# "Putting God on notice" is not just arrogant, it's also foolish. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 4, 2003, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051 "2003-03-04T18:45:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2003, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/21 "2003-03-05T00:27:13Z")
From the article cited in the OP: > [@](#): > > Character, which [chairman of President Bush’s Council on Bioethics] Kass describes as “the merit of disciplined and dedicated striving,” will wither. “People whose disruptive behavior is remedied by pacifying drugs rather than by their own efforts,” Kass says, “are not learning self-control. If anything, they are learning to think it’s unnecessary. People who take pills to block out from memory the painful or hateful aspects of a new experience will not learn how to deal with suffering or sorrow. A drug to induce fearlessness does not produce courage.” I’ll bet he’s morally opposed to the use of anesthetics in surgery, too. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![NaSultainne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8797f3/32.png) [@NaSultainne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NaSultainne)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2003, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/22 "2003-03-05T00:49:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tars Tarkas \* > Yeah, lets kill all them yahoos in labcoats! Luckily we don’t wear labcoats in this lab. Darn! How’s we gonna hunt y’all down if’n ya won’t stay in uniform! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Azael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@Azael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Azael)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2003, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/23 "2003-03-05T01:08:08Z")
Yeah GOM, I’m sure God is offended. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2003, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/24 "2003-03-05T01:22:05Z")
Man, some people need to take a few deep breaths and maybe a short nap after reading about some scientific advances, before reacting all over the place. Who the heck has “put God on notice” lately? People on BOTH the pro- AND anti- science camps have been WRONGLY claiming since the 1850s that science has done that. It hasn’t. It has just provided explanations for various phenomena that happen to test out w/o need for the “and then a miracle happens” step, to the point we can rely on them to explain the day-to-day if life. “Science has no built-in morals”??? Well, neither does government. Or carpentry. Or cubist painting. Or the digging of ditches. Or salsa music. Or salsa cooking. Or reading tarot cards. It’s the _people_ engaging in those activities that need morals. If people’s value sets are so shallow that a result of scientific research can lead them to dump moral behavior, that is an impeachment of their weak character, not of science. Morally bankrupt **people** will do morally bankrupt things and if they don’t have science as an excuse and technology as a tool they’ll use the spread of the One True Faith or the defense of the Sacred Fatherland or the protection of Our Women’s Virtue as excuses and common swords, fire, and whips as tools. Those who believe that a naturalistic explanation for the universe, and the technology to control phenomena such as life, are nothing but an excuse to exempt us from moral behavior, those are the yahoos. Meanwhile, I’ll gladly take from the guys in the labcoats the medication that prevents me from dying young, this computer, this internet, and a whole lot ofother wonderful things. And that in no way takes from me a jot nor a tittle of my beliefs in what is proper, right, wrong, ethical, correct, beautiful or harmonious, nor from my capacity to love, nor my awareness of the inherent dignity of the human being. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2003, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/25 "2003-03-05T01:28:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by NaSultainne \* > \*\*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. > \*\* As a zookeeper, I should point out that the actual lesson of **Jurassic Park** was not “Don’t try to create life via genetic manipulation.” Rather, the moral to the story was “When designing animal enclosures, always include a physical barrier between the animal and the guests.” At least that’s the way _I_ always viewed the movie. I mean, come on, a seven-ton predator kept in check by an electrified string?! Yeah, great habitat design, guys. The real villains in **Jurassic Park** weren’t the genetic engineers…they were the architects! It’s fairly obvious that our society should turn our backs on naturalistic zoo habitats, since at some point in the future someone may try to place a dinosaur in a poorly designed enclosure. But, as they say, once the genie is out of the bottle… And because we can’t even agree on outlawing theme park-like zoo exhibits, that, too will one day occur. Architecture 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. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2003, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/26 "2003-03-05T17:40:29Z")
This stuff is only the beginning… in a thousand years there might be talking[bonobos](http://www.orionsarm.com/races/NeoChimps.html)[merpeople](http://www.orionsarm.com/races/merpeople.html) or humans adapted to live in [free fall](http://www.orionsarm.com/races/space_people.html) And so on… well it passes the time… i(s that what god said all those billions of years ago?) ---
**Author:** ![FranticMad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c68b51/32.png) [@FranticMad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FranticMad)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2003, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/27 "2003-03-05T23:38:35Z")
The article linked by the OP is silly. Not for what it says, but because it reads like a sophomoric creative writing assignment. GOM, you’re going to find the next 50 years pretty frustrating. ---
**Author:** ![bong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@bong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bong)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2003, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/28 "2003-03-06T03:37:14Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by GOM \* > \*\* > Humans cannot create life._\* Can too! What about pregnant women? ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2003, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/29 "2003-03-06T06:00:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ben \* > > * * * > > Scientists at NASA have created Bacterical life in a test tube. > > * * * > > \*\*Cite? > > And why is NASA doing this? \*\* I remember reading about this in \* Cosmos \* by Carl Sagan. He termed it as “the stuff of life,” a biological compound. The reason as to why they did it is to learn more about how life initially developed. Apparently, with the right compounds, and a little electricity, it’s easy enough to create “life.” ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2003, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/30 "2003-03-06T06:12:49Z")
**Lissa:** What you describe is [the Miller/Urey experiment](http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/miller.html). It was performed in 1953 by two scientists at the University of Chicago – _not_ by NASA. This experiment established that, by applying lightning-like electrical sparks to methane, ammonia, and water vapor (thought to be the compounds available in Earth’s primordial atmosphere), you could create **amino acids** , which are the individual building blocks of proteins. It’s a **huge** step (or set of steps) from amino acids to anything resembling bacteria, though. ---
**Author:** ![Truth\_Seeker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5fc32e/32.png) [@Truth\_Seeker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truth_Seeker)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2003, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/31 "2003-03-06T08:23:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\*Humans cannot create life. \*\* Well, I wouldn’t be too sure . . . [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in\_depth/sci\_tech/2001/san\_francisco/1181710.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2001/san_francisco/1181710.stm) ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2003, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/32 "2003-03-06T08:50:13Z")
It might seem strange for me to say this, but in some ways GOM is right. As an enthusiast for genetic engineering, but aware of the problems it might cause (like economic collapse for small farmers in the third world and elsewhere, germ warfare, semi-viable transgenic organisms polluting the gene pool), I am also aware that the GM we are looking at is artificial horizontal gene transfer between species, and not really inventing new creatures at all. The [link](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2001/san_francisco/1181710.stm) that Truth Seeker posted concerns a true _neogen_ virus, a totally new entity. It would be a long time before entirely new eukayotes, or any large multicellular organisms, can be created without cribbing genes from existing animals. That good old Catholic, Tolkien, denied the ability of making new life to any being less than The Creator. In some ways he might be proved right. Any transgenic animals that are developed in the near future are likely to be chimeras, assembled from existing genomes, perhaps with a small amount of neogen material added if the biologists are feeling brave. The input of regulatory bodies like the UN will no doubt mean all such experiments will be under close scrutiny and within tight boundaries. ---
**Author:** ![GOM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5f9b8f/32.png) [@GOM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GOM)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/33 "2003-03-08T16:00:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MEBuckner \* > \*\*So what are you saying; that if humans ever do manage to create an artificial life form, it will prove the nonexistence of God? \*\* 😉 No. Almost exactly the opposite. It will prove the incredible intelligence required to design, assemble and program life. Far more intelligence than the combination of all the scientists in the world right now. HTH ---
**Author:** ![GOM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5f9b8f/32.png) [@GOM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GOM)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/34 "2003-03-08T16:01:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by eburacum45 \* > \*\*It might seem strange for me to say this, but in some ways GOM is right. \*\* Oh thanks! Trying to kill off my thread, I see… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![robertliguori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@robertliguori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robertliguori)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/35 "2003-03-08T18:13:35Z")
> [@](#): > > The link that Truth Seeker posted concerns a true neogen virus, a totally new entity. It would be a long time before entirely new eukayotes, or any large multicellular organisms, can be created without cribbing genes from existing animals. Hell, why not crib? It’s not like God didn’t fire up the ol’ Ctrl-C Ctrl-V when he was designing life. ---
**Author:** ![Ben](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/df788c/32.png) [@Ben](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ben)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/36 "2003-03-08T18:21:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by GOM \* > \*\*😉 > > No. Almost exactly the opposite. It will prove the incredible intelligence required to design, assemble and program life. Far more intelligence than the combination of all the scientists in the world right now. > > HTH \*\* In other words, if people can’t create life, that proves that Goddidit. And if people can create life, then that too proves that Goddidit. GOM, when, if ever, will you reply to the counterarguments that have been made to your position? For starters, you can tell us why diamonds aren’t proof of ID. After all, it used to be that people couldn’t make them- so God must have done it. Now people do know how to make them- proving that intelligent design is necessary, so God must have done it. If you’re so uninterested in real debate, why don’t you either post these threads to MPSIMS or the Pit? ---
**Author:** ![GOM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5f9b8f/32.png) [@GOM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GOM)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2003, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/37 "2003-03-09T05:28:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by eburacum45 \* > \*\* > The input of regulatory bodies like the UN will no doubt mean all such experiments will be under close scrutiny and within tight boundaries. \*\* I wish I could be as optimistic as you are about this… My confidence in the UN is close to zero. ---
**Author:** ![gex\_gex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/94ad74/32.png) [@gex\_gex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gex_gex)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2003, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/38 "2003-03-09T13:14:24Z")
> [@](#): > > _originally posted by NaSultainne_ > Do I trust some yahoo in a labcoat to be the one to lead the way? Unfortunately, no. **NaSultainne** , who do you trust? When you’re sick, do you trust your doctor? Doctors are just people like you and me. When you want your kids to know stuff (do you?) do you send them to school? Teachers are just people like you and me. When you want to know how to get the best return on your tax, do you go to an accountant? Accountants are just people like you and me. When you need to fill up your car, how are you aure that what you’re putting in your car is petrol? The oil companies are run by people just like you and me? How did you trust that your computer could be used to connect you to this message board would work? The person who designed was just human, like you and me. In fact, how do you trust anyone to do anything for you, knowing that they are only human? ---
**Author:** ![Epimetheus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2003, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/39 "2003-03-09T17:07:32Z")
My favorite part in the article is this: > [@](#): > > Ancient Greeks also sang of Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from Zeus to give to man. Zeus, for his part, sent man a gift – Pandora. And, through her, a whole box of troubles. No mention of me!! Geesh, Pandora was given to me fer Zeus’ sake, not mankind. Dear old brother Prometheus was the one that warned me. This allegation against dear ol brother, whom is paying a dire price for his insolence in giving fire to mankind, is horrendous. Learn some history [washingpost.com](http://washingpost.com). ---
**Author:** ![GOM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5f9b8f/32.png) [@GOM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GOM)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2003, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051/40 "2003-03-09T17:28:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ben \* > \*\* > > For starters, you can tell us why diamonds aren’t proof of ID. \*\* You can start here: [http://www.iscid.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get\_topic;f=6;t=000297;p=1](http://www.iscid.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=000297;p=1) HTH [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/putting-god-on-notice-is-not-just-arrogant-its-also-foolish/159051.md?page=3)