[_ Old Earth _] partially synthetic life

[Brah]

Synthetic in the sense that they put the genome together from scratch which is still extremely impressive imo.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/ ... -life-form

A lot of people are uncomfortable with this kind of control over life theistic and atheist alike so i figured it would be a cool topic to get started.

As for me I'm all for it. (as long as it has a dozen fail safes that is)

 

[Barbarian]

This is troubling on many different levels. It's an impressive feat, of course, but we are moving toward the production of a totally synthetic form of life far too quickly for comfort. As you say, a lot of safeguards need to be in place.

And historically, safeguards have never lasted very long.

 

[John]

They are using intelligence & design (& spending lots of money and time) to try to demonstrate how life could arise by chance without intelligence & design?! :rolling

 

[Caroline H]

They say they do this to help society...but it seems to me that $40 million could be better spent on feeding people who need food, or clothing them, rather than playing with fire for 10 years in a laboratory. A waste of money, time, and resources in my opinion.

 

[jasoncran]

why does the botany bay colony come to mind off of star trek?

 

[Barbarian]

They are using intelligence & design (& spending lots of money and time) to try to demonstrate how life could arise by chance without intelligence & design?!

No. That's not how it seems to have happened. No "design" of course; God is the Creator, not an inferior "designer."

And the laws of chemistry and physics are not random.

 

[jasoncran]

but they are added energy to it to keep it going. and that the rna cant fully reproduce.

dont a lot naturalist say that evolution doesnt need God.

i think its also said the same about the laws of chemistry and physics.

where did this order we say in chemistry and physics come from? answer this from a scientific point not a theological means.

 

[jasoncran]

but they are added energy to it to keep it going. and that the rna cant fully reproduce.

dont a lot naturalist say that evolution doesnt need God.

i think its also said the same about the laws of chemistry and physics.

where did this order we say in chemistry and physics come from? answer this from a scientific point not a theological means.

wrong experment. they are just using chemicals to make genome that is already patterned and patterned it after another experiment. i was thinking of the attempt to make a rna strand from nothing via selected elements to see if it could happen the way of natural process.

they are copying a known dna sequence,and cloned it and modified it.

 

[logical bob]

They are using intelligence & design (& spending lots of money and time) to try to demonstrate how life could arise by chance without intelligence & design?! :rolling

I expect they were motivated by the challenge of whether it could be done and by the possible applications. I doubt it was done to make an anti-creationist point.

 

[jasoncran]

he is talking about the experiment that was done see if rna could arrive by the likes of the miller -urey primardial ooze.