Life Created from Scratch

by bboyneko 18 Replies latest jw friends

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  bboyneko

  Researchers in New York have created infectious polioviruses from ordinary, inert chemicals they obtained from a scientific mail-order house, marking the first time a functional virus has been made from scratch and raising a host of new scientific and ethical concerns.

  "This shows it's now possible to go from data printed on a piece of paper or stored in a computer and, without the organism itself. . . . reconstruct a life form," said John La Montagne, deputy director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58070-2002Jul11.html
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  gsx1138

  Ahhhh, my theory of evolution and life comes closer to validity. Mwahahaha, now to plan my take over of the world.

  gsx1138
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  Francois

  Um, as much as I like stuff that supports evolution, to be honest, guys, viruses have always been a problem for scientists. As in, fitting them into the definition of life, of being alive. And that little infinite do-loop has been making the rounds for as long as we've known about viruses.

  So. Don't be too giddy about this announcement. It's likely to come down to an argument about definition of terms before it's over. It always does. Remember the argument between psychologists and practitioners of Social, um, Science about whether or not a true feral child has ever existed? That boiled down to an argument over definition of terms as well. Never settled, either. I vote with the psychologists, btw.

  Francois
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  Xander

  The reason it is interesting news is, although a virus can be argued to be 'living' or not - the same principles used to create a virus can be used to create an RNA, then DNA strand (errant RNA is pretty much all a virus is).

  And we all know what you can do with DNA, right?

  It IS big news, no doubt...

  Although, of course, the 'ethical concerns' they mention (what a fascinating euphanism) could be horrific. You think biological warfare is bad NOW....
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  gsx1138

  Damn you Francois. You'll not interfere with my plans. Very soon I'll be breeding sharks with laser beams on their heads and the world will be sorry. Your life will be spared though Francois because you took the Psychologists side.

  gsx1138

  by the way does my signature show up or is it a red X?
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  ThiChi

  Wow, everything still seems to need a creator. Where did the chemicals come from to create the virus? Fair questions for free thinkers.
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  Xander

  Chemicals came from atoms. Atoms are made up of subatomic particles.

  Where did the subatomic particles come from?

  Well, we know that E=mc2, and we have verified that using this formula we can generate a LOT of energy by converting matter to energy.

  Wouldn't be too hard for an enormous point of energy to form matter then, would it. Say, a Big Bang of energy?

  Just a thought.
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  ThiChi

  I agree with Einstein, "I cannot believe God would play dice with the universe."

  A "Big Bang" of energy from where? (or from what).

  Edited by - thichi on 12 July 2002 13:27:55
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  funkyderek

  A "Big Bang" of energy from where? (or from what).

  From God, of course. Based on your posts here, I can guess what your response is going to be: Where did this "god" come from? Unfortunately, that's a much more difficult question as whatever probability there is that elementary particles defined by very simple rules could come into existence by chance, it's vastly more improbable that something like a god could just pop into existence, so by postulating a god, you have to believe one of three things:

  1. God always existed. It is, of course, much simpler and more elegant to accept that the simple laws that we know to exist have always existed, as they require far less explanation than something as complicated as a god.

  2. God came into existence by chance. Again, this leads to many more complicated questions than just accepting that the universe came into existence by chance.

  3. God was created. This is really the only way to explain the existence of a god. This means there must have been a "super-God" who created God. This inevitably leads to the question: "Where did super-God come from?" To answer this, replace the word "god" with "super-god" in the above three items and repeat as needed.
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  julien

  1. Suppose the universe is running on a massive computer (Matrix style) beyond our ability to comprehend (think of an amoeba compared to the universe).
  2. Would we really be able to detect that this is the case? I don't think so.
  3. Now suppose instead of a massive computer it is just some immortal entity with lots of time working out all the computations using sticks and twigs and writing in the sand on an very large desert. Our universe would exist only by his computations of its state. For each unit of planck time this person would compute the action of every quark in the universe. Of course it would take eons, but perhaps time has no meaning there.
  4. What if for each time unit the entire state of the universe could be recorded as a massively huge integer. (think about the giant computer again, and imagine concatenating all of it's memory bytes into one huge number)
  5. Further what if each of those 'state numbers' for every planck time unit of the lifetime of the universe was combined into an even more massive integer.
  6. Then could our entire existence be defined the existance of that massive integer? and since all integers presumably exist apart from our universe could it mean all possible universes also exist?

  Edited by - julien on 12 July 2002 14:10:12