you are producing on abioism.”

— Dan Pohl (2017), site message (Ѻ) to Libb Thims, Sep 11

“Kudos to Libb Thims, who I understand is the coiner of the term ‘abioism’. I haven't read any of his work yet and so cannot comment on it, but the term rocks! :)”

— Jim Crawford (2018), “Introduction” (Ѻ) to new Abioism Blog, Jun 27

“Oderberg’s idea of immanent causation is a good description of what I mean by ‘self-movement’. If we could not privilege the imminent causes of self-movement above non-imminent ones, then we could not even say that living canines are any more alive than robotic dogs, an assumption that is taken to its logical end in the writings of those who espouse abioism (e.g. Jabr 2013) — the idea that life does not really exist. Moreover, we see how the difference between causes internal to a thing and causes external to a thing can matter apart from their necessity in a functional process. For example, we recognize that a car battery, which cannot hold a charge and is in need of a jump, is “dead” in contrast to one that can turn the starter when prompted by the ignition. While the faulty battery might be able to still complete an electrical circuit and permit the circulation of current so the driver can make a pit stop at the auto parts store, he dare not turn the engine off before he gets there, unless he wants to jump the battery again. By saying this, I do not mean to draw an analogy between human death and the death of car batteries, but to highlight an important feature of the causal story about a thing, which can in turn provide us with knowledge about the condition of a thing.”

— Adam Omelianchuk (2019), “The End of a Human Organism as a Self-Moving Whole”

“I must have watched that Alfred Rogers [abioism] video (Ѻ) at least five times.”

— Ram Poudel (2019), comment to Libb Thims over lunch, Chicago, summer

“The greatest minds in history. My big influences are in the top 2000 list: Goethe (my strongest influence), Newton, Einstein, Leonardo Vinci, and Libb Thims. Thims has influenced me in my: atheism, my determinism; I became interested in thermodynamics; I discovered the work of Goethe; my understanding of intelligence changed; in my work ethic (work hard, study hard, don’t waste your time; in unlearning the idea that I am alive. Nothing is. I learned about Beckhap's law, the influence of latitudes on the intellect, the way in which books and the search for self-taught knowledge can change the entropy of the body.”

— Zadquel Lugo (66AE), Tweet, May 4

End matter

See also

• Colloquial defunct speak
• Defunct theory of life debate
• Life terminology reform
• Terminology reform

Works

• Thims, Libb. (66AE). Abioism: No Thing is Alive, Life Does Not Exist, Terminology Reform, and Concept Upgrade (pdf). LuLu.

Further reading

• Anon. (2019). “I recently came across a belief called ‘abioism’ (life doesn’t really exist). What are the best arguments against it?” (Ѻ), Quora.
• Anon. (2020). “Recently, I’ve come across a belief named ‘abioism’ in a YouTube channel which means life doesn’t exist. It made me very sad and depressed. What should I do now?” (Ѻ), Quora.

External links

• Abioism – Hmolpedia 2020.