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Science on verge of new `Creation'
Chicago Tribune ^ | 3-38-04 | Ronald Kotulak

Posted on 03/29/2004 5:33:56 PM PST by dogbyte12

More than 3.5 billion years after nature transformed non-living matter into living things, populating Earth with a cornucopia of animals and plants, scientists say they are finally ready to try their hand at creating life.

If they succeed, humanity will enter a new age of "living technology," where harnessing the power of life to spontaneously adapt to complex situations could solve problems that now defy modern engineering.

"There's nothing we could make that could compete with the predators that are out there and have had 3 billion years to evolve," he said. "Bacteria eat anything. They eat jet fuel, oil deposits, chlorinated hydrocarbons, anything. They will eat anything that we put out there to compete with them."

Another safeguard scientists are designing to provide total control over artificial cells is to make their lives dependent on chemicals that do not exist in the environment. Withdrawing the critical chemicals would result in the death of the cells, particularly if they should escape into the environment.

(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: biotech; crevolist
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To: PatrickHenry
Inventing "facts" is chump change for people who "invent" advanced degrees for themselves.

;-)

81 posted on 03/30/2004 6:45:49 AM PST by longshadow
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To: Michael_Michaelangelo
So give us a definition we can work with in this debate. And no moving the goalposts.
82 posted on 03/30/2004 6:50:22 AM PST by Modernman (Chthulhu for President! Why Vote for the Lesser Evil?)
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To: longshadow
... people who "invent" advanced degrees for themselves.

Such invention is yet another incontrovertible example of ID.

83 posted on 03/30/2004 6:59:21 AM PST by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.)
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To: AllenBarraIsRight
You don't evolve if you are created, you have no reason to.

Nobody "evolves". Evolution occurs across populations, not among individuals.
84 posted on 03/30/2004 7:07:29 AM PST by Dimensio (I gave you LIFE! I -- AAAAAAAAH!)
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To: AllenBarraIsRight
You know, God, Genesis, etc.

No, I don't know until you specify (which you've just done). Pepople have proposed thousands of different gods over the millenia. I'm not about to assume that a person is referring to a specific deity unless they give something specific to that deity in mention.

If humans could create life, how would that prove that God could not?

It wouldn't. It says nothing about any hypothetical god's ability to create life.
85 posted on 03/30/2004 7:10:20 AM PST by Dimensio (I gave you LIFE! I -- AAAAAAAAH!)
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To: Dimensio; PatrickHenry
When did PatrickHenry say that God does not exist? I must have missed that. I've never really seen him express his views regarding the existence of any gods.

Don't you know that PH is actually a deep cover mole for Creationists??? Doubt me, eh? Observe this insidious weasel at work, in this very thread:

Buggsie! I'm delighted to see you here. Truly, I've missed you. You are one of the very best on your side of this endless debate.

You see? This was a coded post to a creationist!

Foiled again, evil one!

86 posted on 03/30/2004 7:24:29 AM PST by Shryke
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To: Shryke
Foiled again, evil one!

It's all that information miraculously coded into my DNA that keeps bursting forth. I can't control it!

87 posted on 03/30/2004 7:29:47 AM PST by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.)
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To: AllenBarraIsRight
If man can create life, why not God?

Why would anybody want to create a god?

88 posted on 03/30/2004 7:41:12 AM PST by balrog666 (A public service post.)
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To: Shryke
Curses. I could never figure out how they got those messages hidden in sentences. The Bible Code was the Evil Atheist Conspiracy's biggest setback.
89 posted on 03/30/2004 8:16:38 AM PST by Dimensio (I gave you LIFE! I -- AAAAAAAAH!)
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To: Modernman
I'll pass on the request for a definition. However, I'll provide you with some characteristics of Life that I and many others believe to be true:

* Living things have a purpose beyond simply carrying out instructions. There is an overall 'directedness' that guides living things and an end-goal that living things tend to move toward.

* Living things have the ability to produce their own movement or actions with energy already within them.

* Living things can initiate action under their own power, but but can also use restraint when necessary.

* Living things seem to be highly organized.

* Living things have the ability to avoid destruction.

In addition, the Origin-of-Life Prize webpage provides the following 'mechanistic' requirements for living things(http://lifeorigin.org/):

A living thing must be able to:

1. Delineate itself from its environment through the production and maintenance of a membrane equivalent, most probably a rudimentary or quasi-active-transport membrane necessary for selective absorption of nutrients, excretion of wastes, and overcoming osmotic and toxic gradients,

2. Write, store, and pass along into progeny prescriptive information (instruction) needed for organization; provide instructions for energy derivation and for needed metabolite production and function; symbolically encode and communicate functional message through a transmission channel to a receiver/decoder/destination/effector mechanism; integrate past, present and future time into its biological prescriptive information (instruction) content,

3. Bring to pass the above recipe instructions into the production or acquisition of actual catalysts, coenzymes, cofactors, etc.; physically orchestrate the biochemical processes/pathways of metabolic reality; manufacture and maintain physical cellular architecture; establish and operate a semiotic system using "signal molecules"

4. Capture, transduce, store, and call up energy for utilization (work),

5. Actively self-replicate and eventually reproduce, not just passively polymerize or crystallize; pass along the apparatus and "know-how" for homeostatic metabolism and reproduction into progeny,

6. Self-monitor and repair its constantly deteriorating physical matrix of bioinstruction retention/transmission, and of architecture,

7. Develop and grow from immaturity to reproductive maturity,

8. Productively react to environmental stimuli. Respond in an efficacious manner that is supportive of survival, development, growth, and reproduction, and

9. Possess relative genetic stability, yet sufficient diversity to allow for adaptation and potential evolution.

Is this what you were looking for?

90 posted on 03/30/2004 9:00:58 AM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
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To: Shryke; PatrickHenry
You see? This was a coded post to a creationist!

Foiled again, evil one!

Another insidious plot has been revealed!

91 posted on 03/30/2004 10:39:46 AM PST by longshadow
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To: longshadow; Shryke
Idiots!
92 posted on 03/30/2004 10:42:50 AM PST by PatrickHenry (FreeRepublic is a jealous mistress.)
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To: longshadow
I can't help it, dammit, it's so stupid it's fun!
93 posted on 03/30/2004 10:46:32 AM PST by Shryke
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To: dogbyte12
More than 3.5 billion years after nature transformed non-living matter into living things, populating Earth with a cornucopia of animals and plants, scientists say they are finally ready to try their hand at creating life.

More than 3.5 billion years after God created matter and living things, populating Earth with a cornucopia of animals and plants, scientists say they are finally ready to try their hand at playing God.

94 posted on 03/30/2004 10:47:58 AM PST by JimRed (Fight election fraud! Volunteer as a local poll watcher, challenger or district official.)
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To: Shryke; longshadow
Some day they may need evolution as thinking improves.
95 posted on 03/30/2004 11:19:09 AM PST by PatrickHenry (FreeRepublic is a jealous mistress.)
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To: PatrickHenry
Dammit, you raised the bar a tad high, no? I can't compete with that.
96 posted on 03/30/2004 11:30:05 AM PST by Shryke
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To: Shryke
I can't compete with that.

But some bright day in the future you may be able to.

97 posted on 03/30/2004 12:43:53 PM PST by PatrickHenry (FreeRepublic is a jealous mistress.)
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To: PatrickHenry
Haven't yet been struck by lightning. Which disproves a whole lot of predictions around here.

Hmmm... you're doing better than me. Last week, mere minutes after posting on an anti-evolution blog site, God smote my hard drive!

98 posted on 03/30/2004 2:29:59 PM PST by jennyp (http://crevo.bestmessageboard.com)
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To: jennyp
God smote my hard drive!

Ah. Justice at last! We don't hear about that happening to the promoters of creationist websites. Although, there was a rumor going around that the folks at DesignedUniverse managed to trash their own website.

99 posted on 03/30/2004 3:39:24 PM PST by PatrickHenry (FreeRepublic is a jealous mistress.)
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To: PatrickHenry
re: I've long suspected that the closer we get to creating life in the lab, the wilder will be the shrieking from the creationist camp.)))

(shrieking) LIFE! LIFE! Give my creation LIFE! Eyegore, throw the third switch! not the third switch, Mawster...! You heard me, throw the third switch!

Courtesy of Mel Brooks.

100 posted on 03/30/2004 3:44:05 PM PST by Mamzelle (for a post-neo conservatism)
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