Aquila ka Hecate

Hi Tercel O Avis,

You know, it may not be a 'major theological doctrine' of christianity, but one does get rather tired of hearing it.



<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22we++can%27t+create+life%22&btnG=Google+Sear ch" target="_blank">Google on "we can't create life"</a>

jankin

That's what I said. This was a simple virus, but there is no qualitative barrier to more complex forms.

So you are a mind-body dualist then? AFAICS, the "mind" (including "active conscious awareness") is am emergent property of the brain, which is itself a result of DNA data (plus experience). See <a href="http://www.naturalism.org/" target="_blank">http://www.naturalism.org/</a> for data.

Simple - take chemicals, synthesize compounds, and create code that has reproductive capability and is indistinguisable from the "wild type". If you accept that smallpox is "alive", you have thus "created" life. Period. (If not, I need a better defnition of life.) Next step is a procaryote - some sort of bacteria; my guess would be yeast as we have the greatest amount of data on it. Then eucaryotes (need to deal with mitochondrial DNA as well). Bilipid membrane encapsulation we can already do via current efforts in nanotechnology. Then we move to Volvox (commensal systems), followed by differentiating commensals. All this is by quantitative increases. The "big" thing is that supernatural "magic" has been removed from "life"; removing supernaturalism from "mind" will also come.

- jankin.

phlebas

Interesting stuff. Thanks for the article, jankin.

But don't expect to change Tercel's mind, or any other hard-bitten Christian's mind. You could invent a machine where you dump a bag of Bisquick in one end, and a fully grown human walks out of the other. A human indistinguishable from other humans, except perhaps a little disgusted by eating waffles.

The Christians will fall back to how he doesn't have a "soul" and is therefore "not true life."

Tell me if I'm wrong, Tercel.

Psycho Economist

Well, of course... any "man-created" life isn't really life, because it can never have a soul. That's why we shouldn't clone people, either... When could God gift the unborn child with an immortal soul, if there was never a conception?

These was an actual point of contention in the Senate's debate on banning human cloning. (I was watching C-SPAN2, Don't make me buy transcripts of the debate.)

And people said the same thing about in-vitro fertilization, until the kids were born and turned out normal, too.

Pseudonymph

To be honest, if we were able to synthisize say, a baby or something completely from scratch, would christians really be persuaded? You created something by applying your intelligence and "design" to it. They would just say that this was the same as God did.

I don't understand how this would make christians upset at all.

<img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Bobby B.

Virus's are just molecular machines that have the ability to reproduce themselves by hijacking the machinery of cells that are alive. In other words, I don't think of them as being truly "alive".

Virus's are also vastly simpler than even the most basic plant or animal cell. If anyone ever does create even a basic cell with the thousands of enzymes required, all working happily together, that will be major news.

Unfortunately, I think this is one area that Creationists may be able to have a leg to stand on. The creation of the most primitive life is a huge leap from a Stanley Miller type of experiment of mixing some basic chemicals together, zapping them with electricity, and getting life. From what I know and understand, there is still not even a remotely good explanation on how primitive life actually started. (I personally suspect we never truly will, but that doesn't mean it was supernatural).

jankin

You have just reduced "god" to human size, or elevated mankind to godhood. In either case you have destroyed anything special about this deity thing and fundamentally destroyed the christian conception of their deity (as I see it). If we can do "it" (and this god-thing exists), then one of the obvious conclusions is that this god-thing is as apparently stupid as the horribly make-do physiological design parameters seem to make out. What idiot runs a sewer system through the middle of a playground (the uro-genital system), and purposefully crosses air supply systems with fluid and solid transport tubes (in the throat/pharynx)? If you're arguing for ID, I see no evidence for it.

- jankin

p.s. as for viruses not being "alive" - nothing can reproduce without a well defined and supportive environment suitable to its level of complexity. It is purely arbitrary to claim that a cell that can reproduce is alive, while a virus that can reproduce is NOT alive. The leap from the number of genes in the smallpox virus to the number of genes in a simple bacterium is on the order of 100 fold (as far as I recall; may be 1000x). This provides no barrier that I can see (other than money requirements).

p.p.s. On the origin of life - there is quite a bit of work on the sulfur plumes in the deep sea providing sufficient energy as well as biochemical "soup" top provide alternate routes to organizational complexity. It need not be open ocean plus lightning.

jankin

Soul? What's that? Show me one. I presume you mean something that can be differentiated from mind? If so, it must be that imaginary organ that has never been discovered in surgery, nor found missing in autopsy, but has been asserted loudly to exist by some, which is afflicted by another imaginary disease called "sin," for which a set of social and economic parasites claim to have the only effective treatment and cure, i.e. group ritual psychotherapy practiced without a medical license or malpractice insurance, called "salvation," which must be purchased and paid for while alive but whose efficacy and safety can only be demonstrated after death, from which state we have had no credible reports as to the truth or falsity of these claims.

And my taxes go up to make up for their property and income exemptions. Yuck. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

- jankin

Tercel

Yes.

That's nice. But the creation of a virus doesn't seem to prove that. And I cannot actually think of any possible experiment that would prove that position true or mind-body dualism false - they're philosophical positions not an empirically provable ones.

How? Do you mean it shows the creationists that evolution is clearly possible? Well, newsflash there - plenty of Christians accept evolution.
But even creationists will just respond (I have seen them use this argument before) with SirenSpeak's point - the creation of life in the lab wasn't a matter of mixing a few chemicals with a little electricity, but rather was a complex process that was at every step careful designed and controlled by intelligent beings.

In your dreams!


<strong>Phlebas</strong>
I suppose it's theoretically possible that a humanly created being might not have a "soul" (In which case I believe it would be obvious that there was a problem, ie I would expect them to be mentally incapacitated)... but that would significantly lower my opinion of God - if he's a quarter of the super-powerful being he's supposed to be, I'm sure he's quite capable of combining a soul with a newly created body especially given that he does it all the time whenever anyone's born...

leonarde

From the OP: Well, to the extent that I can follow the science of the process described I don't agree with the
above characterization: "Life is an emergent property of matter itself..." suggests to me that
this happened spontaneously, or at least under conditions that may well have existed in the remote past without the role of any intelligence. Instead it reads (to this layman)like
a painstakingly difficult process based on knowledge acquired by human scientists (ie human
intelligent agents) over many decades (if not centuries). The synthesis was apparently accomplished by exploiting knowledge of pre-existing viruses of a similar type. In other
words, to me this all seems to be a type of 'intelligent design', and not a spontaneous process at all. Here the scientists seem to be 'filling in' for any (alleged) deity. The metaphysics (ie soul) I am agnostic about.

Cheers!

[ October 29, 2002: Message edited by: leonarde ]</p>