[silverleaf]

Once they've managed to construct an artificial organism by assembling chemical units, only the most obstinate will continue to argue against the possibility

OK Sparky, once they've "managed to do" that, in the lab or on a supercomputer, get back to us for more discussion of how they plan to jump their life form forward to mankind or something artifically equivalent.

Until then, molecule-to-man is an assumption and does not address how to create the molecules they are tinkering with. A child with enormous intelligence and an unlimited supply of building blocks could build the Golden Gate Bridge or an artificial equivalent....I'll concede that it "could" happen... But my suggested experiment is to put alll the world's intelligent children in an empty room and let them build the blocks, first. Which you support is possible in theory.

Signed, Grasshopper

[snarks_when_bored]

We're not talking about the same thing, I guess. I'm not talking about making atoms from scratch (I'll leave that up to Big Bangs and supernovae and the like). I'm talking about taking chemicals (amino acids, etc.) and assembling them into artificial organisms. I'm sure that at first such organisms will be quite rudimentary. However, perhaps we'll figure out a way to encourage a kind of hyper-evolution to take place in the lab, thus producing hardier and more varied sorts of organisms. As for an artificial man, that's for the more distant future.

...molecule-to-man is an assumption and does not address how to create the molecules they are tinkering with.

If you read the article I linked to, you'll note that the lab guys are talking about constructing organisms molecule by molecule. They're not talking about making molecules from scratch. Why would they be? There's no need to do that. Nor was there any need to do that when the Earth was young; there appears to have been a wide array of molecules of many sorts available in the early soup from which life arose.