Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Poised to Create Life
Tim C writes "I was watching the 9 o'clock News on BBC1 here in the UK, and could hardly believe what I was seeing - a group of American scientists have apparently discovered what they believe to be the 300 or so genes that are all that is required to create a simple life-form - more details can be found on the BBC news website.
Somewhat reassuringly, they realise the potential impact of their work, and so are seeking the opinions of religious leaders before proceeding with the next stage of their research - actually attempting to create a living organism."
I'm surprised that GritsBoy hasn't yet posted something along the lines of :
Hey, everybody! I've just created a new lifeform! I poured a bowl of hot grits down my pants (mmmm mmmm!) just after I'd had a tug!!!
Because of the mmmm delicious, tasty and nutritious nature of grits, my little DNA swimmers mutated into a new life form!!! And boy, they just love grits too!!!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Heil Trejus!
The trick of course, is to convince them (religious people) NOW that they are wrong. Appealing to hindsight won't work. It doesn't help us if 400 years from now, people look back and say "Yeah, the scientists were right again and now the major world religions retroactivly support them."
There is an overwhelming number of posts taking the side of religion or science. I would like to argue on the side of reason, and say that both religion and science go hand in hand. This apparent discovery (apparent, as this has not been confirmed by the general scientific community) doesn't really make us Gods anymore than raising cattle. We breed and do things with cattle to fulfill our own purposes, and that is by no Christian definition ungodly. If we were to play with life on a higher level, it would still be nothing contrary to the scriptures. The Wright Brothers (an overused example I agree, but applicable none the less) were told that if humans were meant to fly, God would have given them wings. It was Galileo who said, "I do not feel compelled to believe that the same God who had endowed us with intellect and reason has intended us to forgo their use." "Thou shalt not commit adultery" This is because the ability to create human life is God's, and we are only authorized to use God's gift he has given us within the bonds of marriage. God has given us dominion over life on this earth, excepting mankind (excepting mankind because people are the children of God, not just his creations, and the power of procreation is a sacred one). So, it is not against the will of God for mankind to build bacteria. God gave us dominion over this world, so how are we doing with our stewardship? We are accountable, and I would like to be able to say that we have taken good care of our world. So, it is reasonable (as with most things) that we should proceed with caution. This, I believe, though, is exactly what the scientists are doing. Should we not recognize and give credit to them for consulting with religious leaders and others before continuing? There are some definite moral issues that arise from genetic manipulation and creating life, and it is wise of these scientists to consult with others before continuing recklessly into their research. Thoth thoth@digistatic.net Post scriptum - I have provided my email address so that you can share with me your ideas, and I would appreciate any views you may have, contrary to mine or no.
how long will you continue? Moderators can waste their points marking us as trolls, but I will continue to speak the truth: Your post are never funny. I'm really sorry, that's just the way it is
You're certainly one to talk..
It's easy to say I'm just heaping all the bad stuff on and then not provide any counter-evidence.
Give some examples of new ideas that a) brought a revolution in our ways of thought and living, and b) were embraced, rather than oppressed by the church.
The point I was making, and the point that everyone except you got, is that the church has a history of protecting The Truth (tm) from anything that has the semblance of threatening it.
It's been constant battle between those who "know the truth" versus those who are honestly searching for it.
This fact has been documented time and time again throughout our miserable history up until this very day even. From geography to astronomy to geology to anthropology to generic engineering, there has been a constant struggle between the church and the scientist.
Care to guess how many times the church was in the right?
The World Is Not Enough
BBBLLLEEEPPPHHH!!!
Science has no business "consulting" with anyone on anything. Ethical considerations? Remember Hitler. His programs advanced our medical knowledge, although the experiments were usually fatal to the "volunteers". Ethics has no place mixing with science.
This experiment can greatly expand our knowledge of how life works. If we end up creating the next Black Plague and killing 1,000,000,000 people -- maybe it was meant to happen. This world's too crowded as it is.
Give me knowledge or give me death!
People suck, kill a friend today.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
This may have already been said, but my quick scan of the messages could have easily missed it.
Depending on your definition of life you can get by with a lot less than a couple of hundred genes. Sure, bacteria may need more, but there are many a virus with a lot less than a hundred genes.
My bio is a bit rusty, but if I recall, tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) has 3 genes.
Now, granted, a virus needs a host to replicate, but many people do consider them alive.
If you consider a prion alive, then you can, in fact, get by with 0 genes. All you need is a protein.
And the operation and purpose EVERY keyword in C is fully understood and has been mapped out, their design and shortcomings known down to the smallest detail.
Link these known C kewords in a really large program (millions of lines of code) and the best SW engineers in the world could not in their lifetimes predict what the program will do before executing it but can analyze and understand it's behaviour only empirically after running it.
What's more is that the article says that the scientists DO NOT KNOW WHAT 111 OF THE 300 ESSENTIAL GENES DO!!!! They know only that if they're removed, the cell will not live!!!!! THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND 1/3 OF WHAT THEY'RE CREATING!!!! Can you say "recipe for disaster?". And as any programmer (and gene coding == programming) with experience can tell you, even the tiniest single character mistake can not only crash your program buy lay WASTE to the entire execution environment. This new life cell is the program and the Earth is the execution environment. Is any of this scaring the crap out of you? It had damn well better. Of course they'll create the cell in a sealed environment to be safe. Java runs downloaded web applets in a sandbox envoronment. What's the safety track record of the latter? 100% safe? Nope. Now how secure will the former be? PH33R this.
Just one week?
/. population is astounding. That one person can say, in the middle of this crowd, that 'man may make the vessel, but the soul of God's work', without rabid retribution from the rest - who've been born and raised on stories of aliens and AI... Wow!
Seven days?
Interesting. Did he rest on the seventh?
This is a truly amazing, fascinating topic. The scope of reactions across the
Maybe we are ready for this after all.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Stringing base-pairs into a synthetic DNA molecule is engineering. Understanding the ramifications of tinkering with an ecosystem is not. Nothing mystical or supernatural, mind you, it's just that it's complex beyond our current ability to understand. Maybe someday we'll have the wisdom to tinker wisely, but we sure as hell don't have it now.
I've done a fair amount of ecosystem modeling in my time, and though the models certainly helpful in understanding the gross effects of some variables, their predictive power is rather poor.
I forget who said it (I think it was a geologist), but this is a quote that I think applies:
"It may be that there are some systems so complex that the only predictive model for that system is the system itself."
If you've done any serious work in ecology, this seems to ring true. You just can't foresee the contingencies. Actual reality trumps virtual reality every time.
If I had a problem of a religious nature, I wouldn't ask a scientist about it. I wouldn't want my priest to ask scientists before making religious decisions, either. So why should it work any differently the other way around?
-Dave Turner
Ahem. Firstly, the Church is not the same as organised religion or religion in general. I go to synagogue, for instance. Second, science is not some sort of eternally progressive wonder against which a wicked and moribund religion struggles woefully, y'know. It ain't the 1920s and we're not logical positivists anymmore.
Do you really need help in thinking of new ideas that brought a revolution in our ways of thought and living that sprang from religion? Presumably you wouldn't be familiar with the 10 commandments, the sermon on the Mount, the idea of personal morality, the idea of universal humanity, charity, the sanctity of life and much much more, would you? These happen to be ideas that originated within a *religious* context.
And you wouldn't be aware of the role that science played in eugenics, the death camps, the construction of the atomic bomb, mechanised warfare etc etc, either? Science is not practiced in a vacuum, and it is not practiced only by saints, either.
What is the reference?
That's a totally invalid argument.
'It might cause harm in the future, so we shouldn't mess with it'.
I can think of a thousand different ways in which the invention of the computer can, has, and might in the future cause harm. However, the computer has been -way- more productive than it has been destructive. Now, you might say 'how is creating life good?'. Well, I could make things up, but honestly, I don't know for certain what applications this might have. But, when they built the first computers, they really couldn't have envisioned the internet, ATMs, wordprocessors, photoshop, and all of the other wonderful aspects of computers that make our lives (in theory) easier.
Also, your argument implies that, by telling a couple of scientists not to study something, we'll be safe 'from the evil of creating life', or whatever. That's bullshit. Eventually, someone, somewhere, will figure this out, and will use it to create life. It's inevitable. People want to play god (I'd love to play god, that'd be fun as hell!). They'll do it with or without your permission. They'll do it with or without the governments permission. They'll just do it. By saying 'no' to these guys, you're just robbing a few honest scientists of a chance to research something they've discovered.
Finally, biology and ecology -is- just a simple engineering excercise. I think you'll agree with me that there is really nothing 'mystical' about mathematics, right? Machines do it, and do it far better than we can(ignoring higher level abstract mathematics). Well, consider - Descartes considered mathematics to be something that is uniquely human. He couldn't even remotely conceive of a machine to do math, and no other animal in the animal kingdom can do math. He used this as an argument in support of Dualism (the idea that there is the 'physical' brain, and then something beyond that, to account for consciousness and introspection).
Now you're saying (if I understand correctly) that biology/ecology is something 'mystical' that we shouldn't mess with. Well, same thing will happen to you, as happened to Descartes and hundreds/thousands of other people that said 'Science can't explain this , so science isn't the all-powerful belief-system you think it is!'. You'll be proven wrong.
if god is so omniscient as most believers think, then shouldn't it have seen this coming long ago? if there is a god, and god didn't like what we were going to eventually do, i'm pretty sure it would've put an end to this a while ago. use some logic and stop setting(made up cause your scared) limitations.
______________________(
Quoting Richard Feynman:
"The common human problem, the big question, always is 'Should I do this?' It is a question of action. 'What should I do? Should I do this?' We can divide this into two parts. We can say, 'If I do this what will happen?' This doesn't tell me whether I should do this. We still have another part, which is 'Well, do I want that to happen?' In other words, the first question is at least susceptible to scientific investigation; it is, in fact, a typical scientific question."
Feynman argues basically that the realm of science is seeing what is possible; it is up to society to decide what it wants to do with the discovery after the fact. (BTW -- this quote is from The Meaning of it All.)
So many people have tried this argument and i finnally have to respond. The difference is that these scientist are creating a new kinda of life, probably completely different from any other life on Earth. When you reproduce, all you are doing is creating another human, which is agruably just a detached extention of yourself. When you fertalize an egg, you are merging one cell with another, no creation there, just a remixing. the fact that this cell divides and becomes independant is irrelevant. The point is that it is not new, just an addition.
ummm, I just gotta say, that's damn funny... you need to keep that up, just so I can link to it in one of my .sigs....
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
The capatilists "live" off the backs of the third world nations b/c they are so bad off their even the sweatshop wages they pay are better then what they had before.
it's not charity but its better then nothing.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
Dude, if I had karma to give you, you'd get it for that. :)
Even if I'm Catholic and therefore supposed to Inquisition your punk-ass or something.
Extremely funny!
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
The point is that it brings a whole new kind of weird to science. What (technically) are these new life forms? Are the they children of the scientists? We need to define a whole new section in our laws for this...
-Elendale (thinks this is the wave of the future and wants these scientists IPO)
I don't understand why people have such a virulent reaction towards religion. Why do you think, for instance, that it survives only through preying on credulity? My religion has a large number of adherents who are university educated or beyond, who find that it provides meaning in a way that science simply cannot. As for teaching philosophy in schools, there's a fair chance that that would weaken people's faith in science more than in religion...the Duhem-Quine thesis, for instance.7 16,115090+2,00.html
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5
Finally, how do you propose we achieve a non-culturally-relativist platform? Tolerance is itself an ideology, as the previous poster pointed out.
i said that the simple bacteria created by these scientists would not decimate life on earth. they are taking the essential genes from a non-pathogenic bacteria. if the ability to decimate life on earth was an essential gene, do you think there would be life now?
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts. -- Voltaire
I guess I better go crawl in a hole and tremble. 100% safe?
I'm even frightened of bell curves now.
by the way I try to read as little as possible,,,it frightens and confuses me.
last comment ever
On Sept. 13, 1999 the Moon as you know it was replaced by a hologram and artificial gravity for planet earth was turned
It seems to me if you don't believe in God the most logical choice for a system of ethics is basically game theory, waying of the risks and rewards and making the choice which leaves you the best odds.
This is (at least for me) more or less correct: I tend to not rely on a codified system of ethics, but rather evaluate each ethical choice on its own conditions, and possible implications on myself and what I care about.
Now, "what I care about" is, of course, indirectly influenced by the ten commandments of the Old Testament, since I live in a Western society based on Christianity. I do, however, try to question my values and motives from time to time, seeing if there's anything that could work better.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
Religious issues aside, what happens if they somehow manufacture an unknown but deadly form of bacteria? Of course they have precautions for this kind of thing, but still, thou shalt not forget Murphy's Law.
Welcome to Slashdot Paranoia 101. It's a setup for a sci fi movie, but I doubt it's going have any relevance for a very long time. And I think you would need a team of mad scientists.
The only thing that will tell us who was meant to survive is time. Your arguments have TAINTED the matrix, and are REJECTED.
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
Just like if we break a window, it's no trouble to put it ba...oh. Whoops.
Well ok...
Science and Medicine
"and science is only good for humanity. If Science is the good guy, and Religion is the bad guy"
Great Scientific Advancements and it only did us good things:
Atomic Bomb - Science
Radiation Testing on Cancer Patients - Medicine
DDT Sprayed on Children - Science
Phelidomite Treatments- Medicine
Chemical Warfare\Gases-Science
Bleeding People with leeches- ultra Scientific
Matter\ Antimatter bomb experiments - Science
Pricing AIDS treatments so that they can't be used in the 3rd world - are religious people doing this no I think it is pharmaceutical companies that only do us GOOD as you say!!
And by the fucking way Galileo only "rediscovered" these notions of planets orbiting the sun.
Why don't you look to old Sumerian and Egyptian Pagan Rituals. You will find funny scientific things like precession of the equinoxes, heliocentricity, Pi, the Golden Mean.
Look in the Bible you will find some funky astronomy in there to...Probably inherited from the Eqyptians or the Sumerians. So perhaps religion is not so stupid after all.
And why don't you know all this it is because SCIENCE itself in the early years was completely racist and biased. Look at NEWTONIANS (who are really just NEO-PLATONIST anyway)and their hositlity to EINSTEIN initial papers. We don't want to know that ancient people knew their science through their religions. We do not want to know that thousands of years ago people may have been quite advanced and not stupid "religious" savages like you make them out.
And by the way I AM AN ATHEIST - Science student! so don't lump me in as an easy Christian target for you all to nail.
And I thought that Modern Science discovered all of these things.
Read some Ancient History man and get a brain of your own.
Please reply to me and tell me the good that this gave to us
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf
Heh, I am not trying to turn this into "what animal can kill what other animal" discussion, cuz an elephant enjoys stomping priviliges (sp?) over most animals. The gist of this thread (I think) is that man is not the "best" creature when it comes to survival. Man needs his tools to live, and if we took away those tools (from a nuclear holocaust, for example), he would have very little to fall back on. What would Bond do without his exploding toothpaste and garotte-wire dental floss, not to mention his missile-firing BMW?
Certain animals like bugs have tenacity and survivability practically wired into their genetics. They are low to the ground, can eat anything, and are damn near impervious to disease. Also, for every one you stomp there is probably a nest of larvae waiting to take that unfortunate ex-bug's place.
The point of all this is, if something happened that leveled the field for the rest of the animals (no toys for us), I wouldn't wager on the survival of man. Let's hope it never comes to that.
even though it contains all of the genes required to live, this still does not mean that it will be better-suited or more efficient. the extra genes that organisms have add to their ability to adapt to new situations and environments, which make them more suited to live, and more efficient in certain environments.
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts. -- Voltaire
What an idiotic suggestion that religious leaders be asked for advice on this topic. They don't have the foggiest idea about the possibilities of this technology, nor on the impact that it could have on anything, not even on religion, because they are exactly like everyone else, ie. not clairvoyant. At best they'd be guessing, which doesn't give them any kind of privileged say whatsoever.
The only people that have any special platform in this subject area are the domain specialists. The rest of us are just handwaving. We should all have a say of course, but not from any privileged position.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Perhaps, rather than using CAPS to prove your point, you should use logical arguments.
Lets face it, that post was *not* helpful.
You do have a point, but please, in the future, try to make it much nicer.
DNA is universal? Im not a super-biologist, but i don't really think that is relavant to what you are saying.
Only one news source has less accurate information than "conventional" news sources. This source is slashdot comments.
This is not to say that it doesn't have many good comments, but EVERYTHING should be taken with a grain of salt, and ive seen some very bad comments. Religeon bashing ones seem to include these.
Perhaps its not only the Religous people who have IQ lower than 70
People have a right to do what they want?
Wonderful. Wouldn't you want to live in that world.
1) Many Christians do go around telling atheists how much we suck. Many Christians do not respect our beliefs. The anger you see is largely in response to this.
2) I do not respect your beliefs. I am confident that you are wrong. I only pretend to respect your beliefs for the same reason that I constantly tolerate people saying wrong things. (misstatements of fact about a variety of topics). They won't want to hear what I have to say, if they bother to listen to it they won't believe it, and it will just start an argument that will leave both of us hating each other. I have nothing to gain, it is not my responsibility to educate other people, and there's no reason to try when the probability of failure is so high.
I know you don't understand, so here's some help. Take someone who's beliefs you have no respect whatsoever for. Someone who you think is thoroughly wrong in some regard. Perhaps even someone you consider insane. Perhaps even me. Think about how much you respect their beliefs that you know to be completely wrong. Well that's how much I respect yours.
I'll treat you theists with respect, but I sure don't respect your religion or your religious beliefs. I only tolerate them so that we can get along, and because you usually have redeeming qualities that far outweigh the bizarre religious ideas. And I have sympathy for you only believing what you were taught your whole life.
I was merely responding to your clueless rant, O Tactful One.
"I'm not interested in pointing fingers or a flamewar- "history", such as it is, has been highly corrupted by entities such as the church- there's more under the surface than your average Believer can handle, so of course they're going to scoff at it. From the standpoint of science- this is like asking your uncle if it's okay to breath, knowing full well if you're uncle says "no" and you do anyway, he'll sit on you. I AM young, and if I "get over" anything, it will be Religion and feeling compelled to reply to these sorts of barbs."
You started off with a rather childish and provocative characterization of the history of religion (which includes a lot more than Catholicism, by the way), and then complain about "barbs"?
"If you want to debate science or history, I'm game. If you want to talk religion, scrag off."
Well, if you will look at your message that I originally replied to, it seems that you really _do_ want to talk about religion. It wasn't my idea.
Every story that involves genes and people ALWAYS has this pathetic PR bid on the religious community. Essentialy if you don't acknowledge their existance and importance to human civilization by giving them condescending explanations of your work for their blessing then expect all sorts of angry publicity and demonstrations.
Its a lot like opening a new business in small town, there are certain established public figures that you have to bribe to even get the business license. These being, in every case, useless people we can do without.
Allow me. :-)
Question 1: Why *DO* you believe in god?
Thank YOU! I was about to post something along these lines when I decided to make sure it hadn't already been posted. I can't believe it, like a hundred comments on Urey-Miller that has nothing to do with this, but was the first post ;), but nothing relavent to the man behind the controversy. Venter is most DEFINATELY a business man first and basically everything he does is blown WAY out of proportion. I wonder how many people here realise that he and Celera Genomics are the main proponent behind patenting the human genome...
Head over to www.celera.com before deciding he's the best biologist since Watson and Crick...
There are only two ways. Both are slim to none:
/. to give him the IP. (haha!)
1.)He can ask
2.)break in and try to get it that way(correlate with the posting times?). (cmdr prolly knows his
security pretty well)
*shrug* why threaten statue-man? Post was rather
creative, if anything.
I think this should be brought out:
"However, when they can create life and then tell me exactly what choices this creature will make during its life...then they'll be playing god."
Essantially, he is saying that being/playing God is not about creating, but about knowing. I'd like to hear some responses to this. Being an atheist myself, I can't really say.
Responding directly:
Unfortunatly for your argument, if we do create AI, then presumably we will have all the sourse code for it and will be able to predict its actions precisely. All you need is a slightly faster computer to tell you what the slightly slower one is about to think. (Naturally, for analog life, this is not true.)
If we create life for any purpose (even to destroy it immediately) then one could argue that at least we created life - and any life, even a really terrible life, is a good thing.
If you agree with this, then you are probably against euthanasia. If you're against this, then you are basically saying that not all life is better than death. From this follows a whole list of questions; is euthanasia ok somtimes? is suicide ok sometimes? is even murder ok sometimes? (maybe starving children?)
I don't know, but it seems to me that ANY life is better than lack thereof, and thus CREATING life is a good thing. I know this is majorly over simplified, but it got me thinking and I thought I'd post my thoughts.
I don't see any special about this vaporware from some guys promising to create some puny bacteria. Hey, my parents created me in nine months! And I have become a reasonably accomplished code-hacking life form. I don't depend on some lab assistant for my food :-)
However, I should point out that they did consult religious leaders beforehand.
After scientists become good and skilled at creating life, they should breed Pokemon! Then they can release them into all the grassy areas of the world and then we can all go get Pokeballs and try to capture them !! I want a real life Pikachuu ! :D
What is it about issues like this that make people all religious? Not to insult any slashdot posters (they are obviously all saints who give away their incomes to the poor.) but why do people who aren't bothering to devote themselves to doing good willing to tell scientists what they can and can't do in the labratory.
I respect, even if I don't agree with, the objections of religious leaders. These are men and women who really have devouted their life to doing good. But it is the height of hypocrisy to say "you shouldn't do that" when I know full well that you earn a great deal above the mean income and are keeping most of that money to make yourself happy. And no helping out once in awhile at the local community center doesn't cut it.
I don't blame you, being good is very difficult (heck im not), and maybe you think that doing this might be wrong. So post that you think it might be wrong. But posting about how man has gone to far or other such dramatic statements is really kinda ridiculous when you fail to devote yourself to this good you apparently so strongly believe in.
ohh and I apoligize beforehand to that handful of peoplel here who really are extremly good.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
One thing that I have to wonder about these folks is if they're prepared for any potential security concerns that might be posed by people who are against this sort of work. I keep getting this mental image of Jake Busey with a bomb strapped to his chest in Contact.
For the overly sensitive, I'm not attempting to make any sweeping generalization about any particular group of people. I'm just saying that there are crazies in every crowd, and in a situation like this it might be prudent to do a little bit of planning.
"single celled organism won't have a soul"
Yes, hmmmm. I got into an interesting discussion with a strongly religious friend of mine a while back on this sort of topic.
I asked if bacteria had souls, he said no. Fish? no. Monkeys? no. A human fetus? yes. An embryo? yes. A fertalized egg? yes. An unfertalized egg? no. Sperm? no. An egg with a sperm in it but without the DNA combined yet? no.
So I said "So the creation of a soul can be traced to the time when the two sets of genes combine?" and he said, "I guess so." And so I asked "well, what about when they are half way together? is there a soul then? Is there a half soul? What if i combined the DNA in a highly controlled enviornment and was able to hold them in this state?" He pretty much had to admit (for the first time ever, and we argue about this sort of thing a lot) that he really didn't know.
I don't think that I actually upset his views any, but it is interesting that even a highly religious and well read person like him could be confused by this fairly simple matter.
First, let me say that I agree with you entirely: this research is important - vital - to furthering our understanding in the medical/scientific fields. However, I take issue with your objection to the consultation of religious groups.
It isn't religion that breeds intolerance, but instead the abuse of religion...just as the abuse of science and technical knowledge can breed an equal - and opposite - intolerance for the less-quantifiable elements of society. The consultation that you object to is a trend that I applaud in the scientific community - the realization that science does not operate in a vacuum...that scientific discoveries have human consequences...and specifically that an interdisciplinary approach to problems is what's required to translate pure scientific knowledge into human understanding and societal benefit.
Religious zealots...scientific zealots...linux zealots...they're all the same in that they lack the open-mindedness to accept that another perspective can complement their current knowledge. As soon as the mind is closed, you shut off the ability to develop/accept new tools to deal with familiar problems...familiar problems that may have remained problems because the closed mind's viewpoint is the only one it can see.
- clearcache
(Freedom of Religion - and lack-thereof - advocate, Freedom of Science - and lack-thereof - advocate, and Freedom of OS advocate...my personal beliefs are irrelevant, but my tolerance is not)
If you take it as a given that some small group of nasty people can create a disease that will wipe out the existing human population, then you'd damn well better have the technology to "upgrade" our immune systems to deal with such diseases!
"Nature" apparently allows us to do this too. If it defied physical law, the "laws of nature," well, it just wouldn't work now would it? I've never understood why anything we do is not "natural," but anything any other species does is. People who think like this tend to also say that we are no better than any other thing on earth. If we are no better, then wouldn't whatever we do be "natural" as well??? If what we do is unnatural, you are admitting that there is something that sets us apart from nature. Setting us apart in a dominant way. If that is the case, then we are in fact better. So either way, we should do whatever we want as a species.
If we wanna save the environment, well, that is for us. Not for the spotted owls. If we think it's actually for some dumb birds, we're deluding ourselves.
I read somewhere once, that a group of scientists
had built a tank of gasses that were similar to earth when life supposedly evolved.. according to darwin's notes.. and they did get amino acids to form.. it was interesting, but I probably got the details somewhat wrong since I think it's been 6 years since I read it.. does anyone know what it is i'm referring to? who did it, where it was done?
"And how can this be? For he is the
It is SICKENING that scientists have to approach religious leaders for "approval". Internal review boards were made for this. Religion has no business dictating a scientists actions!
Does being able to make working DNA necessarily mean that you can create a new organism?
That is bizarre. I'm really glad that they are consulting religous leaders. I'm sure that they will be told not to proceed, but I'm also sure that they will anyway. As much as I want technology to push ahead, I really hope that they fail. I believe in God, and I don't really think that we should create life. Increasing the standards of living is one thing, but I have to disagree with this.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Genetics are just math.. enough time and research
and people can figure it out.. I guess it's
newsworthy to note the progress, but sooner or later there will be organizations with genetic kickstart disks and a php interface, so you can create the perfect baby and mail order some frozen spermcicles to your door.
"And how can this be? For he is the
800th post.
This is the most significant topic I've ever seen posted on Slashdot, and I think the feedback here proves that I'm not alone.
Jesus, the world will never be the same after this.
hm. To put the thinking cap on backwards:
Assume for a second there may be a supreme being. This 'being', being supreme, is omniscient and omnipotent. It created the reality as we know it... for example, the concept of mortality and pain and struggle and sorrow and joy and all that.
So to use your burnt child analogy, why would such a supreme being decide to make things that hurt? In other words, why does there have to be pain? What purpose does it serve? Why did that supreme being even want to create a bunch of other lessor beings and then make things miserable for them?
The only thing I can think of, is that such a supreme being likes being worshipped. It likes to be superior. It is egotistical. . What's the point then?
I've heard two answers in my 26 years of consciousness:
1. We need pain to recognize enjoyment.
2. Read the story about Job.
Well, the first one just brings me back to my first point... Why, in that case, did the supreme being decide that we need pain to recognize enjoyment? Omnipotence implies that such 'rules' were created by the supreme being in the first place.
The second issue is pretty damn degrading. It's basically telling me that I don't know squat, and I can't comprehend anything, so don't ask questions. Well, Mr. Supreme Being, why didn't you make me able to comprehend it? Oh sorry, I'm being uppity again.
Which brings me to my next topic, and now I'm going to focus on Christianity. Specifically creation. Eve had free will. Eve ate the apple. We are all punished. hm. It was Eve's fault, punish her. According to Genesis, she, the spare rib, was created to be a helper and serve Adam. Oh I get it, she was blonde and the REAL punishment is only for blonde people? God has a sense of humor? I think so. Why else did he give Adam nipples?
Yeah, I'm too psyched about snowboarding this weekend to stay on topic. But the nipple thing intrigues me.
Men have nipples because we are all female until there are some hormonal changes in the womb that genderfy us (Next big thing: herbal remedies that increase breast size of the fetus so they don't have to have augmentation later!). But in Adam's case, he wasn't born in a womb. God, being omniscient, must have realized that he'd need an Eve, so maybe he put nipples on Adam to plan for that. But if he can make Eve out of a spare rib, why can't he add nipples to her and her alone? I mean, he is omnipotent too, right? And if he's omniscient, he knew that Eve would eat the apple so why did he even tempt them? Makes the case for a sadistic god. Wonder who he's frying with his giant magnifying glass now? Anyway, the whole nipple thing really points to science rather than creation if you ask me.
Oh yeah, creation. Lets see, who begat who... Adam and Eve begat Cain and Able. Cain begat... Enoch? Or was it Able who begat Enoch? No matter. They had to 'begat' with someone female. Funny how the Bible doesn't mention any of the female names unless they did something bad or drew attention to themselves. So is Enoch's mother? His father's sister? heh heh Funny jokes come to mind: Who are you if your daddy is your uncle and your mommy is your aunt? Enoch! You might a redneck if... your mother is your aunt! OH wait You might be twice removed from God if your family tree don't fork!
Well, I gotta go. It's been fun to vent... BTW I'm not really a coward. I don't come here often so I rarely post so I don't have an account. If you want to continue this discussion my email is aasland@yahoo.com - wouldn't it be cool if I got 400 emails over the weekend? sweet! Anyway, have fun and don't play too roughly with your nipples!
Very true, I skipped a bit over the platform issue because it wasn't entirely relevant to my argument and I would have been a bit boring. But I'll explain further now.
The ultimate "platform" for life is the physical universe, but that doesn't really mean much because digital electronic comptuers also operate in the physical world. Just as computers have structures bulit in the physicsl world, biology must also.
When I said the cytoplasm was the platform, I was going for the concept of cytoplasm as "all the stuff in the cell that is responsible for the transcription, translation, and ultimate expression of DNA". The proteins responsible for this stuff are suprisingly constant in most organism. In fact, the largest difference between these support structures occurs between the prokaryotes (bacteria) and eukaryotes (everything else). Since we're talking about bacteria, the simplest way to do "execute" this "program" would be to synthesize the genome, then get bacteria to take it in (there are techniques for this) and discard all of its old DNA (perhaps a bit harder). Then we would have a bacterium with RNA transcriptase, ribosomes, folding chaperones, etc., everything that we need to get this new DNA expressed as proteins. Let's say the new plan for a ribosome was slightly different than the old one (that's already present in the cell). You would probably observe, as the bacteria went through its life processes, that the old ribosomes would gradually decrease in number and the new ones increase, until the bacterium would be almost entirely created according to the new plans. These new plans would, of couse, have to specify how to create all of the infrastructure themselves.
Come to think of it, that right there is probably the spot this analogy crashes hardest: no digital comptuer program must contain the instructions for its hardware, operating system, and compiler, all in one. Yet DNA contains all those things, and one placed in an environment that will interpret it (any old bacterium will do), it will eventually produce the life form that it codes for.
You are right when you say "The 'platform' controls the 'code' much more than in a computer." The DNA must simultaneously contain the instructions for the platform and the code that runs on it. It IS the platform, as much as it is the code.
"In itself it's an interesting piece of scientific research. But it depends on your motivation. If you are trying
to prove the non-existence of God that's one thing, but if you are just carrying out an experiment that is
quite another.
What is this?????
What other reason is there for a religious group for dissallowing attempts to prove the religion is flawed? If the religion is in fact correct, there is no need to worry about people trying to prove otherwise. However, if the religion is indeed flawed, they're all better of knowing it. Unless the religious leaders have something to hide....
the useful sequences I was talking of were relativetly short (like 200). For an amino acid sequence to be reproducing, it would have to be even longer, making the odds even less.
Happy? While religion IS a hot point, from my POV the topic here is that scientists are consulting w/ religious leaders to do something that they really shouldn't be asking permission for. It's akin to me asking my boss if I can format my hard drive- while he technicly has some say in the matter, since the format has no impact on productivity, there's no point in mucking about with a few days of booha while he makes his decision. Better to just do it. It's the same situation here. While I'm fully of the opinion that there are areas science SHOULDN'T go, I also believe that they should be responsible enough to make the decision for themselves, as opposed to consulting a source that has a long and colorful history of bias and guilt [I don't know about you, but I hold no truth for the concept of "original sin"]
Okay. Do you have any idea how many electrons there are in the Universe?
> All the sane people knew that China is 20000 sea miles in the west, and noone could get there with 15th century technology.
Isn't that what I said? If they had gone by logic or science, no one would have bothered.
> To the population of these west-indian islands, and to whole Amerika, this discovery by religious fanatists turned out as a real disaster.
While I am not here to defend Columbus, I would say the gold hunters caused far more damage than the priests.
> BTW: America was discouverd before by several expeditions
yes, I am very well aware
The only reason for my original comment was to reply to "If we'd done that 300+ years ago would anybody have bothered to try sailing around the planet?" and point out the irony/incorrectness of it.
I guess that I'm approaching this from the "It happened, so let's figure out how" point of view, and you're approaching it from the "I don't see how it could have happened, so it must not have" point of view, which is very unscientific. That second camp assumes that they know everything, their own judgement and knowledge are the limits of reality. I assume no limits to reality, but look to come as close as possible by observing what goes on. (I've posted somewhere else in all of this muddling about life about Richard Feynman. Read him for more on this sort of thing).
Most natural things do not have the destructive effect that we do. In fact, the only things that rival us are non-living forces such as natural disasters.
What a load of crap. Carpenter ants routinely destroy forests. Army ants routinely kill every living creature in a several-mile radius. Nile perch routinely clear out entire species through ramping breeding and eating. Chimpanzees routinely destroy entire populations of animals in their search for protein. Mosquitos and vampire bats routinely decimate animal populations by transmitting infectious diseases.
We are different from other species. We recognize our destructive effects [after it rains down on our heads], and sometimes take action to correct it.
Self-corrections, not destructive tendencies, are what separate us from other species.
..let's not forget that while the church DID preservel iteracy to a degree, it also had its fair share of black marks- hence the attitude theretowards: Eclesiasticism is best exemplified, I think, by the Borg from Star Trek (or Microsoft)- if the Bible was literally interpreted instead of spun into whatever it is that people want it to say, civilization would be far more advanced.
Now that Christianity has become the dogma of the US and a good chunk of the technological world, I think some people are beginning to think that religion is in need of a dire overhaul. I was born/raised a "liberal" Mennonite, but the guilt-tripping and that some long dead Christ died for "sins" that I've "committed" never really took- nor did a lot of the other stuff. Move on, branch out, and expand the horizons. If you're going to consult religious authorities, who have an extablished habit of extreme Zealotry (though I HAVE, honestly, met a few good eggs), you seriously need to expand the test group to include the Judeo-Christian Church, Wiccan, Muslims, Thelemics, etcetera: asking one order on the topic will contaminate the results: it's akin to asking someone in Pittsburgh what they think of the Cleveland Browns: you are NOT going to get an objective opinion (you either love the Steelers, are here on business, or get sick at the thought of sports) [hey, I think this analogy works!....]
If anything, there IS a need to reread and recouch ones words, especially in a forum such as this: if I had properly thought through my original statement, I would not have wound up on this train of explaining myself further. But then, my point is being slowly proved as I warm to a more objective take on the subject. Still...
Religion has it's "good points", I guess- but taken in general rather than one religion in particular. Science needs a truly objective body of opinion, not just the Church in a matter such as this.
Oh come now. Religion has more blood on it's
hands than any other activity known to man.
Splitting it up across denoiminations amounts to nothing more than petty sophistry.
Ahh..I love the smell of burning Revisionist Historians in the morning.
And the immune system attacks, and clippy is smashed into a thousand pieces!
Don't hold your breath, but the pretty things are going to hell. And so is clippy!
This brings up an interesting question which others have asked, though not earth shattering in my oppinion. Where do you draw the line at creating life? Do you have to construct every detail of a simple cell? Is it creating life if you coax it to grow from previously non-living matter (but you don't know what it'll look like cause you didn't construct it yourself)?
This is indeed a question for philosophy majors. But the only importance, really, is a matter of language. Do you call it creating life or not? If you do are don't doesn't really make a difference in whether or not the action you're performing is ethical (note that I do not use the word moral).
Based on the most simplest form of ethics, it is only ethical if the action does no harm to environment or entity. God doesn't have to play a single part in this. The real conundrum is if it is inethical to destroy this creation once we've created it, which we'll likely have to do, and that may only be a matter of conscience. If it'll be on our conscience, we shouldn't go there. But if it'll wiegh heavier if somebody with fewer scruples does it, and we can't stop 'em cause we don't know the details of how to, then we should swallow our hearts and go ahead (as I wrote in a previous post).
But bringing God, or any god, into this discussion is only a matter of aesthetics and esthetics, and excludes the vast majority of people concerned (namely everybody). So, bringing God into this discussion as a serious argument for or against is actually an inethical thing to do, no?
Woah... That's a shift of subject... Or is it?
The right people have to be convinced, afterall.
-- "So far, I have not found the science" -Soul Coughing
Last, but not least, there's the argument that God (whoever/whatever God may be) gave everyone free will. To renounce that gift is clearly somethingyou can do, but since it goes against what God obviously wanted us to have, it's at best stupid and at worst a crime against nature.
:)
:) I have strong opinions on both sides of this argument. I firmly believe that only God can create life. I don't know how He did it, and I don't know if humankind will ever know how He did it, but He did. I don't think that what these scientists in question are thinking about doing is actually creating, it's just "cut and paste" as someone said earlier. Creating life is making something that can reproduce itself autonomously, from substances that were previously not living, such as amino acids and nucleotides. It's not taking genes, splicing them together, and then sticking them in an "empty shell", or the cell membrane/wall of another lifeform.
And I'm not even going to start on the predestination/free will argument
As both a scientist (biochemistry) and an evangelical Christian (that's right, you can be both
The point is that life needs to come from somewhere. It doesn't just appear where none was before. Complexity comes from previous complexity. They talk in the article about building up a DNA strand from scratch, synthesizing it in the lab. Where do the enzymes to do that come from? Do they expect to build macromolecules from elemental carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus?
On a different thread, just putting DNA in a bacterial shell isn't going to get you anywhere. Remember back to your biology classes - all that messenger RNA and transport RNA and ribosomes and transcription factors and all that? It doesn't come from nowhere. It needs to be syntesized from previous DNA. If it's already there, then this custom splicing of genetic code into a new form is nothing more than the genetic engineering that's been routinely performed for the past 20 or 30 years. Take some code, put it into another cell, change its function. Viruses have been doing that for millions of years.
Some others here have said that it's just a matter of understanding the structure of proteins and how the primary amino acid structure relates to the 3D tertiary and quaternary structure, and how the protein functions. IBM recently announced Blue Gene, a $100 million petaflop computer to unlock how proteins fold. I read in a news story recently that it could take Blue Gene 1 year to decode how 1 protein folds - to compute every possible conformation. There are (more or less) 18,000 genes in the human body, most of them coding for at least 1 protein and some for as many as 5 or 6. I think it's going to take a while before we figure this thing out.
Just a few thoughts.
Matt Morrison
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. Albert Einstein
"There is no God but man". So sez Liber OZ
~ ~^~
Who is Liber OZ?
Heres another way to look at it. If you had kids and you were going to take them on a vacation would you ask them where they wanted to go first? After all you have the money, car, everything needed to make the trip. Its your resources, they can't stop you from going wherever so why ask them?
Well, when its obvious you aren't asking there permission you find a few reasons too,
1) So that they can get envolved with it too
2) So that you can know better if they will enjoy the vacation too. I don't think you base the vacation entirely on their input, but there are places to improve on the main idea with it.
3) So they don't scream that you decided behind there backs.
I think that aside this provides the best explanation of why they should ask ecclesiastical authorities.
If they asked me, I'd say "Render unto Ceaser that which is Ceaser's and unto the Lord that which is the Lords". This is a scientific effort, not a religous one. A religious effort would be trying to gain an understanding of if and who God is. This really is more like playing around with the tools God left us. I wish them success.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^
You sort of crossed the problem, religous leaders get training in morals, not in ethics. Morals are basicaly a check list of what is right and wrong. Ethics on the other hand is the art of seeing things from other peoples point of view.
Personally I think that ethics courses should be required inorder to graduate from highschool, but thats just part of my morals.
""I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -Galileo Galilei"
Let's see...
1. Constantine's conversion = Christianity as the State Religion.
2. Papal Indulgences. Enough said.
2.5. The Crusades! Who could forget the Crusades?
3. The Spanish Inquisition.
3.5 America colonized by the Puritans- one of societies most inane sects. "Escaping from tyranny", they set up there own, which lead to...
4. Salem Witch Trials.
5. The United States- a country whose constitution and original government was founded by Masons- sneaking it into coins, currency, and public education. Sorry, but a Pledge of Alleigance to a government I hold no trust in under a religious aegis I don't follow is a violation of the precarious First Amendment.
Yeah, I'd say that the Pope needs to hose some of the Red off of his hands. For a religion that preachs "let he who be without sin cast the first stone", there's been a veritable hail of the damned things in the past couple hundred years.
Ah well.
Much like Microsoft and the Roman Empire, these religions will fold in due time as the "cults" (as Christianity was classified for a really long time, folks! The only difference is who weilds the political power!) gain appreciation and members. By then this issue will be long solved or forgotten. Either way, all present will be long since gone on to their next incarnation, private hell, galconda, nirvana, purgatory, whatever.
"Whether or not we should do this" is inherently a normative question that implies values, standards, dare I say... "morals." ... Fine. Then don't consult a religious person for a religious perspective, because the answer you will receive is antithetical to the pursuit of science.
I find quite the opposite to be true. Scientists don't deal at all with normative values (at least in their capacity as scientists). It is religious leaders and ethicists who spend a great deal of time studying and thinking about these questions. Therefore, they should be better equiped than scientists to answer such questions.
-jimbo
"Hold me Bob!" "I would if I could man!" -Larry and Bob in VeggieTales
I don't distrust science.
I don't take it for granted either.
We must realize that there are things well beyond our level of understanding. This research has the ability to greatly extend our level of understanding about genetics and all.
But it also contains a very real possibility of biting us in the ass if we aren't careful.
So no, I don't distrust science per se, but I do kinda cringe when scientists start dicking around with things they know very little of.
Of course, by some peoples definition of life, viruses aren't alive. They don't consume food or excrete and they don't have any senses, both of which are common parts of definitions of life.
You're forgetting that Rosie O'Donnell is a stupid piece of shit. I say we create the life form instead of letting her breed, and the world will be a better place on two counts. You sound like you're jealous or really whipped. You do realize that us geeks, including our "bad hair, an addiction to jolt cola, and poor personal skills" are currently kicking ass in a major way, don't you? Rosie O'Donnell is Rosie O'Donnell because she isn't intelligent to hold down a decent job.
Why? It's a statistical fact that the southern usa has a very high percentage of religious people, and thus logical that if their population increases, there would be more religious people, since religion allways always comes from the parent(s) being religious.
The Bible is a book. God is not a book. Thus: the Bible is not God. Therefore the Bible by itself cannot be considered completely authoritative. God retains the right to opinions that are not expressed in the Bible :)
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
I'm not sure if this vacation analogy is an apt one- though putting said religious leaders in the position of the children in this case is both apt and humorous. :)
Which do YOU think would be more educational and a better experience- the Cannes film festival or Disneyworld? The Last Emperor or Pokemon: the first movie? Which do you think the kids are going to decide on?
Liber Oz is a book, not a person: a treatise dealing with the fundamental rights of Man- rights that have nothing to do with petty constitutions or commandments. Very interesting reading. [Particulalry pertaining to "if and who god is"]
He doesn't actually think that is has anything to do with Microsoft, he is just trying to divert the conversation into something geeks are more familiar with.
Regardless of the amount of food, drink, money, or energy, we will still be human. And humans are never satisfied with what they have, they always want more, better, faster, and cheaper. And I ain't talking algae cakes.
-- The meek shall inherit the Earth. In very small plots, about 6 feet by 3.
Why does god want our love? (Hmmm, ST:TOS flashback) I see no use for loving god, so if god really wants what is best for me, wouldn't he just want me to be happy, instead of wanting me to love him. (And for that matter, why would he want me to sit in a big building every sunday singing songs that are mostly very boring musically, and sermons that are not the most enjoyable thing either?).
If he wants us to be happy, why is there war?
Or isn't us being happy what he wants?
Please reread the article!!! All that the scientists are going to do is knock out a hundred or so genes of this tiny bacterium. We knock out genes all the time in the lab-- theyre just taking it to the extreme. Theyre taking a chainsaw to this poor bug to see how much they can chop off and still keep it barely alive. Granted this is an interesting experiment, but it has NOTHING to with "creating" life. What these scientists and the media have created is a bunch of sensationalism. Most likey because theyve run short of funding.
Ditto. No one cares that you beat him, Mr Signal 11. Comments were made for discussion, debate and enlightenment, not karma and first posts.
Viruses have far less than 300 genes. They've made novel viruses for years. Crank up the gene machine, cut and paste...no big whoop...life!
On Sept. 13, 1999 the Moon as you know it was replaced by a hologram and artificial gravity for planet earth was turned
Let me ask you this. Has anyone been able to "breathe" life into a pile of molecules? You make it sound so simple. So, surely, in our advanced technological age, some scientists would have done this by now, or are these the first scientists to ever do this? Also, if these are the first, why do they assume they can breathe life into a pile of molecules, which has never had life breathed into it before?
I am not religious, so don't worry about me gettin' on the soapbox and claiming God creates life, blah, blah, blah, I just think there's more to life than a pile of molecules.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Here's a hint for life. People will tend to listen to you more if you use whole words.
/. expirience than, say, Signal 11, who just wastes space.
You.
Anyway, he adds a lot more to the
Your average Bengal tiger is far more elegant than Mikhail Baryshnikov, and could stomp Stone Cold Steve Austin into the ground.
Your average Bengal tiger sleeps in its own piss and eats rotting carcasses. While the transcendental fantasy of the noble, wild forest is fun stuff for motivational posters, it's a load of crap, in the end.
While we are no match one-on-one with the tiger, we belong to a technologically advanced species that has easily become the dominant life form on the planet.
"Become", nothing. We always were the dominant "species". My dog and I never had any contests to see who had a bigger brain, sorry. Although I will admit that during observance of Festivus we do indulge in a few Feats of Strength...
The bear went over the mountain,
The bear went over the mountain,
The bear went over the mountain,
To see what he could see.
Not as impressive if he just walks around it...
:)
I find this rather scary. This could potentially have the most severe "side effect". Since we really dont understand what we are doing yet and have yet to complete the Human Genome Project let alone UNDERSTAND the information that we will derive from it, how can we have any idea as to what works, what's safe, etc.
I worked in a medical research environment where we studied various things ( I was in the imaging, stoke, atherosclerosis group, but there was cancer, neurodegenerative disease groups and more ) and I fail to see at this point what the immediate benefits could be by performing this experiment, but I do see th negative side of it.We potentially (as has been said in other posts ) could create a bacterium or virus which is with no "natural" controls (like pigs introduced into enviroments not naturally adapted for them ) and thus if deadly has the potential to destroy life.
I fully believe in scientific research and especially life sciences research because of the positive benefits to humanity, and I dont mean so that we can for 500 years but just because we can doesn't mean we SHOULD! Sceince operates in a sort of vacumm where discovery and newness is paramount and sometimes consequences are not thought about or we get to the point where well oops we now are able to do this, should we? well someone will now that its possible so we have to do it to make sure the "right" people do it.
For me this does not come down to GOD, though I do understand why someone might consult religous "leaders". Many people on this planet do believe and this type of research has the very real potential to be both deadly or life saving ( though not anytime soon ). While I dont necessarily subscribe to any religous ideology it is an interesting arguement though, assuming there is a devine creator and that creator is both omnipotent and all knowing then the creator at least is aware of what "its" doing. We one te otherhand have no idea what we might create ahead of time or the ramifications of such a creation. DNA is not lego, building with it just for the sake of doing so is not necessarily benign.
Lets maybe think this one over very very carefully first.
I've seen one person comment that we should because we can eliminate all diseases. Uh nope. I dont think we ever will. Disease is a basic evolutionary/Mathusian control and I believe will always exist in some form or another to control population and provide a balance (maintain ecological equilibrium, ying yang, what have you ).
my $1.05
Sure, some educated people turn to religion but most do not - it's mainly the province of the poor and undereducated these days.
Maybe it was always so; just a couple of hundred years ago atheism carried horrific penalties in most Christian countries (some Islamic countries are still like that of course). So most atheists would have kept quiet about it anyway.
My contention is that the default belief system for the educated in our society today is secular. People who are unhappy or confused about their place in life will sometimes turn to religion if it is readily available. But if the poor were educated, and the number of believers dwindled, there soon wouldn't be any organised religions to speak of. Inevitably a lot of those unhappy people who today turn to religion would then more readily find something else to turn to.
Don't believe it can't happen; belief systems lose popularity and finally disappear to be replaced by something else. It has occurred again and again throughout history.
I'm not against God BTW, I'm just against superstition and ignorance.
--
With regard to philosophy, it's not essentially anti-scientific. Science was once regarded as a branch of philosophy, it still is really in that it contains its own axioms and its own system of logic. The basic methodology was laid down by Sir Karl Popper who was himself a philosopher. Science is still policed by epistemiology which is about the nature of knowledge, whether, how and what we can know, and whether we can know that we know.
Another branch of philosophy important to scientists is ontology, the only tool we possess for the exploration of the unobservable: the quantum realm, the origin and ultimate fate of the universe; what lies beyond it in other dimensions. Even the nature of ourselves, our consciousness.
In its most general sense, philosophy is the science of how to think in a rational manner.
When I was a young man I thought all philosophy was all meaningless twaddle. This was basically due to a fault in my education, I'd simply not been shown anything really interesting. Since then however I've seen a lot of really thought provoking stuff right at the bleeding edge of scientific discourse.
So I believe teaching philosophy in our schools would be a good thing. It would make people learn to think rationally for themselves. If it ever made them "lose faith in science" it would only be for the right reasons, in injecting a healthy modicum of scepticism and enabling everybody to make up their own minds logically about the latest proposed experiment.
That would be better than the typical responses seen today: whether blindly assuming the scientists know what they are doing and have everyone's best interests at heart; or obediently accepting the condemnations handed down by their high priest; or recoiling in simple ignorance and fear.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Actually, the Church of Satan doesn't believe in being tax exempt. They pay like everyone else.
If Adam and Eve had kids, and they were the only people existing at the time, that would mean that the kids would had to have sex with their mother to further the human race. That pretty much invalidates any truth of "Adam and Eve" for me, sorry.
God can't have created the universe. Isn't the universe defined as a class containing everything that exists? So god is a member of the class, thus he can't have created it, because to create something I assume you need to exist.
I'll agree that not many people, not enviromentalists, naturalists, utopianists, scientists, have a clue what they're talking about.
However, there is such a thing as a shallow short-sighted approach.
Think about what script kiddies do all day and compare it to building a useful product for personal use or to sell.
They scan ports. Geneticists scan gene sequences. Script kiddies are likely not to even know what all those ports do. Well guess what? Geneticists have no clue how genes work. Yeah I studied all that crap about who can have blues and which rabbit is going to be an albino. The point is that they don't know what that geen has to do with eye color. They just figured it all statistically without any clue as to how it all works. Now they're going to take sequences they found in many organisms to try to synthesize a life form? Good luck. Why don't we just cut and paste sequences from Windows, BeOS, Linux, MacOS, QNX, and BSD from different architectures and see what happens.
And btw:
If we wanna save the environment, well, that is for us. Not for the spotted owls. If we think it's actually for some dumb birds. we're deluding ourselves.
Go study complexity theory and ecosystems. It should reduce some of that hubris.
The fact is nature isn't for anyone. It's just there and it moves and changes. Look at the damned Red Spot. If trees grew there it could not develop.
Frankly, extreme environmentalists and Manifest Destiny freaks are the same shallow bunch.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I didn't mean to imply that morals cannot exist without religion.
Actually, it's quite accurate to state that morals cannot exist apart from God. This is recognized even by the most humanistic atheists and is the root of the nihilism that they inevitably espouse if they follow thier beliefs to thier logical conclusions.
As Dostoevsky said, "If God does not exist, then all things are permissable." Aha, you say, "Dostoevsky was a Christian!" (as if this somehow invalidates his point), but interestingly, all prominent humanistic atheist thinkers reach the same conclusion: Sartre, Hegel, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, the list is endless.
If you understand nothing else of philosophy, understand this: The existence of objective truth depends completely upon the existence of God - No God, no truth. Ultimately, this is what all philosophies boil down to - and many philosophers on both sides of the argument have validated this point over the years. If it is indeed possible to know anything, (especially anything of a moral nature) then God must exist.
Furthermore, it's prima facie nonsense to reach that point, as the humanist/atheist philosophers do, and then make the self contradictory assertion that the only thing that is objectively true is that there is no objective truth! (But this non-sequitur is a logical requirement of their determination to deny God exists, so they persist.)
This is not a minor point. If you believe that it's possible to *know* anything, you must *necessarily* believe in God (or at least acknowledge his existence by your acts and every thought, even while consciously mocking His deity.)
Why should these scientists talk to religious leaders? Because they're the ONLY ones in a position to provide valid input on the morality of such a venture. (Although I'm sure they're speaking to some to whom truth is a foreign concept...)
I find it a constant source of amusement that there are so many here on slashdot that pride themselves in their logical methodical thought processes, and yet reject Christianity out of hand, while Chrisitianity can truly be said to be the only logically consistent worldview on the planet. (Don't even bother flaming me in response until you've read John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion..)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Prove that God doesn't exist? How can one prove a negative like that? Here--prove the tooth fairy doesn't exist. You can't offer any proof the tooth fairy isn't fluttering around somewhere, leaving quarters under pillows, so therefore, according to your reasoning, the tooth fairy exists.
Basically, the proof I can offer that God doesn't exist is his nonexistence here. I never see him, I never hear him--I never SENSE or PERCEIVE him. His absence is my proof. If you're going to take the stance that he exists if no one can prove he doesn't exist, well that means I can conjure up absolutely ANY wacky god I'd like and say my proof my being exists is your lack of proof it doesn't exist. See what I mean?
I'd love to kick the crutches your reasoning is resting on, but first, could you define soul as you see it? What do you believe there is more to a human, except for a lot of chemicals?
I'm quite opposed to animal experiments, but let's face it: We kill animals in labs all the time. Does the fact that we created it mean that we suddenly can't kill it anymore?
The study also established that some genes were only essential in certain circumstances, when, for example, particular nutrients were denied to the microbe.
What exactly does this mean?
The fact that the absence of the gene only caused an effect when a certain nutrient was denied the microbe implies that the presence of this gene obviates the necessity of the nutrient in question! Assuming this is the case, how long before we start manufacturing genes which fill our nutritional needs more efficiently than a proper diet ever could?
I firmly believe that only God can create life.
I know my mother can create life. My father helped, I don't think she could of done it without him.
I only point this out to bring in a religious topic of interest. God created the world, the Universe, and Adam and Eve's body. It is very interesting wording in the Bible, (I'd like to see how other religions with simular Adam and Eve Stories put this) but God gave Adam the breath of life. Or in other words, he formed Adam and gave him life.
That might be different than creating life. Indeed it turns into a real extreme chicken and egg problem to comprehend a God who created "life" when he would have to be alive to do it.
Lazerus was in the grave three days (and stinking from decomposition) when Christ brought him back to life.
That God gives life to God' own creation seems to fit with Johns view of God, who is the light and life of the world. In all things, and through all things. Even the very source of life in the Universe.
I think this works well into your next point where the complexity of our existence must have been designed from something that understood at least our complexity. Universal Forces? Natural Selection? Or a being with a Purpose veiled behind and using the former two? I think that is why I agree entirely with George Lucas that "whether or not there is a God is the most important question."
I entirely enjoyed your discussion on whether splicing out some DNA and seeing if it lives constitutes creating life. My opinion is that it doesn't. Thanks for posting I found it very interesting.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
Speaking of which, God didn't even write the bible. People who believed they were speaking god's mind did. When I was told this I felt that most of the bible was invalidated. (I'm 14, I was told this somewhere around 10, so I was still at the age where it doesn't sound far-fetched to think that god wrote the bible :-) lol)
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
O come on. I don't like the existance of organized religion very much, but in the short term, they do more good than harm, (i.e. salvation army, AA, etc.) even if in the long run they impede the development of humanity.
Yes, I'm perfectly willing to accept that I'm just a very big bacteria. You can't disprove there's a big invisible turkey hovering above your computer right now, but does that make you worship it? Why not?
If there is a god, and he does think that, why doesn't he give us a signal of it? Because without some divine signal, we could just as well be scammed by a bunch of con-artists. If he really wants us to do this, why doesn't he do all the special effects stuff.
(And don't say I should read the bible, that it speaks of such miracles. Ever notice how they are all from so long ago that there is NO chance of finding out what really happend).
If it makes you feel any better I would have liked to have moderated you up. I think you have summed it up really well.
~ ~^~
A lord in the biblical sence is something more like a gardener. We are only learning how to do our job as lords of the earth.
As a side not, I don't really consider this as creating life as much as it is creating a life form, like taking apart a mercedes to make a dune buggy and hoping it will run.
And it just might work....
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^
If God had meant us to create life, God would have given us genitals. ...never mind.
bacteria are interesting, but as life goes, they're also so primitive, tiny and relatively simple that I don't see anything wrong with playing with them in any way they want.
--- end quote
Are you on crack? Yes, bacteria are primitive lifeforms, yes they are tiny but they are not "simple". Single-celled organisms, sure, but not simple.
These scientists admit that they have NO IDEA what 111 of the genes do!! That's over 35% of the entire genome of this bacteria! You think it's ok for them to "play" with something when they have no clue what 1/3 of it even does? Would you try to design and fly your own airplane without a thorough understanding of aerodynamics? Sure, you might know how to build an engine and some spiffy control systems. But two out of three leaves you dead when you drop your plane off a 747 at 40,000 feet.
That's what these guys are doing here, they are leaping into the unknown and it doesn't take much for them to create something they cannot handle. Especially when they don't fully understand ALL of what they're dealing with.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they should pack up and go home. But for them to even consider creating life without first understanding every piece of the puzzle is grossly irresponsible - and, quite frankly, more than a little frightening.
haha, that has to be the most stupid comment I have ever read.
Since when is the burned hand a punishment for not obeying the parents? As far as I know, when parents tell their children not to touch the hot stove, it is because the parents to do not want the child to get burned. And mind you, most parents try to physically keep the child from hurting itself if it does not know better. A parent who watches it child burn itself and then says "You had free will child" would be locked up faster than they could say "But God..."
Speeding on highways is definetely not a question of freedom of choice. We punish people who break the law because we do require blind obedience to it. You have the right to object to a law if it seems stupid (which we don't to religios morals, which are more or less all stupid), but you still have to obey it no matter what you think.
Your hypothetical Gods actions in this case are more like "I won't make you obey you, but I will punish you in the most aweful way possible if you don't" (ever even consider the reality of hell? Exactly what it means?). Since god is our superior, like a father to children, giving us the choice to hurt ourselves is equivalent to parent who watches the child put gasoline on itself and put itself on fire and then says "But I told you so". From a superior being, this action can be seen only one thing: SADISM.
On top of which, God is more or less making up these things on a whim as you say. At least from my perspective. He may have come to you one night and told which form of worship was correct, but he sure as hell has not been to see me. I could make little more than a wager as to which law actually applies.
I am a mere mortal, and yet I can find it in me to respect, and even defend peoples right to hate me and what I stand for. Yet you perfect God needs to punish us for not loving him? (There have been people in history who praticed that, Hitler, Stalin, etc, but at least all they punished those who did not love them with was death).
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
The point of all this is, if something happened that leveled the field for the rest of the animals (no toys for us), I wouldn't wager on the survival of man. Let's hope it never comes to that.
It's already been that way. When our species started the playing field was, in fact, level. No, I take that back. More accurate would be to say that we were at a distinct disadvantage. Yet we managed to develop into what we are today.
If something did happen to level the playing field for the rest of the animals, a couple things would happen. First, the weak and stupid among us would probably find themselves new jobs as dietary supplements. The strong and intelligent among us would adapt, survive, rebuild, and evolve.
In the end, the human race would end up being far better off as a result.
1. People fear the unknown.
2. The consequences of artificially created life are unknown.
3. The consequences of naturally ocurring life are unknown. (we can't tell the future)
Therefore: People fear life.
We fear ourselves!
Nature has already tried countless variations on new life with great anticipation and much fear only to have arrived at the present. A situation accepted by most if not all present. Evidently the only criteron for acceptance of the present is to be present.
On this planet we have had several (7 or so) dynasties of living organisms. In each,evolution spread across the earth filling all available niches and then sat stable for millennia until a cataclysmic event killed off most existing life (meteor etc.) and allowed another round of evolution to occur. The round previous to us, the mammals, were the dinosaurs. They lasted 165 milllion years, we havent lasted 1 million yet.
I doubt we can make anything in the biology lab that will wipe a significant percentage of us out never mind all life on earth. It is far more likely that we will destroy our environment (pollution/nuclear bombs) or create 'intelligent' devices (computers) that ruin our environment to thwart a perceived threat from us. I guess people are not that afraid of computers since they do not have the ability to replicate yet and hense are still predictable....if you programmed a computer to control robots that made computers and gave it some AI capabilities would that constitute a lifeform. Would that be predictable? Should we be afraid of that?
Whatever, I'm here!
no sig.
um, ya, whoo... Why do you mention this?
Ever see one put in a spark plug? Sometimes these government subsidized geeks, I don't want to say make me sick, but it's close.
How exactly do you plan to track an Anonymous Coward?
Just like with the whole Scientology discussion that happened a couple of weeks ago, people are confusing the church with teh religion.
The scary thing is that scientology has captures so many people...
L. Ron Hubbard even wrote in one of his novels before he became a religious leader that the best way to make loads of cash is to found an organized religion.
Guess he finally took his own advice.
I'd make one too, but it's too much work having to listen to everyones problems and give them a misplaced hope.
May you live in interesting times.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
Great. How long until we see the inevitable "Export a lifeform in 20 lines of DNA" tshirts?
--
Don't question authority -- they don't know either.
I'll grant you that the percentage of religous people is a few points higher in the South than elsewhere in the nation. However, how do explain a phrase like "an increase in breeding"? Has a bad ring about it to me, and therefore, unnecessary.
I think the problem we're arguing here is whether we should ask religion or ask God and believe me there is a difference. I don't know whether God would want us to create life or not and I don't think I'm a qualified person to comment on that. But I personally feel that the scientists should ask him. I'm a devout follower of Christ, I go to church, but that doesn't mean that I believe all the so called "religious leaders" and cling to every word they say. Religion is bull. A relationship with God well that's something else. I think God cares more about the reasons we do things. And I'm glad that the scientists asked but to me its kind of tacking on someone else's opinion of God. Why not ask God himself?
The Anti-Blog
I heard about this somewhere else before.
The way it was stated there was that they wanted to first look into the ethical issues of their doing, which I find really sensical (for once). Genomics, and science in general, has progressed rapidly in a way that traditional concepts of moral or ethics have a hard time covering the new possibilities created by it. Imagine the following:
What the scientists did was once they had a map of the whole genome, they stripped away "unecessary" genes until they ended up with "essential"once. Now, let's say that some day the human genome is mapped. What defines a human as being a human? Strip away all the genes that make it "human" and only keep the one needed to produce organs, pharmaceuticals etc.
This is definitely outlandish (I hope). But the question is : Would that be unethical? If it's a new life form (and remember, it's not a human anymore), why would it be unethical?
BTW, AFAIK Craig Venter is the guy who want to map the humane genome faster than the multinational Human Genome Project.
If you "assume no limits to reality", then acknowleging that there is, or at least there could be a God who created us, should be a natural inclination for you. ----- I guess that I'm approaching this from the "It happened, so let's figure out how" point of view, and you're approaching it from the "I don't see how it could have happened, so it must not have" point of view, which is very unscientific. That second camp assumes that they know everything, their own judgement and knowledge are the limits of reality. I assume no limits to reality, but look to come as close as possible by observing what goes on. (I've posted somewhere else in all of this muddling about life about Richard Feynman. Read him for more on this sort of thing).
Will they use Java? Will it be open source? Will it be Object Oriented? I will wait for the linux version.
@vSpid Like, Whatever
the genome they've created is made explicitly to live.
you figure it out
you have a point, but what if the genome created explicitly to *live* does in fact live and does so so well that it crowds out every other living thing on Earth? (btw, this is what bacteria like doing in your body)
Nah. It's just that since we don't believe in god we don't have any reasons to ever waste time on that line of thinking.
Are there any examples of any organism mutating into a form that is MORE complex? All the cases that I have heard of are where genetic infomation is lost. Kind of hard to "evolve" into a new species when you can't gain new genetic information...
I think I understand why your bio teacher felt the way he did. Biological systems are so complex and intricate, with so many seperate systems working in tandem, it is difficult NOT to see the hand of an intelligent Creator in them. I only took two semesters of bio in college, and even I, atheist that I am, was awed. It caused me to seriously wonder.
But then I came to my senses. Daniel Dennett uses the analogy of "cranes" and "skyhooks." Cranes are, well, cranes. Physical entities used to build something. Skyhooks are cranes suspended in the sky by some mystical force. His point was that there are cranes all the way back, in every system, and that no skyhooks are needed to explain any biological behavior, no matter how complex.
It would have been easy to discount him were there not so many examples to back it up. Yes, biology (and the universe itself) is an extremely, extremely complex system. But complexity, no matter how beautiful, does not lead to God. It is simply complex, not divine.
> I guess that I'm approaching this from the "It happened, so let's figure out how" point of view
That's not very scientific. How do you know life evolved from random groupings of organic molecules?
> you're approaching it from the "I don't see how it could have happened, so it must not have" point of view, which is very unscientific
No I'm approaching it from the point of view that says 'basic science and math say this theory is incorrect, therefore we toss the theory'. You never toss the data and say "well I'm sure it happened this way no matter how much evidence is against me." If the theory and the data don't match, the theory loses.
Obviously it happened somehow because we are here, but the biotic-soup theory is extremely lacking.
it's funny, I always thought life started in the back of '65 t-bird with a bottle of JD or OE 800.
it goes to show you how much a college education is worth these days.
Laugh, I didn't want to touch THAT part of the issue with a 10-ft pole :)
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Why ask the religious leaders? Why would those people be morew important or morally correct than others? Perheaps the scientists are religious? And of course, they are perheaps not going to ask anyone not schristian? Religion should never control science. That approach has been _proven_ to be bad (The earth is flat). If they need advice whetever to implement this, they should ask people from as many and as diversed groups as possible. And not ask the leaders of the groups, but the members.
:)
Would you ask Bill Gates whetever to implement Linux?
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Of course, we could all be living in a universe created in an outside universe by scientists. All of reality could exist in a petri dish or beaker outside of reality. That would make a bunch of people out there God. Still doesn't explain where they came from though. Scary, isn't it?
As for the life creating part of things , go ahead. Playing God is fun!
Ehm, hate to burst your bubble, but I think that was some guy they called jesus.... (Not that I'm christian or anything else religious, but it doesn't hurt to get the 'facts' right).
Wow, that'd be a hell of an orgasm.
Well, I'm not religious, but didn't the christian god, accordingly to the bible, also create the earth?
Now, *that* would be an achivement. =)
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
"Let no one think or maintain that a person can search too far or be too well studied in either the book of God's word or the book of God's works."
Said by Francis Bacon
Darwin used it as a preface to his Origin of Species.
It can't be worse than the 1000 years of darkness religion cost us in the Dark Ages (roughly 0 to 1000 A.C.) where man made no notable progress thanks to overt, oppressive, Christianity.
Your definition of 'man' appears to only include Northern Europe. I do believe the Chinese, for instance, were progressing just fine, and that we all benefited when their ideas were eventually brought to other parts of the world.
Your definition of 'progress' appears only to include technology and manufacturing. During the period 0 - 1000A.D. in northern Europe, architecture improved dramatically, decorative arts and techniques spread and developed, societies became more advanced and homogenous, and great works such as Beowulf and the Book of Kells were created.
And as for the technology, I think you'll find shipbuilding took great steps forward as well.
In fact, I think you'll find the 'Dark Ages' are so called because much of the advances of Roman civilisation were lost, which had everything to do with Romes loss of military power and political cohsesion, and nothing to do with religion, which at the time was in any case largely non-christian.
Thanks.
-----
While I agree with you that it would be mistake to seek ethical guidance from a single set of dogmatic beliefs, I must tell you that I am tired of hearing this rather poor understanding of the Christian church's role in medieval history repeated as though it were fact.
The Catholic Church is almost singlehandedly responsible for preserving literacy and social order following the collapse of the Roman Empire. (BTW, I am not a Catholic, merely a humble student of history). The "Dark Ages" is a myth.
The scholars in the monasteries copied and preserved much ancient knowledge. Some of them (notably in Ireland and England) even made use of the knowledge. Read up an Alcuin of York.
And if you really want to thank someone for progress, thank the Arabs, especially those in Andalusia in what is today southern Spain. They made great strides in astronomy, navigation, and mathematics and did an even better job of preserving the knowledge of the ancient world than did the northern European monastics.
By the 12th century, western mathematics was well beyond anything that had been accomplished in ancient Rome.
Bigotry and dogma are even-present in human communities. The repressive role of the church came up at two critical points. The first was at the rise of Universities (read about the early years of the University of Paris and the Church's ban on Aristotle), and the other was the Protestant Reformation. In both of those cases, their actions were the actions of a temporal institution faced with a direct challenge to thier power and authority. Their wicked and opressive responses were because they were humans with threatened power, not because they were Christians.
Christianity is an evangelical religeon. This makes it very different from many world religions. This evangelical nature builds in a duty to convert people to the faith. It is an agressive ideology. You will get "shit" from the odd overzealous Christian because that person believes that you are in trouble and he wishes to save you. You may not wish to be saved (because you do not believe in the peril), but at least be aware that it is a desire to do good that motivates the "shit giver."
As for "sanctity of life," well, I think that even if you are an atheist, you should have a little awe at the prospect that we humans may create a life form. Surely this capabilityis an awesome prospect and not to be done lightly.
Christianity is not some intellectual void, nor is it the source of ignorance and bigotry. Some Christians have little intellect, and there are ignorant and bigoted Christians, but I beleieve these words are not synonomous with "Chirstian."
John Milton in "Paradise Lost" has Adam confront God with a terrible challenge: "Did I ask thee, God, to mould me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?" What more human question is there? Why am I here? I did not ask to be made, so why I am I here? Why do I live? Why must I know love and then loss?
Before we create a life form, we should ask ourselves Adam's question. Will our "children" millions of years hence, turn to us, not knowing who we were, and ask why they are here?
Parents should ask this before they have children. Why should we not ask it before we create life?
They are asking the opinions of religious leaders? Why am I NOT reassured by this? They are asking opinions of the same folks who tell people that using birth control is a mortal sin or who order a religious execution of someone who speaks against their faith or who say the world is just an illusion and not important? Are we supposed to believe that these people can make sound decisions about the use of the latest technology? I was excited by the post and thought maybe the human race might be growing up in capabilities and ability to direct its own growth until I came across this consulting religious leaders bit. The race is way young as long as it thinks ethics is the sole province of those who are avowedly mystical and quite often anti-science and anti-reason.
"What gives us (in fact, not really "us" at all, just some techno-hubristic-weeny branch of humanity) the right to destroy it?"
There is no such thing as not having the right to do something that you are capable of. The power to do something is the same as the right to do it. What we have the right to do is dictated by the most powerful.
If you believe in creation and all that, then think on this: If there is a god, what gave he/she/it/whatever the right to create the universe? The fact that god has the power to do so gave god the right. What gave god the right to create man? What gave god the right to tell us what is right and wrong? What gave god the right to do anything? The fact that god has the power to do it is what gave it the right.
Now, to answer your question on what gives man the right to do as he pleases. If man has the power to do it, then he has the right.
I am myself a scientist by training. I didn't start out mistrustful. But I've lately come to realise that there's more motivation at work in many scientist's minds than the pure advancement of human knowledge, or the betterment of the human condition.
eg: Some of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project (esp. Edward Teller, but not Robert Oppenheimer)
eg: Nazi scientists working on "efficient" methods of human extermination and cruel medical experiments.
eg: The scientist who invented napalm.
eg: Randy Katz, inventor of Smart Dust microscopic bugging devices (mentioned in an article on Slashdot a few weeks ago). I don't mean to compare him with genocides, but he seems to care little about the potential for misuse of his devices.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I actually think it's dangerous and irresponsible to even consider generating deliberate genetic mutations. As biologists they should know about the dangers of disease themselves but I guess they are blinded by excitement.
:
Forget nuclear bombs and firebombing. The biggest killer this century, and every other century, has been pandemic disease. Diseases are borne from genetic mutation. (further reading : "Plague's Progress - Arno Karlen" )
But what the heck. Mutation comes from everywhere. Creating organic creatures in a lab is bound to free us (and them) from lives of tyranny and oppression. I hope they make the results open source so we can all grow them!
As Oppenhiemer said
"I have become death, the destroyer of worlds"
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I admit, it could have been put in a more subtle way, but it's a normal biological phrase. What makes people so special? Not much to make a fuss about imho.
This artical needs two more points to move from number 10 to number 9 in the 'slashdot hall of fame' And I'm going to move it there :P
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
hohoho
Ehm, hate to burst your bubble, but I think that was some guy they called jesus.... (Not that I'm christian or anything else religious, but it doesn't hurt to get the 'facts' right). Unless you think jesus was god undercover? :-)
Yeah. Custom microbes. That's really slavery.
I s'pose you'll say that the microbes we use today are "slaves" to the beer industry, the yogurt industry, etc...
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Your right. However, this kind of discussion never hurts.
Dr Venter said the technology could lead to custom microbes that have myriad practical and commercial implications such as to clean up toxic messes or to create renewable energy by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.
SOUNDS LIKE SLAVERY TO ME!!!!! YOU GODLESS HEATHEN!!!!!
If they can create life from just 300 genomes. Why can't they simulate those genomes on a computer (supercomputer) and see what happens.???? Maybe beginnings of AI? Just a thought!
Check out 'Beyond Civilization' by Daniel Quinn for a proper meaning on your 'civilization', its a good read.
Ok. Cool. More power to them.
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
Okay. Then I'm approaching it as "There's a possibility that it happened, so I want to consider the possibility, and admit that I may not know all of the science required to figure it out. Because of this, I can't know that it didn't happen".
And remember that "basic science and math" don't say anything about quantum theory, so there may be more to it than what basic science and math say.
I am so happy you agree with me. You are very arrogant and ignorant, but please don't speak for me. You have to be ignorant to think that some being that existed forever, who did nothing but be in its environmental nothingness, suddenly at random decided to create an ant farm we arbitrarily call the universe and in this huge microcosm he would put one small spec of matter (which we arbitrarily call earth) and on this spec he would put human beings who's only purpose is to some how, with no direction other than a supposed single showing where he appeared as a human (giving him little credibility) and hoping everyone in the far future would believe the word of those who lived then, figure out the meaning of life which is to worship "God."
So let me get this straight. There is this one being, the only being and he just happened to be the only thing that ever existed, was never created, was just THERE. He created us because he got bored with his lone self and wanted a bunch of worshippers who have no other purpose than to worship him cultishly.
Please forgive me for my skepticism.
I've come up with hocus pocus stories more plausible than that. With this in mind, spare us the evangelism.
Need I remind you that YOU WERE BORN ON THIS EARTH WITHOUT AN ABSOLUTE ANSWER! Same with your priests, your teachers, your friends, your parents, and their parents, and their parents, and their parents, etc. Any idea I pull out of my ass and claim to be the answer to our existence IS JUST AS JUSTIFIABLE AS YOUR CULT CHRISTIANITY. Is there ANY WAY you can prove to me I am wrong? If you say yes, then you are ignorant and a lost cause. And so be it. Who am I to say you're beliefs are wrong (All I have anything to base anything on is my own OPINION AND THOSE I STOLE FROM OTHER MORTALS WHO HAVE NO ANSWERS TO LIFE BECAUSE THEY WERE BORN JUST AS YOU WERE)
We are in fact the dominating species. We have complete and utter control of every species we know of. Fortunately, we are also diversified thinkers (even though I believe we are just reactions to our environmental stimuli - determinism if you will, but I'll save it) and therefore we haven't all conformed to the populous -- christianity -- and we can continue to evolve as we are doing now, which is to take advantage of our scientific discoveries and apply them.
but then again this existence is futile.
btw, explaining the dinosaurs as "a test of faith" and saying they never actually existed, and 'god' put bones in the ground simply to test our faith keeps getting funnier each and every time i think about it. pray for my lost soul, for i'm goin to hell. God is a farse, Jesus was a great magician, and the bible is the best selling fiction of all time.
give this a good a read. it just may change your whole way of life.
If you "assume no limits to reality", then acknowleging that there is, or at least there could be a God who created us, should be a natural inclination for you
I don't know that there isn't a God, but the evidence doesn't seem to support it, as far as I can tell. I'll admit that there's a possibility, no matter how remote.
Why_ should the consult religous leaders at all? It is this very experiment which is going to prove them irrelevant once and for all. After all, if man can create life, then what makes "god" so special?
It's a viewpoint thing. Scientists are most concerned with CAN we, Religion is more concerned with Should we. Both sides can present their views and then we can decide what the ramifications of humans creating life are and whether it's worth it. After all, look how we treated the stuff that was already here, should we bring a new life form into the world simply to abuse it?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I think you missed the point of what I was trying to say.
Many groundbreaking theories in Science are greeted with alot of hostility when they are first proposed. Yes Debate is a good thing! But it is not a fair debate that is used. The ESTABLISHMENT always has the upper hand and only with overwhelming evidence is this opposition slowly eroded. THE POINT THAT YOU SO OBVIOUSLY MISSED OUT ON IS THE FACT THAT YOU BLAME RELIGION FOR ACCEPTING NEW IDEAS SLOWLY. WELL THE SAME CAN BE SAID FOR SCIENCE. That is the only point I am making not that one is better than the other or anything like that.
Yawn your way through this if you like
AND Yes I have heard of PEER REVIEW. I participate in META MODERATION all of the time actually did one 5 minutes ago.
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf
Your argument is spurious. If it were not, there would be no pathogenic bacteria.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Okay, I also agree. But why do we even need AI? What is the point of us assembling some basic for of life (because, after all, we are not really CREATING it, we're just putting together the pieces from the unlabeled diagram we found in the same box)? Why do we do these things? Is it to try and piss off G-d, and finally draw a response from the heavens, or is it to make life easier, or is it just because we really have no control over our actions as a whole and must go around creating new life and technology according to some instinct imbedded in our chromosomes?
(just for discussion)
lf.o
> If Adam and Eve had kids, and they were the only people existing at the time, kids would had to have sex with their mother to further the human race.
;-)
:-)
Thats a common fallacy.
Question: If God created Adam and Eve, don't you think he could of created MORE human mates for the children of Adam and Eve?
The bible doesn't say if God DID or DID NOT create more humans, so why are you dismissing the premise that God can't create more humans?
Cheers
I'm a bible-believing baptist deacon and sunday school teacher (not bragging, merely establishing my credentials).
I say go for it!
When in college, hypsters reflected upon the state of the art in genetic engineering and said that "scientists had created life in a test tube." My fave response was to point out that it was equivalent to jacking up a car, replacing its tires and then saying you'd created an automobile.
The proposed experiment sounds analogous to trying to pull the engine, or changing out the carb. That's the kind of stuff one must do if one's to understand what's going on.
I think experiments like this one is exactly what is needed to get creationists like me and evolutionists to quit shouting propaganda at each other and get on with the task of learning the underlying mechanisms at work in reality.
Can't even agree how many there are...
there *are* reasons to be worried about this, but they don't have anything to do with the "creation" part; making "creation" a special thing outside of human reach seems to be a christian knee-jerk reaction, but I see no real basis for it.
As a Christian I'd have to say we stepped past the point where God said 'Don't eat the bloody apple you dick.' and are now to the point where God is saying, 'Do whatever the hell you want, if I don't want you to do something you bloody well won't be able to.' so I say go for it, as long as we are pretty sure we know what we're doing let's give it a whirl!
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Right on to point 4. If life on mars I say we make it happy in a nice zoo and then full speed ahead.
I don't understand these people wanting to wait for public debate. Surely while one guy was telling the press that, the others were getting the equipment set up.
And I would really, really, like to buy a petri dish of manmade life. I can think of no cooler pet(s). Just in time for the new millennium.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
Do you really think YOU are just a "bag of chemicals?" Really? Do you think you're any better than the bacterica in your intestines? You're both life. You're both bags of chemicals. What makes you different? Just because bacteria don't "rationalize" as we know it, isn't rationalization itself the byproduct of chemical reactions?
What about Faith? Is faith really just the result of chemical reactions?
Why do you think I'm on "crutches" of reason? You haven't offered me any convincing argument that God doesn't exist, and that therefore, the soul does not exist. Prove it to me that they don't. Prove to me that I'm no different then a single bacterial-life. Bacterial life doesn't slam religion without any more argument than "You're just stupid and wrong." Bacterial life just eats, breathes, reacts, defecates, and dies.
So do you. And I. So does that mean we're bacteria?
You state "I'd love to kick away the crutches" as if to say that "Your stupid faith has no basis, but I'm too kind to say so." Whatever.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
(excuse me for the quotes I'm about to butcher, but I don't have copies of the Bible, Shakespear, or anything else handy. Consider the following as paraphrased.)
And they did eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge...
There is not good nor evil, but thinking makes it so.
So, my view, yeah, ppl are different because we think about this stuff. Animals don't worry about the environment: take for example, deer. Where I live, deer are destroying the forest. The deer don't care, they're just eating. But the ppl around here do care (and the animal rights activist are saying "no, no, don't shoot bambi!") The problem is this: the reason the deer are eating so much is because there are so many, which is because there are fewer wolves, which is because ppl killed nearly all the wolves in this area.
So who's fault is it that the forest is getting eaten to the ground? I think the intelligent answer is to say WE are responsible. We started the problem, it's our fault, now what do we do about it? Do we WANT to be custodians of every living creature on the planet? Do we let sportsmen take responsiblity for the role the wolves played? We have to be very cautious in the decisions we make. Another example: have you heard about the new beetle they're introducing to the US to eat some fungus (also introduced from another country, accidentally I believe) that's killing all the Hemlock trees? How long until that beetle becomes a problem and we have to introduce something to take care of IT. I'm not saying that this bug is a bad idea, I just hope that carefull considerations have been made. Unlike every other creature, we don't just do stuff, we worry about wether it's "right" or "wrong". (Wether that's a side effect of an advanced, enlarged brain or the gift/punishment of the gods is another debate.)
I say, go on, do the experiments, but Procede With Caution.
If we wanna save the environment, well, that is for us.
That's right. This rock we call Earth was here long before us, long before the plants and animals, long before any life, and it will be here long after us, long after plants and animals, and long after any life. Don't protect the environment because it's the 'good thing to do'. Protect it because YOU are a part of it, and if it goes, it's taking you with it.
"God does not play dice with the universe." -Albert Einstein
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Well, a prokaryotic cell is an order of magnitude less complex, but, agreed, this would still be a pretty incredible jump to make.
OTOH, a *relatively* simple "organism", capable of performing transcription etc given a suitable environment (ie. a host organism) but incapable of independent activity should certainly be within our grasp in the short-medium term. What we're talking about here is something akin to a virus and WOULD NOT be alive.
As for your anaerobic atmosphere, you seem to be under the impression that water can be easily converted into free oxygen + hydrogen gas. This is NOT the case. There are plenty of environments on Earth today that are totally anaerobic, and there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that life evolved under such conditions.
http://www.klub.org/
Do you really imagine that the scientists working on this project don't know that? Of course they do. But the cell machinery in a small mycobacterium is extremely simple compared to that of a eukaryote like yeasts, amoebae or humans.
Even if they wanted to synthesize all the parts of the parent cell themselves, this would hardly be insurmountable - we have automated peptide synthesis machines now. And cell wall chemistry is well understood too.
But it's hardly likely to come to this. They will probably jsut take one specimen of the natural Mycoplasma they have been studying, remove its single plasmid and insert the one they've synthesized. In principle, this is a little like cloning of eukaryotes using a denucleated ovum.
Within just twenty hours of repeated division (assuming one cell division per hour) the original parent cell material will have been diluted by a factor of 2**20 (over a million) and well before that point the cells will be surviving solely on what enzymes and structural proteins they can synthesize for themselves with their artificial genome.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The article states that the scientists will not proceed with their work until they have had a public debate with religious leaders' involvement.
What are their real intentions?
When in history have we ever discovered a technology, and decided not to use it? Has there ever been a time? We may have limited use, but we have never completely stopped advancement on technology just because it is considered "unethical". There is not a single case that I can think of where we have completely abandoned a technology we have discovered.
If that's the case, what do the scientists hope to gain by asking the community about the issue? They have never needed religious approval before to conduct other experiments and do tests. New technology seems to be shunned many times by some groups, but is always embraced in the end. It takes time, but it happens.
Here's a Scenario: The debate ends with people in agreement that it is not right to be tampering with life, and we should not try to "create" life. How long will it be until 'someone' researches it anyway.
- We, as humans, cannot simply drop the issue.
History has proven it, and it will prove it again.The article says that scientists will not proceed with their work until they have talked with with religious leaders in a debate.
What are their real intentions here?
When in history have we ever discovered a technology, and decided not to use it? Has there ever been a time? We may have limited use, but we have never completely stopped advancement on technology just because it is considered "unethical". There is not a single case that I can think of where we have completely abandoned a technology we have discovered.
If that's the case, what do the scientists hope to gain by asking the community about the issue? They have never needed religious approval before to conduct other experiments and do tests. New technology seems to be shunned sometimes by some anti-groups, but isn't it always embraced in the end? It takes time, but it happens.
Here's a Scenario: The debate ends with people in agreement that it is not right to be tampering with life, and we should not try to "create" life. How long will it be until 'someone' researches it anyway.
- We, as humans, cannot simply drop the issue.
History has proven it, and it will prove it again.spam
You must have choosen Orange, Statue-Man. Orange Rules!!!!!!!
You're obviously basing your opinion of other animals on what you've seen in zoos...which is about as accurate as forming an opinion of Man based on what can observe in your typical Turkish prison.
While the transcendental fantasy of the noble, wild forest is fun stuff for motivational posters, it's a load of crap, in the end.
I don't recall advocating going off to live in the forest...as a matter of fact, my previous post said quite the opposite. Because of our advantages as a species, we have been able to rise to the position of dominant life form on this planet. We keep the mighty tiger in cages for our young ones to gawk at. We're clearly the winners here.
"Become", nothing. We always were the dominant "species".
Your incomprehensible use of quotation marks around the word "species" notwithstanding, this is patently false. Are you advocating creationism here? When our species first appeared on this planet, we had the brainpower, but lacked the technology...the technology we have been able to develop is the only reason we are still here. If you think our dominance on this planet could possibly have preceeded our toolmaking skills, then I cordially invite you to strip naked and climb into the cage with the tiger.
My dog and I never had any contests to see who had a bigger brain, sorry.
You give your dog food, shelter, and medical care, and he gives back nothing in return. Who's the smart one, again? ;)
I found this in the archives
One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him. The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost." God listened very patiently and kindly to the man. After the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this? Let's say we have a man-making contest." To which the scientist replied, "Okay, great!" But God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam." The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt. God looked at him and said, "No, no. You go get your own dirt!"
The MyTh - I am a figment of the Imagination - [Im Probably even not here]
I didn't mean to imply that morals cannot exist without religion. I did mean to say that religions believe that morality is their province and domain. Hence a moral issue is going to pull in the religious types.
That brings up another topic, which I won't go into much, except this. From what does one derive their moral position unless their is some higher reasoning than "I feel like it" or "it's good for me"? My own position is that this leads to relativism, which doesn't hold any water. What's "good" for you may be "evil" for me and then where does that leave us? Law is, at some level, based on right and wrong (hopefully), which derives from our concept of morals and ethics. I can see law being refined to handle new situations that didn't exist before, but I can't hold to the notion that morality can flip-flop from day to day based on how people "feel". There has to be a right and there has to be a wrong. It just makes more sense to me. And for that to work, there has to be a God that sets those rules. Mankind can't, because of what I've just said.
Anyway, that being said, you also mention that "artificially creating life is not mentioned in religious texts". Of course not. But the values that God stands for, the morality, is clearly laid out. That standard is an eternal truth you can apply at any time. That's what makes religious texts relevant beyond the period in which they were written. "Love your neighbor as you love yourself" is just as valid now as when Y'shua stated it almost 2000 years ago.
I also don't understand why people try to separate their religious life from the rest. I am an integrated person, a whole person. My opinions in one "section" of my interests carry over to many other things. To be otherwise would make me two-faced at best. I don't live a double life. Do the rest of you? (Not an accusation, just curious.) I think it perfectly reasonable for a scientist to have moral questions regarding his work, and turn to God for the answers.
CT
Constitutionally Correct
Sorry this is 16 hours after first post and too late to get moderated up... but for those hackers who want "code," or any download scavengers wanting the raw gene sequence data for M. Genitalium, I found it at ftp://ftp.tigr.org/pub/data/m_genitalium/
"God became man that man might become God."
He only succeeded in creating amino acids. The odds of them randomly stringing together (with no rights!) to form something useful are so low it's absurd
But if enough amino acids interact enough times (as would have happened in the millions of years that life-forming conditions presumably existed), the odds become not so absurd. Also, a low probability of an event occuring doesn't mean that it didn't - there's a low probability that I would have ended up with my exact genetic makeup, but exactly that happened.Who said anything about being an athiest? "There is no god but man" is different from "there is no god and when we die that's it"- if anyone's got issues, it's those who don't take a look around and realize there's more to life than materialism and mundane trivialities: in this respect, the Church has a good idea, but as an evangelical religion, it's totally the wrong tactic- like Amway salesmen. My "religion", if you could call it that, is a little different. Quote: "Convert not. Talk not overmuch."
The Answer to the Question at hand is either "42" or relative to the individual. Depending on your perception of Truth, factors like Karma and Reincarnation have a lot to do with the present lifetime, but remain a far shot from the Ultimate Question. The answer to "Why" will never be a complete and easy-to-understand answer, and one man's truth is another mans feces. Why I'm here hasn othing to do with why you or anyone else is here, though the phenomenon may be related. For some, Christianity is the answer. For the rest, it isn't.
Science, no matter the topic at hand, should keep the possibilities of long-range implications in mind as well as the Ultimate Question.
LOL... so you think you're as special or more special than God just because you figured out how to take apart something He has built and re-assemble it to something else that still works? It's like taking apart your car and re-assembling it to another car, and then claiming that you invented cars. Rather myopic, if you ask me.
The problem I have with these statements is that you're taking the view that there absolutely is a God, so therefore he must be more powerful than us. I say evolution and chance did it, and people are awfully clever to have pieced together (a very little bit of) how it happened. And since this assumes there is no 'God', then we're not copying anybody's work, it's all original.
So what if life on this planet is the result of some aliens coming down millions of years ago, and dropping some of these 300-gened organisms on earth?
God does want us to be happy. And knowing more about the human condition than we do (since He created us, and became one of us), He knows that the best way to be happy is to love and obey Him. He says things like, "I love mankind. If you love Me, then you'll also love mankind. If you love mankind, you won't hurt each other, but seek to bless (help) each other. Then things will go well with you and you'll be happy." But we (mankind) don't go for that. Looking out for many other people sounds like more work than just looking out for myself (never mind that means you have many others looking out for you, too). So we think we can just take what we want, and be happy right now. That's sin, it's in our nature. (Notice it's not a sin to be happy, but to put your own gratification above serving God.) That's why we have wars. But God has already considered this, and provided a way out for us. He's forgiven us for not loving Him as much as we love ourselves, and encourages us to keep trying.
If you're going to a church with boring music and sermons, you're going to the wrong church. I have a blast at mine.
CT
Constitutionally Correct
People who seperate their religous life and the rest of their life are not two faced. While I agree that a person's personal decisions should be based on all of their beliefs, I think that larger decisions like genetics must be thought through more delicately. For public decisions, the scientific and religous communities are often broke apart. In this case, the decision clearly falls on the scientific community. If some bishops were praying to God to create a living thing out of nothing it would be different, but that is not the case.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
To further our understanding of nature. Simple as that.
--
PanDuh
A disturbing number of people seem to have quite unfounded fears that display a lack of basic knowledge of how biology works. I understand that this is a computerist (for lack of a better term) type site. So to make an analogy that might be more comprehensible: imagine a program that can make a copy of itself when you give it the command to do so. Now does this sound like a program that you would fear?
I don't want them to destroy the cute little fellows after they create them. I want to buy some. I don't usually like pets, but I would be proud to own some manmade life. (this is putting aside that little technical debate about just how manmade these little critters _will_ be.)
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
There are certainly ways around this tendency of microorganisms to spontaneously throw out genes that aren't useful_to them._ Basically, you put the organism under some sort of selection pressure with a toxic drug (an antibiotic, for instance), and then put gene(s) conferring resistance to the drug into the cell, along with the gene you want the cell to express, both located on the same DNA molecule (a plasmid).
That way the gene you_want_to stay in and be expressed isn't as likely to be kicked out. Even better is putting the gene you want into the chromosomal DNA of the cell since that would tend to be more "stable"*. This can be done with a virus that integrates into the host cell's chromosomes (like a retrovirus**).
With a "reduced genome set" organism like that described in the news, however, it should be possible to more easily put desired genes into the chromosomal DNA directly (via chemically sythesizing the genome) and more easily "debug" expression of new genes that are "run" on the system...
* In biotech jargon, "stable" has a meaning analogous to a compile time error, that is the new genetic program is "rejected" by the cell, not simply that it doesn't "run" and express the way it was intended to. Debugging gene expression (runtime errors) is another matter!
** Which is one reason why the human body can't easily get rid of herpes or HIV, since they have the ability to integrate into the chromosomes.
Last time I checked, science doesn't have a great track record on "moral" judgement either. Nuclear weapons, enviromental rape, super-bacteria created by the wide spread overuse of antibiotics (sp?), yada, yada. Oh science is DEFINATELY proven that it keeps moral implications high on their list.
You absolutely need to read some of Richard Feynman's writings (everybody else in this thread should, too). His view on this is that science is a way of doing things - it doesn't have morals. It's not good or bad, but can be used to either end. It's the people who use science that have good or bad moral judgement. How can something that's not sentient have morals?
Feynman has several wonderful books. The one that has several chapters addressing this issue is called "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out", and addresses these very issues.
And the fact that my post was moderated down shows the real problem with the moderation system, and why I always read at -1. I upset some religious wacko with my explanation of why I usually say nothing to religious wackos.
I'm sorry, I realize none of you want to hear again the whole "playing god" thing, but I really think this has gone too far. Who does man think he is, to assume the role of god and create life? Are we really that conceited that we feel we are ALLOWED to create other organisms? I wasn't even thrilled when we began cloning other species, though at least we weren't starting with a lab table and ending up with a brand new organism.
You're right. I'll stop having sex and having kids, because I'm really not worthy of creating life.
When will the realization that we are not the be-all end-all species set in, and finally limit our scientific expeditions?
When we realize that we, as a species, do not deserve to live. We should self-destruct right now. I feel so ashamed that natural selection has deemed that we should be the most successful species. I'm going to lock myself in my room and cry now. Leave me alone!
Catcha' later,
Paul.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
> But if enough amino acids interact enough times (as would have happened in the millions of years that life-forming conditions presumably existed), the odds become not so absurd. I'm not sure you realize how absurd the odds are. We are talking on the order of the number of electrons in the universe. > Also, a low probability of an event occuring doesn't mean that it didn't - there's a low probability that I would have ended up with my exact genetic makeup, but exactly that happened A common example of faulty logic. The correct way of saying this would that there's a low probability someone could guess your exact genetic makeup before you were born without knowing any of your close relatives. Yes, long random string were probably formed, but the odds those could be anything useful are mathematically 0.
> But if enough amino acids interact enough times (as would have happened in the millions of years that life-forming conditions presumably existed), the odds become not so absurd.
I'm not sure you realize how absurd the odds are. We are talking on the order of the number of electrons in the universe.
> Also, a low probability of an event occuring doesn't mean that it didn't - there's a low probability that I would have ended up with my exact genetic makeup, but exactly that happened
A common example of faulty logic. The correct way of saying this would that there's a low probability someone could guess your exact genetic makeup before you were born without knowing any of your close relatives.
Yes, long random string were probably formed, but the odds those could be anything useful (the sequences we have picked) are mathematically zero, just as the odds your genome would match one randomly designed are zero.
dolphin, whale both very complex and intelligent species. And even then your limiting it to the assumpsion that earth is the only place in the universe that has life..
What was the quote from Hitchhikers Guide? "Man belived himself more intelligent then dolphines because they had not built huge buildings and learned math etc.., and dophin belived themselves to be more intelligent because they had not built huge building, learned math etc..."
Yes, long random string were probably formed, but the odds those could be anything useful (the sequences we have picked) are mathematically zero, just as the odds your genome would match one randomly designed are zero.
"(the sequences we have picked)" -- Once any self-reproducing sequence formed, then it's just a matter of mutation and reproducing before you start to form more complex sequences, like those 300 or so that these scientists have targeted. Again, it's not a matter of all of these atoms moving into sync at the same time! It's a matter of a simple sequence reproducing and mutating into a more complex one, with the chances of the simple one being randomly produced being > 0.
I'll put it like this. The chances of a a bunch of molecules of iron existing in a large slab of organic material are 0, according to your logic. But I say that it happens all the time. Way back a long time ago, some amino acids bunched together. Then mutations and evolution occurred. Now people are pounding nails into walls everywhere. You don't advance straight to step 100,000, you have do go through smaller, more probably steps along the way.
Getting back to Miller. He obviously didn't show exactly what happened, but I think that he did show that there's merit to this primordial soup thing.
Agreed, however the non-free-living parasites lack many of the essential anabolic genes that closely related free-living ones have.
I checked with Loki and he's all for it, too. So perhaps this event could serve as a unifying bridge in the fragmented Norse pantheon!
Bah, your essential problem is that you think that there exists an ethereal "substance" called "the breath of life". Life isn't a substance, it's a pattern.
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
Right and wrong
I don't like idea of scientists having to listen to the religious leaders in this case either. Because I am an atheist. But many aren't. For many people, religion is both support and a moral guide and a thousand other things besides, so if this is really such a fundamental breakthrough and life in itself can be created in labs, their religion will either have to change or dissapear. So basically there will be a lot of bad blood. And by having a (hopefully) public discussion, things will have time to both settle down and settle in. In peoples minds that is.
i love you statue man.
Is anyone else thinking this is probably NOT a good idea? Biology is not my area, but IIRC a virus is one of the simplist forms of life, so wouldn't it logicaly follow that they are likely to create a virus that, since it is completely new, we would have NO imunity to.... Someone please tell me I am wrong...
Not everyone deserves a 320i
That wasn't a joke.
You didn't make anything.
I read somewhere once, that a group of scientists had built a tank of gasses that were similar to earth when life supposedly evolved.. according to darwin's notes.. and they did get amino acids to form.. it was interesting, but I probably got the details somewhat wrong since I think it's been 6 years since I read it.. does anyone know what it is i'm referring to? who did it, where it was done?
You are refering to Stanley Miller's experiment where he tried to create the compounds found in living things from a mixture of gases hypothesized to approximate conditions on Earth way back when.
I am quite sure that Miller was not working from Darwin's notes, however. The mixture of gases Miller used came from much more modern sources.
BTW, Miller was mildly sucessful, creating several interesting things in his apparatus. However these compunds were still far to simple and lacked the stereochemical chemical properties found in living things.
I agree to the same. The world works within natural boundaries of physics and life, much of which is unknown to us. I believe that God would like us to educate ourselves and strive to learn more and do more. And if it comes to a step where we have gone to far, and it's not the right time, I know that it isn't going to happen, for some reason or another, he won't let it. No matter how much various religious leaders and followers will cry out, how do we, as humans, know ultimately what is good or bad? People that feel so strongly against it have a lot to think about upon faith and prayer, instead of knee-jerk blasting of innovators.
Actually, that was great...you gotta appreciate it when he inclides links back to his earlier postings. :P
...something
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Just because a person is against organized religion does not make them an atheist or against the posibility of some brand of diety. It just makes them intelligent, seeing the source of organized religion.
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
OK, since there seems to be so much anti-religious flamebait out there, I thought I'd argue the other side. Disclaimer: I'm not a member of any organized religion.
;-).
I think it's a perfectly good idea that the scientists talk with various religious authorities before continuing. People are arguing that they didn't do that before they invented the nuclear bomb, therefore why should they ask now. I've got to wonder; if the world's religious authorities had been involved in the decision to build nuclear weapons, would Mutually Assured Destruction have ever become our primary foreign policy?
Another reason why it's a good idea: the injection of a new and different set of ideas into any experiment will generally benefit that experiment (note: this is a generalization and there are of course exceptions). Anyone who says that religious authorities have nothing to contribute to this work have never argued philosophy with a rabbi
Just my $0.02
--Alex
Causation can cause correlation
Watch as you go to write your code and wait patiently for it to assemble and a crowd of people huddle around the monitor
and out pops... Clippy!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I'm sorry, I realize none of you want to hear again the whole "playing god" thing, but I really think this has gone too far. Who does man think he is, to assume the role of god and create life? Are we really that conceited that we feel we are ALLOWED to create other organisms? I wasn't even thrilled when we began cloning other species, though at least we weren't starting with a lab table and ending up with a brand new organism.
I don't want to get off topic, but...man continues to disgust me. Too often we think that WE are the dominant species, the ones meant to survive. We are arrogant, and we are ignorant. Every day we cut down tons of trees for wood in order to keep industry alive. When will we realize that these very trees are what supply us with oxygen? And who gave us the job of ruining the habitats and lives of other organisms...why, just because we have more brainpower than them? People often say we're the smartest of species, but I disagree. For, if we truly were, we wouldn't be the only species on earth who kills its own for pleasure.
And now this. And now, we synthesize life, just another step in man's arrogant trip to the top. This comes at a time when we are trying to learn more about other plants, of which Mars comes to mind at the moment. The first thing we did when we found out we could get to Mars was send out probes to check if there was water there, and analyze the atmosphere -- why? Sure there were some minor scientific reasons: life on mars? history of mars? But the real reason - can it support human life? Once again, we are putting ourselves first, not worrying about how we will ruin Mars as we did Earth, and trying to extend our boundaries and God-given limitations.
Folks, I am not an overly religious person. But this has got to stop.
When will the realization that we are not the be-all end-all species set in, and finally limit our scientific expeditions?
Science can take us anywhere; it's time for us to set the limits on how far we'll let it take us.
---Blake
SO, if the scientists succeed, they by definition become GOD, correct? Can they put that after their names like MD or PhD?
seriously, though. It's just a matter of time. If someone can almost do this today, then imagine what types of life they'll be creating when they have a 1000 node cluster of 10ghz cpu machines helping to do the computation (say in 10 years)
sometime in the future, it might be a grad student exercise to synthesize an organism based on stereoisomers of amino acids.
Read K. Eric Drexlers book - Engines of Creation
Religion isn't going to like this, but then traditional religions generally don't seem as relavent to 20th century folk as they might have hundreds of years ago. Most people don't really like the idea of appending a religious text the way we'd append a constitution or law, either, so traditional religions can't very well deal with things like genetic engineering that didn't exist until a few decades ago. They have to rely on some subjective interpretation...
Not a troll about religion. Just my opinion. If you love god, that's great, but if you feel like religion doesn't speak to you concerns, read the first few chapters of The Celestine Prophecy and see if you agree (good book, but it lost me towards the end)
So, religion aside, the real issue is: who's going to fund creation of new life? My guess is that the US won't support it for political reasons, but that some 3rd world country will. Same with genetic engineering - you know that eventually somebody is going to start cloning humans.... and people *will* pay money (hey perverts: want a 21-year old Pamela Andersen clone? How about a clone of famous dead people? How about cloning sports stars and genetically enhancing them to have more mass, muscle, how about genetically enhanced wrestlers? is there any money in any of these?)
So, a few top scientists will disappear from the face of the earth, and then one day... BOOM! some earth-shattering announcements about new synthesized life forms.
You know that every country has probably discussed the idea of GENETIC WARFARE (it is, of course, an extension of biological warfare which every country has done extensive research in)
... and wouldn't oil companies like to develop oil-eating phages to clean up after their alcoholic ship captains when they crash tankers?
... and wouldn't the seed companies like to have seed that would grow in broader climate ranges and bear larger fruit and be STERILE so that you had to buy more seed (oh, wait, we're already doing that)
... and wouldn't livestock growers like to ensure that their cows gave more milk and that their turkeys had larger breasts (oh, wait, we're already doing that).. how about if we could grow just a chicken breast with no head or feathers?
... and wouldn't parents like to ensure that their offspring were disease and genetic defect free? we can test for stuff today, but imagine if you could go through a menu much the way you configure a linux kernel and add and subtract genes from a lifeform you create?
Face it , after the web,e-commerce, internet thingy become commonplace, the next big boom will be in biotech again, and it will possibly *NOT* happen in the US.
Hold on for a wild ride!
Even better. M. Genitalium lives in the human genital tract and lungs.
The researchers suggest that 111 of the genes perform unknown functions.
"M. Genitalium causes no known disease."
*gulp*.
--
HOWTO get better dates on slashdot
And there i was, thinking that creating life was just a matter of rubbing two warm adult bodies together just so.....
I think the real concern with this, as with any technology, is it ALWAYS finds it's way into the wrong hands. Often, noble intents have unpredicted results. It's matter of fact now that Albert Einstein spent the final years of his life protesting nuclear warfare. And it doesn't matter what decisions are made, those with evil intent will figure it out eventually IF in fact it can be done. Besides, the impression I get is that they are not really "creating" anything at all, but splicing together 300 someodd already living and material components. Kinda like taking one guys brain and anothers lungs and gluing them together. Creation in a true sense is starting something from nothing... they at best can build with prefabricated materials.
Blender And Linux Fan
BECAUSE IT'S TRUE
If sexuality is supposedly predetermined (not chosen), will these scientists choose to implement gay or straight lifeforms? Hehe, it could be as easy as changing a setting when they go to replicate. emum {_STRAIGHT, _GAY} sex; COrg* Organism; Organism.InnateSex = _GAY; It could happen.... Out.
Everyone has a unique perspective, and it's entirely possible that everyone's perspective has a part of the truth. It's like the story of the blind men and the elephant.
Then, of course, you can always give J.R.R. Tolkein's famous reply to this conundrum, which he put in his poem "Philomyth to Mysomyth". This argument comes from the basis that if we're made in God's image, and God is a Creator, then we must also be creators. (Indeed, by this argument, to be otherwise would be to destroy our very essence.)
Last, but not least, there's the argument that God (whoever/whatever God may be) gave everyone free will. To renounce that gift is clearly something you can do, but since it goes against what God obviously wanted us to have, it's at best stupid and at worst a crime against nature.
Oh, and as for sailing around the planet, one of the earliest to do so, Saint Brenden the Navigator, did so on (so he claimed) God's orders. So, if more people had consulted religion back then, America might have been discovered a thousand years earlier. Religion is what you make of it, not the other way round.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This is the problem that I have with the whole genetic engineering issue....
Once you can recreate something, it's value decreases. (Anyone notice how cheap porcelain statues are these days?)
For instance, the cheaper ram is, the cheaper a computer gets. The cheaper creating life is, the cheaper it is treated.
Right now, we treat automobiles that our grandparents could have never dreamed of affording like, well, shit. Imagine what our grandkids will do when they find out they can use "Kenmore Gene-O-Matic" to create cats to constantly torture?
And for the parents, why bother keeping that fat retarded nearsided kid you have? Just make a new one!
When something is not fully conceived, it's one thing. When fully conceived life can be created at random is truly when we have reached a level where current states of people's methods of evaulation need to change. The "gimme gimme now" attitude hopefully will be short circuited by then, otherwise, we have a lot to fear for on moral grounds.
-Erik-
If man has found this, is it not the will of god?
Well, what is the problem, why do scientists have to ask religious authorities if they can or cannot proceed at all? Do men ask that question when they're going to have sexual intercourse? Or is there a difference if it's "created from scratch"?
Even when we're creating life from inanimate dead objects, we didn't create the objects, so there's no problem with religious claims that God is the origin. And if we were not supposed to do it, we shouldn't be able to, the impossible isn't possible. So we could actually do it???
Of course, a possibility doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, we should think about it. Using common sense. Not just religious beliefs.
Personally, I think we could learn a lot about life from this experiment, so I'm giving my go-ahead-signal. It's neither good nor bad, it's (as most things) mixed, but I believe the good will outweigh the bad. Go ahead, carefully, move on...
-- Eavy (: Linux Is Not UniX
There's a book "At home in the universe" by Stuart Kauffman which explains how the emergence of life (at least as far as the self replicating soup precursors to RNA/DNA) is actually pretty much inevitable rather than a fluke.
I agree with your position but... I don't like your analogies... lol. The nuclear bomb was a covert operation, if we had consulted religious leaders than it would've been public domain and we all know how much government (yes even democracy) hates telling us what it's doing. Then, as far as I know scientists didn't exterminate passenger pigeons, and if they did then they surely didn't plan their extinction! That's not how it works. Now here's a better analogy... "Scientists didn't consult religious leaders when they first thought of nuclear fission/computers/violent computer games/etc". Eh ok they arent the best either, if anyone comes up with a better one put em here :-)
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
I dont quite think that that would happen. This is not an ideal society, and people often screw up (but not as often as in movies).
Terraforming would take some time, Mars is not small. And there is little reason to go inhabit Mars anyways. If we made it into another Earth, than there would be no reason to go, as the conditions are so similar. If we have the capability to terraform, we most likely would also have technology enough to solve the reason why we would be going (food most likely).
A more likely activity for the little engineered buggers would be to create mass amounts of efficient food that live off of carbon monoxide. Not only is it cheaper, but it also reins in with our tendency to go putting technology to use before we understand it fully.
Oreo, I'm not in very lucid today.
You could splice an elephant and a pig to make little pot-belly elephants
Forgive me for asking, but how do you propose to eliminate microsoft via the creation of new life? The us of biological weapons against Redmond wouldn't be polite at all, and that's the only way this could possibly help us get to 'say goodbye to MS' :)
In the article, it says that those genes not present in the most simple bacteria of all were "not essential to life". Actually, if you consider that the DNA codes just encode chemicals you end up with defining life as a more and more simple chemical reaction.
The problem here is where you draw the border of the reaction being life. If you scale everything down that much to the most simple processes you cant apply the standard set of rules (Eats, Farts and what not) but you will have one guy saying that if you take away chemical X its not "life" anymore while the other says that the definition still applies.
In simplified techspeak: We all would probably agree that a single transistor would not be designated a computer. But as the circuitry gets more and more complicated (working too; not just stuffing random bits together) where can you discern between it being a computer and not.
So, will this be able to grant us any particular insights? We will learn the exact functions of some groups of DNA code. But we will not learn what parts make up "life" because everyone has different views of that anyway.
They simulated the conditions of preprehistoric earth... volcanoes... lightning... they created a bacteria that would absorb "food" but it would not procreate. So by the definition of life it was not alive.
There were no volcanoes in Miller's experiment, only electric arcs (lightning).
He most certainly did not create a bacteria!
And as for this alledged bacteria, what "definition of life" are you applying. While I agree that a creature such as you describe is not alive, I am amazed at how you banty about the phrase "definition of life", like we have this all figured out already.
It is uninformed, incorrect posts such as these that threaten to make the internet practically useless as a learning tool. I can only pity the poor student who searches for information about this article and ends up reading this mostly ignorant discussion.
Hmmm...that was a little harsh, but i just don't see why people bother posting if they know nothing about what they are talking about.
Okay, i'll stop now, really.
In any movement, this is one shitty problem. Just as many people can point out some linux morons who totally ruin the good name of linux, so can anybody quote religious organizations or leaders to put the movement in a bad light.
The poblem of many societies today is the drive towards total freedom and the denial of moral judgment to anybody. Just today a friend of mine took some beatings from a person with absolutely no moral borders or social correction or a sense of right or wrong. He was totally, legally right (a situation at a crossroads) and got chased two kilometers through the town and when he finally stopped he was given a severe verbal and bodily beating. In front of 20 witnessess.
I'd rather prefer an acknowledgement of a certain right of moral judgment. The moment you've got a judgment you aren't considered tolerant anymore (esp. in the Netherlands). And since "tolerant" means "the sole positive character trait"... Once you're honest and 've got an opinion you're redefined as a moron...
One possible solution is the general acceptance of a certain faith, because most of them include a certain higher power with, logically, the right to impose his moral on us. It's about the only *logical* way to get a certain basic set of rules into a society. This is a very technical train of thought, I know. But when we're all individuals who are a result of random fluctuations and are all up to ourselves (say, evolution combined with a lack of any god), the only logical result is total anarchy, nihilism and the right of the strongest.
But of course any religion has first and foremost to be examined *not* on it's leaders but on wether it's true or not. When (personally) proven truth, any resulting moral borders from that faith will most probably prove to be very healty.
greetings,
Reinout
Reinout van Rees
If God doesn't want us creating life, he'll find a good way to stop us, now won't he?
No.
Ever heard of the concept of free will? I would recommend reading Milton's "Paradise Lost", the question is dicussed at some length IIRC. Basically, the whole reason that Eve was allowed to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge (which, obviously, God could've prevented, not least by not putting the tree there...) was because of God's desire for us to have free will. Because, and I forget the exact quote, "What is worship without free will but blind obedience?"
Or something along those lines - the point was that we could not effectively demonstrate our love and thanks if we were forced to because we had no free will.
As to your original question, I suspect that they care for a few reasons, in adition to those alread pointed out by others:
1) Religious leaders are generally seen as being wise, and it never hurts to seek the counsel of the wise
2) By asking now, they avoid possible ecclesiastical outrage and condemnation later
3) Maybe they're Christians, and are seeking guidance from their spiritual leaders - the two are not mutually exclusive. One of the most devout Christians I know is soon to enter his third year of a Phd in Theoretical Physics...
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
While it's interesting that the scientists involved are waiting for the ethical debate to take place, I don't think it's going to make a difference. The procedure will be carried out no matter what the result is.
The progress of science is inherently unstoppable. It usually occurs not through breakthroughs but through small improvements made over time.
My guess is that there's nothing biologically revolutionary about the work these scientists are doing. Which means if they refuse to take the next step someone else will pick up where they left off. Even if some are convinced the practice is unethical others won't be. Given that and the influence of greed I think progress is certain.
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
Imagine sometime in the future when the interworkings of genes in understood to the extent that semiconductors are understood today. 3rd year college students would take courses in Basic Genetic programming, and have to create a simple bacteria as a final project. Genetic programmers would create custom organisms like layout engineers make custom ASICs now. You could have standard series of basic components, like an 74HC11 quad Krebs-cycle module, or a LM317 metabolism regulator with 100kcal/day max rate and 85% effiecency.
I wonder if the genetic scientists of the next decade will be thought of like the pioneers of VLSI back in the 60s are thought of today.
So, from this, can we deduce that these genes will be common to all living things? Or is it simply that that's the simplest combination discovered (so far)?
it's the simplest combination of genes discovered so far. all living organisms have these genes or analogs to them.
Ignoring theological implications, for the moment, what other implications are there? For example, could this be used to produce an artificial biological weapon, with custom-made properties?
this could be done more easily with existing organisms. with this organism, you must start from scratch; however, with other organisms we already have a framework on which to build.
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts. -- Voltaire
Put down the apple, and step away from the tree.
Okay, back to the garden, people. Nothing to see here.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
He means multiple sclerosis; click here for the National Institute of Health's info page.
"The best way to do mathematics is to be creatively lazy." -I. M. Isaacs
Biological life and particularly bacteria has existed on this planet for millions of years. In all that time the probability that a bacterial deformed cell division resulted in the the sequence of genes proposed by these scientists is quite high.
If that new bacterium were so destructive and hence successful, it would still be around today.
Therefore IMO the bacteria they create will be next to useless, and therfore no threat to us. One could probably work out the probabilities, but I can't be bothered. What do you think?
I agree. I am actually just in the process of reading Carl Sagan's book A Demon Haunted World which, among other things, explains why Science would be more reliable than religion.
My opinion, in this case, is that they should be consulting top scientists, rather than religious leaders, mostly because they would know more about the method involved, etc. and would thus be able to give a better answer.
-------
"But really, I think life is just a game of Mao Nomic." -Purplebob
As a catholic, the idea probably didn't occur to you, but to a large number of people, asking religious leaders a question of morals is like asking politicians a question of economics. There is no reason to believe they have better answers than the man in the street, and from their track record, one would have to assume their answers are significantly worse than what the scientists would come up with. But, like asking the president what's good for the economy, asking the pope whether something is ethical is good PR.
What is morals anyway? If you ask the pope, it means conforming to what the church says. Is this actually the right question to ask, "does genetic research agree with catholic ethics"? Or should we ask "do the benefits of genetic research outway the risks"? I do not believe that religious leaders have anything to contribute to this second question, and to me (an atheist), the fact that they are considering consulting religious leaders suggests that they can't be bothered to way the costs and benefits themselves, and are looking for someone else to make the decision for them. This I consider irresponsible.
The decisions should be made by those who best understand the issues. The issues are not religious issues, they are cost/benefit or risk/return issues, and geneticists are those best qualified to make that call.
--Kevin
I am glad that the scientists have decided to wait on the results of a public debate before taking the next steps, but I think that bringing religion into the debate will only start a long, drawn out flame war that won't accomplish or decide anything.
Most rational people would agree that theological debates never get anywhere because the basis of religion is personal belief; you can't prove that you're right to anyone else.
What *should* be debated is an issue that Albert Einstein originally posed many years ago. He believed that technology was developing faster than popular morality (a basic examination of the majority of the posts above would indicate that he underestimated the problem; many individuals are being presented with a fantastic communications medium, and they're using it to babble senselessly).
The scientists are indeed creating life. Bacteria are living organisms, and the scientists are planning on engineering living organisms using the most basic building blocks possible. This is a far cry from creating anything pet-worthy, but, look at how far this technology has advanced in the last decade, and extrapolate from that an estimate of about how long it will be before we can create something pet-worthy (I'll probably see it in my lifetime).
At what point would a society stop and decide to reflect on itself instead of pushing the envelope? Experiments and learning are very good things to practice, but it's also a wise idea to stop pushing outward and reflect inward every once in a while.
I think it would be ideal if the scientists waited at the creation point and concentrated instead on understanding more of the process that makes life work, but I also know that won't happen. These people are scientists because of their inquiring minds and boundless curiosity.
Realize that it was only (relatively) very recently that "civilized" societies decided that servitude was unethical. We as a race still treat each other abysmally, and we treat the living things around us even worse. I'm not fond of imagining the results when those ideals are coupled with technology that will eventually allow us to create living beings to do whatever work we care to have them do for us.
The scientists mean well. They are, for the most part, moral, intelligent people. But it is hubristic of them to think that the technology they're developing now won't soon reach the public sector, which, I think, simply isn't mature enough to handle it yet.
- Cattywampus.
The more advanced technology gets, the less use we have for religion. Religion is a kind of "training wheels" for humanity, which finds survival difficult without some rudimentary organization. This organization, until lately, has been the glue that holds humanity together. Now we're finding out the humanity may not need religion quite so much. Eventually, and IMO soon, religion (in its traditional, current form) will cease to exist. This is a good thing. When something outgrows its usefulness, you discard it -- or you become as obselete as it. The faster religion is phased out the better. It's no longer necessary in civilization, since we've pretty much figured it all out. Remember, religions are used to explain the unexplainable. Nowadays, there's little left unexplained. I find it disturbing that these scientists felt compelled to ask religious leaders. Wonder what these leaders will say? I think it's pretty obvious. The researchers should have just gone and done it, IMO. Sid
It's called PUBLIC RELATIONS.
After all if we were all listened to the french we wouldn't be using soap, either.
-Erik-
Why should they care what the religious leaders think? If God doesn't want us creating life, he'll find a good way to stop us, now won't he? Besides, if all the religions can't even agree on who god is, what qualifies them for moral judgements?
EXACTLY! We must have been seperated at birth, because I thought exactly the same thing.
Where does it say that only God should create life? I realize that there are many other moral consequences other than that, but that seems to be the major one that religious leaders will make, and to my mind, it doesn't seem to have any bearing. I believe it's more important to consider what the role of man-created life forms would be, should they end up more complex. I'm much more scared of us creating ourselves a slave race, or living biological weapons, than of one-upping God.
-Neux
"This sentence no verb." -Anonymous
If you embossed that prayer onto a scenic picture of mountains, trees, etc. and then framed it..
I'd buy it.
It'd be like the "Footsteps" poem that touches my soul so deeply (or something).
If you are wary of the opinions of religious leaders, why should you be any less wary of anyone's value-laden judgement on this question? I find the fact that scientists are claiming to seek religious guidance on this question supremely laughable. "We have discredited your Bible in each and every area of significance to which it lays claim; your God did not do what men claimed he did; all your judgements rely on disproved bunk. However, we would like to humor you and ask your opinion on this Very Important Question." Please!
For years, scientists have claimed that the question of the supernatural is outside the realm of science, and therefore, not their problem. Fine. Then don't consult a religious person for a religious perspective, because the answer you will receive is antithetical to the pursuit of science. Instead, they should consult their peers for a contrived (and I don't mean that in a derogatory way) and secular standard by which to judge their work. Keep religion out of it.
Right?
I beat you by about 1 minute. See also: CID 19.
I'm sorry, but consulting religious leaders on something like this is not a good idea. If science has to take a back seat to religion, we'll never get anything done. The Pope wasn't exactly thrilled about the whole "The Earth isn't the center of the Universe" thing, but we got over it.
Damn fucking cockroaches....
Considering all of the "good" religion has done in the past Aeon (Spanish Inquisition, assimilation of paganism, the Crusades, etceteras), Why should they be consulted at all? It is because of this BS over original sin and te Sanctity of Life (anyone else see the contradiction?) that society is what it is today. Faith is one thing, but having to kowtow a potentially massive breakthrough because it's in dnager of pissing off the pope is an outrage. The pope is aas fallible as Microsoft, folks- and represents the same sort of monoplositic tendencies.
Which is better- progress or being guilt-tripped by someone who has little understanding of what you're doing but is going to be a loubmouth because he "believe's" it's wrong? Belief and science are mutually exclusive terms.
I don't know why they want to talk to religious groups, first off. That smells like a grab for some airtime and cheap publicity - Once you concider some of the impacts that this technology can have. From a step back, the only thing I've seen come out of religion recently is a lot of people killing each other and crazies annoying me at my front door in the morning.
Flamebait aside - here's why this is really important. My dad is a PhD Genetist, and has talked about one of the problems with biology for the longest time. Basically it comes down to this - biologists aren't too concerned with how things work, why they work, and how to use them.
One of his favorite stories goes like this - an alien biologist and an alien engineer land on Earth. They see a 2 TV sets, and don't know what they are. The biologist promptly gets his tools, microscope, sketchbook, and disscects the TV, counting and drawing each part, right down to the microscopic level. What does the engineer do? Hits the "power" button. :)
Once we can engineer life, we can make use of the only known self-replicating, self-assembling, kick-entropy-in-the-face system in the universe! The applications are endless, here's a few:
Want to colonize mars? Make a bacterium that feeds on mineral deposits and CO2 to generate massive amounts of Oxygen. Worred about infection and lifespan? An adquate understanding of the genes will allow you to program it to replicate 10 times, and then die - just like your cells die.
Need clean power? The article hit the nail on the head. PLANTS split water up into hydrogen and oxygen - albeit in small amounts - and there isn't a soul on the planet that can duplicate that system. My dad would get a kick out of biology texts, because they have the engineering equivilant of a "and then a miracle happens" block on their photosynthesis charts. This alone has the potential to revolutionalize every aspect of our lives!
Obviously there are dangers, but we're a species that lives with between 20k and 50k thermonuclear warheads turned on and able to extinct the planet with the confirmation of a code and the press of a button.
Quantifying life in chemical terms will open up a new science, breathe new life into biotech, maybe put an end to some of this religious crazieness, and most of all - get engineers working with biological systems, the most elegant computer system of all. Whoever made that analogy in an above post was a genius!
Kudos!
..don't panic
Hey gonzo... long time no talk `8r)
:wq
The problem with creating a new lifeform (and a tiny bacterium will probably be first since it's simplest) is that NO ONE can know for sure that the created life form won't be worse than than anthrax or E. Coli (sp?) and deadly to all life forms.... It matters not who they ask. Religious leaders don't have specialized access to Ultimate Truth. They're just people like you and me, as are the scientists. But someone, somewhere will try to create the life form sooner or later, so it would be better to do it now under rigorously controlled conditions than for some overzealous grad student at an ivy league school to kill off most of the east coast (though I suppose we could stand to do without New Jersey) for his thesis project. So I say, yes, do it, so we know how to deal with it if someone else does it too.
Now they can show that they took the moral/ethical implications into account before doing what they were going to do anyway. ;)
'Intellectual Properties' are uncontrollable in the wild. To base an economy on them is just stupid.
Don't go putting the scientist and geek communities on a piedestal here. The meaning of civilisation(IMO) is for the largest amount of people to have the best living conditions possible, with the largest amount I hope for 100%.
Don't get me wrong here, they shouldn't have to get permission from religious leaders but there has to be serious debate on the subject with representatives from all communities involved. If we say "RELIGION SUXORS NADZ" as soon as they have something to say about scientific stuff we're no better than them. Remember that.
Man, I really need to learn how not to ramble on =/
I don't worry about the religious implications so much as the possibility of something going horribly wrong. What if our Frankenstein's monster turns out to be virus-sized?
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
Okay, so you're nervous about the implications and consequences. I can understand it, although I don't relate or sympathize. I just hope you understand that neither your opinion nor that of any religious leader will make any difference; I hope you understand that "but I really think we shouldn't do that" isn't going to stop anyone. The scientific process will go on; we will eventually create life, and then go much further than even that, no matter your opinions on the existence of God. The universe does not conform to your expectatives or desires.
FOO!
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
The Third Age is upon us.
dmorin sees it as wierd that "science has to basically ask religion if its ok to do something".
Where does any science text say this? Scientists don't have to seek religious approval for what they do. However, they often choose to do so. This could be for sincere reasons but also could be because it benefits them to do it. They receive favourable publicity and are seen to be associated with people who generally command wide respect in the community. Any politician will tell you this is good for their public image, and public image is important in the politics of the research community, just like in regular politics.
Consulting church leaders also helps neutralise a potential source of bad publicity. To be consulted benefits church leaders aswell. Therefore they will court such consultation. Speaking out against science doesn't help this cause.
I agree with dmorin that it is strange to see sciene asking permission or advice from religion. Mosts scientists beleive in the religion called "science" which is fundamentaly incompatible with Christianity. Can you imagine Jesus saying "I am the way, the truth and the life; but just to be sure, go and check with Allah before you do anything big".
If they are asking, then they probably have already done their tests.
There is nothing in the BBC link about asking religious leaders. It does refer to "an ethical review" and public comment. "What's god got to do with it?" anyway (apologies to Tina Turner). Man created god in his image because he was lonely. Some people still believe in one or more gods; this reflects a lack of progress in the human spirit. We need to stand on our own ethical and spiritual feet, not depend on a god or gods (nor their spokescritters).
All that "junk" DNA is there for a reason, more than likely. Maybe it's there to help filter out mutations? With a giant target, only 1% of which is important, you're less likely to get a critical DNA failure. With just the "important" sequences, I would wager that their "organism" would not last long before a terminal mutation occurs.
"Though it may take a thousand years, we shall be FREE."
We wont't truely understand the biochemistry
of life until we actually build some life.
I suspect it will be a lot harder than expressing
a minimal set of genes, but will eventually
be doable.
You can play God all you want thinking that you can create life.
Since when is thinking that you can create life == playing God? People have been accused of "playing God" long before biotechnology. Frinstance when they determine who shall live and who shall die, as in executions and triage wards. It's a trendy phrase, used to dis those who make unpopular decisions about life and death.
But you will NEVER BE God.
That depends on your definition of God. In the JudeoChristian tradition, it's true. Humans can never be God, because there can be only one God, and that job's taken. The best we can hope for is to be with God someday.
But there are other approaches to consider. In some traditions, humans are already Gods, or at the very least carry a part of the divine within them. Still others claim that some humans are Gods (f'rinstance the king, the emperor, etc.) but most are not and can never be. Who's right? I've got my own beliefs, but I can't say that I know.
It's yet another waste of your tax dollars.
That does not follow from your initial argument. If you think it's a waste of tax dollars, please tell why. Offer some reason. If it's only because we won't become Gods as a result, then all spending is a waste of money. You can't buy Godliness, at least not in any religion that I'm aware of.
i see two kinds of posts on this article: one type is the religious flamewar we see quite often and the other is a the "wow, now we can engineer bacteria for !" don't get me wrong, this is a very exciting prospect, but we've been able to engineer bacteria for various purposes for a long time. the exciting part of this is that scientists have narrowed down the most important genes and how they work together.
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts. -- Voltaire
For understanding confiscated knowledge you obviously underestimate, all simple systems holistically obviated like endive!
No matter WHAT the Pope says, they'll still have crazy lunatics outside the building protesting.
Crazy lunatics, by the way, are not a unique product of religion. Though religion DOES seem to attract quite a few of them.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Last time I checked, science doesn't have a great track record on "moral" judgement either. Nuclear weapons, enviromental rape, super-bacteria created by the wide spread overuse of antibiotics (sp?), yada, yada. Oh science is DEFINATELY proven that it keeps moral implications high on their list.
Thats not a problem with morals. If i throw a drowning man a life saver and accidently clonk him on the head and kill him, it's not my morals that are at question. Science usually makes advancements with the goal of knowledge and for the benifit of mankind.
It's the politicians and leaders that take these inventions and twist them into something evil.
I'll see you in hell.
Yes, God WOULD find a good way to stop us . . . Y2K BUG!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I fell . . ." Fzzt
I got it
IT HAS TO BE MEEPT!
Either that or the original first poster... No one else has either enough free time or motive to do it.
-Erik-
Maybe tomorrow.
Ok so this comment started out as a reply, but turned into something else when I noticed that the article does not actually say anything about religous leaders, or asking there opinion. It states the following "The idea is currently the subject of an ethical review "
So it's a question of Ethics, not Religion. Some may argue that the two are intertwined. For all we know they submitted it to a panel of their scientific peers.
It seems more likely that they recognize that what they are trying to do effects the future of all humanity:
"...the scientists involved say no
attempt will be made to proceed with the daring
experiment until there has been a full and public
debate."
and respect the fact that maybe it should be humanity's decision, not thiers.
The article states that there may be some debate on the subject that has religous overtones:
"The prospect of "scientists playing God", as
some will undoubtedly see it, is bound to
provoke some fierce arguments. "
But all that says is someone somewhere might do some bible thumping.
note that the majority of humanity is religous, therefore if the decision is made by humanity, it may end up being decided on religous grounds.
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
Exactly. This is a good portion of what my personal belief is. I have trouble giving money to people that want it and in the same stroke tell me that I'm not giving enough.
Just like with the whole Scientology discussion that happened a couple of weeks ago, people are confusing the church with teh religion.
Would the bible (god's teachings) have a problem with recreating life, or playing god? Probably. Will the Pope, if the vatican's electric bills finally get paid? I doubt it.
-Erik-
"If God doesn't want us creating life, he'll find a good way to stop us, now won't he?"
:)
It would really suck if he did
"Besides, if all the religions can't even agree on who god is, what qualifies them for moral judgements?"
Last time I checked, science doesn't have a great track record on "moral" judgement either. Nuclear weapons, enviromental rape, super-bacteria created by the wide spread overuse of antibiotics (sp?), yada, yada. Oh science is DEFINATELY proven that it keeps moral implications high on their list.
Remember, every one asks can we do it. No one asks SHOULD we do it (Jurassic Park, right?).
Personally, I think we should. As long as we consider all consequences of our actions.
I'll get on the case, although should that not be mountins of discarded pc's, a lake of mercury and fractal trees?
P P
Looks like someone has watched to much Star Trek.
Take these needed genes, squish them together. From what I understand, you would have a pile of genes, not a living creature. Under what methods does a pile of molecules "come to life?" Does anyone have any resources or explanations, this is got me stumped.
"Life" is just a bunch of chemical reactions that turn a pile of molecules into more of those molecules. Nothing mystical or magical about it. All you need is to get a "pile of molecules" that will organize surrounding molecules to create copies of itself and you have "life". There is no "life energy" needed, except for the laws of physics which govern chemical reactions, hence no need to "breath life" into anything: just gather the right molecules together in the right way and let 'er rip!
geneticists have been modifying organisms directly (no, i'm not including artificial selection); this experiment isn't going to make it any easier to find cures or make evil organisms, only further our understanding of gene interactions and evolution.
also, all bacteria are genetic bacteria.
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts. -- Voltaire
Great! we can't send things to Mars, can't write simple to use, non buggy progs that just let us do our daily work without crashing, we can't control nuclear power, we can't keep peace on our world and now we start playing around with new life forms... I wonder what will happen next...
--
PanDuh!
I think it's the fact that the story singles out religion as some sort of source of expertise. It's like going to the marketing department to get an opinion on a piece of technology. Just makes my skin crawl.
They're taking an existing bacterium, extracting the genes, knocking out a few genes they think probably aren't necessary, and putting the modified genome into a membrane. I hardly think that qualifies as "creating" life, and it's pretty silly to get drawn into that argument.
I believe in God too, and I agree with the guy who said that if there was a God , He would want us to use our minds. Belief in God really doesn't mean that truth should be hidden. There's nothing morally wrong with this type of research.
I heard some guy on the radio saying that "A scientist who doesn't believe in evolution is like a plumber who doesn't believe in pipes". That's a load of crap. Evolution doesn't say anything about what goes into the pipe in the first place.
This experiment doesn't answer that question either. It makes no attempt to create conditions where "life" would "spontaneously" occur out of some sort of primordial soup on tap.
Scientists don't really have any training based on morailty. Generally they do what they do for science sake. We don't have many conservative leaders, by conservative I mean asking what affect this technology will have 10 generations from now. You can't exactly extrapolate out that far, but I think you know what i mean. People who might have insights in this area are probably religious leaders and philosophers.
If they actually have the ability to create even the most basic life forms, this is INCREDIBLY huge with ramifications beyond anything I can image. It won't be long before we can create complex organisms if this turns out to be true. Look at how quickly computers developed over the past 50 years. Amazing.
Our society has no mechanisms (institutions) to handle something like this. It's more like "if it makes money, go for it". Of course we do have laws limiting some harmful activities, but the church is the closest thing we have to a "moral" institution, regardless of what you think of them.
They should be consulting philosophers as well as a number of religious leaders. IMO, our society isn't ready for this, just like we aren't ready for genetic engineering. Given how our society acts twords most of it's population, the ability to do harm is too high.
Religious leaders would probably be against it, but they would probably also so that this isn't creating life. You can't "manufacture" a soul would probably be their argument.
To the person who made the comments about the 95% being anti-god, here is your reason.
I thought we had enough problems with the Stallmanites, but geez, now we have to deal with ethical bible thumping christians too.
YOUR GOD IS DEAD. He died in a tomb about 1965 years ago.
I must have the "constantly looking for an argument" gene in me or something.
-Erik-
I've never seen anything like this. I think that #rit channel or whatever got together and just pasted a whole bunch of their stuff together, a group effort in other words. This shit is too fucked up for one person to take all that time on.
Scientists: What does the religious community think about this?
Religious community: *ahem* We think that this move will bring 1000 years of Karmic damnation upon humanity (1000 pages of proof ensues)
Scientists: Hmmmmmm.... intriguing. But we're gonna do it anyway. We invited your overly verbose hineys to the table as a PR thing, it ain't like we're gonna listen to anything you say!
(New life is created)
(New life finds cure for humanity)
(A thousand years of Karmic damnation ensues)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
So instead, he gives us free will, but threatens us with eternal hell-fire should we happen to choose not to worship him.
I'm sure you know a metaphor when you see one, so I won't bother to explain it.
Many theologians believe that those who do go to Hell will actually prefer it to the presence of God that is Heaven. I'm not going to go into much depth here, but check out C.S Lewis's book The Problem of Pain for a good analysis of that idea.
I think that the ethical implications of this are enormous, and reach beyond the Judeo-Christian boundries that you think this is pushing. Note that the researchers only said "consult with religious leaders," without specification as to type.
There are those who think that ethics and religion don't go hand in hand. I disagree. That thing that Judeo-Christians like to call a consience is what drives us to a standard for ethics. The idea that an religious life is an ethical life is part of our core beliefs.
This is quite important, as you noted "We never stopped to think if we should." I must commend them for taking this step.
As a firm (but not rigid, for those that might call me intolerant) believer in God, I am impressed that in these times that the team even felt it was necessary to ask this question. Many posters here on /. seem to think that infomation is for information's sake alone, that ethics and religion have nothing to do with answers.
Do I think science should not be looking for this answer? No. Through science, we learn the mind of God. Perhaps in time, science can create life. But science can NEVER make something out of nothing. Only God can. So I don't feel that the creation of life belongs to God, per se. The soul, that belongs to God. Science may create the vessel, but never the essence.
For those of you who don't share my beliefs, that's fine. This is just my point of view. You're entitled to your own, just as I am.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
that's right :)
except on the part that says: Nowadays, there's little left unexplained
i don't think we have come 5% of the way yet
Join with me in our prayer
Our father who art on Slashdot
CmdrTaco be thy name
Give us this day our daily news
Forgive us our flames and bad Karma
As we forgive those who flame against us
Your website come
Thy posting be done
In the real world as it is online
If they cant figure out how the 14 genes of the
AIDS virus or the 300 genes of minimal life work,
they've got a long,long,long way to go to
understand humans.
Now, I'm not arguing that we should just run right out and do it. Like I said at the top, "whether we should" is indeed a valid question. I just find it weird to think
of science as asking religion, as if they are the ones that should be consulted. If we'd done that 300+ years ago would anybody have bothered to try sailing around
the planet?
You have a point. Think how nice it'd be *cough* if we hadn't sailed around the world (geez, I really wonder what it'd be like.. not good, I guess).
Anyway, what I was thinking was - this is not 300+ years ago! Yeah, I see that you're making a relative analogy that is in all likelihood plausible, but if that's your only argument for going ahead with this project, then you're just as sunk as those people you're trying to say are sunk fighting against it. Yes, I realize that you didn't say we _should_ go ahead with it, and I agree with the whole could we/should we thing. I, personally, am torn. But that's irrelevant here. I'm just saying that there doesn't seem to be much of an argument for either side yet, or, at least not in your post.
Insert mind here.
I couldn't agree with you more. But indeed it is a strong belief that anything innovative is able to destroy mankind (and sometimes the ecosystem, earth, or the universe). Anyone remembers this ABC news chronicle where one guy was saying a physical experiment could create a black hole and destroy the earth? I guess when fire was invented someone said "Uh dont you know guys fire is dangerous? No doubt we'll burn down the forest with that. Forget about fire, we should not play God"
No technology is bad. Only misuse is. By restraining fire you don't burn the forest. By keeping genetic engenieering in labs until you know what's going on you don't kill the ecosystem. But here there is no danger of any kind, because the good priests will stop it: "Sorry Mr Darwin, it seems that your thesis does not take in account the influence of Jesus Christ on Galapagos island fauna. We urge you to put an end to your research."
Statue Man rules even my powerful ass.
> Who does man think he is, to assume the role of god and create life? Are we really that conceited that we feel we are ALLOWED to create other organisms?
Uhm, Hello. Because nature allows us humans to pro-create. We create another organism anytime a mother has a child.
Why would it be any different in creating a new species?
Cheers
Heheh, sorry friend, that argument doesn't cut wax... ever seen "The Man Who Would Be King"? Rudyard Kipling disproved that argument rather succinctly. Without technology, your "God-like" facade would wither on the vine.
Destructiveness in a bacterium would *not* be a survival trait. If there were a bacterium, or other lifeform that caused death in it's host population very quickly, and spread quickly, the host population would die out, leaving the disease with no where to bread, and then it dies out.
The ideal survival strategy for a disease-causing organism would be to exist within a host population without causing any harm, but spreading throughout as much of the population as possible.
Of course, that's all academic. An organism that can kill us quickly and spread easily may not survive in the long run, but we'd still be dead.
I'd give this one a "Flamebait", and the original press release a "Troll-ing for research dollars".
:-(
DNA is DNA, whether you build it from scratch or cut-and-paste using genetic engineering. We're creating life, let's call the pope. Yeah, right!
Wish I got my LNUX today!
If man didn't create man, I wouldn't be here right now.
--
PanDuh!
...is a good first rule.
There is an old sci-fi story in which this poor sot gets a package from the future - The Acme Build-A-Friend Kit.
He proceeds to open it up and follow the instructions, and ends up with a clone of himself, only with most of the flaws missing.
A few hours later a time cop arrives, looks the situation over and decides that the original person must be the construct (because of the flaws) and disassembles him.. and takes the kit back to the future.
Sooner or later there is really going to be a big question about where this technology is going to take the human race.
This is great and yet was so simple to find. Using the process of elimination one has found life. These genes could then be compared as patterns agains't the human genome to find out where life begins in humans - what chromosome and area. Now the only thing to determine is the DEATH genes. Do these same set of genes produce death or is it another set of genes that do this? By removing these genes, we have ETERNITY! The fountain of youth. The other possiblity is to reverse the aging process too. The benefit of this is that an artificial bacterium can be created similar to the oil eating one that can be injected into humans. This gene could be used to eat the plaque in the human arteries to unclog them and eliminate heart attacks. The bacterium would then die off due to starvation (no plaque) and thus be removed from the body using the normal methods that the body does to do this.
Whether the relgious leaders stop it here or not, it's inevitable that this sort of thing goes through. But if we say 'no' now, we won't have nearly as much knowledge of it as a future Saddam Hussein or Adolf Hitler.
At the risk of sounding like someone who's seen one too many James Bond movies, what if they were to develop a plague, and because we'd been told to stop this here and now, we didn't have the data to stop it? Can you imagine looking your child in the eye as he or she suffers miserably, and try to explain that there's no cure because the religious leaders thought it'd make God mad?
In my opinion, it'd be better to develop it now, while we have interested scientists willing to lay their findings out on the table. One thing I hope they don't try and do is patent the process for the creation. Yes, I suppose that'd be considerably more reasonable than patenting the genes themselves, but patents seem to kill progress.
I've seen people talk on and on about how you could wipe out cancer, diseases, and mental illnesses with genetic engineering and biotech.. But what about greed? That'd be a wonderful stride for humanity, if we'd work towards the common good instead of our own good. And we could wipe out that strange syndrome that seems to completely destroy a sense of humor. Imagine, with these two things gone, we'd never have to worry about rapists, thieves, most murders, or the record companies ever again!
And just out of curiosity, how much are the Scientologists charging for their answer?
This stupid little comment was brought to you courtesy of A.Coward & H.A.D.Dwarf Enterprises.
Will this "artifical" life be OPEN SOURCE? Will it run on NON-MICROSOFT or INTEL platforms? Will it use a BEOWOLF CLUSTER? And can they replicate stank hoes for my nerdy ass to bang after I get done programming my new GPL LINUX IPO SOFTWARE?
This is a sad sad thing... unfortunate as it may be, religion and science don't mix... What if Galileo went to the religious authorities when he realized that he was on the verge of discoveries that might upset them... Or what if Darwin never researched evolution because it might annoy the religious powers that be... Just because a scientific discovery may turn religous dogma upsidedown doesn't mean we should abandon our search for truth... even if it discredits or disproves some religions... I believe that consulting relgious leaders is not only absurd, but unethical..., I believe a scientist has the duty to pursue the truth about our world... no matter who it upsets, or what taboo subjects it talks about... when I believe something a scientist says, I believe it because I believe that their information comes from careful scientific study... If scienctists start to base their research on religion then I can no longer believe what they have to say... What they say will have no more credibility then the story book that says zeus creates thunder.
Ben
- Different perspective. It's always nice to get a different POV than yours, if only to make you stop and think.
- Gauge possible reaction from public. Who would have a better idea of what John Q. Public might think, the scientists or the clergy?
- Never underestimate the power of good PR.
I could go on, but the question I would ask is, why not?P.S. I'm a devout agnostic.
Do we have that right to kill it? Is that murder? If we mess up somehow, do we have a new species, and then are we allowed to cause it's extinction?
This brings back memories of Asimov's robot books, actually. We create the 'life-form', and then we're not legally allowed to kill it (except these life-forms can actually kill it).
ps. I'm all for it.
"We have discredited your Bible in each and every area of significance to which it lays claim; your God did not do what men claimed he did; all your judgements rely on disproved bunk. However, we would like to humor you and ask your opinion on this Very Important Question."
Those are some pretty hefty claims for science you have there. Care to offer any support for them?
Our father who art on Slashdot
:)
CmdrTaco be thy name
Give us this day our daily news
Forgive us our flames and bad Karma
As we forgive those who flame against us
Your website come
Thy posting be done
In the real world as it is online
I'd probably find this somewhat offensive if it wasn't so darn funny.
Finkployd
(the followings are just random thought, and may not be backed by any scientific evidence at all)
Simple things are difficult to destroy. Hm...I wonder what if this simplest bacteria becomes the most annoying enemy of us.
We kill bacteria by exploiting their weeknesses. The simpler an organism is, the less weeknesses we can find. They are much like security holes - the simpler a system is, the less likely you'll find a security hole in it.
So, is it necessary that we create some weaknesses in this "M. Artificilium" so that we can kill it effectively? Would it adds to the difficulty of designing it?
Anyone knowledgeable in pathology please shed some light on this.
Save the children; quit overparenting!
And start thinking of the implications when this does inevitably happen. Even if these scientists feel that this is wrong and do not proceed, someone else will, and eventually, they will succeed. That is why we need to instead think about the implications of this when it does happen, be they ethical or environmental. For example, if we do have hallmark create-a-kid, this will clearly be made only available to the upper class. This would be bad! Or, as another poster mentioned, we could create something that could destroy earth's fragile eco-system as we know it. That is why we need to debate the applications of this technology NOW and create legislation to stop future abuse of this technology NOW before it is too late. This technology will forge ahead. Lets make sure we as a society are ready for it.
confused.
(CAC)
i believe that science is our evolutionary advantage, and that we have to use it to survive. if these scientists can build a tight enough quarantine, i say go for it.
_Why_ should the consult religous leaders at all? It is this very experiment which is going to prove them irrelevant once and for all. After all, if man can create life, then what makes "god" so special?
Hmm. I'm a theist, and I fail to see how this makes God or religious leaders suddenly irrelevant. I believe in a God who gave us rational minds, and an orderly, law-driven universe. Given that, isn't it logical that we should be able to retrace the steps of evolution?
Boy, am I tired of the unfounded centrality the genome has in the public consciousness. Even most scientists, who should know better, talk as if the genome is the only essential component of life.
"Technically we would need to synthesise a genome and see if it led to a living organism."
Uh, a genome on its own, synthesized or not, will never lead to a living organism! It requires extremely complicated biological machinery to transcribe, process, and then translate the DNA into proteins. This is not a trivial matter. For all our advances in the field of cloning, for example, we still have to stick our manipulated DNA into a naturally produced egg. DNA is a very simple molecule; the rest of the fertilized egg is not be so easy to synthesize.
Being able to build DNA is great, but DNA on its own does nothing! Only when you have DNA wrapped in an elaborate package do you have the possibility of life. Focusing only on the DNA is like believing that once you have a blueprint, you don't need to know anything about tools to build a house.
Sorry this is long, but its important...
Before the beginning of this century, the general feeling in the scientific community was that humans would shortly posess all the knowledge of nature and the means by which to control it in a finite period of time. Science would merely be assigned the job of filling in the small holes in our knowledge. At the dawn of this century that optimism was destroyed by things like general relativity, and later, genetics, that proved the world was infinitely more complex than we had any ability to understood.
Here we sit, content in our inevitable ability to accomplish whatever we choose in some finite period of time, convinced that we posess adequate knowledge to do almost anything, or that this knowledge will quickly be gained, when in reality, our children will look at us with that same bewilderment about our udder backwardness that we see our parents with. The tech press allows us to brandish our pathetic understanding of their science, as if we actually understand, and then to feel an amazing sense of pious condescesion about the inevitable march of science, that we don't understand, despite the fact that, like out greatgrandparents, we don't have any conception of the breadth and depth of the universe.
We act as though organizing the DNA of an amoeba is the seminal accomplishment of the history of the universe because we assume that if we can prove our abilities for small cases of n and the ones that follow, then all cases are proven, asserting our godliness. How can there be religion if we have the power of God? In reality, we know little of what the universe holds for us, and all of that knowledge, all of those abilities, would not be communsurate with understanding or obtaining its creation.
What we fail to understand is that as Christians understand our creation "in his image," we are allowed to understand, and to imitate, and possibly even encouraged to master the world that God gave us, yet we are also called to be stewards of it, and to care for it. That we understand a small pittance of God's thoughts at creation is not so entirely remarkable, and does not give us the power of a god.
You don't have to defend God from the scientists.
Andrew Gardner
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
LOL... so you think you're as special or more special than God just because you figured out how to take apart something He has built and re-assemble it to something else that still works? It's like taking apart your car and re-assembling it to another car, and then claiming that you invented cars. Rather myopic, if you ask me.
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
I think you vastly underestimate the risk. There is already a lot of work ongoing towards the understanding of genetic codes that influence intelligence in people. Once this knowledge is gained, it could easily be used to select for or manipulate genomes that would in fact lead to creating something more intellignet than onesself.
There are some interstibng similarities between creating life and abortion. Both have distinct advantages and both lead to outrage in religious communities. There is no objective way to judge the morality of either. I wonder if these scientists were sued, if existing abortion legislation would factor into the court's decision..
THEY'RE GOING TO MAKE "ALIENS"!!! Somebody tell Sigourney Weaver to shave her head and pull out the exoskeleton!!! And for god sakes somebody kill Paul Reisner before he screws us all!!! GAME OVER MAN GAME OVER!!!
TODAY I GOT A MESSAGE FROM JESUS HE SAID "STOP NOSING AROUND IN MY BUISNESS YOU FUCKING GEEKS" MAYBE I BETT HE IS S I THINK THAT JESUS IS NOT KIDDING WAIT
I'M AFRAID I AM GOING TO HAVE TO GO WITH JESUS ON THIS ONE FELLAS
Why should they care what the religious leaders think? If God doesn't want us creating life, he'll find a good way to stop us, now won't he? Besides, if all the religions can't even agree on who god is, what qualifies them for moral judgements?
I just had this strange thought: What if they create a 100% exact copy of a molecular lifeform, but it doesn't start to "live" ? Because some "Spark of life" is missing ?
If that would be the proof that there is something not explainable by science ?
Would a great war between the religions break out, because now there is a proof of god, just which is the right one ?
Of course, that is not going to happen, because life is just a chain of chemical reactions, and thoughts are just electrochemical patterns in our brains. Or not ?
I'm going to go off the deep end and propose an ethical rational behind this creating life thing. Somebody's got to do it, so that the experiment can be done right, and we slashdotters have the tenacity to take the initiative, no? What it boils down to, of course, is if the public is ready for it. I'll expound on that after my rational.
Athiestic Ethical Rational Number FtW001Under a sufficiently controlled environment this experiment can be done safely and ethically. First off, comparison to Jurassic Park is a good warning but scale is an issue. It is conceivable to build a sealed, starile room in which the experiment can be carried out and terminated. Such rooms already exist and harbor such dangerous organisms as Bochelism, HIV, and Anthrax. We are thus already prapared to handle the experiment with relative safety.
If we create it, we can destroy it. This is what should be done. Until we have examined all of the ethical ramifications of exposing the outside world to our creation, we should not let it leave this room. We destroy living creatures in the name of science all the time, particularly micro-organisms. This would be nothing new.
Since we cannot begin to comprehend the uses of this technology until we try it, we should try it in a controlled situation. As each use is discovered, we should have an intelligent and responsible group of people examine its ethics. Only by doing this step by step can we be prepared to deal with some rogue lab going out on its own and doing ethically questionable things.
The key is that now that the technology is at hand, ignorence is more dangerous than striking out on shaky ground. If we balk at this, somebody is going to do something that we don't understand and hurt somebody before we can say "now wait a minute!"
Obvously, my arguments are founded on certain fundemental assumptions, such as that what we are currently doing is ethical to begin with. If you disagree with these, than you can't argue the details, just come up with your own rational. My point is that we should be hashing out rationals left and right, right?
Now, that said, the real obstacle here is public opinion. By that, I don't mean Joe Sixpack exactly. I'm refering to the religious leaders that the scientists are consulting, and politicians, and corperations, and anybody and everybody who acts as a spokesperson or leader of the public. If the majority of these people are not ready for this technology, and by ready I mean a variety of things, then the experimentors are going to run into a world of trouble.
I'm sure you can imagine what I'm talking about. If the scientists went ahead without consulting everybody, you'd have religious terrorists bombing the labs (as other /.ers have suggested), you'd have corperations patenting the procedure and using it to create the ultimate protein food or the ultimate weapon, and you'd have government agents snatching key information from the lab databases, or whatever government agents really do, and you'd have more people voting for the candidate who wants to cut back on science.
And that's my pair of coppers
-- "So far, I have not found the science" -Soul Coughing
"I'm suggesting that science for the purpose of science is important in our existance if we're ever going to leave this rock and move somewhere else after we destroy it." How about NOT DESTROYING IT? What gives us (in fact, not really "us" at all, just some techno-hubristic-weeny branch of humanity) the right to destroy it? You people are out of your fucking minds! Think about what you just wrote!
Forget the cultists - how about just some good discussions about ethics: supernatural beings need not apply unless they participate incarnate.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Anyone see the movie 12 Monkeys? We are all going to be living underground because we are going to accidentally create a life form that will wipe out the human race as we know it. I suppose this is the next step in Darwin's theory though, so I'm not going to worry about the inevitable.
Genes do not an organism make. The most apt analogy is that the genes are all the code for an OS. For a functioning OS, the code itself is necessary but not sufficient. For that we need hardware to execute the code. In the case of the cell the hardware is not specified entirely by the genes - some of it is in fact inherited from previous generations of the organism but not in the form of DNA. As an example, one of the most important of these is the membrane that contains the cell. There are no "genes" for the membrane, yet it does not form on its own - it is entirely derived from previous membranes. The energy that most cells use largely comes from an electric and chemical potential across this membrane - without it there is no "life", there is just a collection of genes. The key concept here is continuity of life through evolution from time imemorial to the present day.
Suppose we start with a huge OS full of extraneous and useless things. We widdle the code down so that eventually we have a "minimal OS". Does that mean we created something new? Certainly not. When these people delete all the "extra" genes, they would certainly not have created a new life form - they would have modified an existing organism - something that is done countless times on a daily basis with experimental organisms.
Now if we start from an artificial membrane "sack", squirt into it the machinery needed to transcribe DNA and produce proteins, put in some DNA, zap it to establish an electrical gradient then watch it grow and divide, then we would have really done something. The size of the DNA and the number of genes is not so important - we can easily manipulate DNA with ten times that number of genes.
So what have these people done then? Well a mildly interesting intellectual excercise and a nice story for the BBC. The greatest impact of this story will be the cries of outrage by the misinformed, and the un-needed (and undeserved) bad publicity for all scientists.
i assume this article will create the usual slashdot crazyness of people sayiny, "oh my, they are playing god" and "this is the downfall of our society". First off, they are NO where near actually making a lifeform and when they do it will be the simplest bacteria imaginable. what this will really lead to is the benifit of mankind and us living longer healthier lives. by understanding what it takes to make a being live we can understand what it takes to keep it alive. so if this does take off and we figure all this shit out u can say goodbye to cancer, MS and all the rest of the horid dieses that kill millions of us every year. i don't know about u but if we get that then i can deal with a couple of people misusing the technology. we are entering a new age of man and i for one and glad to be going there!
I would wager that their "organism" would not last long before a terminal mutation occurs.
.9 of the time (In reality there are a lot more 9's, but I don't know how many). So, every time the organism would normally reproduce, it does. So each generation only outputs 1.8 times as many decendants as the previous one.. Since it's an exponential curve, yes this is a bunch slower, but .. still. One terminal mutation only kills that instance of the organism.
Okay, so let's say that DNA replication works right as rarely as
On the ohter hand, this is an organism that's unlikely to ever evolve any further (there's not a lot of junk in it to shuffle around)..
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
A computer hey? OK that ought to catch someone's attention. Stand by for "WinLIFE(tm) - who do you want to be today?" real soon now...
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
And humans will still find a way to be miserable, because all these groovy things are not really the point. The point has something or other to do with "meaning".
The Glorious Meept made a comeback just the previous article. (Or someone who has his style down pat)...
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Hopefully with discussion, the ideas behind the creation of life will be solid before someone proceeds. Similar to open source in that everyone can be heard, however a little more serious than source code, IMHO.
Ignoring theological implications, for the moment, what other implications are there? For example, could this be used to produce an artificial biological weapon, with custom-made properties?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I don't really understand why people would object to this experiment, though. As the article states: Dr Craig Venter, founder of Tigr and now head of the Celera Genomics Corporation, said the study was redefining life in terms of the genome, the collection of all a creature's genes.
Essential genes
"Will we eventually get to a molecular definition of life? I hope that will happen, yes," he told the BBC.
Understanding life at its chemical roots is a noble goal, and clearly one that organized religion would have been opposed to in the past....
As for creation being the realm of "god," humans have been making art and babies for many years....
I also don't think that this should be phrased as science versus religion, because organized science can be as rigid as organized religion. Organized anything is more interested in maintaning its dominant position than in doing whats best for humanity. We'd be better off if all these organizations were broken up and replaced with democratic cooperation between individuals and smaller groups.
-Brian
Anyone else think of frankenstein the moment they saw this article? =)
But she said the Catholic Church would not countenance the creation of higher lifeforms - or even of bacteria if the motivation was to do harm.
"In itself it's an interesting piece of scientific research. But it depends on your motivation. If you are trying to prove the non-existence of God that's one thing, but if you are just carrying out an experiment that is quite another.
"Obviously if you were trying to create bacteria for germ warfare that would be very wrong."
She added: "If it's just a bacteria, that's fine. But it's a long way from a bacteria to a human being."
*Note* I forgot my login id and password but my email address is brent@stargazer.net Now read on!!
:-) But my question is not that we can create life..we have always had the ability to create life from the bare and abundant elements that the earth provides us(we just couldn't figure it out),plus we create life everyday via sexual intercouse and artificial insemination but would the ability to create life help to cause the religious organizations to loose there hold on the minds of people? It has long been my belief as it has been proven by religious organizations themselves that the bible was used to control people(by using morals, the word of god, etc etc.) It is also quoted in the bible that the God that most religious organizations believe in was the one true creator of life(I'll get the exact bible passages if needed). The implications of creating life would not be that we did create life and what would be created but that by humans creating life we could possibly cause mass panic and disruption within the religious communities themselves.
Hi all,
This has been a question on my mind for sometime. I don't especially believe that there is one true god or in the beliefs of most religious organizations mostly becuase I have a problem with authority.
I have other thoughts on this subject but I could write a thesis on this subject for petes sake....
Just my point of view,
Brent Clements
Yeah, I had similar thoughts watching Contact when the religious martyr was willing to blow up the launch pad.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
"As a catholic, the idea probably didn't occur to you, but to a large number of people, asking religious leaders a question of morals is like
asking politicians a question of economics"
No harm in asking people for their opinion. What you do with it is your business.
"The decisions should be made by those who best understand the issues. The issues are not religious issues, they are cost/benefit or risk/return issues, and geneticists are those best qualified to make that call."
The decisions WILL BE MADE by those people. NO ONE SAID that the religious leaders will be making those decisions. They are simply asking for their input.
And, BTW, with our VERY LIMITED knowledge of genetics as it is, are you so very sure that the geneticists themselves understand all the issues? Hell no. I don't want them to ONLY consult the religious leaders. I also want them to debate this very heavily (and more so than the religious right) with their own peers and not just take off running with it without hearing all sides of the issue.
While the question of Can vs Should is valid, it is also moot. Anything that can be done will be done, regardless of if it should be. Should we make Nuclear weapons? Does the answer to that question stop any sufficiantly advanced (and it isnt that complex) country from making their own? trying to stop it at this point is trying to put the djini back in the bottle. The best you can hope for at this point is to control it intelligently and even that is unlikely.
-It is this courts ruling that Science must maintain a distance of 100yds from Relirion at all times.
-- Hail Eris
I'm not supprised at all about this; it seemed to be a matter of time. A large part of the problem is not in understanding how a cell works, but in building the tools that permit scientists to investigate how the cell works and in doing experiments.
It's like trying to figure out how a computer works and the only tool we have to use is a bulldozer. Most of us know how a computer works, but if the only way we could program a computer was by hitting it with the shovel of a bulldozer, we'd have a hell of a time experimenting with the computer...
Not that I'm trying the same argument as: a pile of dirt is kind of like a pile of rocks, a pile of rocks is kind of like an abacus, an abacus is kind of like a calculator, a calculator is kind of like a computer, therefore, a pile of dirt is kind of like a computer.
You can play God all you want thinking that you can create life. But you will NEVER BE God.
It's yet another waste of your tax dollars.
-- DuckWing
1.) Destroying them
2.) Changing their genetic composition
--
PanDuh
God is dead! Push technology as far as it can go! Create life! Clone! Fuck religion!
You're not thinking straight. In a tiny colony of a million bacteria who undergo fission about once every hour, a mutation affects only one of them. If the worst comes to the worst, it dies. The other 999,999 go on to become 1,999,998 within the next hour. If the food supply is limited, many individual bacteria may mutate themselves to death without affecting the climax population size or even substantially impacting the time taken to get there. So mutations even in vital genes are not really a problem.
And of course mutations in "junk" DNA are of neutral value to the organism.
Organisms which have a short life cycle are designed to cope very well with a high proportion of deleterious mutations, because the losers are quickly replaced. And some mutations which are deleterious under normal circumstances are advantageous in others, so today's weakly mutant is tomorrow's lucky survivor with all the food to himself.
Thus the net value to a bacterium of mutation in vital genes is probably positive.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Consulting religious leaders about science and morality matters is like consulting tin-pot dictators about human rights.
I am so tired of the whole its bad to play God thing. I believe in God(yes Jesus and the whole bit)and creating life is not playing God(as others have said: "we create life all the time through reproduciton"). However, when they can create life and then tell me exactly what choices this creature will make during its life...then they'll be playing god. God is more than creation, its omnipotence. The same is true for AI. what if someday we *do* create a self-aware neural-net(essentially with a free will)? so what? We're still not God. When you can give it free will and can still predict every single choice it will make during its existance and even how its existence will end, then you are God(its the whole predestination paradox).
is it possible that by effectively removing the 111 someodd additional genes, we might accidentally evolve the organism some millionfold amount by optimizing it's DNA for it? If the bug is reduced to it's minimum sequence, might it become some horrible kind of fast-moving flesh-eating bacteria? Sure, it coexists with homo sapiens now, but what if our tinkering creates a bug that's extremely good at reproducing and devouring humans?
Think: it's obviously evolved to the point where it doesn't set off our immune systems. It can comfortably feed off nutrients in the intercellular fluid. It's pretty much dedicated it's existance to feeding off of humans, so it's going to be able to rapidly break down our specific proteins. Speeding it up a few times might be enough for it to kill us easily.
I'm not a genetic engineer or cellular microbiologist, but I'd give this a miss for a few years until IBM gets their petaflop box done and we can run a few simulations of this thing before we loose it in reality.
It's good to see someone else has taken up his experiment. He used to do something sort of like this once in a while before he died. I think in the last trial, they successfully created some DNA, but no life.
It will be interesting to see what becomes of this!
It's very sad... but most people base their fears of Artifical Intelligence (or man made intelligence) on bad science fiction movies... I suggest that you actually take the time to learn something about the field... (first of all, I would say we are no where near creating anything of even near the intelligence of, say a monkey), but even more so... there is really no intrisic danger to man made intelligence, if it ever comes to be... like any technology, the potential for missuse is there, but I believe that what we have to gain from creating intelligence (whether as a computer or a life form) far outweighs the risks...
Ben
"After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter."
Mary Shelley, _Frankenstein_
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
The Robert Sheckley story "Ticket To Tranai" is similar in that women are stored in a no-time field through their married life.
This way, they only see their husbands when the husband is in a good mood, eventually the husband will die and she gets all his money and is still young. Also, wives can't cheat on their husbands this way.
The story also has a President wired to a bomb which any citizen can detonate and other nifty ideas.
Several decades ago, scientists thought that all organic chemicals were different from inorganic chemicals in possessing some special "life-force". This was finally disproved when the first of many organic chemicals (i think it was ammonia) was synthesized from inorganic chemicals.
The field of organic chemistry that that this discovery heralded has affected out life significantly in a number of different way ranging from pharmaceuticals to plastics, to food products (does spam have an organic basis ?:).
Now we are again pushing back the frontiers of the mysterious "life-force" by synthesizing "life" from inorganic chemicals . It is exciting to think about what new fields and new ranges of products this may spawn. Also it is probably another good time to redefine our beliefs about "life" itself.
I am not too concerned about the negative possibilities, nearly all powerful technologies pose some sort of threat. Force after all may be used for its Good Side or for its Dark Side.
Also I firmly believe that they should consult, a board of peers rather than religious leaders. If we had been letting religion tell us what we should be studying we would still be back in the Dark Ages.
I look forward to hearing more about this reaearch and wish them the best of luck .
Smthng.
Interestingly the organism that they are claiming contains the "minimal set" of genes needed for life is not "free-living". This is of note because it means that it is entirely possible that the minimal set would only allow an organism to function if it were in an environment which already provided many of the complex biochemical compounds needed for metabolism. So, what sort of claim is it to assert that they are creating life? Yes, it is life of a sort, but is it autonomous, free-living and independent?
This is bad logic. If you remove the genes that make a humans brain function, the person dies (or worse, becomes a M$ programmer). All they have shown is that these genes are necesary in this particular configuration, not in all life.
It is interseting though that in such a simple DNA structure, 100 genes remain to be identified. Life is quite complex.
Gays seem to have much more fun and vibrant lives these days (when they are not being "bashed" that is).
Why should they care what the religious leaders think?
Because only a sociopath doesn't care what other people think. Religious leaders are other people.
This does not mean one should always give in to the will of other people - only that it's usually a good thing to give it at least a passing consideration. I hope they don't only consider what religious leaders think about this. A great many people, from all walks of life, might have objections, concerns, or even just questions that should be answered.
Not that it matters a whole lot - these things will be attempted whether there is objection or not. Anyone who has ever been told they're not supposed to even try to do that with a computer knows what I'm talking about. Gene hackers can be every bit as compulsive as computer hackers. Right now it just costs too much to attempt projects like this one without the monetary support of large universities, corporations, or governments.
But it's getting cheaper all the time.
i want to attempt to create a living organism with my copyrighted undistributable open source natalie portman and open source drew barrymore.
to achieve this, i will use open source muscle contractions, open source watermarking and open source positions.
the open source community will be handsomely rewarded with my offspring.
thank you.
creating life was wrong by 'His' religious leaders? Interesting that such a huge number of 'individuals' belive in god, yet have never actually thought about wether or not he's something unique... or wether he's just one of many of his 'kind'. Personally I'm tired of all the folks I run into who use religion to refrain from ever having an origional thought.... or exploring one offered to them to it's fullest extent. I'd log in but I've already thrown 'my' christian to the lions today.
Note: The following will most likely end in a rant and a line containing "sorry for the rant."
I am so sick of hearing about god, and people trying to say what god wants us to do and what he doesn't want us to do. Who says god didn't lay everything out perfectly so we would discover how to create our own little organisms at that exact moment? Who says god doesn't want us to create life?? If you ask me, based on catholicism (i know little about other religions, and I don't consider my self a catholic) reproducing is what god put us here to do. So what if we're not using our own parts to reproduce? Proliferating life is the way to go as far as god says. Whether it's human life or not, it's life, and there's nothing wrong with making more life.
OK now here's another point: Who says god exists? Now just think about that, i'm not gonna go explaining my position and everything, as you know where i'd go with it.
Point 3: On the subject of man destroying the environment... I'm all for keeping the environment healthy, but surely you can't equate creating a new organism in a laboratory as eclologically distressing. I could see creating a new organism with the purpose of altering something, and releasing it into the wild, but that's another story. I'm not suggesting that we do that. I'm suggesting that science for the purpose of science is important in our existance if we're ever going to leave this rock and move somewhere else after we destroy it.
Point 4: Mars? How would we ruin mars? It's a wasteland as far as I see, and if we don't find life anywhere in it then I say it's free reign. Hell, we'd have to improve mars just to bring it up to the level of habitable by humans. Sure you could make the argument that "habitable by humans is not necesarily habitable by martian organisms" but as i said, unless we find some life there, we can do what we want to mars. The key part is: Unless we find life there. I'd agree completely that if we discover life on mars then we shouldn't terraform mars to human comfort without consideration of these organisms. But here comes:
Point 4!: Survival of the fittest. If there is some organism on mars that may one day evolve into something sentient and wonderful then great, let it try. But if it's wiped out by expanding humans then it probably wouldn't have become so wonderful. Evolution teaches us that smart/savvy/stronger animals live and proliferate, while stupid/slow/weak animals die off and fade into the background or become extinct. Humans have evolved so far and they are probably to the point of "Monopoly" where according to the DoJ we should be broken up. Maybe colonization is the way to go. Maybe if a substantial portion of earths humans move to another planet then earth's ecology can start working harder and get back into the point of healthy. K I'm out of rant material, can't believe you read it all.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Does anybody else find it weird that science has to basically ask religion if its ok to do something? Is that the right path? Is an answer of "Only God should create living things" an acceptable scientific argument?
I do not believe in the same God that the world's religious leaders believe in. Therefore is it right to deprive me of this scientific advance?
Now, I'm not arguing that we should just run right out and do it. Like I said at the top, "whether we should" is indeed a valid question. I just find it weird to think of science as asking religion, as if they are the ones that should be consulted. If we'd done that 300+ years ago would anybody have bothered to try sailing around the planet?
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
I agree that this isn't a matter of religions morality. What I think is that when you start demanding that science justify itself before procedure, you are taking away much of the possibility, the benefits of what may be. I think we should create without thought to what we may be creating; the implications are undoubtedly many. There are undoubtedly both benefits and drawbacks that we will not intially see. To think otherwise is pure stupid arrogance. There will always be reasons not to perform scientific research of any kind; only some technological advances can be justified. Question vigorously what is done with science, and how research is done, but leave the science alone. It is always worth knowing.
Before we genetically engineered existing bacteria to do what we wanted/needed. Now we will be able to create them from scratch! This is a major breakthrough.
Last time I checked, there was a buffalo user group that hasn't been touched since 1997., but i'll check your thing out.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
People create life all the time. The process is called "sex". If this is playing god, then I guess we're all guilty of it.
I think what really troubles some people is the notion of (quoting the article) "creating life from unliving chemicals". The realization that there is no difference between "living" and "unliving" matter is more than many people can bear, so they insist that there is an ineffable qualitative difference that is beyond the power of science to describe or explain.
Prediction: if these scientists succeed in creating life in a lab, there will be those that insist that it isn't "real" life, just chemicals "imitating life".
Honesty. Loyalty. Kindness. Laughter. Generosity. Magic!
As requested, here is the revised edition with scenic backdrop.
I have to make this joke... M. genitalium ... that is the bacterias name... I'm sorry...
The experiment that you mention was an attempt to simulate the so-called "primordial soup". A glass globe was filles with gasses (mainly CH4, CO2 & N) and liquids which were theorised to be similar to those prevalent on Earth several billion years ago. This globe was carefully sterilised to prevent contamination by modern organisms.
This mixture was then subjected to electrical discharges (in the form of a spark gap) and ultraviolet radiation. The contents were then analysed and found to contain several fundamental amino acids.
Clealy the only way to correct this situation is through the synthesis of organism that can safely use our industrial and organic byproducts as an energy source, thus correcting an ecological imbalance caused by industrialization and overpopulation.
... Wait a minute, I think I've heard of something that does that already, Plants.
Actually, most of our industrial byproducts (CO2 and H2O being the main ones) are released when we extract energy from another material, so CO2 and H2O can't be used as an energy source. What we really need is something that that uses energy from the sun to take H2O and CO2 and make hydrocarbons and oxygen
You can only imagine what kind of disputes this new finding will arouse...
Personally, I'm not the religious type, but the moral resposibilities a person takes on when attempting to create a living organism are tremendous (not to mention that by all rules of religion - this is NOT possible..)
I think the scientists have done the right thing by contacting religious leaders....This is one of the few times that its Morals vs. Technology...
I just hope we can be mature with the technology..
~Marshall
arcane for life
It may be possible to engineer an organism with this 'core' set of genes, to see if it is correct, and to work iteratively to a confirmed 'core' set of genes. I wouldn't call this 'creating' life, it's really modifying an existing organism, similar to what is done regularly by molecular biologists, but with a new goal. It will help understanding of existing organisms, but isn't anywhere close to making a 'new' form of life.
Jim Lund
>I am so sick of hearing about god, and people
>trying to say what god wants us to do and what
>he doesn't want us to do. Who says god didn't
>lay everything out perfectly so we would
>discover how to create our own little organisms
>at that exact moment?
Well, most people generally find out what God seems to want by reading the Bible. It also states in the Bible that God has set us back from where we'd advanced to more than once. READ.
>Who says god exists?
That is what each man and woman must find out for themselves. It's the whole point.
>On the subject of man destroying the
>environment... I'm all for keeping the
>environment healthy, but surely you can't
>equate creating a new organism in a
>laboratory as eclologically distressing.
>I could see creating a new organism with
>the purpose of altering something, and
>releasing it into the wild, but that's
>another story.
I'll give you an example: Africanized Bees. They weren't released... they escaped. If we can't control arthropods... what makes you think we can control bacteria?
>Mars? How would we ruin mars? It's a wasteland
>as far as I see, and if we don't find life
>anywhere in it then I say it's free reign.
I agree. And THAT is were I'd have them do thier genetic research OR maybe the Moon or a Space Station.
>Survival of the fittest. If there is some
>organism on mars that may one day evolve into
>something sentient and wonderful then great,
>let it try. But if it's wiped out by expanding
>humans then it probably wouldn't have become
>so wonderful. Evolution teaches us that
>smart/savvy/stronger animals live and
>proliferate, while stupid/slow/weak animals
>die off and fade into the background or
>become extinct.
This statement fits into the Theory of Evolution nicely. Does it also mean that we are stupid and deserving of extinction if we create a virus or bacterium that annihilates us? I think the answer is yes.
>Maybe if a substantial portion of earths
>humans move to another planet then earth's
>ecology can start working harder and get back
>into the point of healthy.
Who's to say it hasn't happened before?
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Aye. All you need to cook up some new biota is a turd, a bucket of baked beans and a nice warm place.
Remind me not to come round to your house for baked beans.
Aren't we being a little conceited in believing that it's so easy to set off an apocalypse? In working with a few hundred genes, would we create something that brings about the end of organic life as we know it on this planet?
And putting it into slightly closer perspective, will we achieve the same ends by using genetic manipulation in staple foods and livestock?
While it's easy enough to do harm to the ecosystem, I find it hard to believe that changing a few genes will have that much effect to such a complex and resilient system.
Using whose system?
Attempting to classify history into ages is probably a mistake. Whose technology do you base it off? The most advanced? The prevailing technology? The prevailing technology where?
Still, it's amazingly cool. Anyone else feel like they're in a game of Civ:CTP, and their civilisation just started a Wonder of the World?
zorba
All in all, a very interesting time to be alive.
then let me suck you off then bitch
This is the point exactly. Moderate this guy up!
These scientists should consult ecologists about the possible impact of their creation on the environment, not some religious leaders. C'mon!
I remmember reading this article in discover a while back about someone creating a metabolism in the lab. Weird wild stuff!
We overrate our understanding of the biochemical basis of life. Compositing these the 480 proteins
spectifed by the genes in this article wont get
life- you'll need the biomachines these proteins
specify plus the sugars and fats they manufacture.
I give it another century.
At least I am a "materialist" and this this is possible. Some people believe there is a deity
or magic life substance required in addition to chemistry. I don't.
> Scientists don't really have any training based on morailty.
Given that any religious leader likely to be consulted in a Western nation stands on a centuries-long tradition of condemning all rivals to eternal torment, one may well question the value of whatever morality-based training religious leaders are getting.
The primary group who should be consulted are biologists, who can at least venture a rational estimate of the effect of introducing an unrelated-to-any lifeform into our biosphere.
Beyond that, I half-way agree with your suggestion of consulting the philosophers. Yes, because we should get some estimate of the non-biological effect of the introduction, but no because I don't really believe any philosopher, past, present, or future, can really give a solid estimate on the effect.
But at least philosophers aren't likely to give answers based on delusions about what The Man (Who Lives on That Mountain in The Sky) would or wouldn't approve of.
As for my opinion (like anyone cares), I think caution is the watchword. Pardon my latent Luddite tendencies, but it seems that the history of modern technology is increasingly being a matter of cleaning up messes that we thought were good ideas at the time.
BTW, the introduction of autonomous robots is as likely to make our species obsolete as biotechnology is, though perhaps not with such dramatic suddenness as a biological oops. We should have a little chat about the future of robotics, too.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'm officially starting network analysis to track you bastard.
When I find out who you are I'm going to post your IP on every article on Slashdot you post.
Its only time until we get your name & home address.
You'll get the beating of a lifetime.
I have had this sort of discussion with people before, and have encountered the "playing God" argument many times. What I always ask is what is the evidence that they have that we are playing God? Does their religion have a commandment saying that cloning or combining naturally occuring materials (like DNA) is sinful? What about grafting an orange tree to create a hybrid? In short, why do you draw the line where you draw it? I have no issue with religious convictions. What I find all too often, however, is people making decisions not based upon what their relgion actually says, but rather upon their opinions of what their religion should say.
I don't know of anything in any major religion which prohibits this sort of thing. Please, someone, enlighten me if I am incorrect. There are some moral issues and practical issues. These are principally issues of risk v. benefit, and in the case of cloning, the likelyhood of bringing humans in the world with fatal genetic flaws, which would likely happen in the early trials, I would think. That does not forbid cloning in and of itself, IMHO.
In fact, to go a bit further, what evidence do you have that we are not in fact, the end-all be-all species?
Logic ... merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who
There is no mention of religious leaders in the article. Anyway, why do so many people think religious leaders are all morally superior to any other human being in the world?
If you think about it, there are so many different religions in the world, that you would end up with many different opinions from different religious 'leaders' on what is 'right' and 'wrong' to do. Even within the same religion, you would still get many differing opinions.
The last thing we want is for some 'leader' to use their status to advance their own goals. Or we might start another holy war.
bullshit. besides i've always wanted to reprogram the genes of a suitable host so that i can live >1000 yrs. if we can do it in the lab..why not ?
Hoo-rah! Bring on the Demon-Monkeys!
Actually it seems to me that he doesn't think he's more special than God, since he doesn't think there's a God at all.
Well said. And I think many religious people will agree with you. I've read opinions on this before from some and was frankly surprised at their willingness to contemplate such an experiment. I'm often guilty, as many are, of letting the media associate religious with fanatical in my mind. I should know better.
:) Or maybe not if God plays along...
It's not like a major religious text has forbidden creation of life. If living things require a soul that only God can implant we're about to find that out maybe
From a purely secular standpoint it is absolutely critical that this organism be isolated, whether they think it can reproduce or not. Whether you're building self-replicating machines or organisms, you don't want to let them loose without exhaustive study, and a care for mutations. If that condition is satisfied I look forward to the results of the experiment.
Why is it okay to synthesize artificial intelligence to improve safety in vehicles, but so #$@%$#^% wrong to play with some molecules to make an ultra-primitive life form? Would religious leaders balk at the creation of the first computer program that has the intelligence of an amoeba? No? Then what the @#$#$% is the problem then?
Thank you!
If it weren't for heretics like we few, the human race would probably still be picking ticks from one another.
The results can be disasterous! Then again, if that is our destiny, then "Why me worry?"
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
I mean, after all, the Catholic Church is responsible for so much progress in the modern world, like the no contraception rule. and that had to make a few extra billon people. and at least one of them had to go into science, right?
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
hmm, how fun do you think debugging would be? especially considering mutation...
+&x
Hey folks, if you believe God exists, then surely you don't believe that merely creating life is enough to equate yourself with him/her/it?
Now, when we get to the point where we can create Universes then were talking the stuff of Deities.
Of course, I am a Polytheist - so the idea of new Gods and Goddesses coming into being doesn't bother me a bit :)
Polytheism and Modern Paganism == "Open Source in Religion" :)
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
What the hell are the scientists doing asking for some idiotic, religious leader's blessing? Obviously, the scientists who are making life KNOW that most living organisms' DNA is UNIVERSAL - meaning that there is NO FAVORITISM, and thus, there is no god. It doesn't surprise me that they would go out and pull a stunt like this just so they can get some publicity out of uneducated (religious) people. It's quite sad really, especially since most people don't know that humans, in general, are the product of Homo Erectus (APE), and another superior species that most likely does not come from this world (thus, the saying, "mankind shall be made in OUR own image." I think it is everyone's RIGHT to create ANYTHING they so desire. If these scientists want to create life, then so be it. Most people in this pathetic society of ours, tend to forget that it is the people who are proclaimed as 'insane' who actually make SOMETHING in the world (Eric Drexler comes to mind) , whether it be bad or good, and not those who are proclaimed as 'Saints'. Religion and all those people who believe in that garbage, should be disposed of, in my opinion, because they are the ones who HALT or slow down the advance of technology. I want to see Nanotechnology within my lifetime, and I'll be damned if I let any stupid religious person with an IQ below 70 TELL ME what I can and can't do because it is supposedly 'not right'. If it is 'not right' like they proclaim it is, then mankind is an experiment gone bad.
Hey guys, it's fine by me. By the way, the acceleration of complexity in the universe that you might have noticed isn't going to stop. Have a nice day.
All Abstract Structures of Objects and their Relationships exist.
_Why_ should the consult religous leaders at all? It is this very experiment which is going to prove them irrelevant once and for all. After all, if man can create life, then what makes "god" so special?
Folks, I am not an overly religious person. But this has got to stop.
Remember, your "god" frowns on your sending those packages to the science lab, in order to "stop" this. Good luck getting your six buddies together to start a "Crusade", where you can put those who disagree with your, if I may say so, narrow views, to the sword.
Are we really that conceited that we feel we are ALLOWED to create other organisms?
What? what makes you think we need to ask *permission*? And which "god" are we going to ask permission from? It makes as much sense to ask my cat.
Every day we cut down tons of trees for wood in order to keep industry alive. When will we realize that these very trees are what supply us with oxygen?
There is more tree coverage now then there was in 1900, due to the fact that much less land is now in farming use. Those stone walls that run thru the woods were put there by farmers clearing land for planting, not by your "god".
Since you are of the species "man", You disgust yourself. Fortunately, you have the power to correct this problem as it applies to yourself. You will not be missed.
# cat anthrax_leprosy_pi.dna > /dev/splicer0
This would be funny, if it weren't soon to be true.
We've already made self replicating molecules. we can probably build viruses. They are just choosing the mark of "self replicating structures with DNA" and calling it life. For some reason it doesn't really thrill me.
...will work for Chick tracts...
As I've heard television repeat many times before..."Woh Nellie!" Just stop right there and think about this for a minute.
There are some good signs here...it seems they are questioning the ethics of their work (all science and no ethical base is a bad thing). Ask yourself...is science so great...is man so great...as to wield the power of creation. We can't seem to feed our starving population or house the homeless. There are people dying everyday from the machines we built to make our lives better.
I am not saying science is wrong or that we should stop all efforts to continue on with research and developement in all things scientific. What I am saying is this...we've got problems we can barely manage now...are we responsible enough as a people to wield the wand of creation and wave it about.
What horrors will we bring to this earth before some good comes of it.
Put simply, we are not ready.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Scientist create life? Folks have been creating life for years its called sex. Does that mean that one of those geeks finaly got laid? Good for them!!!
Well - despite RobLimo's writeup, the article doesn't mention religious leaders - just a broader debate and ethical discussion. So those boiling-over threads about science and religion are
IMHO beside the point. Ethical discussion doesn't equal religious thought.
Creating life is nice and all, but we'll be 'gods' when we can create a universe in a lab. Until then, I'm sticking to the God theory because so far, we can't explain how somethin' came from nothin'.
The reason no else helped Columbus was because they rightly believed he would run out of food before he would get to China.
The only reason he got any funding was because Isabella was enchanted with the possibility of winning more souls.
Oh and don't forget David Livingstone. A lot of exploration has been done in the name of religion.
'nuff said
For a virus to even be a significant threat, it would have to be fully capable of attaching to a cell, and inserting genetic material which would cause negative effects. It's probably not very likely that this would happen in a controlled, short-term experiment unless it was intentional. Without malevolent intent, the scenario you describe would, IMHO, be difficult. Also, having no immunity to a virus isn't any kind of death sentence. We face "completely new" (as far as our immune systems are concerned) viruses, such as newly mutated strains of cold and flu (which is why new flu shots are formulated), on a regular basis. These haven't yet managed to overtake our birth rate yet.
This may be the most interesting thing to happen in science since that apple caught Newton's attention. The only problem I can see is that the form of the "new" life will be so closely allied with the genetic structure of the experimental model that there may be some potential for crossover contamination. And, since the source organism lives in every human body, that constitutes a real turn of the roulette wheel. Which, I suppose, is why it SHOULD happen now, and with the strictest protocols under very bright lights.
As to the religious objections -- if there is a god (of any ilk), she put the possibility of this experiment into the original programming. We're just making it open source.
Thier is a Buffalo Linux Group. Send a mail to Majorodomo@edgeglobal.com with the body fo the message subscribe blug "username" Its just not a very busy list.
What sort of a world have we created for ourselves? Since when did religion become a dominant factor in our lives? We have screwed society up with preconcieved notions (dogmatism) brought from the dark ages - there should be no taboos in the modern world, otherwise we might as well crawl back into the primordial slime we came from. Ask yourselves these two vital questions - who plants thoughts into our minds, and for what purpose? Only then will you realise what role (and influence)we as individuals have in society. Open source society, thats what we want. Stop the Earth. I want to get off.
Revolution = Evolution
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
So, how high is up?
--------------------
Earth first? Oooh, and I was thinking of paying the rent.
Can anyone tell me what a genital tract is?
To begin with, this sort of advancement scares the pants off me. Human history is chock full of examples of violent, exploitive uses of technology. In that light, the possibilities opened up by such a deep and thorough understanding of life are more than a bit frightening. But let's be realistic here, it really is only a matter of time. It's not as though we're going to stop trying to figure out how things work any time soon. Heck, that seems to be one of the major drives behind the human condition. And it must be admitted that as frightening as the potential misuses of such knowlege may be, the positive possibilities may be even more exciting.
In the end, I figure this sort of thing is inevitable. Now I'm just trying to figure out if my fears are reasonable, or if I'm just reliving the standard 'fear of new technology' that seems to come around every few years. If I recall, there was quite a bit of resistence to electric lighting in homes as many were afraid it would cause horrible disease or insanity.
--
Behold the Power of Cheese!
What is wrong with this?
What difference is there between making life and making elements through nuclear bombardment?
To me there is no difference in this, than say, spliting the atom or making a species become extinct. I don't recall hearing of scientists consulting religous leaders when they built the bomb, or made the passenger pigeon extinct, why should they now? You can't tell me that any religous leader has the wisdom or knowledge to know if this is right or wrong.
Man has been playing god for decades, this is no different.
Whether or not we disagree with this, it's eventually going to happen. I think it's good that they are consulting religious leaders who devote their lives to, among other things, the study of morals and ethics. I think most people would agree that technology sometimes surpasses the wisdom required to use it with discretion. I am excited about new possibilities, but we should first discover how to use them and what to use them for before we go opening up Pandora's box.
At the least they'll have problems with the patent. I think somebody else has proven prior art...
THEY CAN CREATE LIFE, BUT THEY CAN'T TRANSFORM NATALIE PORTMAN INTO A NUDE STATUE???
- -----
- ----------------
- ----------------
- ----------------
- ----------------
- ----------------
- ----------------
- ----------------
- ----------------
- ----------------
- ----------------
- ----------------
- ----------------
- ----------------
- ----------------
- ----------------
IT'S NOT FAIR!!!!
Maybe when they figure out how to turn Ms. Portman and other cute teenage girls to stone I'LL GIVE A DANG.
Until then, they can take their artificial life and SHOVE IT!!!
OPEN SOURCE NATALIE PORTMAN STATUE!!
And now for something completely different.
---------------
Y0V F0RG07 N4K3D 4ND P37R1F1ED!!!
Y0V N33D 2 4DD 4 \/\/H013 107 0F 5747V3 57VFF 70 7H3 1157!!!! 4ND M4YB3 GR175 F0R U4R137Y!!!!!
Seriously now, I bend over backward to write in-depth, meaningful "NAKED AND PETRIFIED" articles for this site, and THIS is the thanks I get? C'mon. Include the Naked and Petrified movement in your list. We need all the help we can get!
I've had over 100 moderation points spent on my posts so far (20 on the Open Letter to ESR, 34 on my "First Post!!!", and 1 on about 50 other posts). 1 4M 50 31337!!!!
Any reason you're being such a jerk? There's not really much merit to what you say. But I'll address it anyway.
I guess a lot because people aren't buying into this. I guess it's in the same vein as "Gee well I guess because people are black/jewish/gay/straight/different in any way we will hurt them, torture them, and then cremate them in ovens it is just abhearent.
Is it "abhearent" to give someone an eternal, peaceful life if they choose to accept it? I'd never really turn a girl to stone long-term against her will. If I ever implied I would, it was just to upset the Politially Correct crowd out there. And it worked! Your analogy is very poor. First, generally when hurting someone, the activity is being performed AGAINST HIS/HER WILL! And even if the person were masochistic or something, you'd still be HURTING someone. You've got no way of establishing that being transformed into a statue could be considered "harm," especially if it were a willing transformation.
In a word no. Basically this is just an indication of a control oriented invididual who wishes to have unlimited sexual contact without any consequences. An ego taken into extreme preportions.
I simply want a world of statues. A world where there are ONLY females, and the females are statues, because males are bad and don't deserve to live, and it is wrong to force females to live in an animate, biological state and to grow old and die. Being a male, I have no place in this world. I will be dead. But I will be happy that I fulfilled my purchase in life. Can the dead be controlling and egotistical? If I were controlling and egotistical, why would I want the females to remain stone after I died? I wouldn't be getting anything out of it after my death. So why not set it up to restore them after my death?
BECAUSE I'M NOT MOTIVATED BY PERSONAL GAIN!! I only want what's best for the women and the world.
Including you? I doubt it from your views. Since cells will be replaced with crystaline formations (you said stone) that will be the basis for this new "life form". It get's a little fuzzy about exactly how the need to reproduce is eliminated. As a biological person I may elect not to reproduce or to sit in a bunker under ground for the rest of my life. See the need for sex has been eliminated.
The statues the girls will be transformed to will not be "alive" in the biological sense, but they WILL be CONSCIOUS, which to many people is perfectly good definition of "alive" even if the consciousness isn't inhabiting a body that is biologically alive. Don't you know anything about statues? When's the last time you saw a statue reproduce? The girls will not need to perform any biological functions, and will be incapable of moving or reproducing in any way. They will be STATUES. Say that out loud.
Statuephile? Sounds like a new doctorine. I have a hard time believing that this is something other than something quite recent. Have you ever had sex before with a real person? Other than your mother? Well people find it interesting because there is a massive endorphin release from doing said act. If you have a method of releasing endorphins directly into your pleasure center of your brain I would love to hear about it.
Those who live only for the lusts of the flesh (endorophins included) are doomed to die to the lusts of the flesh, after living lives of sin and decadence.
We've been around forever, but it's only within the past decade that, thanks to the Internet, we've begun to find each other, and organize. For most, there IS no doctrine, it's just a sexual interest, they don't believe in any particular philsophy as I pretend to do in these troll-posts. It's just what they like instead of, or in addition to, sex. Most enjoy sex as well. Some don't. To each his or her own.
Yes, I have had sex, with a woman, when I was 18. I didn't enjoy it, just as I knew I wouldn't. And I'm never going to do it again. Because I choose not to.
So you think that the christian second comming of christ will bring about an end to sexual reproduction? Ineresting unless he kills all of us there still has to be a method of reproduction that is simple and quick and sexual reproduction fits the bill.
There's simply NO excuse for this. You obviously haven't even read the Bible. If you did, you'd know that we'll ALL be transformed into our spiritual bodies at Christ's return. The Bible states over and over again that we have exactly TWO bodies, no more, no less. One is a physical, earthly, mortal body that is prone to sin and death. The other is our spiritual body, which is celestial, immortal, not subject to the desires of the flesh, and is incapable of feeling pain, being damaged, lusting, or reproducing. When a person dies, he instantly enters his/her spiritual body, the body in which he will eventually stand judgement. When Christ returns, all who remain alive will ALSO enter their spiritual bodies, and we will be the same as those who have died. We will not all perish, but we will ALL be changed into our spiritual bodies.
If you read the Bible, you'd know this stuff. There's NO excuse not to!!!
Don't trip over your shoes billy or maybe all the used porn magazines that you colored the skin grey on to make them look like statues. Your father and I have really had concerns about your welfare ever since you started handing out with those terrible slashdot kids. You have started to do strange things and quite frankly we are concerned. Now take your prozac and a glass of warm milk and get ready for military school in the morning ok?
That was just a mindless, insulting troll and doesn't deserve a response. So it won't get one.
Any reason you're being such a jerk? There's not really much merit to what you say. But I'll address it anyway.
I guess a lot because people aren't buying into this. I guess it's in the same vein as "Gee well I guess because people are black/jewish/gay/straight/different in any way we will hurt them, torture them, and then cremate them in ovens it is just abhearent.
Is it "abhearent" to give someone an eternal, peaceful life if they choose to accept it? I'd never really turn a girl to stone long-term against her will. If I ever implied I would, it was just to upset the Politially Correct crowd out there. And it worked! Your analogy is very poor. First, generally when hurting someone, the activity is being performed AGAINST HIS/HER WILL! And even if the person were masochistic or something, you'd still be HURTING someone. You've got no way of establishing that being transformed into a statue could be considered "harm," especially if it were a willing transformation.
In a word no. Basically this is just an indication of a control oriented invididual who wishes to have unlimited sexual contact without any consequences. An ego taken into extreme preportions.
I simply want a world of statues. A world where there are ONLY females, and the females are statues, because males are bad and don't deserve to live, and it is wrong to force females to live in an animate, biological state and to grow old and die. Being a male, I have no place in this world. I will be dead. But I will be happy that I fulfilled my purchase in life. Can the dead be controlling and egotistical? If I were controlling and egotistical, why would I want the females to remain stone after I died? I wouldn't be getting anything out of it after my death. So why not set it up to restore them after my death?
BECAUSE I'M NOT MOTIVATED BY PERSONAL GAIN!! I only want what's best for the women and the world.
Including you? I doubt it from your views. Since cells will be replaced with crystaline formations (you said stone) that will be the basis for this new "life form". It get's a little fuzzy about exactly how the need to reproduce is eliminated. As a biological person I may elect not to reproduce or to sit in a bunker under ground for the rest of my life. See the need for sex has been eliminated.
Important Poll for Slashdot, please answer
If you could transform any 5 (or 10, or 50, whatever you feel like) young women into statues:
1. What females would you choose, in order from my favorite downwards?
2. Why would you choose those females?
3. What kind of stone (or other immobile substance, natural or manmade) would you transform them into?
4. Describe the pose each girl would be in.
5. Describe the facial expression each girl would have.
6. Explain what each girl would be wearing, if anything.
7. Explain what you would do with the girls after they were petrified.
8. Anything else you'd care to add here.
Thanks for your participation!
Ladies (and faeries), you can list men instead of women if you're so inclined. I don't discriminate.
I spend all my time fantasising about petrification; more specifically, thinking about magically transforming cute naked teenage girls into cute naked teenage marble statues, and then admiring and them and perhaps having some sexual contact with them and perhaps masterbating while looking at them and ejaculating on their petrified bodies.
I have no normal sexual desire at all. I consider sexual intercourse or any sexual contact with a biological person to be the most disgusting thing imaginable. Petrificaion is all that I care about. I spend like 4 hours a day masterbating while thinking about cute girls like Natalie Portman and Lacey Chabert being turned to stone.
Maybe there's nothing wrong with this. I dunno. You tell me.
So you want to advance science?
You want exploration?
You want excitement?
You want to waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money?
FUCK MARS
Work on a way to turn cute teenage girls to stone!!
That's what would REALLY help out humanity!!!
So, you say that the 99% should be able to supress and trod all over the 1%, and the 1% are supposed to just sit there and take it?
I realize my letter was too harsh. But after being crushed under the heel of the sexualist regime for my entire life, I'm sure you'll feel a little pent-up anger is justified. Just as Linux, BSD, and BeOS folks are rather justified in feeling a certain amount of hostility towards Microsoft.
But I apologize for my confrontational tone. Can we not just accept that statuephiles are statuephiles, and sexualists are sexualists, and live in peace without insulting on another?
I'm prepared to, if the other side is willing to at least try to be respectful.
And if not, I'm currently in legal discussion about begining to file suit against those who practice discrimination against statuephiles in states that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, and pressing for laws in states where homosexuals are protected under Hate Crimes laws for statuephiles to be protected as well. If such laws cannot be passed, I may challenge the constitutionality of every law that protects or favours homosexuals but not of other sexual-orientation groups such as heterosexuals, heterostatuephiles, and homostatuephiles. I will not rest until the SUPREME COURT itself has struck down every one of those discriminatory laws. There are also a number of people I have in mind to take to court for slander, libel, and threats against me and others in the statuephile community.
Want to compromise, or want to get legal?
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SEXUALISTS ON SLASHDOT
Dear Slashdot,
I'm a statuephile, but I have many sexualist friends (it's hard not to, seeing that the world is probably at least 99% sexualist), and many sexualist enemies.
I don't really have anything AGAINST sexualists. I can't say I understand their philosophy at all. And I consider what they do -- carnal acts involving the intersection of human genitals -- to be absolutely disgusting. I consider sex to be the most disgusting thing in the world. But they have their desires, just as I have mine. So I don't criticize them. I do unto them as I would have them do unto me.
But do I get the same treatment in return? No. Because I prefer preservation rather than destruction, glorification over violation, I'm called a "bad guy", a "freak", "sick", etc. etc. etc. I've even been compared to a rapist! Try figuring that one out... next they'll be comparing Bill Clinton to a good president.
Anyway, just another example of the tyrrany of the majority. Anything that is different is wrong. Anything that seems strange to them must be sick, twisted, perverted, and evil.
But regardless of how the two sides treat each other, there is one simple fact:
SEX IS KILLING OUR WORLD!!!
Sex kills. Sex can cause life. But sex DOES cause death. Sex spreads disease which are ravaging and destroying millions of lives and hundreds of cultures of this worlds. Not only practicing sexualists are affected, innocent children often inherited these sexually transmitted diseases from their sexualist parents.
Sex destroys. The gratitious sex in societies all over the world today result in millions of unwanted births and a population explosion that is rapidly depleting the resources of our world. It can't last forever. The sexualists will eventually see the folly of their ways. But it'll probably be too late.
Sex damns. Almost everyone in the world today engages in premarital sex, homosexual sex, or some other kind of sex that violates God's law. This has reached UNACCEPTABLE levels. We're becoming a world of lost people.
And yet, anyone who doesn't buy into the destructive sexualist paradigm is a "freak." Sex violates. Sex hurts. Sex demeans. Sex insults. Petrification glorified. Petrification preserves. Petrification perfects. Which sounds better to you?
People are too guided by their penii and clitorii to even think about these things clearly!!! They see statuephiles as a threat to their destructive paradigm and immediately say "VILLAIN!!" "FIEND!!" "FREAK!!", then they go out, get drunk, and search for someone who's genitals they'd like their own genitals to come in contact with. All they care about is where their next piece of "action" is coming from.
THAT is their life. Hollow, empty, just a constant quest for sex, sex, and more sex. That is the life of a sexualist. They refuse to see past their penii or clitorri and look at what they're DOING to the world. They refuse to look at the consequences of their reckless lifestyles.
All I advocate is HAPPINESS. I envision a world ruled by thousands of happy, nude, petrified teenage girls. It's a dream, but it's fun to think about.
And I'm some kind of monster because of this. Just look at all that's been said about me so far.
It's getting hard to care about the world. The sexualists will never change. They'll never realize that what we REALLY need to do is band together, find a way to turn girls to stone, and make it happen. In the Statue Age, the girls will be happy. The world will be happy.
Now, I know most people reading this are going to read it and say "his philosophy is something I've never heard before, and I don't agree with it, so that means he MUST be crazy." Typical Slashdot attitude. Typical WORLD attitude. We're all tempted to think like that sometimes. You guys in the majority have it easy. But please think about who you're judging.
I'm not asking you to agree with my beliefs. I'm not asking you to be a statuephile. I'm not asking you to march in any Statuephile Pride Marches. I'm just asking you to ACCEPT my beliefs, odd though they may be to you, just as I accept your beliefs, odd as they are to me. I think that putting one's genitals inside of what basically amounts to a moist bag of mucous, vomit, human waste, and foul fluids of all sorts is DISGUSTING. You think that transforming young women into statues is DISGUSTING. We agree on that. But can't we just accept each other's beliefs, and move on?
If you can at least agree to that, then all I'm asking you, for the sake of all of us, is PLEASE, reply to this message, and say "I will accept your beliefs, as long as you accept mine. We are all brothers and sisters. Lets not dwell on differences." Please do that, at least for YOURSELF.
Good day, and God bless.
Regards,
Anon. Coward #232362369
I HEAR THEY HAVE WAYS OF TURNING TEENAGE GIRLS TO STONE!!!
DID YOU KNOW THAT IN SOME STATE A FEW YEARS BACK, IN THAT TOWN NEAR AN FBI PLACE, FIVE REALLY FINE-ASS 16-YEAR-OLD GIRLS VANISHED FROM THEIR HOMES AND NOBODY COULD FIND THEM!!!
THEN, A YEAR LATER, THEY FOUND FIVE NAKED TEEN STATUES IN THE LIKENESS OF THE FIVE GIRLS!!! STATUE EXPERTS EXAMINED THE STATUES AND CONCLUDED THAT THE DETAILS SEEMED TOO FINE TO HAVE BEEN MAN-MADE!!!
ONE OLD WOMAN SAID THAT THE FBI WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR TURNING THE GIRLS TO STONE
!!!!!!********* BUT SHE DISAPPEARED TWO DAYS LATER ****************!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WARNING: THE FBI TOOK AWAY THE OLD WOMAN BECAUSE SHE KNEW THE TRUTH!!!! THE STATUES ***********MUST*******8 HAVE BEEN THE PETRIFIED GIRLS, OTHERWISE THE OLD WOMAN NEVER WOULD HAVE DISAPPEARED. IT MUST BE THE FBI.
THE FBI WANTS TO TURN OUR TEENAGE GIRLS TO STONE! THEY WANT TO TURN OUR DAUGHTERS TO STONE! THEY WANT TO TURN OUR SISTERS TO STONE! THEY WANT TO TURN OUR GIRLFRIENDS TO STONE!!! THEY WANT TO TURN OUR FRIENDS TO STONE!!!
******************WHAT ****** ***WILL** ---YOU--- ---DO--- %%%WHEN%%% ***THE*** ---FBI--- $$$TURNS$$$ !!!###@@@###!!!YOUR!!!###@@@###!!! FAVORITE SEXY 16-YEAR-OLD GIRLTO STONE??? WHAT WILL YOU DO??????
STOP THE FBI BEFORE IT'S TOOOOOOOOOO LATE!!!!!!!
-----------------------------------------------
I don't really have anything AGAINST sexualists. Heck, 99% of the world is composed of sexualists. However, I think it's odd that I'm villified for preserving and glorifying, while the sexualists are praised for regularly violating, defiling, and engaging in carnal acts of all sorts. They are seen as big heroes because they've managed to get their genitals to come in contact with the genitals of somebody else. OOOOOOooo, I guess we're one step closer to world peace, now? No. One step closer to curing AIDS? No. SPREADING AIDS? Yes. Sexualists spread all kinds of filthy diseases, and cause thousands of unwanted pregnancies every year.
SEX IS KILLING OUR WORLD!!!!!!
And the sexualists don't even care. All they care about is where their next piece of action is coming from.
---------------------------------------------
We need a new AIBO feature
A FEATURE THAT TURNS GIRLS TO STONE!!!!!!!
Dear Slashdot:
This is what we need more than anything.
Please write to Sony and DEMAND that the next model of AIBO be fully able t
o transform cute teenage girls into cute teenage statues!!!
Let's imagine a sexy 17-year-old girl. Let's call her Sarah. Thanks to th
e new AIBO, we can have all KINDS of fun now.
It's Christmas morning.
Sarah is wearing this really sexy little pink silk dress.
She opens up a gift.... it's an AIBO!!
"Hooray!!" She's so happy. She plays with her new pet.
And then I, hiding outside, push the button on the special petrification re
mote control. Sarah looks down at the dog, smiling, and before she knows w
hat happened, the dog zaps her with the on-board petrification ray and she
hardens into a pretty little marble statue.
Then I go inside and feel her up a little bit, and take her and the dog bac
k to my place, where they will be my two best friends.
Then I pet the AIBO, and say "Good dog!!!"
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING
A.C.
-----------------------------------------------
Ha ha, he said "statue."
I bet he'd just LOVE to turn NATALIE PORTMAN into a statue, and have his way with her marble body!!!
-----------------------------------------------
Can Dark Matter turn girls to stone?
I wonder, is there possibly a way of turning girls to stone here? I'm not
really up on the latest science, but please, fill me in. I need to find a
way to transform some cute teenage girls into statues, so I'm asking if Dar
k Matter might be able to help me. Please help. I'm lonely. I need statu
es.
Tell me all about dark matter and how it might be useful for turning girls
to stone.
-----------------------------------------------
*** A VERY IMPORTANT POLL FOR SLASHDOT ***
This is to everyone in the Slashdot community. Please respond.
If you could transform any 50 cute teenage girls into statues, what 50 cute
teenage girls would you choose? What type of stone substance would you tr
ansform them into? Would they be wearing clothing? What sort of pose would
they be in? What kind of facial expressions would they have? Would you k
eep them petrified indefinately, or would it be a temporary job, or would i
t be part-time?
PLEASE USE AS MUCH DETAIL AS POSSIBLE
THANKS,
A.C.
-----------------------------------------------
HELLO FRIENDS:
PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME
PLEASE WRITE A VIRUS PROGRAM FOR ME SO THAT I CAN SEND IT TO CUTE GIRLS, AND WHEN IT IS RUN ON THEIR COMPUTES IT WILL TRANSFORM THEM INTO STATUES THROUGH THE MAGIC OF PROGRAMMING TECHNOLOGY!!!
PLEASE MAKE IT SO IT RUNS ON LINUX AND WINDOWS BECAUSE THE GIRLS WHO USE LINUX AND WINDOES ARE THE **CUTEST**!!!!!!!!!! THERE'S NO NEED FOR IT TO RUN ON BSD BECAUSE ***NO*** CUTE TEENAGE GIRL USES BSD!!! OR MACINTOSH!!!
REALLY ALL I WANT IS THE PROGRAM TO TURN THE TEENAGE GIRLS TO STONE, SO LIKE IF I'M TALKING TO A HOT GIRL ON IRC, I CAN JUST PUSH SOME BUTTONS AND SHE'LL BE TURNED TO STONE IN REAL LIFE!!!
PLEASE HELP ME DO THIS!!!!!!!
Thanks,
A.C.
-----------------------------------------------
GATHER ROUND, FRIENDS.
IN THE YEAR 2000, LET'S ROUND UP MILLIONS OF CUTE TEENAGE GIRLS, ASK THEM POLITELY TO
REMOVE THEIR CLOTHING, AND THEN ONCE THEY'VE DONE SO, HAVE THEM STAND ON
PEDESTALS AND USE EITHER MAGIC OR SCIENCE (WHICHEVER YOU PREFER) TO TRANSFORM
THEM INTO STATUES!!! I *LOVE* STATUES!! I LOVE TEENAGE GIRLS WHO HAVE BEEN
TRANSFORMED INTO STATUES!!!
WHO'S WITH ME ON THIS. LET'S GET IT ON.
WE'LL LET Y2K BE THE YEAR THAT A BUNCH OF TEENAGE GIRLS GET TURNED TO STONE. THEN
THE 21ST CENTURY WILL BEGIN, AND IT'LL BE KNOWN AS THE CENTURY OF THE PETRIFIED
TEENAGE GIRLS.
WE WILL ALL GATHER ROUND AND LOOK AT THE TEENAGE GIRLS WHILE WE.... Y'KNOW. Y'KNOW.
NUDGE NUDGE, NUDGE NUDGE, KNOW WHAT I MEAN.
***** ALMOST THE YEAR 2000, IT WILL BE THE LAST YEAR WE HAVE TO TURN GIRLS TO STONE
BEFORE THE 21ST CENTURY BEGINS LET'S NOT SQUANDER IT *****
-----------------------------------------------
Dear Slashdot:
I really really really need a way to transform cute, naked teenage girls into cute, naked teenage st-one girls. But, I'm having a bit of trouble actually making it happen. So I need help, from y'all, the best and brightest of the Unternet. I mean, Internet. Sorry.
Anyway, this "Redhat Software," with all this stuff they're buying up.... is there any way they might be able to help me turn hot young girls into hot young stat-ues that I can use for purposes of sexual gratification? If you can think of ANYTHING, please help me out here.
If anyone can provide me with an effective method of transforming teenage girls into stat-ues, in such a way that the girls remain conscious, and the condition is easily reversible, OR even provide me a good lead to such a method, I will provide him or her with a large sum of money.
Also, I am looking for cute teenage girls to volunteer to be stat-ues. This will pay moderate sums of money also. I would prefer if you were willing to be nude, however we can reach a compromise, I'm sure. Swimsuits would work for me. As long as you're st-one. TEENAGE GIRLS PLEASE RESOND TO THIS IS INTERESTED.
IF ANYONE KNOWS HOW TO TURN TEENAGE GIRLS TO STONE PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS!!!
Regards,
A.C.
p.s. This is *URRRRRGENT*
-----------------------------------------------
Someday, as soon as I can figure out how, I'm going to turn
a WHOLE BUNCH of cute teenage girls to stone. Then I'll
have a WHOLE BUNCH of cute teenage statues. They will be my
friends. They will be my companions. I will talk to them,
and hug them, and love them, and be their friends, and watch
television with them, and touch them in ways that will make
them happy. I will live with them in a little cabin in the
woods away from civilization. Just me and my petrified
girls. We will be together for all the rest of my life.
K?
-----------------------------------------------
I ENJOY FINDING TEENAGE GIRLS, PULLING DOWN THEIR PANTS, TURNING THEM (THE GIRLS, NOT
THE PANTS) TO *STONE*, AND THEN TOUCHING THE PETRIFIED BUTTOCKS!!!
I ENJOY FINDING TEENAGE GIRLS, PULLING DOWN THEIR PANTS, TURNING THEM (THE GIRLS, NOT
THE PANTS) TO *STONE*, AND THEN TOUCHING THE PETRIFIED BUTTOCKS!!!
I ENJOY FINDING TEENAGE GIRLS, PULLING DOWN THEIR PANTS, TURNING THEM (THE GIRLS, NOT
THE PANTS) TO *STONE*, AND THEN TOUCHING THE PETRIFIED BUTTOCKS!!!
I ENJOY FINDING TEENAGE GIRLS, PULLING DOWN THEIR PANTS, TURNING THEM (THE GIRLS, NOT
THE PANTS) TO *STONE*, AND THEN TOUCHING THE PETRIFIED BUTTOCKS!!!
I WOULD ENJOY FEEDBACK ON THIS, AS I'D LIKE TO IMPROVE MY TECHNIQUE. PLEASE POST YOUR
THOUGHTS ON PETRIFYING TEENAGE GIRLS. IF YOU HAVE ANY TIPS ON THE SUBJECT, PLEASE
SHARE THEM. HOW OFTEN DO YOU TURN TEENAGE GIRLS TO STONE? WHAT ARE YOUR
THOUGHTS ON IT? COMMENTS PLEASE!!!!
-----------------------------------------------
DEAR SLASHDOT:
WHAT I WOULD REALLY LOVE WOULD BE TO FIND A PLANET WHERE THERE ARE PEOPLE LIKE US,
AND THIS PLANET HAS A LOT OF CUTE TEENAGE GIRLS, AND THE PLANET IS REALLY HOT SO
THEY RUN AROUND IN SWIMSUITS, AND IT'S REALLY REALLY SEXY.
ANYWAY, ON THIS PLANET, THEY DON'T LET THEIR CUTE TEENAGE GIRLS GROW OLD AND DIE
LIKE WE DO ON OURS. THEY TREAT THEIR TEENAGE GIRLS RIGHT. THEY USE MAGIC ALIEN
TECHNOLOGY DEVICES TO TRANSFORM THE NAKED TEENAGE GIRLS INTO STATUES, THEN THEY
KEEP THE STATUES, AND WORSHIP THEM, AND LOOK AT THEM AND STUFF, AND MASTERBATE
WHILE LOOKING AT THE STATUES OF THE PETRIFIED GIRLS!!!
AND THE PETRIFIED GIRLS ARE *VERY HAPPY* AND THEY ARE HAPPIER THAN THEY WERE WHEN
THEY WERE ANIMATE, AND THEY ARE SEXY AND NAKED AND STONE AND TEENAGED FOREVER!!!
PLEASE PROVIDE FEEDBACK FOR THIS
HERE IS MY IDEA: WE BUILD A LARGE ROCKET-SHIP AND USE IT TO TRAVEL TO THIS PLANET. WE
TAKE WITH US THE FOLLOWING CUTE TEENAGE GIRLS:
-LACEY CHABERT
-NATALIE PORTMAN
-JESSICA ALBA
-THE OLSEN TWINS HA HA JUST KIDDING
-MAE LING MAK OKAY SHE'S NOT A TEENAGER BUT WE CAN PRETEND
-ALL THE CUTE TEENAGE GIRLS WHOSE NAMES I CAN'T REMEBER
WE TAKE THEM TO THIS PLANET AND THEY GET TURNED TO STONE BY THE ALIENS ON THE
PLANET!!! AND THEN WE CAN TOUCH THEIR ASSES AND STUFF.
PLEASE HELP ME TO DO THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TELL ME HOW TO GET TO THIS PLANET!!!!!! PLEASE TELL ME
HOW TO BUILD A ROCKET-SHIP SO THAT I CAN TAKE THE GIRLS TO THE PLANET!!!!!! PLEASE TELL
ME HOW TO GET THE GIRLS ONTO THE ROCKET-SHIP!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO SPEAK THE
ALIEN LANGUAGE AND HOW TO TALK TO THEM AND STUFF!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE HELP ME WITH DETAILS
OF THIS PLAN I MIGHT NOT HAVE THOUGHT OF!!!! WE ALL HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER IF THIS IS
GOING TO WORK!!!!
-----------------------------------------------
GATHER ROUND, FRIENDS.
I KNOW THERE ARE PLENTY OF CUTE GIRLS IN AUSTRALIA. I'D LIKE TO TURN THEM ALL TO
STONE. LET'S ALSO PETRIFY SOME KANGAROOS ALSO. THAT'D BE KINDA SEXY!!!
*** LET'S GET IT ON ***
*HOORAY FOR PETRIFIED GIRLS*
WE WILL TURN EVERY CUTE TEENAGE GIRL IN AUSTRALIA TO STONE, THEN THEY WILL TRULY BE
FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
IN THE YEAR 2000, LET'S ROUND UP MILLIONS OF CUTE TEENAGE GIRLS, ASK THEM POLITELY TO
REMOVE THEIR CLOTHING, AND THEN ONCE THEY'VE DONE SO, HAVE THEM STAND ON
PEDESTALS AND USE EITHER MAGIC OR SCIENCE (WHICHEVER YOU PREFER) TO TRANSFORM
THEM INTO STATUES!!! I *LOVE* STATUES!! I LOVE TEENAGE GIRLS WHO HAVE BEEN
TRANSFORMED INTO STATUES!!!
WHO'S WITH ME ON THIS. LET'S GET IT ON.
WE'LL LET Y2K BE THE YEAR THAT A BUNCH OF TEENAGE GIRLS GET TURNED TO STONE. THEN
THE 21ST CENTURY WILL BEGIN, AND IT'LL BE KNOWN AS THE CENTURY OF THE PETRIFIED
TEENAGE GIRLS.
WE WILL ALL GATHER ROUND AND LOOK AT THE TEENAGE GIRLS WHILE WE.... Y'KNOW.
Y'KNOW. NUDGE NUDGE, NUDGE NUDGE, KNOW WHAT I MEAN.
***** ALMOST THE YEAR 2000, IT WILL BE THE LAST YEAR WE HAVE TO TURN GIRLS TO STONE
BEFORE THE 21ST CENTURY BEGINS LET'S NOT SQUANDER IT *****
-----------------------------------------------
I REALLY REALLY WANT TO REMOVE NATALIE PORTMAN'S PANTS, TOUCH HER BUTTOCKS, AND
TRANSFORM HER INTO A STONE STATUE, THEN I WILL HAVE A PETRIFIED AND NAKED NATALIE
PORTMAN, WITH A BUTT THAT I CAN TOUCH ANYTIME I WANT!!!!
PLESE HELP ME TO DO THIS!!!!!
I REALLY REALLY WANT TO REMOVE NATALIE PORTMAN'S PANTS, TOUCH HER BUTTOCKS, AND
TRANSFORM HER INTO A STONE STATUE, THEN I WILL HAVE A PETRIFIED AND NAKED NATALIE
PORTMAN, WITH A BUTT THAT I CAN TOUCH ANYTIME I WANT!!!!
PLESE HELP ME TO DO THIS!!!!!
I REALLY REALLY WANT TO REMOVE NATALIE PORTMAN'S PANTS, TOUCH HER BUTTOCKS, AND
TRANSFORM HER INTO A STONE STATUE, THEN I WILL HAVE A PETRIFIED AND NAKED NATALIE
PORTMAN, WITH A BUTT THAT I CAN TOUCH ANYTIME I WANT!!!!
PLESE HELP ME TO DO THIS!!!!!
I REALLY REALLY WANT TO REMOVE NATALIE PORTMAN'S PANTS, TOUCH HER BUTTOCKS, AND
TRANSFORM HER INTO A STONE STATUE, THEN I WILL HAVE A PETRIFIED AND NAKED NATALIE
PORTMAN, WITH A BUTT THAT I CAN TOUCH ANYTIME I WANT!!!!
PLESE HELP ME TO DO THIS!!!!!
-----------------------------------------------
DEAR DEBIAN:
IF YOU COULD TRANSFORM ANY 50 HOT YOUNG WOMEN INTO STATUES, WHAT 50 HOT YOUNG
WOMEN WOULD YOU CHOOSE?
-----------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------
I am the original poster (and the person who started the "naked and petrified" trend on Segfault, though a bunch of other lame-brains picked up on it... the sexually explicit comments were NOT mine, and I'm also the author of the famous "immobilized and not fully clothed" letter to ESR, the first ever "naked and petrified" post to reach a moderation point of 5, and stay there), and I would like to clarify.
I would NEVER transform a girl into a statue unwillingly if she didn't enjoy being a statue. If she did NOT like being a statue, I would immediately restore her to her animate state, apologize thoroughly, and go look for females with more of a proclivity for being marble.
Rufies are NOTHING of the sort. They do NOT actually transform flesh into any kind of inert substance while preserving the consciousness of the transformed person. That's what's important.
In all of my fantasies, the women LOVE being statues. In fact, the transformation is usually voluntary, or at the least, temporary. Many of the women I talk to about this say they DON'T think they'd probably enjoy being statues. But until science or magic actually advances far enough to find out, we don't know WHAT it would be like to be a statue, and whether or not the women would enjoy it.
So how can you decide if it's good or bad?
And since it's something that can never happen, in our lifetimes or probably ever, what is the bag fat hairy yak-brained idea??
Petriphilia (or statuephilia) is a VERY common interest. You'd be surprised how many hundreds of us there are on the Internet, and how many THOUSANDS in the world. So before you switch into FLAME FLAME FLAME FLAME mode, maybe you should read what this article is actually saying. How would you like it if I criticized YOUR sexuality?
Okay, I'll do just that.
GOD, YOU'RE SICK! YOU ACTUALLY HAVE *SEX* WITH PEOPLE! THAT'S DISGUSTING! YOU CAN GET ALL KINDS OF DISEASED AND PREGNANCY AND STUFF DOING THAT!!! SICK SICK SICK!! YOU SEXUALISTS MAKE ME WANT TO VOMIT! I'M HEVER READING SLASHDOT AGAIN!
There. You didn't like it very much, did you.
Throw stones elsewhere, or better yet, don't throw stones at all.
I was actually rather disheartened when this got moderated up. That's not what's supposed to happen. My "Open Letter to ESR" was supposed to be moderated up, and it was. Because, not to brag, it was very clever. This was no more clever than my favorite cartoon, Pokey the Penguin. It was meant for those who, like me, keep thresholds at -1, sort by score, and always skip to the bottom of the article to find the REAL good stuff.
I apologize for the inconvenience caused by it being moderated up.
For those who want to learn more about people who love turning girls to stone:
http://www.oaktree.net/argoforg
http://members.xoom.com/meddie/Medusa
We're really quite normal, good, honest people. Please don't judge us based on the fact that one of us (me) enjoys a good Troll now and then!!!
Good day, and God bless.
A Genetic Engineer dies and goes to heaven to meet God. .. no . .get your own dirt.
Genetic Engineer So tell me God, what does a guy have to do to run this place?
GOD Can you create life?
Genetic EngineerYes!, I can, can you?
GodWith that God picks up a pile of dirt and with a little of this and a little of that....presto!..creates life!
Genetic Engineer Not to be out done, the GE bends over to pick up some dirt and god stops him and says:
God no
So, this is the biological equivalent of 'hello world'?
But science can NEVER make something out of nothing. Only God can.
Okay, fine. But what if they do create life. Then what, eh? Are they/we God now?
For those of you who don't share my beliefs, that's fine. This is just my point of view. You're entitled to your own, just as I am.
I am not trying to belittle your beliefs. Hell, you might be right for all I know. I am just posing the question "What are the implications for your belief system if this works?" Kinda a devil's advocate thing ;)
They are by no means mutually exclusive.
One deals with how the world works.
The other deals with how we should live.
Understanding quarks and neutrinos doesn't tell you whether it is ok to gossip about your neighbor.
the Human Genome Project has already had some work related with this, as well, natural things have been created in controlled invironments before...although it is nice that recently can do it with humans, it has been done.
I know... I know... but I couldn't resist!
Oh, and you may have crawled from primordial slime but I most certainly did not! I crawled from primordial soup. Mmmm... Primordial Soup(tm) - it's good for you.
The Good Ole Days weren't really that good. I mean... it was DARK and all in them ages - right?
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
This was in Newsweek a few months ago. TIGR has been talking with these religious leader for quite some time.
It isn't clear from the article where they're going to get the DNA "decoders," which include various types of RNA, some proteins, and amino acids. Are these going to be synthetic too, or are they going to be borrowed from existing life?
The shareholder is always right.
Isn't imitation the sincerest form of flattery ? :) twi
Religious leaders will never let scientists interfer with their business, after all. Imagine : if we manage to create artificial life, and we will eventually, for sure, they will lose their monopoly on godlike powers...
You bet if we ask them their opinion about that, they will be totally against it !
I hope priests are on stand-by to baptise the little critters.
A Genetic Engineer dies and goes to heaven to meet God.
Genetic Engineer: So tell me God, what does a guy have to do to run this place?
GOD: Can you create life?
Genetic Engineer:Yes!, I can, can you?
God:With that God picks up a pile of dirt and with a little of this and a little of that....presto!..creates life!
Genetic Engineer: Not to be out done, the Genetic Engineer bends over to pick up some dirt and god stops him and says:
God: no .. no . .get your own dirt.
see above
They are NOT creating life, Just putzing with what is already there. Nothing really new.
Ethics is a highly subjective and volital thing, but is none the less an essential part of science / engineering.
My personal value system suggests that manipulation ( in all its forms ) of single celled life falls in yellow catagory which means acceptable, but with precautions. Research such as this should be public knowledge ( genetic war-fare is a potential down-side )
Personally, I don't think that there is anything special about life. We are simply bueatiful machines crafted in an elegant fashion. This is completely independant of whether we were created by an intelligent being or not. Just as we seek to explore the physical world around us, why not seek to better understand the most basic workings of our being. If you are relgious and are having issues with "defining-life at a genetic level", then think of it as simply better appretiating "God's work".
As a point of reflection, Judao-Christian Dogma states that "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me". If God can be defined ( at least in part ) as the creator, then surely mans ability to manipulate atoms and now create life places us dangerously close to defiance of that tenant.
I'm one of those egnostic types, somewhere between atheism and religious so I like to straddle the fence ( It's more interesting than only taking one side ).
-Michael
I don't think scientists should try to create any type of life, even if it is simple. Creating simple life will quickly lead to making more and more complex life. And then the next thing you know we have synthetic humans all over the place. This is a mess, I love technology and I enjoy it helping my everyday life, but it needs to stop at some point. When man can create man, man has gone too far.
~Jay (Negative Seven)
God and some scientists get into a heated argument. Finally, the scientists demand to know why God thinks He is so special. In response, God asks the scientists if *they* can create life. Glowing with pride, the scientists reply yes. "Prove it," says God.
The scientists scoop up some dirt to use as raw material and begin to head back to their laboratory when God calls them back and says, "No, you have to create you OWN dirt!"
It could lead to "Reduced Genome Set" genetic engineering. Less DNA to divide might mean lower division time, more efficient industrial microbiology processes. Does anyone know about the theoretical advantages of RISC, and do you think there is an analogy in genetics?
I love the way any time a topic like this comes on /. a bunch of bigots take the opportunity to rail against Christianity, and religion in general. Welcome to /., forum for tolerance (laugh) I'm a christian, and believe it or not, I don't go around on forums telling athiests how much they suck. If I respect your beliefs, shouldn't you respect mine?
I don't see why this article is so sensational. It is essentially extrapolating wildly from an gene-finding exercise akin to the human genome project.
For one, I believe that, could this group presently create life, they would. Instead, I think they merely wish to start a debate about the nature of creation.
First: I think that "creating" life means much more than simply taking DNA and reconstituting it into a preexisting lipid membrane and seeing if it works. Life surely did not evolve in this manner and I doubt the researchers would succeed with this method. Dividing cells take with them proteins from the parent cell which are necessary for life; if the researchers plan to include these the significance will be diminished further.
In any event, I don't think that this achievement is anywhere near as important as cloning a mammal like Dolly; both accomplish roughly the same goal. While it would certainly be a technical accomplishment, taking a self-replicating molecule and providing it with a safe environment and all the right materials is hardly creating life if you subscribe to the "body as a life-support system for a gene" view.
All in all, I think this is just an attempt to both spur debate and to bring attention to a research group which has accomplished an admittedly awesome feat: isolating the genes which are the bare essentials for life...
Invicta{HOG}
A few years ago, sitting in bio class, I started thinking to myself: an organism is just a giant computer, right? The DNA is the source code, transcription into polypeptide chains is compiling (assembling, really), protein folding is linking, and then the exe's (proteins, enzymes) run on the platform of cytoplasm. This anology can be extended further quite easily. Membrane-embedded receptor proteins are input, the golgi apparatus is output, the nervous system is the central bus, etc.
So, being a programmer, I wondered how hard it would be to "write" an organism from scratch, in assembly language (amino acid sequence). We'd have to understand all the layers above it, including transcription (we understand that pretty well) and protein folding (that one will take a lot of work still). Not to mention how tertiary/quaternary structure of proteins affects their function (a veeeery hard question, as of now). I thought that writing an original organism would be out of reach for at least 50, if not several hundred years.
What it looks like is that these scientists are not using assembly language, they're using pre-build [COM/CORBA/whatever] components. In fact, biology makes it much easier than would be expected: we don't even have to understand the precise functions and interactions (component interfaces) of each component. We just throw them all in a cell and let them mingle how they like, and it works! I never considered that in my bio class musings.
However, this still makes an interesting point: until we "write" the organism in DNA base sequences (machine language) or perhaps amino acid sequence (assembly language), we cannot say that this is an "original" organism, created by man. It's more like a microscopic Frankenstein, that is, built from pieces of other organisms.
M. genitalium ? They should rent "Weird Science" and create something fun.
I didn't notice anything in the article about them consulting religious leaders. Just that the subject was under ethical review.
- Go to a local college and get a faculty listing.
- Find the names of those professors who teach the most hated, anti-God sciences. (Biology and astronomy are two obvious good choices.)
- Get a phone book and find their addresses. IMPORTANT: Write them down!
- Go to Home Depot and buy enough bricks to fill up your car trunk.
- Print out several Bible verses on standard letter paper. Make lots of copies!
- Wrap the Bible verse papers around the bricks.
- Drive to each of the addresses you looked up before.
- Throw a Bible brick through their front window.
This would be an excellent activity for a church youth group, or perhaps a Circle meeting. You can set up a network of folks to monitor the scientists to verify that they have indeed given up their ungodly ways. If the scientists fail to read the Bible messages that have found their way to their living room floor, you must keep open the option of killing them. Be merciful; a bullet is probably better than a bludgeoning. But you must be decisive and act in the best interests of God.I wish you good luck.
It looks like you're assuming here that science is necessarily good for humanity, and so impeding it is impeding the "progress of humanity". I'm not sure that's necessarily the case - certainly many scientific breakthroughs have helped humanity. But what about scientific breakthroughs such as: the atomic bomb any sort of biological or chemical weapon etc. Now, certainly creating life doesn't appear to be as malicious as anything on the list, but who knows what it could be used for? How about (in the future, obviously) creating an army of soldiers whose only loyalty is to their commander? I'm not saying anything like this would necessarily happen - I'm just trying to show that science is not good for humanity in all cases...
Kind of ironic that a post predicting organized religion-bashing gets replied to with a bash on organized religion...
Aren't they basically taking existing life and just throwing out some unnecessary genes? I don't see how this is qualitatively different from any other kind of genetic engineering (though it's quantitatively different in the number of modifications).
Yup. I tend to think of "soul" as a synonym for "mind", or alternatively as a term for the synthesis of body and mind, whateverthehell that means.
;)
But suffice to say that when I wake up from being a cyrogenic popsicle in the year 3010, the harem of willing and nubile catwomen I create (or another sufficently chauvinistic-piggy fantasy to subsitute) will certainly have as much of a soul as I do, as far as I'm concerned.
(Notice: The above is an attempt at humor. I'd never abuse such technology for such lowly ends... which means I'll have to make sure the catwomen have IQs of 200 or so. Make 'em useful.
These are *MY* opinions.
They will not be *YOUR* opinions until the Orbital Mind Control Lasers are operati
This isn't news -- this is just Craig Venter (who despite his doctorate, is more a businessman than a scientist) chatting to the press. Craig absolutely loves seeing his image and words in print, and the press for its part is convinced that Venter is some sort of ubergenius and prints every word. The fact that there must be a minimum set of genes for life (and deriving a good set from highly degerate species like like Mycoplasmas) is not exactly an astounding realization and has been made before by many more qualified people than Craig, although they didn't run off to the BBC with it.
However, the claim that we are "at the verge of creating life" is about as meaningful as similar claims that we are at the verge of colonizing Mars or having real artifical intelligence. There are zillions of practical problems that need to be solved, and many of them seem quite intractable at present.
Remind me to remind you do to a web search when you're looking for something.
This isn't a sad case of Christianity infringing upon Scientific & Social advancement, it's a sad case of Christians infringing upon that which they do not take the time to research.
We are on the brink of something truly great, and God has to step in.
God has not officially stepped in for several millennia now.
An example of the sad state of the Church knowledge would be this: the Catholic Church in 1992 issued a statement saying that Galileo was right, the Earth does in fact revolve around the Sun. (
Don't get yourself confused. A Church is a business -- religion is not. Any business's goal, no matter which product they are trying to sell, is ultimately left up to the few at the top of the corporate ladder, or by a mandate of the masses who represent that business. The Catholic church is no different. There is a big difference between The Church and Faith. Christianity (of which I am a strong believer) or any faith has never impeded science, learning, or freedom. Churches have.
IMO (because again, I am a Christian), all churches have ultimately the right ideas and ideals, however the methods they use to achieve those are questionable, at the least.
(And yes, I belong to a specific denomination of Christianity. And no, I will not mention it in this thread -- it is irrelevant.)
I hope the synthisize the bacteria and get a lot of press. There are some states in the US that mandate that creation is taught in schools. Some schools aren't allowed to use the word evolution (they use "change over time" as a substitute). If I were a parent in one of these states I would file a law suit. Some people will always fear technology but they SHOULDN"T BE GIVEN A CHANCE TO INTERFERE. My guess is that the open discussion they propose is only for public relations sake. It is a good move to stave off the outrage of the superstitious. People freak-out when there "religious leaders" freak out. If people hear that "religious leaders" are involved it will quell their fear. Could this technology lead to the production of biological weapons? probably. But humans already possess this capability. Wouldn't it be great if we had the opposite capability?. Maybe religious groups should be more concerned with scientists who make incurable strains of anthrax than the guys who want a chemical definition of life. We don't need a chemical definition of life to show that God and Creation are illogical concepts. People have maintained their faith against overwhelming odds for centuries. to supress technology is to turn ones back on humanity.
They could have armies of billions of mindless slaves doing their bidding and they're stopping to question religion?! Why not just wipe out the religion's followers if they contest you afterwords? This is a simple case of shoot first, ask questions later.
-Derek "blight"
But anyway, imagine the possibilities...with genetic manipulation, scientists could do just about anything. They could 'make' a virus whose's only goal is to destroy some other kind of virus (like AIDS, for example). On the other side of the coin, this could open up a whole new chapter in bio-chemical warfare by some malicious scientists. When this becomes readily available, let's hope that humanity will have matured enough to the point where this kind of technology won't be used with evil intent.
But enough about the bad aspects of it. As for the ethics if it, I don't think there's anything wrong with creating some bacteria by mixing some chemicals in a lab. If we start creating humans though....
I don't want to get off topic, but...man continues to disgust me.
You and me both. Not so much because humans are arrogant and ignorant (although too often we are), but because there's too damn many of them. If we'd concentrate on quality instead of quantity like the K-strategists that we supposedly are, we wouldn't have such problems. But I digress.
Every day we cut down tons of trees for wood in order to keep industry alive.
The vast majority of the trees that are destroyed are not even used for wood. They're burned in order to clear the land to make room for more people. The wood isn't even used! I say again there's too damn many people on this rock!
When will we realize that these very trees are what supply us with oxygen?
It's not quite that simple. When forests (and kelp beds, and wheat fields) are growing, O2 is released into the atmosphere, and CO2 is removed and its carbon incorporated into the plants' structures. When they are burned, or decompose, or are harvested, O2 is removed from the atmosphere, and CO2 is released. It's a somewhat stable cycle. What really messes up the CO2/oxygen balance is not the destruction of forests (though that has an impact) but the burning of fossil fuels. Plants can grow back, but oil and coal don't. That carbon has been added to the atmosphere and it won't be coming out again.
While I agree with you that humans are disgusting, and that they're trashing the planet big-time, I don't think the answer to that is to put limits on science. More than anything else, science has the potential to get us out of this mess we're currently in, if we'll just stop putting short-term profits first and let it. For better or for worse, humans got the big brains. It's time we used them.
Let's not forget to ask them if the earth is round or whether the earth is the fixed center of the universe.
Anyways it could just be a stunt to get some recognition and raise their stock value. By the way, my question to the experts is: how much should I charge to cure the common cold, if I happen to have that cure in my lab, and I'm selling it now for $19.95 plus shipping and handling?
(I have to post anonymously just to avoid the persecution I'll get for speaking freely.)
I find it rather amusing that this "Mycoplasma genitalium" they are using that is the simplest known form of life on earth is to be found in the "human genital tract".
I was actualy a little un-impressed when I read the article, they have found this poor little critter with just 480 genes, some of which they have judged as redundant. Reading between the lines i'll try to give an explenation on what they plan to do.
Having extracted the relevent peices of dna they will drop them in a test tube. Into the test tube will then go some of those weird protean machines you find in cells that takes dna and translates it into strands of protean. These starands of protean will then fold into lumps of protean (the very process that new IBM machine wants to simulate)that will procede to bounce around. The newly formed lumps of protean will stick together when random chance causes matching faces to meet and hey presto you a the functioning components of a cell.
Its actualy a little more complex than this but still decidedly un-impressive, basicly this could have been done already but they needed to find something simple enough to manage.
So will this lead to a new era of genetic enginearing? Potentialy yes, when we write software the easiest thing to do is take an existing program, strip out all the junk you don't want (or don't understand) until you have something basic to build on, the same applys to genetics.
Basicly all this 'consult the church' type stuff is almost certainly hype to get the press and public attention they want. The end result? well they get noticed and get the reasearch grant extension they need to actualy do this stuff (It's basicly all talk at the moment).
You must be trying to get back at them for turning your penis to stone.
Take these needed genes, squish them together. From what I understand, you would have a pile of genes, not a living creature. Under what methods does a pile of molecules "come to life?" Does anyone have any resources or explanations, this is got me stumped.
If they can breathe life into non-living material, if they can take this pile of genetic soup and construct a living "thing," then kudos to them.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Leave to a bunch of geeky scientists to create life as an science project. The way our parents did it is still a lot more fun. :)
Poised to Create Life -- I picture a scientist in his boxer shorts saying, "All right honey, let's get this experiment started."
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
We can try to stop the economic development of other contries with laws and tolls, but not forever. Sometime you will have to step down from the throne. The same goes with evolution. Someday, we have to let go. Something will be here instead of us in the future. Created by us or by evolution, does it matter? We are humans not gods. Thats why we won't be on top of the food-chain forever. The survival of the fittest, thats what matters.
Hit the nail right on the head!
This experiment, as far as i can see, is not in fact "creating" life, merely modifiying other life. (it boils down to this, anyway)
Personally, i doubt that scientists will be able to create Evolvable (especially not cross-species), free-thinking, reproducing life. Having a conciousness, and making choices, i believe cannot be "real" in a purely physical universe.
Until scientists can create their own laws of physics (something i think will never happen), I'm also sticking with "religeon".
Sidenote: So many anti-religeon posts seem to generalise a lot. Not good.
With 600 comments already in queue, I doubt anyone will see this, btu oh well...
1. The time to ask "Should we create life?" is not when the capability is at hand. The time to ask this question was about fifty years ago. If the answer is "No," the you avoid the research that can make it possible. Now it's too late to really consider the question. If something can be done, it will.
2. While this is an interesting advance, it is an expected and not very revolutionary one. Consider the following headline: "Carpenters learn to assemble prefab homes." That's what this seems to amount to. Scientists have identified already existing gense that control existing life. When they can engineer never-before-seen genes adn create life from those, I'll be a lot more impressed. That's be the headline that reads "Carpenters plant seed; grow homes in less than a day."
An adquate understanding of the genes will allow you to program it to replicate 10 times, and then die - just like your cells die.
This sentence illustrates your fundamental misunderstanding of biology. You can attempt to build an organism that reproduces 10 times and then fails to reproduce. But there will be mutations that mean that some of the decentants will not die.
Biology is not engineering and can never be engineering because life is inherently messy. Engineering is about understanding how a system with interact with its environment and designing with well understood margins of tolerance.
We know enough about biology to know that we can't completely predict how organisms will interact with one another and their environment and what will eventually result when things are released into the wild. Unanticipated things happen. If you think that we can, then you have deluded yourself.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
No doubt! My life would suck if I didn't have my rocketship...
When any given two people have sex and have a kid, there is a good chance that their kid will be smarter than at least one if not both of them (take einstein.... you think both of his parents were as smart as him). So indeed, every time people have sex and have a kid they are taking the chance that will create something smarter than themselves... and so far the world apparently failed to end.
Ben
That's the most interesting thing I've read in this discussion. Too bad after 400+ comments everyone's out of mod points.
Thinking on the journey that we as a race have taken to come this far and looking ahead to how long it might take to get to the point where we might be able to create something as complex as ourselves and our world........maybe it is possible. This shows us that creation isn't magic and that is a very powerful thought. It might take us just as long again to create something worthwhile, but this step proves that it is a possibility.
Feels like a eureka moment for mankind. I don't think the same now as I did an hour ago. I hesitate to say "God is dead", but I will say that he's not as mysterious to me anymore, if he is.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
IIRC, they've even found one of the RNA bases in some runs. Interesting, yes?
--
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
ok, just to clarify. to the best of my understanding, the main religous argument against genetic science is that creating and/or modifying life itself is reserved for God, and man should not mess with it.
Therefore, if you are a scientist trying to create life, you are "playing god" becuase you are attempting god's work. But since you cannot Know what God knows you are, in comparison, just messing around in an amateur fashion, or "playing"
Just a little clarification. That's it. Personally I;m with the guy that quoted St. Augustine.
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
Assume that life can be created successfully in a lab. Assume that eventually, some years hence, we get around to creating complex, human-level life.
Does the resulting pseudo-human have a soul?
If that pseudo-human does not have one, what about a human that receives such extensive genemodding that it is all but indistinguishable from the pseudo-human?
These are *MY* opinions.
They will not be *YOUR* opinions until the Orbital Mind Control Lasers are operati
Before one of our all-too-few trips to the moon, a NASA engineer sneezed into a camera box. The camera went on a little trip, and stayed on the moon for several months. It was later brought back, and the damn little creepy-crawlies in the camera case came back to life.
:)
Yeah, you're right, a zealot with a lab can work wonders. 12 Monkeys was all too creepy, but it made a strong point.
As some conspiracy fans have pointed out too often, AIDS just might be... Well, hush! Eschelon and all.. But as you suggest, it may not be that hard. No genetic level engineering, just some splicing (cut&paste). Take one part common cold, one part AIDS and one part Ebola... Shake well and spray in a fine mist at O'Hare. That's a six month incubation period of rampant but unseen contagion, a two week immune system shut down, followed by a bleed-out in a 24 hour window.
After a year, the 'offending' group is gone. Then guess what? It's gone wild. A few oportunistic mutations, and it goes after the next broadest gene base. We're all toast.
Well, all of us except some slime inside an old camera case.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
The way I see it, the real issue here is not whether they can create life... They can... They will... Soon... The real issue is what happens to it afterwards. This can reap benefits for humankind that are unimaginable, but it can also destroy... I think that they should be talking more to political leaders than to religious leaders, and giving them a "heads up" that soon, everything may change...
Miller had several problems with his experiment:
1) He assumed a reducing atmosphere. I don't believe there is any direct evidence of this. In fact even the oldest rocks show traces of oxidation, implying an oxidizing atmosphere.
2) His spark would destroy amino acids as easily as it created them, so he had to quickly drain them into a separate chamber where they wouldn't be destroyed
3) He produced both left- and right-handed amino acids. All life uses only left-handed amino acids.
4) He only succeeded in creating amino acids. The odds of them randomly stringing together (with no rights!) to form something useful are so low it's absurd.
No single task is more essential to our continued survival. Without the creation of optimized synthesized lifeforms, charged with the task of interacting with our environment in a way that eliminates the uncontrollable byproducts created by humans during the last 250 years, we will pluge the planet into an unrecoverable tempest of biologically hazardous miasma. Clealy the only way to correct this situation is through the synthesis of organism that can safely use our industrial and organic byproducts as an energy source, thus correcting an ecological imbalance caused by industrialization and overpopulation.
First off, this isn't really creating life from scratch, what their doing is stripping down prexisting (in nature) plans for bacteria to the bare minimum and making the simplest bacteria they can. Their borrowing all the stuff like the genetic code, the ideas of DNA, RNA, proteins from nature. The organism they create will be very feeble since it only has the bare minimum to survive (if it really will survive at all). On the regilious note, rembember that the Human Race is supposed to be god's childern. Well Children grow up, at what else could god's children grow up to be except gods themselves. The next millenium is just the begin of humanity adultlence on its long road to goddom.
Is it really creating life if it uses the same building blocks that all known life uses? I say don't call it creating life until we can do it without carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.
It is the duty of every thinking person in existence to explore their life. I think the goal of mankind is to truly understand itself. This understanding must happen in all forms: physical, mental and !(physical || mental). -- Call it spiritual if you like. Curiosity at our makeup is a strength. If we know what we are and how we work, how can that be bad? I think the fear that this referenced article provokes is that of our inability to control what we find. It's not the discovery of the facts of the universe that are bad; it's the use of those facts for destruction that give us sleepless nights. Should the scientists attempt to create a life form by manipulation of non-living components? Yes, but only to prove or disprove that their underlying theories are correct. If it is their goal to construct living entities for a purpose, then this argument ends. The next argument simply becomes the purpose of the organism's creation. My $0.02 and the result of yet another blonde moment.
First off, I'm a firm believer in God (I'm Catholic). I'm kinda glad that that are seeking input from religious leaders. It's always best to hear all sides of an issue before you jump into things. Many of the posts above have said things like "I can't BELIEVE they're asking their PERMISSION to conduct research". Uh, it's called acting responsibly and I for one am glad to see some scientists realizing that their work could very well have adverse affects on humanity as we know it. While getting input from religious leaders great, I sure hope they don't stop there and discuss it in great lengths with their peers before going forward. Remember, many of you aren't believers (which is fine and dandy with me), but that doesn't mean that those who do are without opinion.
I, for one, would like to see them proceed. There is great knowledge I'm sure that could be gained from this. And, as long as it's conducted in a safe and responsible manner, we should be encouraging research like this instead of fearing it.
I don't think the scientific community gives a rat's ass about what the world's religious leaders
think. But they are smart enough to realize you don't want a bunch of crazy lunatics outside your building protesting that you are going against god's will. Personally I belive in god and think if god didn't want us to do something he would send us some other sign beside carzy lunatics. Sooner or later we are going to go down the road of creating a single cell organisme and I can already see the FOX special "When E. Coli attack".
There are a lot of benefits to this, the sooner we figure out how to creat genetic bacteria the sooner we can find cures for disases that require gene changes like Sickle Cell and Huntingtons disease.
Vidi, vici, veni. (I saw, I conquered, I came)
Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.
That includes ourselves... btw.
Hate to do this but.. There's a good site for debating these matters http://forum.erudition.net I love Slashdot but it doesnt lend itself to long-term discussion, and we could use some traffic. Oh yeah it runs on BSD :)
It's sorta hard to argue for or against the existence of something when it can't really be defined. ;}
Depending on who you talk to, a "soul" is anything from some mysterious energy temporarily bound to the body, to the electrical signals that course through our nervous system, to a product of our imagination.
That's part of why there's a debate raging over abortion.
It's also the same idea as in artificial intelligence; if I were to design a complex, adaptable program that was able to converse with people in a manner indistinguishable from any other person, does that make it "conscious"? Who knows.
- Cattywampus.
there is alot to yawn about.... but...
quote:
their hositlity to EINSTEIN initial papers.
Have you not heard of peer review? Or that science advances because we kill off all the old geezers and accept new ideas.
Debate is a good thing. Einstein wasn't murdered, most Physicists aren't gun toting. We argue all day long on slashdot.
Just saw Kevin Smith's Dogma, cool movie.
The Plot is: Two mischievous angels who were laid off by God and are given the boot. Finding themselves banned to Wisconscin, they set out for New Jersey where they find a loophole that will allow them to re-enter heaven. The only problem is it by proving God is fallable, it destory the fundation of God's existence, which is "God is infallable". So the God might just say "good bye" and vanish in a puff... (thus the movie begin)
It seems the life-creating experiment might just make God a little more irrelevent, just like Copernicus, Darwin did.
Just trying to connect the dots here.
--- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.
- Impeded progress of Science in general.
- Denied the proof of glaring evidence.
- Slowed the course of Science hundreds of years.
- Instilled Fear and Hostility in the masses.
Why must these horrendous people keep on stagnating the progress of humanity? Why don't they just accept that what Science and Medicine does is research and developement? Why must they refuse to see the irrefutable proof of what Man has accomplished? In our hour of glory, we are struck down as dumb beasts to grovel at the feet of "the God that is love."My uncle is a pastor and has been for the last 30+ years. He is the most knowledgeable man I have met when it comes to The Bible. (notice i didn't say christianity or religion or anything of the sort. If you believe in the christian God you also believe that the Bible is his word.) Ok, I asked him what he thought on the subject of man creating life. He responded with "Is man God? ...Of course not, God created life from nothing and man is attempting to create life from life. Man is just following God's Plan. To dominate over his kingdom. "
Oh well. Thats about all he had to say on the matter and besides long distance calls cost me money.
-Felix
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
-Solus
I'm an atheist. Not an agnostic. An atheist. I am convinced 100% that there is no god. It follows that I believe everyone who believes there is a god is wrong.
Why should I or other like-minded scientists have to examine the (false) hypothesis that there is a god to continue valid research such as this? The Catholics didn't ask me if they could build a church next to my house & litter the area with noise pollution and obnoxious personalities every week.
That "life" is merely a chemical reaction and perception is electrical impulses. Before anyone jumps to any conclusions, I am a perfectly happy person, not misearable and out "...to show worthlessness or simplicity of life..." The human element is a wonderful thing, but it still all boils down to chemistry, which to me, makes it all the more fascinating.
Isn't that how Dr. Frankenstein got started?
I predict that 95% of the posts lambast anyone who believes in any kind of organized religion. I predict that the remaining 5% will attempt to defend it, but get drowned out in all the atheist posts. I predict that most of the "anti-God" posts will get marked as either: A. Funny or B. Insightful, while the "pro-God" posts stay the same. I predict that a lot of the religioius bashing will come from anonymous cowards. I predict at least 4 long and flam^H^H^H^debate filled threads to be generated, most of them mocking a pro-God post. I predict that few threads will discuss the actual implications of doing what this article suggests, and instead take up space making fun of religion. Which is actually sorta reduntant considering most people at Slashdot who post at the articles are atheists anyway. And I predict that all the above predictions will come true : )
If this project is considered "creating life", and a creator of life is a god, then I AM A GOD!
I have removed genes and added synthetic DNA to a bacterium to produce a strain which had never before existed on earth.
So get down on your knees now and worship me!
Actually I consider both premises to be false.
There is not much new going on here - just hype, ignorance, and FUD.
it's more important that scientists have identified these genes than it is that they're creating the organism. think about it...we've always been taught the essential characteristics of true life in high school biology courses. now, the scientists have actually identified these genes.
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts. -- Voltaire
Nah, it was inevitable. Picture this: We gradually teraform Mars... we add simple life forms at first and gradually increase the complexity... eventually we have a self-sustaining system on Mars... the creatures become "self-aware"... and we're worshiped as "Gods"... Science and technology will eventually create Heaven on Earth. People will live forever, all diseases will be cured, genetic manipulation will lead to more intelligent and creative humans, etc. Humans will travel to other planets. Wow. I wish I could see about 5000 years into the future.
This is not very surprising. As everyone knows, DNA contains genes. However, few people have any idea of what genes do, so I'll try to explain a bit:
;-)
A gene is a section of DNA which creates a protein. The proteins play a part in chemical reactions in the cell, and when these are magnified a few billion times you get a person - or something else.. Anyway, this is why it is so easy (relativly) to, for example, insert the "fish oil" gene from a fish into the Wheat plant, and the extra protein made from the extra gene just happens to effect only particular chemicals, namely the saturated fats. This gene results in the cell making healthy unsaturated fats rather than the less healthy (for human consumption) saturated fats.
DNA is not like code, it doesn't step through the genes in order so you can put them almost anywhere. You just need the right ones.
These scientists a claiming to have found the genes which (via proteins) cause all the chemical reactions necessary to create a complete cell (with wall, membrane, cytoplasm, reproduction, the works..). Most likely, it would die outside of a controlled environment. But it could turn out to do anything. Given more genes, it might be possible to create a complete animal - although they have no idea what that would be like.
This is all not surprising as the genome project has been trying for many years to identify the effects of each gene, at least in humans. The problem is that each gene slightly effects the organism's chemical balance, and in large multicellular organisms (ie. us) it is hard to track the results and determine which gene causes, say, homosexuality. And here comes another ethical debate...
EVERY single gene they intend to use and every metabolic pathway possible will have been characterized and accounted, computer modeled and simulated. Creating the beasty would just be one of those "we told you so" kind of events.
Scientists, by the way, know why anthrax and e. coli kill people. They know also that bombs kill people faster and much more efficiently and predictably. They're not idiots..they're scientists.
On Sept. 13, 1999 the Moon as you know it was replaced by a hologram and artificial gravity for planet earth was turned
When I saw it on television, I thought "What a bunch of self-serving, publicity seeking brown nosers." Well, not in quite those words, but something on the lines of who do they think they are, asking "religious leaders", of all people, what they think of their "wonderous work", which only consists of "we can take away all these genes and wowee, it still works."
Today was the last day of my Ethics class, and the topic of discussion was the ethics of technology. And boy, lemme tell ya, it ain't always fun being the smart-ass programmer guy with opinions. Turns out it was me and the cute girl who doesn't say much vs. the rest of the class. Real fun. The discussion on abortion was far less heated.
As a devout agnostic, I consider God to be the unknowable. No just what's over the next hill, but the Mystery itself. That being said, I think it's way too easy for people to say "that's God's business," as if the Bible contains a job discription and mission statement.
As far as the social implications go, the wish for slower technological growth is just that: a wish. People will continue to pry apart the nuts and bolts of the universe, and the people who are in charge of the distribution of new technology might as well be moderate to the point of brain death.
I, for one, would rather have Uncle Sam mucking about with genetic technology than some mullah who's reading into the Koran a bit too much (or a devout neo-Orthodox Greek feminist/part-time Marxist rebel, your radical minority here). I'm kinda happy with my bourgeois, liberal, feminist, psuedo-revolutionary, Mountain Dew, whitey, fucknut life. I don't want someone who believes very much in what somebody else told them to kill me, my friends, my family, and sure, even the assholes in the SUVs. No, I don't think the US is peacful, kind, impartial, or even good. But we are very slow to move, and we disagree with ourselves. Who better to have their hand on the trigger than a schizophrenic imperialist with delusions of grandeur and everything to lose?
I'm also not a big fan of the "it's not natural" arguments. Western thought tends to seperate Nature and Man, with disasterous results for Nature. I consider both myself and the keyboard I'm typing on to be natural. It's not like we create matter from a vacuum, right? It's not like we change the laws of physics to help us make things.
Everything you're not equipped with from birth is "unnatural" if you think about it. The "natural" place for a rock is on the ground, not in a human's hand, skinning an antelope. Sticks belong on trees or on the ground, not being used to thresh grain.
As humans, our nature is to fuck with things incessantly. Yes, we run into problems because of this, but it's the way we are. Pandora's box anyone?
Right. My thinkgeek.com order of Penguin caffeinated peppermints just came in, so I'm just a *wee* bit jumpy. Woo!
-- I can't think of anything witty to put here. Sorry.
Gee... it seems that the researchers have fallen a bit short. There is 103 genes which they are clueless as to their function. Allow me to quote the article, "The surprise came when they discovered that 103 genes have a function that is a complete mystery." The article also makes a good point: "But so far, research on single-cell genetics has yielded only theory and not much more." http://www.cnn.com/1999/HEALTH/12/10/simplest.cell /index.html -------------------- Sitzen zwei U-Boote im Kino. Kommt ein Panzer rein. Sagt das erste U-Boot zum zweiten: "So'n Quatsch! Ein Panzer im Kino!"
While I don't give a toss about religious objections to creating life (leaving aside the argument about whether this lot can actually walk the talk), I *do* find this kind of thing deeply scary.
Think BSE, think Ebola, think any number of fictional sc-fi rampant bugs.
Now think how easy it is to get things wrong -- for a metaphor, just look at the Morris Worm; not indented to run rampant and destructive, but it did nonetheless.
More knowledge is never a bad thing (whatever John Katz said t'other day) and if creating life from scratch can prove anything to us (possibly give us more clues about the origin of life on Earth), I'm all for it: but for pity's sake, kill it *as soon* as you've proved it's alive.
--
I believe God created life (and all other things!), and therefore man.
So: Life is not the invention of man, it is that of God.
Therefore, if man "creates" life, he does not hold the patent. :) (Small joke, considering all the patent posts lately.) Or, is it better to say, he didn't create life from nothing, for the first time. And, when you get right down to it, "life" is really just a bunch of complex chemical reactions. I see no reason why God would not allow man to expand himself to create complex chemical reactions, no matter their end result.
The question you're all REALLY asking is: :) a soul? :) The process is unimportant.
Does a "man-created" life form posess, for lack of a better term for you agnostics, atheists, and people who just like to debate
I don't think there's any question man will create artificial intelligence.
I don't think there's any doubt that man will create the complex chemical reactions of life, and possibly artificial humans. We create humans all the time, it's called sex.
What IS important is: ONLY God can create a soul. Man may create the shell, but only God can create the soul. Should man create a vessel capable of a soul, then God may decide to give that vessel a soul. It's up to God, really. God created the man that created the machine or creation with the soul.
The process is unimportant. God still initiated it. And so, man only creates life because God allows it to be so. So, man is not a god, he is God's instrument, and shall always be.
How's my logic now? And actually, I'm not offended by your questions, they're quite valid.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
It is unlikely that this cobbled-together bacterium (for want of a better term) will be pathogenic. Virulence in bacteria is usually the result of specific adaptions to overcome a host's defence mechanisms - not pure chance alone. Perhaps virulence factors could be inserted by the malevolent, but such a thing occurring by chance alone is unlikely (although the role of selection shouldn't be neglected...). Also, such artificial bacteria probably won't be as hardy as the real McCoy; they probably would need to grow on enriched media with all sorts of nutrients and special carbohydrates, etc and be lovingly cared for by their proud parents :) and the danger of accidental escape is fairly low given the precautions taken. So an artificial bacterium isn't really that great a danger compared with modification of an existing one to add virulence, or (less imaginatively) just mass propagation of some existing nasty like anthrax.
remove the sz's from my email to use it
I feel that while discussion about the ethics and morality of creating artificial DNA and through that, artificial life is good, it is also wasted in the sense that someone is going to do it, whether we decide it's for the bad or for the good.
Most of the great discoveries in history are attributed to one man or team, but in truth they built their work on the works of other scientists, and like Leibnitz discovered differential calculus at the same time as Newton, so have others also the potential of doing the same discoveries.
I think it is inevitable for us to attempt to create new life, digital or analog. It's in our genes.
The scientists' plan to consult religious leaders seems to me more than anything else to be a publicity stunt. Notice that the phrase is "religious leaders", which means the relgions in questions are organized religions. Why do people think that leaders in organized religion has anything to do with knowing what is the moral thing (if such a thing exists) to do? It is true that many people rely on the morals defined in their religions to guide their lives, but so what? Are the scientist going to give up the plan to create a bacterium simply because many people may be upset with it. So what is their intention? To refrain from doing a wrong thing (whatever that means), or to refrain from upsetting a large group of people? Moreover, unless the religious leaders are all experts in biology, i don't think they will fully understand the situation. If you just knock on the Pope's door and ask him if it is right to create life, how is he supposed to interpret your question? Now i would love to see the Pope's reaction if you instead ask him if it is right to create a bacterium (The Pope may be a bio PhD for all I know, but you get the point). What would be interesting would be if one day they have the power to create consciousness. Then i won't be so sure about whether religion should be involved...
Many people use Jurassic park as an example in support of consulting with religion. But in fact the novel says nothing about religion. Did all hell break loose in JP because the scientists did something immoral? Sure, it could have been prevented if religion steps in and say they must not create life, but this argument is ridiculous, for it implies that the mess in JP is a result of the act of God. I may as well claim that if Nedry is not such an asshole nothing would have happen. Now what? do the scientists perform background checks on all their computer gurus?
When you say "learning", I think you are half remembering, "adapts" which was on a fair number of those 7-point lists. However they were referring to evolutionary adaptation not mental adaptation which you seem to be. Learning would after all exclude plants, fungi, etc. and the majority of animals. Incidentally almost no one uses those 7-point definitions anymore since they don't even come close to defining viruses, retroviruses, prions, or, as you point out, individual cells within an organism.
concept of god socially beneficial for survival of species..think for a while...bad things MIGHT happen!
definition of god ambiguous by nature
definition of nature ambiguous by nature
all that is, is natural, by nature
what is supernatural, but more natural ambiguity
On Sept. 13, 1999 the Moon as you know it was replaced by a hologram and artificial gravity for planet earth was turned
a group of American scientists have apparently discovered what they believe to be the 300 or so genes that are all that is required to create a simple life-form
Gee, 300 or so genes... Oh, well, it's a shoe-in then!
Or is it?
Have you ever counted the atoms in one gene, let alone 300?
Are these dudes planning on starting from raw atoms, or will they be reassembling bits of existing ex-life with very small stitches? Will their construction reproduce, in keeping with one of the basic definitions of "life"? What will they mount their assembly in? Betcha it's an existing cell! What? They're not going to make their own cell? Now, why would that be? Why should they have a problem with assembling hundreds of interdependent homeostatic systems on a molecular scale?
Hands up all those who visualise a cell as a tiny lump of simple jelly! Today's message is: WRONG! A cell has millions of very specific atoms in very specific dynamic relationships with each other.
This is not making life, this is just more tinkering with the basic life components! Who let the PR agent into this?
Does being able to make working DNA necessarily mean that you can create a new organism?
In short, no. You can, however, create new DNA, and insert that into an existing organism to change what it does.
On the subject of religious leaders, they've collectively caused more misery in the millennia up to now than any other single person or group of people, Hitler and Genghis Khan included. Scientists, and you, need to stay as far away from them as possible!
On the subject of Miller, his experiment was supposed to mimic a primordial anaerobic atmosphere. One with water in it. Water made of two parts hydrogen and one water. Anaerobic? Hmmm.
It also featured a number of items not found even in hypothetical primordial atmospheres, like a cycle into and out of the reaction chamber through a filter designed to rescue the proto-organics before said reaction chamber volatised them on the next pass.
Quite aside from this, ALL rocks have oxygen in them. There are NO rocks compatible with an anaerobic atmosphere, or any evidence that there ever was such a thing.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Congratulations on labelling >70% of the world's populations as nuts.
Everyone here always claim to be open-minded. Yeah right.
People like you are just as bigoted, if not more so, than the people they criticize.
Sure. If, IF, there is an omnipotent God, then {s}he can just create the world all over again. And maybe in that release, the Covet They Neighbours Ass clause will be replaced with Thou Shalt Not Immitate Thy Maker.
Who says God can't learn from His mistakes?
There is a parable in the Bible, about a landlord who gave three servants an equal amount of wealth before going away. The first servant spent the money, the second burried it to keep it safe, and the third invested it and made more in the process.
The lesson is about investing one's gifts and talents for the greater glory of God. IMHO, (as humble as I can be - just in case) god is probably pretty damn proud of how we're doing with these neat little minds of ours.
Now, if we can just have enough self-restraint to not turn our creations on each other one more time... I'm sure God doesn't like it when his children fight. I hope we will use this to help one another. I hope we use this as another stepping stone out of the crib. Let's go terraform Mars.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Question: Why does a dog lick his balls?
Answer: Because he can.
As much as all of this genetic engineering stuff scares the shit out of me, it's inevitable. The Genie's (Jini's?) out of the bottle and there's no putting him back.
It's admirable that these scientists are trying to be thoughtful about the implications of their research, but if they don't do it, sooner or later somebody else will. Better that this is done by people with good intentions than by some rogue government project.
"There is no God but man". So sez Liber OZ- anyone who knows what I'm talking about could be more than informative. With this knowledge in hand, it can be acknowledged that yes, a second opinion IS important. But asking a christist "authority" is kind of pointless, when you consider the rich historical background on the subject (little of which survived the Dark Ages) from an objective standpoint. The sheepherders are not going to want to dissuade the blind devotion of their flock, now are they?
Morality and religion are completely different things- one can be "moral" without being "religious" about it- I've taken more shit from Christians for not being one than I have from Agnostics or Atheists (for not being one)- so whom do you think I keep for company? I think that those who need to be consulted are objective authorities on the subject- and when Christianity and their "sanctity of life" delusions are involved, objectivity becomes a tainted and invalid concept.
From reading biology-related stories on Slashdot and their attedant comments, I feel that there is this notion that all we need is the genetic information, and the rest will follow. But I think that the nature of life does not rest in nucleic acids, but in the unique self-assembling properties of certain organic compounds, much of which we know little about.
While I'm not saying that what these scientists propose to do is impossible, I really think that it is in the league of trying to figure out faster-than-light starflight. At least, if they are really intending to create life de novo, from a naked, chemically synthesized chromosome. For one thing, they will need to figure out a way to make incredibly long strands of DNA. Even if every single one of these critical genes were only 500bp long, this minimal genome would still require 150kbp, magnitudes of order longer than our current techniques can manage. But that would be the least of the difficulties. So far, we haven't gotten DNA to replicate itself without proteins. And, at least in existing organisms, you can't generate proteins without having pre-existing proteins. A classic chicken-and-egg problem. Add to this the fact that you can't have any metabolism anyway if you don't have a proper phospholipid bilayer, which also requires the presence of proteins to maintain the required internal environment, and it turns out to be quite a formidable task.
But if all these scientists are going to do is take these minimal genes out and resplice them into an optimized chromosome, suck out the DNA of an existing bacterium and plug-in their custom module, utilizing the existing replication, transcription, and translation machinery, can we really say this is creating life? Then this becomes no different from in-vitro fertilization and only a little more difficult than simply having sex.
I'm not Christian, but here it is: "Let them (humans) have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the Earth." (Genesis, 1:24) That was God talking there, saying Man shall have control over all the life on Earth. Not only does He not think that it's not ethical, He commanded that we should have control over the rest of life. And I would think that that would include studying it that we could make it ourself.
I think its more important to remeber the roots of science than who actually came up with what. i.e. The Atomic Bomb and curing cancer through exospure both have their origins in Nuclear Physics. Antibotics and chemical weapons - Biochemistry. I have always found that so much emphasis is put on who discovered what and what kind of person they were. Rather than the actual content of their work. Two cases come to find, both of which come from documentaries run by the BBC. The first one was about Einstein. The documentary spent most of its time talk about his personal life and how he wasn't a good husband, also it talked about his politcal views. This is all very well and good and it did give an insight into what he was thinking. But how much of it was dedicated to explaining what his work was about and what the implications of his work did. About 5%. Mind you this is better than the second one which was about Bletchy Park, used by the British Goverment during the WWII for code breaking. This was a four-part documentary about code-breaking and I was keen to watch it. What actually rambled on about was the personal lives of the people who worked there. When it came to talking about Alan Turing all they talked about was how he was a martar to the homosexual cause. It didn't discuss anything about why this man is considered to be one of the greatest computer scienctists who ever lived. I think its more important to remember the scientific content and not who came up with the idea. Don't get me wrong credit is due where it is deserved. Also on the mention of the invention of the Atomic Bomb lets have a closer analysis of what it has done. When the Atomic Bomb was invented America was at war with Japan. There were two alternatives. Use the bomb or continue a war that would have cost more lives on both sides. I think using the bomb was the better of the two. For one it ended the war very quickly and stopped it tragging out and costing more lives than the bomb took. Also it hammered the message home about how horrible war is and it has shown that we cannot afford to go to war as a species anymore. Basically it now acts as a basic understanding between even the most hated enemies in that actually going ahead using it is so terrible that one can only imagine. It acts as a lease. What does scary me is the person who has no care for life anymore and only wants to hurt. Or the person who believes so frantically in his religious belief that they must carry out apocoliptic prophecy that they are choicen to carry out these acts getting their hands on one of these devices. Basically anyone who is not afraid dieing doesn't give a damn that the rest of us want to live. Sorry for the off subject ramble. But the point remains science is science, and it doesn't matter who discovered what, in the end science is about the persute of truth and it will be the correct theory that will survive regardless of what people think about how rediculous it sounded when it was first discovered. How we apply our scientific knowledge as a race is matter of thought (poltics, debate, etc) and not science. Sorry for the ramble which is way off topic.
Where does all this Frankenstein shyte come from anyway? What the hell does Mary Shelley have to do with modern biological science?
Zip.
As far as I'm concerned, it's about as evil as my left toenail. And about as threatening as my cousin Ira - oh wait! I don't have a cousin Ira.
Bunch of weenies. Stop attending church and seek enlightenment. Which you won't find with your head up your Parson's Nose.