Reply #58: so when do you propose that "an individual" was not alive?

[mike_c]

The question makes no sense whatsoever. Neither you nor I became "alive" at syngamy. Rather, two already living haploid cells fused and the resulting diploid zygote began a process of cell division and self assembly, guided largely by maternal materials distributed in the egg cytoplasm for much of its early development.

You might think this all "has a nice zen ring to it" but it is indeed how reproduction occurs-- there is an unbroken genetic chain extending all the way back to our last common ancestor, about 3.5 billion years ago.