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Artificial Life Created

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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 22,479 ✭✭✭✭philologos


    Wicknight wrote: »
    Life used to be considered direct creation of God

    Life is still a creation of God, even if we can reproduce it indirectly. We had to be created to be able to do this. Our creation raises a lot of questions still.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    Jakkass wrote: »
    There still had to be some root cause for why we even exist in the first place to be able to perform such experiments. This doesn't really weaken the case for God at all.

    It weakens the case for some definitions of god, ones that require supernatural intervention to create life from non-life. But the term god has so many definitions that it's impossible to come up with any one thing that will disprove them all


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,828 ✭✭✭gosplan


    Jakkass wrote: »
    Our creation raises a lot of questions still.

    Yes, but the relm of the unknown, wherein lies the argument for a diety, decreases that little bit more.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 22,479 ✭✭✭✭philologos


    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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    gosplan wrote: »
    Yes, but the relm of the unknown, wherein lies the argument for a diety, decreases that little bit more.

    Continued progress down a spurious line doth not the argument for a diety impact.

    Or haven't you heard that the notion of a conflict between science and belief is generally held in the heads of a blinkered few?


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    Jakkass wrote: »
    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.

    No we're not far from reaching the conclusion that life could exist without any form of being guiding it. There's a difference between something being impossible, ie it couldn't happen, and something being unlikely. Unlikely things happen all the time and the universe has existed for an awful lot of time


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,314 ✭✭✭sink


    Sam Vimes wrote: »
    It weakens the case for some definitions of god, ones that require supernatural intervention to create life from non-life. But the term god has so many definitions that it's impossible to come up with any one thing that will disprove them all

    Indeed. The term god is so loosely defined it is utterly meaningless in a tangible sense. God created life is completely true, if God is defined as that which created life; which could be anything.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 22,479 ✭✭✭✭philologos


    Sam Vimes wrote: »
    No we're not far from reaching the conclusion that life could exist without any form of being guiding it. There's a difference between something being impossible, ie it couldn't happen, and something being unlikely. Unlikely things happen all the time and the universe has existed for an awful lot of time

    It's still hugely hugely unlikely. That's why I view it to be more realistic that there was indeed a guiding principle both to the universe and to all human beings. That being is commonly referred to as God.

    Every time one considers how unlikely it is that the universe was created without God, or at least every time I consider it, the more absurd I think your references to the FSM are, because the case for God is about as strong as it has ever been.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    Jakkass wrote: »
    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.

    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.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    Jakkass wrote: »
    It's still hugely hugely unlikely. That's why I view it to be more realistic that there was indeed a guiding principle both to the universe and to all human beings. That being is commonly referred to as God.

    Every time one considers how unlikely it is that the universe was created without God, or at least every time I consider it, the more absurd I think your references to the FSM are, because the case for God is about as strong as it has ever been.

    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". With regard to the perceived unlikelihood of life forming from non-life the case for the FSM is exactly as strong as it is for your god because the FSM is also defined as having created life. You really should have a read of the link monosharp posted that shows the common misunderstanding of probability in this area and how it's not actually possible to work out the odds in any meaningful way

    http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html#Intro

    The complexity gap that you have placed your god in is already closed I'm afraid


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 22,479 ✭✭✭✭philologos


    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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    Jakkass wrote: »
    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.

    *Ahem*
    Sam Vimes wrote: »
    It weakens the case for some definitions of god, ones that require supernatural intervention to create life from non-life. But the term god has so many definitions that it's impossible to come up with any one thing that will disprove them all


    You are arguing that the idea that life formed without god is absurd while simultaneously arguing that life being formed from non-life by entirely natural means does not threaten your position. It seems your entire argument here is based on a misunderstanding of probability and an attempt to perform a probabilistic calculation that it is impossible to perform


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 232 ✭✭nachoman


    I'm curious, what implications would this discovery have for life in lets say 20 years in the futre?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,240 ✭✭✭✭Fanny Cradock


    sink wrote: »
    Indeed. The term god is so loosely defined it is utterly meaningless in a tangible sense. God created life is completely true, if God is defined as that which created life; which could be anything.

    Maybe to your mind, but I would think that God has a definition on the Christianity forum.

    While this achievement is exciting (and it seems the devil is in the details with regards to the full extent of the achievement) my faith isn't threatened. Indeed, they had previously made a synthetic virus so it was only a matter of time. I suspect that more than one creationist/ IDer will happily point out that this life was designed, and a huge amount of time, effort and resources were poured into it.

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


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    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. :)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 266 ✭✭bytey


    monosharp wrote: »
    So they created DNA from nothing but chemicals, the building blocks of life completely artificial, transferred this DNA to another cell and got this new cell to replicate using the completely artificial DNA.

    Thats barely a scratch on the surface of what they've done, the processes behind all this, transferring DNA, re-writing DNA, basically controlling and writing the software of life.

    They moved DNA (software) across branches of life (Different hardware).

    What they've done here is ground breaking and the impact it is going to have on the entire scientific world, not just biology or medical science, is going to be world changing.

    Whats the Christian response going to be ?

    Obviously this doesn't disprove a deity, but it completely destroys any notion of a deity being required for life*, it also gives further confirmation (as if any was needed) that all life has a common ancestor.

    *Unless your going to argue god created the chemicals necessary for life and without them .....

    Can Christians continue to ignore this ? and pass it off as 'not important' ? Are they going to largely ignore what science is telling us about the world ? about life ?

    On a side note, I'd love to be a fly on the wall at the next creationist meeting. The self delusion required to ignore this might even be too much for some people. I can imagine the headline on answers for genesis, "Artifical life proves there must have been a designer!" :pac:


    1/ im not religious
    2/ I do not believe in god .

    but this chap did NOT create life - he added an artificial element to already existing life - there fore - how life comes about is still a mystery - unless you are religious .

    lot of BS being spread , about this - but he did not create anything other than artificial aspects in existing life.

    FACT.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,981 ✭✭✭monosharp


    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 ? :confused:

    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 ?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    bytey wrote: »
    1/ im not religious
    2/ I do not believe in god .

    but this chap did NOT create life - he added an artificial element to already existing life - there fore - how life comes about is still a mystery - unless you are religious .

    lot of BS being spread , about this - but he did not create anything other than artificial aspects in existing life.

    FACT.

    That is true, he used an existing cell. But every complexity argument I've ever come across points to the complexity of the DNA, not the relatively simply external wall that encloses it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    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.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,981 ✭✭✭monosharp


    PDN wrote: »
    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.

    This is quite simply incorrect and I provided a link which explains why its incorrect.
    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. :)

    Wherever you read the above is not a scientific source.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    PDN wrote: »
    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.

    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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,333 ✭✭✭jonnyfingers


    monosharp wrote: »
    Wherever you read the above is not a scientific source.

    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    PDN wrote: »
    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.

    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?". A being that exists but which we cannot reliably know anything about is irrelevant.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,981 ✭✭✭monosharp


    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.

    And his probabilities relating to the origin of life ?

    http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

    Please see coin tossing for beginners


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    PDN wrote: »
    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.

    I'm not assuming anything, that's what the definition of the word is :confused:

    If something is within the laws of nature, ie natural, it is possible. If it is not within those laws, ie supernatural, it is impossible. You can argue that there exists a being that can do the impossible but that does not mean the supernatural is possible and you are then arguing that something that is impossible is more likely than something that is improbable.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,333 ✭✭✭jonnyfingers


    PDN wrote: »
    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.

    Yeah. I only read it beacuse I saw a post of yours where it was recommended. I nearly did and Astrophysics degree, something I still regret not doing, so it's a subject of great interest to me.

    It's definitely an introductory book glossing over the mathematics and tecnical details to give you a basic understanding of the theories, which is good for non-scientific folk. So very easy to understand.

    And what is really great is that you gain a new appreciation for the universe we live in but it can peacefully co-exist with any religious beliefs. Personally I don't belief in God, as a being "up there" somehow. But I could understand that you could believe and still appreciate the science of the universe.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    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?


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