# Scientists engineered life. Darwin would be throwing the biggest party.



## NeedsNewNameNow

sprinkles said:


> I don't completely agree with that, even though it is a widely accepted idea. A selection implies established criteria, and I don't think evolution establishes criteria (because it isn't a consciousness, or even a thing it's a descriptor for past events) and a process implies an established procedure, which I also disagree with for the same reason.


The procedure is simple-- if a species can provide for its own needs, adapt and defend itself against preditors, it gets to reproduce and pass its genes onto the next generation. If not it dies out.



> Science is inherently biased against a higher intelligence.
> 
> 
> 
> No, not quite
Click to expand...

Really? So if a scientist was to formulate a hypotheses that explained something as the result of a higher intelligence, how serious would he/she be taken? 



> That's because if it is not repeatable, it probably _is_ an anomaly. There might always be exceptions and if we don't call anomalies for what they are, we'd get _nowhere_.


Right, it probably is an anomaly. But the actions of a higher intelligence would probably look like anomalies, escpecially if we don't know what that intelligence is supposed to look like. Which is why science isn't likely to spot one if it does exist. Or if they spot the effects of it, they would try to explain it with a naturistic theory.



> Something intelligent could always be smart enough to hide it's presence. That alone can cause an infinite regression problem, which is just _not useful_.
> 
> This is exactly why many don't tend to even bother. If you can't get proof, then you can't get it - you can only look for things you CAN get proof for. How many times have you attempted to jump to the moon lately? Probably none, you can't do it so it is pointless to attempt it, and would be silly to attempt it _repeatedly_.


Exactly-- that shows that there could be somethings that science has no way to know. There are plenty of things in science that aren't adequately understood. Still plenty of competing theories attempting to explain them.



> There is no ramming. And many won't entertain discussion of non-scientific alternatives on a scientific basis because honestly, there are better things to do - like figuring out things which might actually be _discovered_ rather than _speculated about_.


I've been on the internet long enough to notice that there are plenty of Darwinists whose zeal matches that of the most zealous religious. They proclaim to be all for science, inquiry, rational and critical thinking. But science is supposed to be dispassionate, and these people are anything but. As for critcal thinking... they resort to many often used logical fallacies in their 'arguments'. ad hominims, strawmen, etc. I
I suspect many aren't true scientists, but have adapted science as their belief system. They seem to be driven by the same fears that drive the religious.. their 'right-thinking' is threatened by the 'wrong-thinking' of others, so they need to attack religious and pseudoscience concepts whenever they come up. -- That's what I mean by ramming. 
They think they are spreading the message of science-- but what they don't realize is when attacking other's belief systems, they are driving a wedge and driving people from their positions. So they really aren't serving their cause. (same is true of the religious fundies that do the same)


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## RedDeath9

I think we've gone horrifyingly off-topic...


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## sprinkles

unleashthehounds said:


> The procedure is simple-- if a species can provide for its own needs, adapt and defend itself against preditors, it gets to reproduce and pass its genes onto the next generation. If not it dies out.
> 
> Really? So if a scientist was to formulate a hypotheses that explained something as the result of a higher intelligence, how serious would he/she be taken?
> 
> Right, it probably is an anomaly. But the actions of a higher intelligence would probably look like anomalies, escpecially if we don't know what that intelligence is supposed to look like. Which is why science isn't likely to spot one if it does exist. Or if they spot the effects of it, they would try to explain it with a naturistic theory.
> 
> Exactly-- that shows that there could be somethings that science has no way to know. There are plenty of things in science that aren't adequately understood. Still plenty of competing theories attempting to explain them.
> 
> I've been on the internet long enough to notice that there are plenty of Darwinists whose zeal matches that of the most zealous religious. They proclaim to be all for science, inquiry, rational and critical thinking. But science is supposed to be dispassionate, and these people are anything but. As for critcal thinking... they resort to many often used logical fallacies in their 'arguments'. ad hominims, strawmen, etc. I
> I suspect many aren't true scientists, but have adapted science as their belief system. They seem to be driven by the same fears that drive the religious.. their 'right-thinking' is threatened by the 'wrong-thinking' of others, so they need to attack religious and pseudoscience concepts whenever they come up. -- That's what I mean by ramming.
> They think they are spreading the message of science-- but what they don't realize is when attacking other's belief systems, they are driving a wedge and driving people from their positions. So they really aren't serving their cause. (same is true of the religious fundies that do the same)


Well yeah. Science =/= misguided Darwinists. My entire point is, there is no need to take sides, but at the same time this is a _serious matter_ and not a popularity contest. Scientists fight among _themselves_ over nebulous and dubious assertions that don't even have anything to do with religion/creation, as it is. It ticks me off because I see it as like a group of adults having an argument or discussion and the little kid comes along and interrupts with what they think is a new idea but has already been gone over a bajillion million times.

There's ONE Genesis account which some people try to push against not just 'evolution' (which is a straw man) but DOZENS of variant theories and philosophies. And if you want to talk about broad creation possibilities... well those are pretty much endless and only limited by imagination (which some people seem to lack, unfortunately)

And I think it's more about "method" vs "no method", though some times right and wrong thinking can come into play also. And attacking poor reasoning is not attacking the belief - anyone who posits their belief is going to fall under the same scrutiny as if it were a different belief about photons or whatever. It has nothing to do with a god prejudice (or shouldn't, anyway) so there is no reason to think that "the poor creationists/christians" are getting picked on and side with them out of sympathy, because that is just unfair and is part of what a lot of people are fighting against.

I don't go for the divine exemption bit. If you are positing it, you support it in the same way you support something that isn't divine. I don't care, it isn't a special case any more than the idea of an eleven-dimensional universe.


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## timeless

It seems like they didn't invent this RNA. It's hard to tell from the article because it seems like the only data I can find on the web about this is simply this article reposted. Even if they did create RNA, RNA is not alive.


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## sprinkles

timeless said:


> It seems like they didn't invent this RNA. It's hard to tell from the article because it seems like the only data I can find on the web about this is simply this article reposted. Even if they did create RNA, RNA is not alive.


DNA is not alive either but is important to the formation of things which are alive.


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## timeless

sprinkles said:


> DNA is not alive either but is important to the formation of things which are alive.


Lettuce is important to the formation of a tuna sub, but I'm not going to pay $5 for it at Subway. I was only taking issue with the title of the thread.


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## sprinkles

timeless said:


> Lettuce is important to the formation of a tuna sub, but I'm not going to pay $5 for it at Subway. I was only taking issue with the title of the thread.


Sorry about that... I'm not sure how I didn't even notice that. :bored:


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## Kevinaswell

So are denying this as a genuine form of life?

So how would you define life, then? In such a manner that differs from what they accomplished here?

???


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## timeless

Kevinaswell said:


> So are denying this as a genuine form of life?
> 
> So how would you define life, then? In such a manner that differs from what they accomplished here?
> 
> ???


It doesn't seem like there's a settled definition of what exactly constitutes life, but it seems to be a consensus in the scientific community that life does not include RNA or viruses.

This is how it was taught to me in college, but if you google "is RNA alive" (or stuff like that) you'll find many sources basically saying that it is not.


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## NotSoRighteousRob

eh hold inhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis


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## NotSoRighteousRob

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.400-did-life-begin-in-a-pool-of-acidic-gloop.htmlCREATING life in the primordial soup may have been easier than we thought. Two essential elements of RNA have finally been made from scratch, under conditions similar to those that likely prevailed during the dawn of life.

The question of how a molecule capable of storing genetic information - even DNA's simpler cousin RNA - could ever have arisen spontaneously in the primordial cooking pot has perplexed scientists for decades. RNA consists of a long chain composed of four different types of ribonucleotides, which each consist of a nitrogenous base, a sugar and a phosphate.

Most people assumed that these three components first formed separately, and then combined to make the ribonucleotides. The only trouble was that it seemed impossible that two of the four bases with particularly unwieldy chemistry ever reacted spontaneously with the sugar.

To tackle this problem, John Sutherland from the University of Manchester, UK, tried to work out a new recipe for RNA that gets by without forcing isolated bases and sugar molecules to react. His team experimented by cooking up ribonucleotides from five small molecules thought to be present in the primordial soup. "We started with the same building blocks as others, but take a different route," Sutherland says.

And this time the cooks seem to have got it right. The recipe and conditions that they came up with to mix the five ingredients - including a good blast of UV light - produce ribonucleotides via a joint precursor molecule that contains both the base and the sugar instead of making each in their free form
...
"We don't use any way-out scenarios - all the conditions are consistent with what we know about early Earth," says Sutherland. William Scott, from the University of California in Santa Cruz agrees: "It's a great leap forward that demonstrates how prebiotic RNA molecules may have assembled spontaneously from simple and presumably relatively abundant constituents."



Molecule of life emerges from laboratory slime - life - 13 May 2009 - New Scientist


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## amanda32

RighteousRob said:


> CREATING life in the primordial soup may have been easier than we thought. Two essential elements of RNA have finally been made from scratch, under conditions similar to those that likely prevailed during the dawn of life.
> The question of how a molecule capable of storing genetic information - even DNA's simpler cousin RNA - could ever have arisen spontaneously in the primordial cooking pot has perplexed scientists for decades. RNA consists of a long chain composed of four different types of ribonucleotides, which each consist of a nitrogenous base, a sugar and a phosphate.
> Most people assumed that these three components first formed separately, and then combined to make the ribonucleotides. The only trouble was that it seemed impossible that two of the four bases with particularly unwieldy chemistry ever reacted spontaneously with the sugar.
> To tackle this problem, John Sutherland from the University of ...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Molecule of life emerges from laboratory slime - life - 13 May 2009 - New Scientist


I clicked on the link for the article but it doesn't give anymore information unless you subscribe.
I don't think it's intellectually fair to post something that makes such an assertion without providing the full article.


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## NotSoRighteousRob

I grabbed as much as the article I could find elsewhere. I suppose if your looking for detailed reports of their experiments it would be rather hard to get a hold of them. Still it seems to be a rather well known article, I haven't found any challenging debates against it yet.


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## amanda32

RighteousRob said:


> I grabbed as much as the article I could find elsewhere. I suppose if your looking for detailed reports of their experiments it would be rather hard to get a hold of them. Still it seems to be a rather well known article, I haven't found any challenging debates against it yet.


I know you tried, but it bothers me that I can't read it.


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## timeless

RighteousRob said:


> CREATING life in the primordial soup may have been easier than we thought. Two essential elements of RNA have finally been made from scratch, under conditions similar to those that likely prevailed during the dawn of life.http://www.newscientist.com/article...le-of-life-emerges-from-laboratory-slime.html


So they made two elements of RNA, not RNA itself. That's even further removed from the definition of life.


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## Lucem

I wonder if we'll ever be able to create life. As in real multicellular lifeforms.


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## NotSoRighteousRob

i'm staying out of this, nevermind


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## thewindlistens

Why the hell do I even enter these threads? They just give me a headache.

Also, why did this trend just spring out of nowhere on this forum? Is it really all just because of some troll pretending to be a creationist a few days ago? Really?


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## SherylLynn

In order for a scientist to create life, they would need to start from nothing - and I mean NOTHING already created. That isn't possible, and nature itself testifies = God gets the credit.


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## Lucretius

SherylLynn said:


> In order for a scientist to create life, they would need to start from nothing - and I mean NOTHING already created. That isn't possible, and nature itself testifies = God gets the credit.


This is unprecedented fatuity.


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## SherylLynn

Azrael said:


> This is unprecedented fatuity.


Taking something that someone else created and saying you did it from scratch is the only fatuity here. Get your own dirt


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## sprinkles

SherylLynn said:


> In order for a scientist to create life, they would need to start from nothing - and I mean NOTHING already created. That isn't possible, and nature itself testifies = God gets the credit.


It's not about creating life, aside from a bit of misnomer in the thread title.

It's about discovering fundamental and invariable properties of biochemistry. If it is discovered that in a given scenario, molecules will always act in a particular way, and this action results in lifelike behaviors and possibly spontaneous genesis of life forms, and we can deduce when and how this scenario happens, then we could potentially bring the probability of abiogenesis type theories closer to 1. That still doesn't 'rule out' creation... for those so inclined... but people wouldn't be able to keep yelling about how impossible it is.


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## Lucretius

SherylLynn said:


> Taking something that someone else created and saying you did it from scratch is the only fatuity here. Get your own dirt


I'm sorry, but this is just nonsense.
Essentially, you have equated a purely speculative conjuring _ex nihilo_ trick to the human conception of "creation," which is actually a transmutation of existing materials.
Then, after doing so (to dub the former "creation" also), you draw attention back to the distinction you initially pretended wasn't there.

Contradiction much?


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## SherylLynn

sprinkles said:


> It's not about creating life, aside from a bit of misnomer in the thread title.
> 
> It's about discovering fundamental and invariable properties of biochemistry. If it is discovered that in a given scenario, molecules will always act in a particular way, and this action results in lifelike behaviors and possibly spontaneous genesis of life forms, and we can deduce when and how this scenario happens, then we could potentially bring the probability of abiogenesis type theories closer to 1. That still doesn't 'rule out' creation... for those so inclined... but people wouldn't be able to keep yelling about how impossible it is.


It isn't a misnomer, it is an often made statement and it always goes back to creation/God. That said, you are wrong, with nanotechnogy you can reorder and manipulate molecules down to the cellular level.

Edited to add: molecular, cellular or atomic scale, sorry!


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## obz900

Azrael said:


> Haha! :laughing:
> 
> I love it. For as long as scientists cannot create life, creationists will be shouting *"life cannot come from non-life!"* and claiming that "the breath of life" is divine.
> As soon as scientists _can _create life, they'll just faithfully switch to *"but the experiment required intelligence!"*
> 
> Are any of you familiar with the term "unfalsifiable?"
> 
> This is why your religious presumptions will never make it into the scientific community.


Are these (the bolded items) not the same thing?


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## sprinkles

SherylLynn said:


> It isn't a misnomer, it is an often made statement and it always goes back to creation/God. That said, you are wrong, with nanotechnogy you can reorder and manipulate molecules down to the cellular level.
> 
> Edited to add: molecular, cellular or atomic scale, sorry!


In the sense that a title is like a name for a thread, yes it is a misnomer. You take is as a statement - I do not.
Simple.

And what exactly am I wrong about? What does nanotechnology have to do with anything? All I said in the simplest terms was "We want to know why this thing does this other thing." You're saying I'm wrong? On what basis...?


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## SherylLynn

sprinkles said:


> In the sense that a title is like a name for a thread, yes it is a misnomer. You take is as a statement - I do not.
> Simple.
> 
> And what exactly am I wrong about? What does nanotechnology have to do with anything? All I said in the simplest terms was "We want to know why this thing does this other thing." You're saying I'm wrong? On what basis...?


I do not understand your reasoning on the former, but regarding my comment that you are incorrect, you said "molecules will always act in a particular way" and that is wrong...the whole point of nanotechnology is manipulating molecules lol!


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## sprinkles

SherylLynn said:


> I do not understand your reasoning on the former, but regarding my comment that you are incorrect, you said "molecules will always act in a particular way" and that is wrong...the whole point of nanotechnology is manipulating molecules lol!


In a given scenario. LOL.

Way to go out of context. lol.

:dry:

Edit: Oh. Forgot the 'if' too.


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## Lucretius

obz900 said:


> Are these (the bolded items) not the same thing?


They are very different.
The former asserts a divine quality to life, and claims that under no circumstances can life be formed from non-life without God's help.
The latter only claims that complexity requires intelligence, which is obviously much more vague and equivocal.


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## sprinkles

Azrael said:


> They are very different.
> The former asserts ... quality to life, and claims that under no circumstances can life be formed from non-life. [period]


:crazy:

I say this because (based on this assertion):

[]L = Life exists.
[]A = Life always existed
([](L <=> A) => []~(L <=> ~A)) Implies that life which did not always exist, does not exist
[]L <=> ([](G|A) & [](G => A)) implies that God must be alive (if he exists) because life cannot come from non-life, and also implies that life could have always existed on its own because life must always have existed. If God had no beginning and God is alive, then life existing by itself is also possible.

[]L => []A => ([](L <=> A) => []~(L <=> ~A)) & []L <=> ([](G|A) & [](G => A))

I'm just messing around and I'm probably way off on syntax, but my syntax evaluator flags it as valid. :tongue:


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## DarklyValentine

ah, RNA Ribo withchie ma call it...ribena for short, is most delicious; actually between that purple pertitide and diet coke dunno what iam most addicted too 
Its the silk cut wicked those silver ones man up...beats chest

I have gleaned over the research, with my one good een (eye)

makes sense, besides there always this bizarre assumption that everything everywhere has to develops sensibly (unlike wicked)..and thingies like normal and logical are wordage used...which is why I like to beat that lot about the head with a thick dictionary...or a bible

Evolution, whether leaps and bounds, or if you say by mutation is not an abnormal occurrence...but neat as you say someone kevin.

although i dont necessary disagree with sprinkles first para


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## Lucem

wickeddesires said:


> ah, RNA Ribo withchie ma call it...ribena for short, is most delicious; actually between that purple pertitide and diet coke dunno what iam most addicted too
> Its the silk cut wicked those silver ones man up...beats chest
> 
> I have gleaned over the research, with my one good een (eye)
> 
> makes sense, besides there always this bizarre assumption that everything everywhere has to develops sensibly (unlike wicked)..and thingies like normal and logical are wordage used...which is why I like to beat that lot about the head with a thick dictionary...or a bible
> 
> Evolution, whether leaps and bounds, or if you say by mutation is not an abnormal occurrence...but neat as you say someone kevin.
> 
> although i dont necessary disagree with sprinkles first para


ಠ_ಠ

wot?


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