(May 20, 2010 at 8:13 pm)Too Dark Wrote: "God is dead"

Nietzsche.

I like your Aphex Twin avatar.

no Christians have responded to this yet?

(May 21, 2010 at 12:44 am)The_Flying_Skeptic Wrote: no Christians have responded to this yet?

They're praying for it not to be true.

(May 21, 2010 at 1:27 am)Minimalist Wrote:

(May 21, 2010 at 12:44 am)The_Flying_Skeptic Wrote: no Christians have responded to this yet?

They're praying for it not to be true.

That or they are waiting for some well known Christian to say 'anything' and call it a good enough argument to not be alarmed, move the goal post or keep the goal post where it is for many 'new creationists' (also known as theistic evolutionists [e.g. Christian, geneticist Francis Collins] but I'm with biologist Larry Moran on his use of the term 'new creationists' on his blog 'SandWalk'). I was waiting for a Christian to say 'Well, this doesn't prove that life can form naturally. All they did was swap the DNA of one already existing single cellular organism with manufactured DNA.' I'd argue that this feat still represents a significant step from the 'Miller-Urey experiments'. I, as theists should be as well, am curious as to if the individual strands of DNA that were used to manufacture the 'artificial life' were created by by an artificial process or simply stolen from other single celled organisms.

@TFS

This had nothing to do with abiogenesis. What they did was start from a bunch of chemicals in the lab, and synthesize the genome from scratch. They even coded specific markers (they call them "watermarks") which contain encoded lists of the researchers names, and website urls.

(May 21, 2010 at 2:05 am)Tiberius Wrote: @TFS

This had nothing to do with abiogenesis. What they did was start from a bunch of chemicals in the lab, and synthesize the genome from scratch. They even coded specific markers (they call them "watermarks") which contain encoded lists of the researchers names, and website urls.

yeah. i never said that it was abiogenesis. the video posted here made no mention of the distinction between the experiments involving synthetic life and abiogenesis and I was only emphasizing the difference to clarify. Thanks for further clarification.

"They even coded specific markers (they call them "watermarks") which contain encoded lists of the researchers names, and website urls."
I knew that? is that proof the pieces of DNA they 'bought' were created by artificial means?

(May 21, 2010 at 2:16 am)The_Flying_Skeptic Wrote: Is that proof the pieces of DNA they 'bought' were created by artificial means?

No, but this is:

"What they did was start from a bunch of chemicals in the lab, and synthesize the genome from scratch."

Chemical synthesizers have existed for years...

i think given the fact that they did not create the whole organism from scratch, saying that 'scientists have created life' is inaccurate or misleading. I suggest saying 'created an artificial species' as more accurate. You cannot say that scientists have created life and say that the experiment has nothing to do with abiogenesis (@ adrianhayter).

---

(May 21, 2010 at 2:22 am)Tiberius Wrote:

(May 21, 2010 at 2:16 am)The_Flying_Skeptic Wrote: Is that proof the pieces of DNA they 'bought' were created by artificial means?

No, but this is:

"What they did was start from a bunch of chemicals in the lab, and synthesize the genome from scratch."

Chemical synthesizers have existed for years...

is that what the research paper said? sure chemical synthesizers have existed for years (doesn't everyone know that?). they bought the sections of DNA from another company (this does not mean that the 'other company' did not synthesize the sections of DNA from scratch).

The difference is between "life" and "synthetic life", which I made sure to include in the title. They manufactured the DNA themselves, as stated, using a chemical synthesizer. They even went as far as to code English words into it...

(May 21, 2010 at 2:38 am)Tiberius Wrote: The difference is between "life" and "synthetic life", which I made sure to include in the title. They manufactured the DNA themselves, as stated, using a chemical synthesizer. They even went as far as to code English words into it...

wow... amazing, honest effort to clarify the difference to theists.

synthetic life is ambiguous, saying nothing about which parts of the organism are artificial and which parts are essentially stolen. you could just as well call an organism that was entirely created by artificial processes 'synthetic life'. are you drunk dude?

---

(May 20, 2010 at 1:42 pm)Darwinian Wrote: I'm still absorbing the importance of this. It may take a while but when I do............

That'll answer all those. "Can your scientists create life?" questions...

'well, they have created synthetic life but note that synthetic life has nothing to do with abiogenesis'