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Artificial Life - amazing breakthrough or one step too far?

When it gets to the point that they might as well be humans, I think man may have went to far. Watch Surrogates and you might know what I mean. That's when it has gone way too far.
 
donavannj said:
This sounds like the same thing we've been doing to plants and domesticated animals for centuries: genetic engineering (even if we call it "breeding" with animals and plants). This was just the next logical progression in the field.
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So true. I mean, we clone plants all the time, and genetically clone animals to create the best animals we can, and now we've managed to artificially create a single bacteria cell and people are getting geared up about it? It's a good thing! It's progression of our scientific acheivements! So calm down!

Creating a single-celled organism entirely synthetically is a huge step up. And yet, it's similar to genetically cloning a sheep to ensure the best genes get passed down. We've been doing that for years, since '96 (I believe) with Dolly the sheep, and yet now we can create life completely artificially, without the need for cell donors. How amazing is that? If you don't agree, I'm afraid you may have just missed the larger point there.
 
I wasn't specifically talking about cloning... I was referring to the fact that we've been breeding animals and plants for specific purposes for centuries, trying to get specific traits to become the norm. For instance, the different breeds of horses, dogs, and other domesticated animals. That's essentially genetic engineering.
 
donavannj said:
I wasn't specifically talking about cloning... I was referring to the fact that we've been breeding animals and plants for specific purposes for centuries, trying to get specific traits to become the norm. For instance, the different breeds of horses, dogs, and other domesticated animals. That's essentially genetic engineering.
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Of course. :D
The term can refer to both.
 
I'm against this. Sure, it's great that we're evolving, but it's for nothing. Why do we need to make artificial life? We're screwing with things that shouldn't be screwed with. Global Warming isn't that bad.

We need to focus on other things, like curing diseases rather than impending artificial life.
 
Pachy said:


I strongly disagree. Creating artificial life isn't 'Playing God'. 'Playing God' is if we were to create artificial and sentient life and then enslave it. 'Playing God' would be calling ourselves all powerful because we can create life.

It honestly annoys me whenever people demonize scientific advances such as this, they're so ignorant in doing so. Creating life, cloning animals and even humans is far from 'Playing God' in my opinion, we're never near the power that God Himself has.
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Agreed.

Furthermore, this technology cannot be used to create sentient life. If it ever does.. /shudder It better not. I't personally lead the revolution against THAT particular scientific movement.
 
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Guillermo said:
I'm against this. Sure, it's great that we're evolving, but it's for nothing. Why do we need to make artificial life? We're screwing with things that shouldn't be screwed with. Global Warming isn't that bad.

We need to focus on other things, like curing diseases rather than impending artificial life.
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To start with, I don't understand where you picked up the link to global warming from. :/

Secondly, as I said in my earlier post, an artificial bacteria, as has been created, could be manipulated and developed to a similar use as stem cells or vaccinations, namely curing diseases, providing much-needed organs and easing suffering for those who are in pain due to their medical conditions. These ARE the things these scientists are focussing on, and as such, this discovery is a good thing.
 
Yusshin said:
No different than the government assigning people to create viruses. Those are living entities, too >> programmed to do horrible things.

We are not creators. We are creations. Humans should stop trying to play God with their cloning and ****.
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If everyone thought so, we'd be in the middle age. I'm sorry to say.


That's so hard to work with genes, I strongly doubt it's as meaningful as they make it seem. If I am wrong it's so good, go deeply into it without concerning the "bio-terror" which is quite unlikely, it's not like there're countries nuking eachother all the time just because there's nuclear technology.
 
I spy a zombie invasion soon. >.> Quickly! To the Home Depot for barricading supplies!

But ,uh, in all seriousness I'm pretty sure the ending of all this is going to be pretty bad. Creating life and all that is good and all, but I'm pretty sure there are people out there already planning to use these things as weapons or something. That's why genetic engineering scares me so much, because although they are doing great things, but there are also multiple usings of such "great things", which can lead to a lot of trouble in the near future. But I'm paranoid, so that's just me.
 
This is a classic debate between scientists and theologians.

I'm personally 100% on the science side of this. Scientific advancement is a good thing, as people have said, it can lead to curing diseases. This particular example, of intaking carbon dioxide and excreting biofuel, is wonderfully inventive and I wish that guy all the luck in succeeding with it.

It actually kind of pisses me off when someone who knows nothing about the field or what is done in the laboratories comes out and says, "You can't do that! It's against my religion." Because, at the core of this, it is a religious debate. Sure, there are the ideas of bio-terror and things going horribly wrong, but that's what science does: poses problems and tries to solve them. You can not advance without risk, and who wants to live in a purified bubble?

As for ethics, I've always believed it stints scientific growth, because ethics are relative. It's unfair how scientists are demonized in movies and fiction (and in real life, for that matter!). Whenever some outbreak occurs, or some supernatural entity comes into our world (ala The Mist), it's always the scientist's fault. :P

We have a barrier between science and religion for a reason:
If the Vatican truly had its way, all us scientists would be burned at the stake.
 
Richard Lynch said:
We have a barrier between science and religion for a reason:
If the Vatican truly had its way, all us scientists would be burned at the stake.
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And then we'd still be dying from the Bubonic Plague because there were no smart people to tell us from doing the stuff that spreads it.

Quite honestly, I am very happy about this. I've become increasingly concerned about the environmental state of the world and the economic catastrophe that would ensue from the oil fields running dry, so hearing this is amazing.

And on the issue of God-mode, they undoubtedly worked extremely hard to bring these artificial bacteria to life. God, if I'm not mistaken, simply willed life to come about. Humans creating life through months upon months of work and millions of dollars poured into research over a period of 10-20 years ≠ God creating the world and all life in 6 days.
 
Pretty cool. We'll be seeing real Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh monsters next decade.

Although, the concept of this life being "artificial" is sort of debatable. The chemical makeup is exactly the same as anything alive. The only difference is that mankind forced the conditions to be right instead of naturally like such billions of years ago.

Then again, I can see the possibility of being able to create organisms. Very remarkable. People are calling this practice "playing god" because this does seem threatening to the concepts of religion and has way too many risks. But I am sure we can advance at a pace good enough for people.
 
We're hardly playing "God" with this breakthrough. We'll be playing God when we can create an entire universe from scratch. Of course, I'm sure we'll be able to do that too, eventually. ;)

This is inevitable, whether or not you think creating life is a good thing. I think the benefits far out weigh the risks. The benefits, of course, including production of extremely cheap biofuel, tailor-made cells to cure diseases, and other possibilities we have not even imagined yet. The downside is the possibility that such technology could be used to make incurable diseases or some other incredibly dangerous life form. But, like the atomic bomb, it would have happened eventually.
 
Richard Lynch said:
This is a classic debate between scientists and theologians.

I'm personally 100% on the science side of this. Scientific advancement is a good thing, as people have said, it can lead to curing diseases. This particular example, of intaking carbon dioxide and excreting biofuel, is wonderfully inventive and I wish that guy all the luck in succeeding with it.

It actually kind of pisses me off when someone who knows nothing about the field or what is done in the laboratories comes out and says, "You can't do that! It's against my religion." Because, at the core of this, it is a religious debate. Sure, there are the ideas of bio-terror and things going horribly wrong, but that's what science does: poses problems and tries to solve them. You can not advance without risk, and who wants to live in a purified bubble?

As for ethics, I've always believed it stints scientific growth, because ethics are relative. It's unfair how scientists are demonized in movies and fiction (and in real life, for that matter!). Whenever some outbreak occurs, or some supernatural entity comes into our world (ala The Mist), it's always the scientist's fault. :P

We have a barrier between science and religion for a reason:
If the Vatican truly had its way, all us scientists would be burned at the stake.
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It's not a matter of science vs. religion: it's a matter of science vs. morals. And morals aren't relative. Unlike in other areas, there aren't many groups with equal but different morals: there are groups that differ in the understanding of morals. From the way you put it, you're almost suggesting that there is no true right or wrong when you say, "ethics are relative."

You are correct when you say that religion shouldn't be able to influence science, but you are incorrect in thinking that, in order to think that this is immoral, you must be religiously biased. I do not find this moral at all, and it is hardly due to my religion. And so what if it is? What makes your beliefs (or lack thereof) superior to mine? There is no such thing as middle ground when it comes to this: if I find something against my religion, I'm sure as heck not going to compromise, even if it is due to my "inferior" religious beliefs. That'd be like letting a sacrifice cult, so long as the victims are willing, rise up just because you aren't allowed to say that's against your religion or set of morals. You obviously think it's immoral for religion to intervene in science: suppose in my opinion, it's ok. Are you going to compromise? Hopefully not.

Let's look at it from a couple different perspectives:
-There is a god or set of gods that have instructed that humans are holy, and they should not be created by man. Well, what's immoral is obvious here...

-There is not a god or set of gods that have instructed that humans are holy, nor they should not be created by man.

https://philosophy-in-la.tribe.net/thread/7c18422d-c3b1-4750-9bb2-b4f077f45a3f

This article is quite a read, but it is an excellent piece on the dehumanization of genetic engineering. Basically, what is the value of humanity? Are we here to serve ourselves and become the ultimate, perfect being? Otherwise, this science is something we should avoid.
 
Aureol said:
It's not a matter of science vs. religion: it's a matter of science vs. morals. And morals aren't relative. Unlike in other areas, there aren't many groups with equal but different morals: there are groups that differ in the understanding of morals. From the way you put it, you're almost suggesting that there is no true right or wrong when you say, "ethics are relative."
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You have to be kidding me. Of course morals are relative. And there isn't any true right and wrong. The only reason we have our concept of right and wrong that we have today is because they were defined by society, and hot wired into our brains through generations and generations of teaching the same things. It doesn't mean that what we believe to be right and wrong is absolute. The human race is such an arrogant species. We think that everything we think, or think we know, is absolutely right, and we refute anything else. But the whole of what I'm trying to say is that just because one, one million, or even every single person on this planet believes something to be true doesn't actually make it so. It may make to true to us, but we aren't the absolute truth holders.

Sorry for the off-topic...
 
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Yusshin said:
We are not creators. We are creations. Humans should stop trying to play God with their cloning and ****.
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As people have already said, I don't understand how this is playing God. If creating a bacteria by cloning the chromasomes of a natural bacteria then implanting it into a host cell is playing God, then you mustn't think to highly of God. Playing God would be taking over Mars and creating life forms that can live on it, giving them the ability to think, be self-aware and dream, then telling them that they must worship you. I think we can safely say we're a while away from that.

Now for the actual topic... I think this is amazing. I totally disagree with all the people who complain about it. Sure, it could fall into the wrong hands and we'd all die, but nucleur weapons are already in the wrong hands so really, I think if someone's gonna wipe out humanity they'll do it with bombs instead of taking the time to manufacture a particular bacteria etc.

As for the ethical side, so long as it's only creating bacteria at the minute, I don't see the problem at all. This is an amazing step in science, and it shows that we are forever learning new things - it was only around one hundred years ago that we even discovered the first bacteria, so for us to be able to create it now is amazing. I'm sure that it will be able to be used for many things, as they've said, it just might take a while for them to start using it.
 
One could argue that we are playing God, but the way I see it, we are playing with God's toys/tools, that were passed down to us. Much like a child playing with a hot surface, there isn't much we could do but burn ourselves and learn from that.

I think the people that whine about this being a bad thing really don't understand how difficult this is to do, and how monitored it is.
 
Magik?! said:
As people have already said, I don't understand how this is playing God. If creating a bacteria by cloning the chromasomes of a natural bacteria then implanting it into a host cell is playing God, then you mustn't think to highly of God. Playing God would be taking over Mars and creating life forms that can live on it, giving them the ability to think, be self-aware and dream, then telling them that they must worship you. I think we can safely say we're a while away from that.
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Aye chihuahua, with the "God demands you must worship" bit. But, I'm not getting into that now. You still have a point. There's not any problem with this particular breakthrough.

I don't see what's so controversial. The bacterium wasn't created from scratch, and I have a feeling they couldn't just do that to whatever microbe they come across. It was a very specific, probably very simple (comparatively) bacterium that they chose, and reconstructed the insides. They did not create life, they reconstructed extant life. Into another form of extant life, even! When they build their own bacteria from a bowl of swamp goo, It'll get iffy. Until then, no worries.
 
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