The point I was trying to make and the reason why I'm not strongly for the position that viruses are alive is because I'm not saying that under the current scientific definition viruses are alive. I'm not arguing against that. You can't argue that a definition is not written as it is. The point of this thread was to challenge the philosophical understanding of what life is. I realize that from reading this thread, while clearly some people seized this opportunity to do exactly that, it doesn't seem like some other people realized it and I think that's where I was getting at when I was saying "did you not read what was said", but I think I was also not reading correctly and obviously my opponents were trying to make a point which was not really opposed to my position in this debate. It's like two debates occurring in parallel. In hindsight, it's pretty funny, but it's also sad.
