CNN Gets 'Synthetic Life' Right in the Headlines

[The_Flying_Skeptic]

@Tiberius

is someone else on your account? an ad hominem is not an insult. an ad hominem is a type of argument. My insult to your character was not an argument or a supporting part of my argument.

example of ad hominem
you should not believe that the earth revolves around the sun because Nicholas Copernicus was an infidel.

explanation: as you can see, the argument uses an irrelevant fact about Nicholas Copernicus to try to discredit his hypothesis that the earth revolves around the sun. I did not use any irrelevant derogatory facts about you to try to discredit your arguments.

example of a statement (insult)
Nicholas Copernicus is an infidel. so much for NIcholas copernicus being an infidel.

I said you 'almost' accused me of being creationist since you accused me of defending a position that only a creationist would unreasonably defend. I didn't say that you accused me of being creationist. Again, be more charitable, less arrogant and maybe we'll get somewhere.

(his meaning being "creating something from nothing"). With this I agree with him; they did not create something from nothing. I also, however, pointed out that such creation is impossible, and so complaining about the wording is ridiculous in this situation.

When Venture said that he did not create a living organism from scratch, he meant that he did not create every part of the cell from scratch since they used the cell membrane, among other parts of an already existing living organism. The only part of the cell that was manufactured was the chromosome. I never said that 'created from scratch' meant 'something from nothing'. I clarified in an earlier post that 'created from scratch' in this case meant that no parts of this new cell were taken from an already existing cell. The only part of the cell that we can say was created from scratch is the Chromosome, as according to you, they assembled the chromosome base by base.

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The first point that I'd like to make is that DNA does not equal life. DNA is, of course, an absolutely essential component of all living cells, but so are lots of other components- the ribosomes, the cytoskeleton, the cellular membrane, the network of enzymes that instantiates metabolism, and so on. Living systems are incredibly complex networks which operate in such a way as to conserve their identity from the general environment, maintain and repair themselves, and reproduce. They aren't in any way reducible to a particular chemical, however important that chemical may be.

What Venter and his team did was to manufacture a novel DNA system, and then insert it into an already functioning organism. It seems reasonable to say that in doing so they created a new species of bacterium. What they very clearly didn't do was create life- life was already there.

Heres an analogy. Suppose you design and manufacture a new type of car engine. You then remove the engine from a car, and put your engine in. What have you done? Not made a car, certainly, since all you've done is replaced one of the components, albeit a very important one. However, if you claimed that you hade made a new model of car, then I doubt if many people would argue with you.

@Tiberius, emphasis added by me.