http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_a...t/10132762.stm
Thoughts? In particular what do theists think about this?

Is that avatar artificial? Pretty sweet if it isn't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rKe8

Craig Venter creates synthetic life form


"Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history, potentially peeking into its destiny. He is not merely copying life artificially ... or modifying it radically by genetic engineering. He is going towards the role of a god: creating artificial life that could never have existed naturally."

I think Jib said he would stop believing if we created life on our own. I'm not sure Venter's creation qualifies (maybe it does) but isn't this getting somewhat close?

That is awesome.

Nah, god just slips in 2 drops of "essence of life" at just the right moment.

until this happens naturally on its own, no theist is going to care.

Why

If this Venter guy can create life dose'nt that make it more likely not less that a more advanced god character could have created us?

It was never in doubt that a god character could have.
Venter is just a guy like me ... only way smarter, so at the least it allows the ad to say "gods are overqualified, do not apply."

this makes "god" less necessary and the possibility that life on earth began somewhere else (panspermia?) as a science experiment of another species a tiny bit more feasible.

lol

sorry, did your religion or holy book state that "god" was actually an alien life form from millions of years ago? You don't just get to call anything you want god. You could say "god is everything" and then even if a cosmic snickers wrapper created life on earth then you would still technically be right because your definition was so vague that it included every possibility there was.

Everyone on RGT knows that there is no theist ever in the history of this forum that meant "alien life form from years ago" when they said the word "god". They largely meant the christian god. Two very different things.

lol

We care because we love science. We just think it tends to prove ID rather than disprove it, not unlike AI. From what RTB has said about Venter's work, it is a massively complex undertaking, requiring the best and brightest in several different fields. About the direct opposite of "accident".

And what does it tell you that most of those people are non-believers?

how do you get less necessary than not necessary?

That you like red herrings.

You pointing out that that's a red herring is itself a red herring

boy this is fun, I really feel like we're getting somewhere!

Once the process is refined, I see no reason why this technique couldn't be used to synthesize a human cell from a sequenced human genome. Then already feasible cloning technology could be used to create a viable embryo, which could be carried to term in a surrogate.

A question to the theists here: If such a being were created this way, what would, theologically speaking, it's "status" be? By that I mean would he/she have a "soul" and be eligible to be saved? If so, does that mean scientists are capable to synthesize souls? Or would god infuse the person with a soul at some point in the lab process? Or rather would such a person appear human in every way but have no soul (and no afterlife)?

If you think such a synthesized person would have a soul, what would happen if the scientists started modifying the genome to synthesize organisms which are increasingly different from humans? Would god at some point decide a particular variation wasn't "sufficiently" human, and not give him/her/it a soul, or what?

requiring the best and brightest in several different fields to do in several years, what took nature a couple billion.

What's the Moore's law equivalent when it comes to science?

the number of species created doubles every couple of years?

All they've done so far is copy nature at a fairly low level. And what they've copied probably only took a few million years, if that.

Edit: Which again, just continues to prove ID.

No, it doesn't prove ID.

In no way, shape or form does this prove ID - wtf?

Just a question for clarification: the genome was synthesized and introduced into a natural cell from which natural genetic material had been removed?