I would like to share this article with you guys, and please, do not bash me. I am in no way trying to disprove/prove, argue/agree with any of you. I am just wondering what religious people thoughts are about this.
guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-synthetic-life-form
Please, take the time to read it, because it is actually very, very interesting, and well, historic.
“defining moment in the history of biology and biotechnology”, Mark Bedau, a philosopher at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, told Science.
My first comment is that a lot of “intelligent design” went into the job. *Not one *reaction happened by accident or random chance. And even then, he was basically copying or modifying a pre-existing blueprint.
Secondly he still required the shell, or the rest of the bacterium to have any chance of keeping the original genome alive.
Third I’d like to see a bit more information before assuming or accepting he’s created an entirely new “life form”. The media has a tendency to hype things well beyond what has actually been achieved, espeicially if they think they can keep God out of the picture.
Ken Ham of “Answers in Genesis” had this to say about it, in an article entitled “Get your own DNA”.
*Well, I woke up yesterday morning to news headlines on television (and then seeing many of the same claims in newspaper and web reports) that scientists had supposedly made some sort of life in a laboratory. For instance, Science News blarred that the scientists used “a made-from-scratch genome,” which was not made “from scratch” at all—the reporter gives a false impression as to what really happened.
Going back a couple of years, in February 2008, AiG commented on this same sort of research headed by the same scientist stating (see Getting a Life?):
According to media reports, a team of researchers is on the verge of creating artificial life. DNA specialist Craig Venter, president of the J. Craig Venter Institute in the U.S., is “poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form [a synthetic chromosome] on Earth,” reported the UK’s Guardian.
Georgia Purdom, a geneticist at Answers in Genesis–U.S., observes that, in this instance, life is not being created from “scratch”—it is being “rebuilt.” In assembling this man-made chromosome, scientists (using their intelligence, it should be noted) use a sequence that is modeled after a preexisting bacterial chromosome, which uses preexisting DNA bases. Then they place the chromosome into a preexisting bacterial cell.
In other words, concludes Purdom, all the components already existed. She adds that these components were created instantaneously by God, not through the many years of toiling by scientists.
In 2007, Dr. Georgia Purdom wrote this related article along with this article on synthetic life. And in 2008, this article, “‘Creating’ Life in the Lab,” appeared on AiG’s website.
So what is this latest piece of news that has created headlines around the world? An article from Science Express states:
For 15 years, J. Craig Venter has chased a dream: to build a genome from scratch and use it to make synthetic life. Now, he and his team at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Rockville, Maryland, and San Diego, California, say they have realized that dream. In this week’s Science Express they describe the stepwise creation of a bacterial chromosome and the successful transfer of it into a bacterium, where it replaced the native DNA. Powered by the synthetic genome, that microbial cell began replicating and making a new set of proteins.
However, some of the popular media printed headlines that made it sound like something new had been created—giving the distinct impression that man had created life in a laboratory. For example, “It’s Alive! Artificial DNA controls life” was the headline for an MSNBC article.
For what these scientists really accomplished, I urge you to go to today’s News to Note article on our website that will give you the details.
But, basically, we could put it this way:
Scientists (in what is obviously a significant technological achievement—well, for man it is anyway) took an existing bacterium and copied its genetic information (that God Created), based on the genetic code God created, using intricately designed machines, and yeast cells (that God created). They spent $40 million and used the research skills of 20 highly qualified and intelligent scientists over 10 years. They copied this information and then reconstructed the genome, inserting the equivalent of a “name tag”’ and then, after taking out the DNA, inserted the “synthetic” genes into another already-existing bacterium, so that the complicated machinery of the living bacterium (that God had created) could then enable this cell to live and replicate—as per the instructions on the genes that God put there in the first place and that these scientists copied!
Now the lead scientist for this project, J.Craig Venter, who is considered one of the leading scientists of the 21st century, does not claim what has been done has anything to do with the origin of life. He has certainly accomplished an incredible technological achievement—though, there are obvious ethical implications that no doubt will be discussed for years to come.
However, some of the popular media has tried to use this to (falsely) insinuate that scientists have basically created life in a lab. That is simply not true. All they have done, as I have stated, is copy the DNA God had already created. If scientists want to “create” their own life, they need to go and make their own code system—their own “DNA”! As I say, if you want to make this an origin of life issue, then go and get your own DNA!*
indulgence in Darwinism vs. Intelligent Design argument! Ah well…
