Primordial Groove

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021121/ap_on_sc/new_life_form_5" target="_blank"> Here </a>

EDIT: Forgot the question: How long until people bring up 'playing god' as a reason not to do this?

[ November 21, 2002: Message edited by: Primordial Groove ]</p>

Krieger

LOL. I already saw some fundies in RL freak out about that story when they heard it on the news.

"They can't do that!" .. "No!" .. "Devil's work!"

sweep

why does it matter, 'how long until they do'- ? The fact remains, if the fact is that god has power over others and the shape of the earth, that these people are playing at gods; they shape the whole world and create the potential for both disaster and growth, on our planet.

I think that it is typically human, and sad, that organisms, contrary to our survival, are created. I would like to see other worlds where carelessness, fear and hatred, exist only to remind us of failure, rather than to assist the destruction of all thinking life

sourdough

whats the big deal,people create new life all the time,all it takes is male and female.

sweep

the methods and physiiological results are similar, but the intentions are different, or lack of, and the overall consequences of creating life.

a backalley rape involving lazy alcoholic 'crack whore' results in disaster for the 'new life'

biological warfare could include 'a clone war'

oh that is soo, star wars

crocodile deathroll

People have be playing god for millennia it is called "selective breeding". Look as what we have done to man's best friend from a 1 kg Chihuahua to a 200 kg Mastiff.
It is just that these days playing god is a little more of an exact science.
But what's the big deal?

MadMordigan

Everytime a person denies sex with another, they are playign god, preventing what otherwise could be a beautiful new human being.

How come common, everyday things are totally accepted in retail, but as soon as they are done wholesale, they are evil?

Gauge Boson

I do agree that it is appalling that so many organisms (specifically, humans), contrary to our survival, are created (a couple hundred thousand times a day).
But these scientists are hatching an evil plan to take over the world with the simplest organism ever known? When you say "contrary to our survival", you must mean that it is definitely bad (or else you wouldn't have said "contrary"). How is that? If you do a little reading into the subject, you will find that there are reasons for this that are very much beneficial to our survival. For example, microbes could be engineered to live only in the filters in power plant smokestacks and feed on pollutants. As for "fear", fear appears to be your position. This project is just one step beyond recombinant DNA, a process that occurs naturally.

crocodile deathroll

One interesting bit of trivia. I have enough sperm in each ejaculation to impregnate all the women in the United States twice over. So that is 300 million "beautiful new human beings" which could of been born.

sweep

these scientists will be funded, and will work for someone, or some organisation, that wants power and control. As a race, we are still in a precarious primitive stage, governed by 'the body'. Greed, dominance, and death are the order of the day. So I don't think an evil plan is the case, although you are correct in suggesting that I do a little more reading.

It frightens me that we possess such power, yet we have no hold over the power of our own bodies, our desires, our beliefs, as stubbornly we cling to them. What are the outcomes?

Undoubtedly, there are many advantages in the long run, even if by 'trial and error' we crush a few thousand lives in the process. My lack of foresight prevents me from seeing the greater good, and the natural urge is to preserve what I have now.

Still, we do not have total control, and the past reminds us of human error, of the horrors that 'man' perpetuates.

god help us! don't abolish us