Now, there’s something new happening with the creation of life, and no one is sure what to make of it. **No longer is the act of creation seen as the sole province of God **or nature or the Great Whatever. Tomorrow belongs to me. And to you and other humans.
And another quote:
Or do we turn our attention, and godlike talents, elsewhere – to the salvation of the planet, for example?
:smack:
Humans cannot create life. Our best scientists cannot design, assemble and program one living anything. The “best” we can do is fool around with the programming (DNA) and see what kind of monsters are the result. So much for our supposed “godlike” talents…
We’ve been already manipulating genetics for most of recorded history, from breeding horses and dogs, to high tech engineering of tomato plants. This is just the next step. I don’t think it’s really that scary, and I also can’t see why science should deliberately put the brakes on new discoveries. Knowledge can never hurt us. Ignorance can.
“To make an apple pie from scratch, one must first create the universe.”
I’m in the fooling-around-with-existing-design camp, but even if we did create an artificial life form I’m not sure what it would have to do with the existence/nonexistence of God.
The article does seem kind of dumb, though, at least on first skim-through. Ooh, we can manipulate DNA directly, now all our problems will be solved :rolleyes: .
I think you’re getting overly upset at the headline and bit of purple prose from an otherwise interesting and nuanced article. Yes, these are big, dangerous issues. Yes, we have the potential to radically alter current life, and even design new life forms. Yes we can’t afford to jump into this sort of thing blindly.
Though I really liked this: “Ancient Greeks also sang of Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from Zeus to give to man.”
I know this is an informed reference to Greek drama, but I still get a kick out of envisioning Greek society involving citizens singing things like this at each other like the Once More With Feeling episode of Buffy. [sung]“Hey did you read that new Washintong Post article about Prometheus?”[/sung]
Like it or not, the human body has flaws and can be improved upon. We are finally getting to the point where we understand enough to start making design upgrades. Welcome to the future. Feel free to die and rot in the ground if you choose. Such is your right. Me, I’ll take the upgrades - complete with subjective immortality and a Tipler machine thrown in the old cortex. What’s with the wait already?
I’ll pass on the immortality, thank you. Just let me keep my (still thick and full and greyless as I approach 40) head of natural hair and my ability to function well down there for another 30-35 years and I’ll be happy.
Will the creation of new life forms make us gods in our right? I am with dalovinj and will take whatever upgrades I can get my hands on.
The OP says that human beings cannot create life, but Ventner just might. His blitz attack on the human genome certainly shows spark. And what then? Humanity could not only improve itself but create new life forms (how about one that feeds on oil spills?).
OK, as an atheist it is easy for me to dismiss talk of gods. Not that I wish to be dismissive of anybodys beliefs per se, nor do I really want to start yet another atheist/theist spiel.
Why does the OP think that all we can create are monsters?
I could be accused of living in a sci-fi dreamland, but I honestly see recent biotech developments as being a road to a kind of godhead for humanity
Venter is a self-righteous jerk. he admitted publically his DNA was used, and now we can’t use the data gathered from that sequence because it violates anominimty agreements for donor samples. And that is messing up a project we are doing in my lab. so Venter can eat it.
Sure, it’d be great if we could eliminate the diseases currently ravaging the world, starting with cancers, AIDS, Ebola, diabetes, and all the others one can list. Do I trust some yahoo in a labcoat to be the one to lead the way? Unfortunately, no.
Has anyone else paid any attention to the shortened lifespan of Dolly the sheep? Does this give anyone else pause? Or should we just damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead?
Why do I have such a pessimistic attitude? Those yahoos in labcoats? They’re just people. Like you and me. Nothing special. Just a better brand of education, a healthy budget, and some neat tinkertoys we rather grandly label the “genetic blueprint”. I, for one, cheesy though it may be, do appreciate the character in Jurassic Park arguing against genetic manipulation when he said: “You were so busy figuring out whether you could, you didn’t stop to figure out whether you should”. Paraphrasing, of course.
But, as they say, once the genie is out of the bottle…And because we can’t even agree on outlawing human cloning, that, too will one day occur. Science has no in-built morals, and it’s outpacing society’s ability to constrain it. Time will tell whether the alarm should have been sounded or not.
GOM, the fact is that you keep harrumphing about this, that, and the other, but IME you’re never interested in a real debate. You love to go on about how scientists can’t create life, but whenever anyone points out that a century ago they couldn’t make diamonds either, you never, TTBOMR, reply. You just ignore them until the topic comes up again, and then whip out the old “scientists can’t create life” bit again, and ignore them again.
It’s the same way with other topics, like your UFO conspiracy theory. You coyly hint about how something is up with NASA and extraterrestrials, and you spend a fair amount of energy talking about it indirectly, but you refuse to spell out what, exactly, your beef is- even when you invite me to start a thread specifically for the purpose of hearing you spell out your theory.
Heck, back at the Pizza Parlor your favorite argument was “there is no evidence whatsoever for abiogenesis.” It didn’t matter how many times I presented the evidence for abiogenesis to you, you would never even acknowledge that the evidence even existed.
And you can’t even get your facts right! What about those bacteria that are genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals? Are they “monsters” produced by “fooling around”?
Back in the 1830’s when theists wanted to invoke the GOTG, it was all about vitalism. They went on and on about how organic chemicals contained a magical life force that scientists couldn’t create. Then one day Woehler heated ammonium cyanate and got urea. So much for that idea! Then their god scuttled cockroach-like a little deeper in the shadows. Nowadays it’s not that organic chemicals- or even living things- have a magical lifeforce, it’s that God is so smart that we not only can’t create life, we can’t even manipulate it in a useful fashion. Even that view is blatantly out of kilter with reality, given how much people have benefited from biotechnology. I mean, my job is dependent on using our knowledge of the machineries of life to perform skillful manipulations of living things so that we can figure out more about how they work. In my campus library there’s even a thick textbook called “DNA Manipulation: the Awesome Skill.” But you’re so totally ignorant of the state of the art that you make it sound like we’re a bunch of neanderthals clubbing Swiss clocks and peeing on the pieces.
Humans create life everyday! My wife and I can testify to that. Scientists at NASA have created Bacterical life in a test tube. No God Man ever imagined is as wonderful as Man itself.
