Posted on 06/28/2007 6:50:09 PM PDT by Edward Watson
Scientists could create the first new form of artificial life within months after a landmark breakthrough in which they turned one bacteria into another.
Craig Venter likened the process to 'changing a Macintosh computer into a PC by inserting a new piece of software'
In a development that has triggered unease and excitement in equal measure, scientists took the whole genetic makeup - or genome - of a bacterial cell and transplanted it into a closely related species.
This then began to grow and multiply in the lab, turning into the first species in the process.
The team that carried out the first “species transplant” says it plans within months to do the same thing with a synthetic genome made from scratch in the laboratory.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Of course it's scary and the claims of "playing God" is constantly leveled against these scientists. However, we've been playing God since we've developed vaccines and dentistry - imagine how miserable our lives would've been without these benefits.
Granted evolution is junk science, there’s no reasonable way to think that a benevolent God would create biting flies, mosquitos, chiggers, ticks, disease organisms, and the sundry creatures of Pandora’s box. More likely is that man or something like man in some past age acquired the power to engineer and re-engineer complex life forms and that the creatures of Pandora’s box are the result. You need to think about stuff like this before jumping into it.
YEC INTREP
It’s like the quickining
To me this doesn’t sound like anyone is “creating” life. It sounds like they’re changing bacterial life from one to another. It is interesting stuff.
The actual creation of life seems to be well out of our reach at this point.
So.....the original man-like creators came from.....where?
But the common cold is still a pain....
The basic system of life i.e. RNA/DNA is clearly the work of a single pair of hands, i.e. God’s. Moreover it is provable that macroevolution is unworkable. Nonetheless evidence suggests that the re-engineering of life forms was a cottage industry of some sort in the recent past of this planet and that more than one pair of hands was involved. God wouldn’t need 100 subtypes of horses and again there is no reasonable way to picture God having created biting flies and ticks.
I figure if we discuss the issue and make sure were not passing boundries that will ultimately undue us in morals and in life...then it will be okay.
Not sure with this. We haven’t discussed this enough.
Ping.
They can save a lot of time and money - there's already a lot of artificial life running around the halls of congress
One word describes this: “Frankenstein.”
I'm more inclined to go along with your original timeline if even that isn't a bit optimistic. There is nothing "basic" about even bacterial life - it is astoundingly complex and we still do not understand when or why a major portion of the existing genome is transcribed, or a very great deal beyond the initial translation. When you place a genome that is known to be working into an infrastructure that is known to be working you're taking a very great deal for granted that you won't be able to when attempting it with a hand-made genome.
You can cheat, and the intial experiments probably will - you can attempt to replicate a known genome by sticking together a sequence of known alleles. That would be quite an achievement in and of itself, but "artificial" life it would not be. IMHO, of course.
"Creating" is not the same as "transforming".
“Nonetheless evidence suggests that the re-engineering of life forms was a cottage industry of some sort in the recent past of this planet and that more than one pair of hands was involved. God wouldn’t need 100 subtypes of horses and again there is no reasonable way to picture God having created biting flies and ticks.”
Oh, yeah, sorry about that. Those are my fault...
If we could speed it up and turn a T-Rex loose in the Senate chamber next week, I’ll give these guys a big contribution. ;)
What has a T-Rex ever done to deserve something like that? Of course, it would be feeding on familiar flesh - dinosaurs.
This isn't nearly the same thing. Mechanical fixes to problems plaguing human kind is not the same at all as creating new kinds of life with who knows what consequences.
We're (they're) messing with things that are way beyond our ability to understand or deal with. My concern is that this could result in the creation of something that could get way out of control. Look what happens with embryonic stem cells unexpectedly causing aggressive tumors. What happens if some form of life extremely aggressive or harmful is created and gets, or is let, loose?
The potential for abuse is way too great.
Got yours yet?
“More likely is that man or something like man in some past age acquired the power to engineer and re-engineer complex life’
You seem to be confusing possibility with probability. And the probability is vanishingly small. If we must maintain the charade of a religious mindset here, let’s just agree that God is bsically an underachiever.
This article is overimplying what has been accomplished here. There’s another version of it floating around here where the guys who accomplished this readily advise that there is no life being created from scratch here. However, they do think they see how to get there.
Yes, I saw it just now.
The comments were more, ahem, ‘interesting’ than the article itself.
Ward Churchill: Fake Indian, fake education, fake artist. A complete fake.
I’d like to clone George W. and have the clone clean toilets in Mexican jails!
“I’d like to clone George W. and have the clone clean toilets in Mexican jails!’
Not me. The clone didn’t do anything wrong. Make the original clean the jails.
Kinda like grafting...No creation here!!
At this rate, it should be possible to create new multicellular life forms by 2020 and new mammals, like the mammoths, by 2030-2040. With any luck, I’ll be able to see currently extinct creatures walking the earth again in my lifetime.
Just make something that will wash my windows. OK?
Lovely, just what we need. Scientists creating bacteria that will likely eliminate all human life (accidentaly of course).
Just because you can do something isn’t reason to do it.
There is a line in the movie, The Green Berets about an explosive experts who as a kid had a chemistry set that got bigger than him and his Dad both. ;)
This sounds very similar.
God created large critters that bite (Lions, Tigers and Bears). They fell with the rest of creation. Those small critters that bite serve a purpose. Remember; not even a sparrow falls from the sky without his providence.
They are not creating new life forms but mutating existing cells. Wonder how long till something goes wrong and it escapes from the lab?
He's ahead of YOU.... I mean, if you've managed to create anything as complex as a dog or cat lately and gotten it to work, let's hear it.
If man is the creation of a perfect creator.... either man is perfect or the creator is imperfect. I can’t even make my own vitamin C, but my dog can. The dog, in that respect, more closely approaches perfection than I do.
Hmmmm. Maybe there’s a reason God is dog spelled backwards.
Is Jehovah a pooch?
Might be one of those things where if God made anything perfect it would live forever here on Earth and never get to see paradise. That would be sort of a raw deal when you think about it.
I’m thinking of the lyrics,
When I die I may not go to heaven,
I don’t think they let cowboys in.
If they don’t, just let me go to Texas,
Texas is as close as I’ve been.
If I was going to live forever, I think I prefer to do somewhere like earth. From the description, existence in paradise sounds like it would get boring the first day — and then what?
Apples and oranges.
It's certainly a mystery, but the most reasonable explanations that I've heard are either that a) before the Fall man was unaffected by these things or; b) after the Fall, Nature fell in some way too.
Yup. There is only one true Creator, since only God can create something from nothing.
I tend to agree. From what I’ve seen, there are some pretty wonderful things right here; some may even be in Texas. If one was to live forever here on Earth, just think of the places you could visit and the understanding you could achieve - just think of the frequent flier miles you could rack up!
“Apples and oranges.”
Yes, I see your point. As we know them, apples and oranges are both the product of human ingenuity.
Groundhog Day comes to mind.
Quite true. An entertaining film that raises some interesting concepts.
One thing we know about Heaven is that it isn't what is presented in the Philadelphia brand cream cheese commercials.
1 Corinthians 2:9The paintings of God sitting on a cloud, surrounded by cherubs, were created in a symbolic language. Angels, for example, are purely spiritual beings, composed only of intellect and will. They are often depicted in medieval paintings as heads with wings, representing their nature as aeviternal intellects.Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has ready for those who love him.
It's hard for our finite minds to imagine eternity as not being boring. But keep in mind that God is pure act; there is no potency in God; unlike all other creatures. God can be conceived of as "the eternal now." Keeping in mind the principle that that which is received is received according to the mode of the receiver, for us to experience God directly (which is what Heaven is, seeing God "face to face") in any meaningful way, we must be elevated above our own limited human natures. This phenomenon was termed "deification," by some of the early Church Fathers. And our bodies will be glorified, as was Jesus'.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.