(October 6, 2012 at 12:00 pm)Akincana Krishna dasa Wrote: Someone else on this forum today told me that maybe in a million years scientists could create life from chemicals. No scientist can create any living thing from raw chemicals. They've tried. Nor can scientists can bring any dead organism back to life.
I'm a little disappointed at this popular Christian tack. What irritates me about it is that if scientists do create a living thing from raw chemicals, you'll just drop this objection and blithely move on retaining the exact same beliefs as though scientists making life from chemicals doesn't prove a thing. So the whole issue is pointless since it doesn't have anything at all with why you disagree with atheists, it's just a freakin' talking point.
Now scientists have taken a denucleated (dead) cell, inserted an artificial nucleus (bacteria genome made from scratch), and have the cell resume functioning, including reproduction by cell division. In other words, the only part of life we have not made completely synthetically is the cell wall. We're not a million years off from making a living cell from scratch, we're probably less than a decade away from it.
So, if biologists completely synthesize a cell from raw materials, what significant change will that bring about in your belief system?
