Biologist (Almost) Creates Artificial Life

Aditya Malik writes "Wired has an interesting story up about how a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building 'protocells' from artificial molecules which are very close to satisfying the conditions for being 'alive.' 'Szostak's protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe.' This obviously raises some questions about creationism, not to mention some scary bio-research-gone-wild scenarios."

Comments

What questions exactly?

[Itninja]

This obviously raises some questions about creationism..

Since the scientist did the (almost) creating here, what questions would this raise? Now if the (almost) alive protocells had popped into existence by random chance and from a void of nothingness, that would raise some uncomfortable questions.

Re:What questions exactly?

[lawpoop]

I'll tell you what questions this "raises" -- but prepare to be dissapointed. I had a high-school science teacher, who was a great teacher, but was a creationist. Yes, he really was a great science teacher. He spent half a class one day explaining "questions"* about cosmology and creationism. He didn't proselytize, didn't say that he had the answers, or that the Bible did. He just asked some questions that got the students thinking. IMHO, I think that's good -- though questions early on are like inoculations of skepticism. And, there are good, scientific answers that sufficiently motivated students looked up ( this was before widespread internet)

Anywho, one of the questions was something like "Suppose a scientist creates life from scratch in a test tube. Is that evidence of abiogenesis, or creationism?" One answer, that most scientifically minded people choose, is that the scientist isn't doing anything that couldn't have happened in nature without the scientist, so therefore it's evidence of abiogenesis. Other people, those more creation minded, say that an intelligent being, in this case a scientist, created life from raw materials, so therefore, its evidence that life is created by intelligence.

Please, don't shoot, I'm just the messenger. You're asking what questions would be raised, I'm telling you the questions that people get out of this.

* He also posed another question about radiometric dating of rocks that I never got a satisfactory answer for. For instance, say they date some rocks, and there is 0.03% lead to uranium, or some such ratio, and therefor the rock is X million years old. How do we know that when the rock was originally formed, it was 100% uranium in the sample that we are now taking from the rock? If a rock cools from molten lava, aren't active and decayed isotopes mixed together, thus throwing off the dating scales based on that ratio?

Re:What questions exactly?

[quantaman]

Thanks for the answer. I'd always wondered about that one.

The disappointing thing is that your science teacher was spreading doubt on the subject when the answers were out there to be found. When a vast number of scientists say it's true, "I don't think it's right" is not a valid answer unless you've got a PhD. He may not have been spreading religion, but he was spreading doubt about a well-founded science, as if the scientists themselves were ignorant of it. They are not, and it's extremely bad form to imply that they are.

I'm a scientifically-minded skeptic, but I gotta say I disagree with you 100% here. I think that the essence of science is doubt, skepticism, and inquiry. These theories are not so fragile that we have to protect them with a shield of awe. If the science is well-founded, then it should be able to clear these hurdles easily. It should be able to withstand the most withering lines of inquiry -- And it does.

If you teach kids to blindly accept what "the authorities" tell you, whether those authorities are the Bible, or well-respected grey-bearded scientists, then you will get adults who accept whatever the authorities tell them -- in other words, people who can't be scientists, because they don't know how to think for themselves, and therefore can't use the scientific method.

The theory could withstand those lines of inquiry if those students were given the theory. Instead they're given a tiny, perhaps broken, subset of the theory. Then they're told a larger, more elaborate crackpot theory and given "evidence" to support that theory.

Perhaps they learn a tiny bit of critical thinking in discarding the "conventional" theory, but at the cost of incorrect knowledge. Even worse people have a very strong tendency to defend the first opinion we learn on a subject, chances are a lot of them are going to learn a good deal more about rationalizing their incorrect beliefs than skeptically discarding them and arriving at the correct ones.

When we teach science, we shouldn't say "Believe this because a bunch of scientists believe in it!". Instead, we should teach them to ask questions, develop a hypothesis, and think about ways to prove or disprove it. When they're old enough, they should be doing experiements. Think, ask questions, make observations, and do experiments to test your theories. That is science, not the consensus of elites.

True though at the end of the day it's also a good thing to realize that science is about evidence, and if a bunch of scientists believe a theory to be true I think that's pretty damn good evidence that it is true.

Re:Self Replicating?

[SuperSlug]

Ok here is some more evidence

Bone structure and histology
Growth rates
Predator/prey ratios
Speed and agility
Rate of evolution
Similarities with birds
Parental Care
Bone Isotope Composition
Insulation
Arctic Faunas

Should I go on? There is a ton of evidence for each of these items that indicate that dinosaurs were warm blooded. There speed, growth rates and similarities with birds to the most obvious one.

Re:Interesting work

[Weedlekin]

"ALL other religions and world views always place their version of God within our time-space-matter-energy universe, or as as part of it."

Balderdash. Hinduism for example says that this universe is one of many that have existed, and others will exist after it (their total number is supposedly greater than the drops of water in the Ganges). Each of them is created by Brahma The Creator, maintained by Vishnu the Preserver, and will eventually be destroyed by Shiva the Destroyer, who are mere avatars of The Great One, a being so complex that humans can only perceive minute and sometimes apparently self-contradictory aspects of it. The story says that one day to Brahma is greater than four thousand million human years, and when he sleeps at night, the Earth is destroyed, and will be recreated when he awakes. After Brahma has lived a number of these days equal to the days in a human life, Shiva will destroy this universe (an act that also destroys Shiva and Vishnu), leaving Brahma to create a new universe and new avatars of Vishnu and Shiva.

"ONLY in the Bible does the real, eternal self-existent God reveal Himself as One outside of and entirely independent of the Universe and its content."

Nobody who isn't living in complete ignorance of the writings of the many other religions that have existed during our history would make such a preposterous claim, because the African Kabuka and Mandinga religions have single gods who create the entirety of the universe, as does the original Korean religion (which calls the creator JuMulJu), the ancient Egyptian cosmogony of Ptah, and many, many other religions both ancient and modern.

Re:Interesting work

[Joey Vegetables]

From my very limited background as an amateur, part-time Bible student in the past:

• The oldest texts (Alexandrian family mainly) differ substantially from the later "Textus Receptus" family. These differences dwarf any subtle differences between translations based on the same textual family.
• Most widely used English translations are actually pretty good. In particular, the KJV does a fairly good job of translating the TR (though the English is of course out of date) and the NIV does a decent job on the Alexandrian family.
• People who prefer the KJV in spite of its dated English, including myself, often do so because they are not fully persuaded that a handful of older texts outweigh the evidence of numerous newer ones. But even in this group there are many (again including me) who would like an updated version of the KJV, keeping the same textual basis but updating the language to be more understandable to 21st century English speakers.
• Even the substantial differences between Alexandrian and non-Alexandrian manuscript families are somewhat irrelevant to doctrine.
• For the Old Testament we have a completely different problem. The text can be reconstructed fairly well. The meaning of the text sometimes cannot, because of our less than perfect knowledge of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic. The best evidence often comes from versions (translations) and while some of these are much later than the texts in question, they do provide valuable insight into the meaning.
• The Greek LXX (Septuagint) version is enigmatic at best . . . it is not of particularly good quality, yet Jesus and the apostles quoted from it extensively, even in places where it appears to differ in meaning from the Hebrew text. To me this is an unsolved problem. It suggests a need for further research and questioning of many of the assumptions Bible scholars tend to make.