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Your elation over the advance of our knowledge is fine, rifleman . . . and it is an impressive accomplishment (if rather dangerous). But it adds nothing to your delusions about your non-God "Nature" God nor your misapprehensions about what would be required to eliminate our Creator. Replacing our Creator with human "mimickers" only validates the idea that we are created in God's image and likeness . . . including His creative abilities. Let's face it . . . we didn't "get our own dirt" to work with . . . and we "copied" the DNA design in an existing genome and modified it. Hardly original or all that creative.
I appreciate your kind thoughts, Mystic. What it does, in effect, is reduce to dust-bunnie status the absoluterequirement that a Godly element be present to "spark" life, to "create" it, to make it "reproduce" (with occasional but predictable errors) and thus to generate "Evolution".
Now, I acknowledge that you personally fully accept Evolution; you are, after all, far from dumb, and one of the more gifted minds here. Too much so many. But regardless, you must also admit that all of those elements, and so many more rather ethereal ones you have tried so hard to define, have been absolutely mandated over the centuries to be purely the domain of God.
Yep; when these creative folks at the CJV Research Institute do design and create a new simple life form and then let it go for a few generations, why would we not expect the same identical results to Richard Lenski's breakthrough benchmark 2008 study where he proved that an existing organism can, through natural mutation events, create a new organism that can then take advantage of a previously un-utilized opportunity?
Let's review:
1. We can now assemble the simple requisite amino acids from elemental components.
2. We can now physically place them in a functioning sequence which we can also now reliably read from an existing organism.
3. That new organism takes on all the definors of life: vitality, existence, response to stimulation, reproduction. And then...
4. If we watch it for a while, perhaps even within the first few generations (it doesn't have to take 22 years as Richard Lenski's happened to...), Dr. Lenski's astounding work show us it can and will make use of chance mutations and consequent new-found faculties to better itself. And then faithfully reproduce those changes into it's lineage.
All absent any praying or bright white lights appearing in the corner of the lab one night. or weird humming sounds, or an angelic new lab assistant arriving to take over?
Pretty amazing set of accomplishments, would you not agree? Not exactly wild scientific drink-induced assumptions either, sorry guys.
So. Anyone here want to bet their 2011 total earnings (before taxes) that the same lab types, diligently crouching in their basement labs, won't eventually publish that a really simple organism they created has made several leaps from uni-celled, limited genome, to uni-celled large-genome, to eventual multi-celled genome?
Or that we might even find a way to accelerate the mutation regime, so that we can have a proto-lemur become a proto-hominid?
Let's face it, Mystic. The idea of a singular creative force applying guidance within the Universe is, well.... quaintly romantic. But that's all, since He/She/It are now no longer necessary. No, we don't know how "it" all happened yet, but at least we know how to ask the questions. And, apparently, get good answers.
All absent the shrill caterwauling of those who would have us reject all we have learned, only to have us return to pitchforks & torches, wooden and brass icons screwed to the end-walls of really wonderful big buildings, fervent but pointless prayers and mass imaginative storytelling.
I'm sorry: I'm still on too much of a high to stay here much longer. I'm real interested in what might be on the news tonight. Of course, Fox, being the NeoCon Channel, will no doubt relegate it to the last item, just after their announcement that frozen TV dinner sales were down at WalMart this last week.....
Meantime, ain't logical investigation simply wonderful? You never know what they will come up with next, do yah?
And all this time I thought diamonds occured due to a process intense heat and pressure deep in the earth being applied to relativly pure chunks of carbon.
So........ from what you say,they just appear in the ground??? Dang that is so cool!
That *is* a natural process. And when I speak of diamonds vs. cubic zirconium, I'm speaking of natural diamonds vs. laboratory-created artificial diamonds.
Sarcasm and head-smacking are not required -- but then, neither is taking somone absolutely literally.
This discovery may throw a monkey wrench in creationism,though I doubt it.As someone said,they will always adjust their beliefs to accept or deny new scientific findings.
But this is no problem at all for Christians like myself who believe in abiogenesis,since we didn't believe that God waved a magic wand or something to begin with.
It proves that scientists can create life in a lab. Nothing more or nothing less. I don't get why you think this somehow demonstrates that there is no God?
Or maybe I've been attending the wrong churches, hang out with the wrong Christians, attended the wrong colleges.....
Well, yeah you have actually, since Christianity has no connection whatsoever with the Creator, whatever he/she/it is.
This discovery may throw a monkey wrench in creationism,though I doubt it.As someone said,they will always adjust their beliefs to accept or deny new scientific findings.
But this is no problem at all for Christians like myself who believe in abiogenesis,since we didn't believe that God waved a magic wand or something to begin with.
And that's why, my friend, you are one of my favorite thinking Christians. I may even have to request a friend status with you!
Quote:
Originally Posted by achickenchaser
It looks like one of the creationist favorite talking points is about to become extinct.
Like co-existing dinosaurs?
BTW, I caught Dr. Ventnor talking this afternoon on NPR. He was very unassuming, and quite conservative about this staggering research result. They cut to an interview just 8 months ago where he thought this would take much longer to achieve, but then he also told the Feds 3 years ago that his genome mapping project was going to be finished way ahead of schedule. They didn't believe him and then he finished 2 years ahead of time. Or was it 4? Can't remember; anyhow, the man is phenomenal. He utilized daisy-chains of computers, including asking private scientifically inclined citizens if they wanted to help him by linking their Macs, etc. into his system overnight and let all those processors work on the human genome project simultaneously.
amazing what the power of positive, enlightened thinking can do, huh? Versus stultified, suppressed and denialistic mentalities can prevent.
Wow great scientific advancement. When a sentient being raised from primordial ooze is produced give me a call. Dump that synthetic cell in a pond and see if it doesn't become some amoebas lunch in a nanosecond.
After the Gulf Oil spill news (those BP execu-liars need to have to drink or bath in that water, as should that big-biz hack, Rush Limbaugh, who said it would all just evaporate, or would just leave a slight haze on sea life, like rubbing them with a little Vaseline!).
Anyhow, the news correctly noted that this would be scientific headline stuff over the next while. You bet it will! As it should be.
Well, enjoy it all, folks. An Historic Day indeed.
This astounding but oft-predicted announcement just on the wire from the highly credible, not-for-profit Craig. J. Ventner Research Institute in San Diego, CA. They have succeeded , after 15 years of painstaking, unbiased biological and chemical research, in creating synthesized, reproducing life by first creating synthesized DNA (made from common amino acids), and then creating a living, self-sustaining cell. As follows:
"The team synthesized the 1.08 million base pair chromosome of a modified Mycoplasma mycoides genome. The synthetic cell is called Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 and is the proof of principle that genomes can be designed in the computer, chemically made in the laboratory and transplanted into a recipient cell to produce a new self-replicating cell controlled only by the synthetic genome."
Well, can't say you weren't warned. I even mentioned this probability this very morning, on an earler post, that scientists were close to synthesizing life in the lab. It's been well known in the scientific community that the Brits have been synthesizing DNA for several months, and this was just the final step.
I now solemnly predict we'll hear the raucous sound of "but... but... but...", like the sounds of two stubborn billy goats out in the farm yard, ramming into each others' heads to prove their point.
No wait; that's wrong. That would more correctly be "Butt - Butt - Butt". Well at least I'm happy to admit when I'm wrong.
Oh I know; this will also be dismissed as "Oh...yeah.. well... well... yeah, but when they produce a cat overnight in a test tube from Drano and old Coca-Cola, then I'll believe it! This ain't REAL life; it's only a single cell, and what does that got to do with God's Holy Creations?"
(And to think; it also wasn't done by hooking up the test tube with jumper cables as was suggested earlier today! And God didn't reach down and stir anything, not even once!)
Well, Just a sad prediction on the likely IDT* responses.
Anyhow, HUGE congratulations, Dr. Ventner and dedicated crew. From all of us loyal scientists and citizens: wenever stopped believing in rational thought.
____________________
IDT* Intransigent Dogmo-Theists.
So, lets get this straight! These scientist were able to create life, but not really because all they did was copy God's design. And they did not really create life, just a genome and stuffed it into an existing cell, created by God. And yet the scientists are getting credit for creating life???
I don't care if they can create from chemical components an entire human. They are still copying someone else's design. And just because they can do it in the lab is not supporting evolution. All it is supporting is that humans are finally figuring out what God did originally. And he did it in with all of creation in six days.
Good try rifleman, you are being faithful to your master!
Wow great scientific advancement. When a sentient being raised from primordial ooze is produced give me a call. Dump that synthetic cell in a pond and see if it doesn't become some amoebas lunch in a nanosecond.
Yep, but in that real primordial pond, it would probably procreate in monumentally large proportions, given exponential reproduction and all, and an organism's typical predators usually develop after the prey resource has reached "usable" population size. So the prey gets to create a viable population first, and only then typical predator-prey population dynamics take hold, with the predators dying off when their favorite food becomes quite limited.
Anyhow, this is not about such inticacies. You could apply the same logic to a Godly creation model. Why, after all, if He created wolves or coyotes or sabre-toothed tigers (some of which we're told apparently "lovingly" co-existed with man, har har..., they all having been created at the same moment)., why wouldn't those aggressive animals similarly kill off all those nice, warm juicy Neanderthal men? Thus, how come we survived, huh?
Because, gentle reader, that's not how it works.
Face it: the bio-sciences are not some arena for simpletons where you read a paperback novel one summer and are then an expert. These San Diego scientists are professionals, with literally decades of painstaking experience and documentation under their belts. Similarly, many of us career professional scientists have understandings somewhat beyond the "Yep; but dump it into a pond and it'll be gone in minutes" conclusions.
BTW, this is exactly as I predicted: some guy who wants us to show a lab-generated cell "evolve" into a cat in a test-tube, overnight, originally "created" out of Drano and Coke™. Since that's not how it works at all, why would you ask for such an illogical, implausible event?
It only shows a nearly total absence of scientific literacy. That I'd be a little ashamed to flash in public, myself. It's why I always respectfully decline to provide an evangelical bible-based intonation or scripture reading and analysis at any important public events: I know next to nothing about what so-and-so said in such-and-such a Book. And yet, here they care, spouting "science" facts off the tops of their pointy little assumptive heads...
I believe it's called "Knowing One's Limitations", yes?
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Aaaaaand... we're off!
