The jpm reply was quite offhand with the joke about the back of the refrigerator. It also consisted of just the one word no in response to my two specific questions. Although in a very narrow sense I guess that you could say jpm answered my questions, it didn’t strike me as a serious response.
Since jpm just provided a link to a page that had a number of articles by Dennis, rather than there being a reply by Dennis in this thread, isn’t it a bit of a stretch to say that Dennis or several people answered my question?
Actually I really was expecting a more detailed reply–not just someone saying yes, or no.
I’m not sure where you are going with the “raised life from the dead” comment, which is not related to my original questions. Could you help me understand what you intended by it?
Do you have any suggestions about other web sites where I might possibly get responses that are more detailed and illuminating?
Given A and B are both Nobel Prize worthy and the fact that no such Nobel Prize has yet been awarded I think the simple answer of no is correct. Of course the assumption you are making is that someone is actually trying to create life in this manner and that may not be true.
If you disassembled a cell, the smallest unit of life, you would kill it. If you reassembled it and it was viable to reproduce, you would have to bring it back to life. Right?
No. Honestly your questions were kind of like asking “Have we discovered life on other planets yet?”
People can joke about Star Wars and point out we have discovered water on Mars and discuss whether or not they believe it is theoretically possible that someday life may be discovered on other planets, but at the end of the day, the answer is a really easy no.
If you then come back and say, “Well, where can I find a more detailed discussion and more illuminating information about the discovery of life on other planets?” it would be kind of confusing. How can someone be more detailed or illuminating about a non-event? If you were able to find a website that offered such information, it would probably be run by wing-nuts.
Sorry if you have felt you have been given a brush-off here, but if your question was an honest question and not baiting for some other purpose, then I am surprised. It seems obvious to me that if humans had succeeded in coming anywhere near creating life in a lab, everyone would have heard about it.
I’m not assuming that anyone is really trying to create life in a laboratory. On the other hand, it would be a great way to draw attention to findings of origin-of-life research that made it possible to do so. Not to mention that your indication of the possibility of getting a Nobel prize would be great incentive to try to accomplish that.
OK now I see the connection. I was visualizing the problem as an assembly process rather than a resurrection. In most cases when someone uses the word resurrection, she is not talking about a molecule by molecule fabrication activity.
But don’t you think “creating life” involves quite a bit more than simply assembling the right parts? Resurrection is a kind of miracle. I think bringing something from non-life to life is a kind of miracle, definitely something more than the right equation or series of steps.
That appears to be a poor analogy. Finding something complicated that already exists in a remote location is quite different from creating it from scratch or reverse-engineering it where you are.
There’s a famous Sherlock Holmes story about a very illuminating non-event–a dog that didn’t bark.
There are a number of examples in the history of science where people were ridiculed by their peers for new theories that eventually superseded the existing paradigm. The “wing-nuts” pejorative does not strike me as promoting “gracious dialogue about science and faith.”
Socrates asked a lot of questions too. Are you suggesting that my questions may have been dishonest or baiting (sounds uncharitable), or motivated by some agenda other than dialog and understanding?
So we’re all in agreement that humans have not succeeded in creating life in a lab by reverse-engineering, or even assembling living cells from components. Which leads into the next question–then how could it have happened by undirected natural processes lacking all the advantages of knowledge and technology that humans bring to task?
Ralph, I didn’t even have a thought that you were baiting … until you started peppering one of the Admin’s with questions like this …
I don’t know anybody on this list that thinks someone has invented life in a laboratory. Are you here to teach something ? Because your methodology of questioning is the kind of methodology that instructors frequently use.
Sorry if my answer to your original question was sort of flippant, though technically correct. This forum is not always as receptive to humor as some others I frequent. In fairness, my suspicion was that the question was not entirely sincere, but rather was posed to lead down a certain path
This is an interesting bunch around here, with some OCDish science types, some rather dour theologic types, and then some of us in between whose main asset is ignorance.
Your second question does get the heart of the matter. I claim ignorance, outside of believing that God’s hand was in it. I do not agree with some who think that life was inevitable,and the universe is teaming with life… I think it was very, very difficult. I sort of even harbor the idea that the odds of life arising is so small, that a universe, or ar least a galaxy sized bunch of stars is needed to produce one that will give rise to life. Did God miraculously wiggle molecules into place, or did he provide the conditions needed for it to happen? I do not know. What do you think?
I was responding to replies by an Admin to my posts, George. By the way, the word “peppering” has somewhat negative connotations. Are you suggesting I was doing something undesirable or inappropriate? And if people don’t want to be questioned, they don’t have to respond to my posts.
As I understand it, the purpose of a dialog is to promote learning on a bi-directional basis. So in that spirit you might say I’m here to be taught and to teach. Is there something wrong with that?
For what it’s worth, I taught in a university for 15 years. I wasn’t an outstanding instructor but I worked very hard at it.
Since you are interested in learning, I should share with you an observation.
Your commentary is unusually infused with questions revealing an inner concern that you feel you are being judged - - a line of questioning you pursue even if the other person may not have had any intention of judging you. My immediate reaction, you see, was that you were being a little abrupt with a very nice person, @Christy.
Now here is where it gets interesting. In the process of asking questions like this, have you considered the possibility that you may be, in fact, triggering the very reactions of opposition or annoyance?
Let’s look at our own little conversation as yet another example of what I’m describing. In my attempt to show you that what you ask people may create the very negative vibrations you seek to avoid, you answered me with a question with a seemingly obvious answer: “Are you suggesting I was doing something undesirable?” Well, yes, Ralph, that is actually what I was trying to suggest.
But rather than offer assurances in response to the higher message, you deflect the whole point of my communication by ignoring the message. And, instead, you essentially say that people don’t have to talk with you if they don’t want to.
Wow. You win. Hands down.
Now that you know that no scientist has created life in a laboratory, what else would you like to learn more about?
Well at least now we know your agenda. And you can’t say we haven’t succeeded in doing something that was never attempted. Even you agree people aren’t trying to create life in the lab. So there is no failure to get you to your next question.
The point of similarity of the analogy was the unlikeliness and general newsworthiness of an event that has not happened.
Sure, but we are talking about science, not fiction. While non-events may have their role in narratives, they are awfully hard to study empirically.
Sorry if it was offensive. No one I know of in this conversation has a website purporting to know details about creating life in a lab. My knee-jerk reaction to anyone claiming to have special insight into the process of life creation would be similar to the reaction to someone claiming to have contact with aliens. I would assume they are not operating within the realm of current science.
That was my first inclination, though I am quite happy to stand corrected. Lots of people hate this organization (atheists because we’re Christian, Christians because we are allegedly tools of Satan), so unfortunately plenty of people are more interested in somehow tripping other people up and saying “Gotcha! I knew you were a heretic/Bible-thumping fundie/godless liberal/hypocrite/etc.” than in dialogue and understanding. I may be a little jaded. Sorry.
Yes.
Good question. That might stimulate more discussion than your first two.
ETA: And for the record, @gbrooks9, I didn’t feel like RDW was peppering me with questions or being abrupt at all. No need to go all nuclear on his communication style. It’s all good.
It’s my personal conviction that life did not just “happen” by undirected natural processes. And even if it were shown that life could have emerged via natural processes, I would still believe it was God who ultimately initiated, sustained, guided, and directed those processes to achieve his good purposes.
I don’t see how the agreement leads to the next question. The answer is simple–time, variation, and selection is how it could have happened, none of which are negated by the lack of creation of life in a lab.
Are you aware that humans use variation and selection to solve thorny computer programming issues?
So I think it will be helpful if you can define this phrase a bit (since, I’ve discovered, people use it in many different ways). Specifically, I’m interested in what “directed natural process” is, since you are contrasting it to an “undirected” natural process. Can you name a directed natural process? What do you mean by “directed” or “undirected”? Furthermore, if God is sovereign over creation (which I don’t know if you claim yourself, but I do), how would we, as created things, know definitively that a certain process is “undirected”? Aren’t all natural processes his creation? Therefore, if a natural process “creates” something, doesn’t that still reflect God’s wisdom and power?
It’s all good.