Artificial Life Created

We are still very far from reaching the conclusion, that life could exist without any form of being creating it or guiding it, which would have to be the case in the absence of God. It is still incredibly unlikely that things just happened to fall into place chemically, and physically to allow for life to begin.

gosplan: It hasn't decreased at all from my perspective anyway.

Jakkass wrote: »

Life is still a creation of God, even if we can reproduce it indirectly.

That is my point.

Life used to be considered a direct creation of God. Then we found out it wasn't. Did everyone stop believing in God? Nope, of course not. They simply moved God one step further back. Now life is considered an indirect creation of God, and the original position merely a misunderstanding.

At what point would you consider God has been positioned too far removed

Malty_T wrote: »

Just a point of note, but what the scientists have essentially done is create a life who's tree of life is separate from our's and all other known life'sr. All for the universal low low deity cost of $40,000,000.

I'm quite aware of this Malty T, I just don't see how it constitutes a threat to the existence of God. We've merely taken a look through how he constructed life as we know it, this information is available to us now through the compiling of genomes both for our species and for other species. I don't see what is so "threatening" to my position.

DeVore wrote: »

So the odds are now down from "impossible" to "winning the euro millions every week for centuries". Thats an improvement.

Did someone say it was logically impossible for life to be formed from amino acids etc? I've never come across anyone that believed that.

Most of us, when we use the word 'impossible' refer to something that is so statistically unlikely that, to all intents and purposes, it will never happen.

For example, Richard Dawkins in 'The Blind Watchmaker' stated that it is not impossible for a statue to start waving its hand at us. Theoretically, it is conceivable that all the atoms in the statue could, by a freak coincidence, all move at the same time to make it wave its hand. However, such a coincidence is massively unlikely, even if we waited trillions of years, so we see such an event as being, to all intents and purposes, impossible.

Twist and squirm all you like but this is a serious breakthrough. They've shown its possible. Complex? Yes, no one was ever arguing it isnt complex. But moving from the impossible to the merely "highly improbable" is not something you can pooh pooh and belittle. They created life and you are telling me that that has no theological implications?

The only people twisting and squirming are those who possess enough faith to believe that the vast diversity of complex life we see on earth could have developed without help in the duration of time available. Such a belief depends greatly on the number and complexity of steps necessary to produce such diversity of life, and the time available for these steps to take place.

In fact you could express this as an equation a÷b=c
(where a represents the available time, b represents the number and complexity of steps required, and c represents the plausibility of our current biodiversity developing unaided)

It can be readily seen that, if a increases and b is kept low, then c is high.

Up until the 1960s this seemed a no-brainer since most cosmologists agreed (in opposition to the biblical worldview) that the universe had always existed and therefore lacked a beginning. This of course meant that there had been an infinite amount of time for life, DNA, and everything else to develop.

However, each new scientific discovery has served to affect our equation by reducing a and increasing b - thereby reducing c (the crucial plausibility).

It has now been demonstrated to most people's satisfaction that the universe had a beginning and is about 15 billion years or so old (rather embarrassingly, this means that Archbishop Ussher was closer to the real age of the universe than most cosmologists up until the 1960s oops!). So, in one fell swoop the a in our equation has been reduced from infinity to a finite number.

Similarly, we have discovered that 'simple' structures such as cells (which previous generations blithely assumed could mutate very simply) are actually much more complex (the more we learn the more complex we see the universe to be, as demonstrated by quantum mechanics and string theory. This massively increases the b in our equation.

However, there are still those who twist and squirm to ignore the fact that, with a decreasing and b increasing, then c becomes increasingly harder to sustain.

One or two posters here have encouraged me to learn more about science. So, over the last few months, I've been reading up a bit on the subject. What I've learned has strengthened my faith considerably.

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I suggest that the points of tension that surround this achievement will be moral and ethical, and not necessarily theological.

Because god created all life but it wasn't actually that hard ?

Tell me, if these guys create a humanoid lifeform, a completely synthetic human-like creature will we then be it's god ? Will we then deserve worship ? Will it have a soul ?

Sam Vimes wrote: »

While we're talking about absurdities, from my point of view what you have just said is "Something that seems really unlikely happened, therefore the stories about a Jewish guy raising from the dead 2000 years ago are true".

No, Jakkass never said anything remotely like that.

a) He has said that the possibility of the process of life starting and then developing unaided is extremely unlikely - so unlikely as to be pretty well unbelievable for many people.

b) His ideas of who God is, and the historicity of the resurrection, are based on totally different grounds.

Anyone with even the faintest grasp of logic or language should readily see that (b) is not in any way dependant on (a). Certainly no one has even hinted that (a) proves (b).

Your brazen conflating of Jakkass' two beliefs to represent him as saying anything like your quote above is really quite stunning - even by the standards of this board.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

When you eliminate the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. The supernatural is by definition impossible and I'll take improbable* over impossible any day


*Assuming it is improbable, we can't really say for sure without knowing what the conditions were for the last 14 billion years

If you begin by assuming something, by definition, to be impossible then you pretty well make all discussion pointless. We can't debate with a closed mind or with such circular reasoning.

jonnyfingers wrote: »

I believe one of the sources is "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene. I've read it and can vouch for its scientific credentials.

Yes, it's a great book isn't it? I found it be absolutely mind-blowing. A fascinating insight into the complexity of the universe.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

My "brazen conflating" is in fact a reminder that the god that Jakkass believes in is not a generic "uncaused cause", an unknown being that may or may not have done certain unknown things. The vast majority of these types of arguments for god do not indicate the truth or otherwise of any one religion over another. Anyone who uses them is supporting the case for Thor, Poseidon and, yes, the FSM as much as they are the christian god so I find them irrelevant. Even if they were valid they would inspire me to say nothing more than "so it appears that there may have been some form of intelligence involved at some point in the past. What's your point?"

Absolute piffle.

As far as I can see Jakkass made no claim that anything in this thread supported (I liked the way you quickly rolled back from 'proved' to 'supported' as soon as you were challenged) the truth of one religion against another. If I missed where he did that then could someone please point it out to me?