CNN Gets 'Synthetic Life' Right in the Headlines

[The_Flying_Skeptic]

Please see the "other" thread (http://atheistforums.org/thread-3782-pos...l#pid72343) for my response to your ad hominem point.

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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.

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Ok then, let me correct my previous statement:
2) I never 'almost' accused you of being a creationist.

Arrogance has nothing to do with it. I know when I've accused someone of being a creationist, or when I've "almost" done so. I did neither. I'll be more charitable when you stop with the constant whining and insulting me. If anyone is arrogant here, it is you. Here is a vital life lesson for you: people, even people you've previously respected, will not always agree with you. So instead of belittling them, or coming up with stupid accusations, try talking to them.

So far in the past few days you've seen that I've disagreed with you, and instead of accepting that as fact (like any reasonable person would), you've chosen to question my integrity or state of mind, asking "Are you drunk?", or appealing to emotion "Are you trying to pick a fight with me?".

2) you accused me of defending a position that only a creationist would defend: you almost accused me of being creationist. my remark on you 'almost' accusing me of being a creationist is a joke, i don't mean for you to respond to that part in seriousness but you did accuse me of defending a straw man of my position.

I was only questioning your state of mind because I expected better. My appeal to emotion was just a reminder to you of how I felt about you. My appeal to emotion wasn't part of the argument, just a side note to see if we could lighten up the mood since I felt that even after my first response to your thread 'Scientists Create Synthetic Life' you completely wrote everything I said as wrong with very little explanation even when we mostly agree (given your posts). Let me go over what you said to me after my first post on your thread:

i said http://atheistforums.org/thread-3742-pos...l#pid71515
summary: 'scientists created synthetic life' as a headline is vague and will confuse theists and atheists. if atheists go around saying 'scientists created life' assuming that 'synthetic' means artificially and is implicit when saying 'humans created x', atheists will eventually look stupid since synthetic does not describe that not all the parts of the cell were manufactured and creationists will use that fact and we simply need to be prepared.

you responded:

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

you didn't even entertain that 'scientists created life' would be misunderstood by atheists and theists. i'm not the only one that thinks 'created synthetic life' is ambiguous and that 'created a synthetic species' is more accurate. Caecilian even came up with a good analogy. I tried talking to you but you continued to treat me as if I was stupid instead of trying to find some common grounds:

i asked an innocent question: http://atheistforums.org/thread-3742-pos...l#pid71519
"Is that proof the pieces of DNA they 'bought' were created by artificial means?"

you respond:

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...

You say 'chemical synthesizers existed for years...' as if I was ignorant of chemistry and had no place in this discussion; but the only reason I thought that they maybe bought pieces of DNA rather than assembled (a plausible proposition) the chromosome base by base or nucleotide by nucleotide was because in the BBC video posted on your thread there was a whole 1 minute discussion on how you can buy strands of DNA and how the company Venture works for bought DNA. I explained this and you continued to bash me rather than say "oh, well I can see where you got confused, but they did create the whole chromosome, connecting every single nucleotide in the genome according to page 5, paragraph 4 of the research paper by Venture's team.", you continued to refuse to find any common ground.