Neil Armstrong

Scientists Create Life

The news is only days old but like a long awaited messenger, we have been expecting it with trepidation.

The answer to the question that man has been pondering for thousands of years is now in.

Like it or not and to hell with the consequences; Man has created life.

Okay, to be more accurate, scientists have created synthetic life in the lab.

But let’s not quibble over semantics because in the near future it won’t matter, we will have done both. J Craig Venter and his team have, to paraphrase those immortal words first spoken by Armstrong, taken “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind?”

But do we know where we leap? Or are we jumping with our eyes closed and hoping for the best?

Craig Venter on Creating Synthetic Life

What the Ancient Greeks Thought About “Life”

Since the days of Aristotle, scientists, philosophers, and theologians have debated the question, which I will state as: “Is Life a gift from God or merely a mixture of chemical components that ultimately unravel or stop working leading to a condition we call, death?”

The early philosophers thought our “soul” was “Life” which left our body when we died. The Greek word is derived from the verb “to cool, to blow” and refers to their concept that in humans and other animals, life was some form of “vital breath”, or “animating force” that some how entered our body at birth.

Henri Bergson’s Élan vital

Henri Bergson coined another term for that vital force that distinguishes the living from the dead; he called it “Élan vital”. In his 1907 book, Creative Evolution, Bergson closely linked Élan vital with consciousness. It was the existence of this vital force, which led people to believe that it was not possible to create organic molecules. In effect they believed man could not create life.

Scientists Create Synthetic Life in Lab

J Craig Venter

Now a little over 100 years later, Dr. Craig Venter’s team has taken an Armstrong like step toward proving them wrong. They have created artificial life by transplanting computer-designed genetic DNA into a bacteria cell to form a new strain of the bacteria. In effect they have created a computer virus that has resulted in a living organism.

While Bergson and his followers may be proved to be wrong, the ancient Greeks had numerous creation myths and perhaps some of these creation stories are more prescient than we realized, for example one ancient myth asserts that humans were created out of earth and water, aided by the Greek God, Prometheus, with his gift of fire.

Is Craig Venter a modern day Prometheus?

Was Prometheus some alien scientist and was his fire a Bunsen burner and are we the product of some computer programme – literally?”

This hypothesis may make an interesting topic of speculation but what is more likely is, that Venter’s experiment as well as that of other teams, such as the researchers at the Scripps Research Institute who in 2009, created molecules that self replicate and even evolve and compete, shows that given the right “environment” life could form spontaneously.

It might be a billion to one chance but the Scripps research hypothesized that “Some chemical reactions occurred about 4 billion years ago — perhaps in a primordial tidal soup or maybe with the help of volcanoes or possibly at the bottom of the sea or between the mica sheets — to create biology”. (see article in Live Science).

Is Man made in the Image of God?

Whichever way you look at it, this type of research will not only lead to new biochemical technology that could be used for good or bad but it will also re-open the age old questions regarding the origins and nature of life. This could have far deeper implications for man kind as he reassesses his place in the world as a creature not made in the image of God and with no moral superiority over other species.

In an article on eSTV we look at the mechanics of how scientists created life on a computer but in this article I want to ask the philosophical questions;

• What happens if scientists prove there is no God?
• What happens when scientists make human beings?
• How will that affect our self esteem?
• How will the loss of “God” or an after life affect the way people behave?

I Build You a Slave

The stated goals of the Venter project is to develop the ability to design microbes from scratch to perform functions ranging from converting carbon-dioxide into oil to cleaning up pollution and the manufacture of better vaccines.

We should note that they are the “Good” causes this technology can provide solutions for, but we all know that there is always another side to research. In this case it is the other uses governments will put it to such as biological weapons and changing the way species function to one day, creating new species of slaves to serve man and I don’t just mean smart microbes.

True, that may be a long way off but so was this result one hundred years ago and our scientific knowledge today is expanding at a rate at least equivalent to ten “20^th century years” every year.

DNA Molecule Graphic

The organism Venter’s team created has one million letters or bases of DNA code but how long will it take before they can piece together the 3 billion bases needed to produce a human (The human genome is made up of DNA, which has four different chemical building blocks. These are called bases and abbreviated A, T, C, and G. In the human genome, about 3 billion bases are arranged along the chromosomes in a particular order for each unique individual.) One thing this experiment reinforces is that nothing is impossible and time is relative.

Indeed, this work fans the debate over the bioethics which is heating up, as the Christian Science Monitor writes, due to “a broad trend in the physical and biological sciences – one that over the past several decades has evolved to give humanity the ability to manipulate inanimate, and now animate, matter at its most fundamental levels and in forms of uniquely human design”. (Pete Spotts, 20^th May 2010). As our ability to create life gets closer to realization, so understanding the ethics involved becomes more urgent.

Venter says his work could be seen as the “final word in favor of mechanistic reductionism” of organic life”. He says. “That’s the enormous significance of this work.” This is a reference to Hegel’s hypothesis of biological development from mechanism to chemism, chemism to teleology, and teleology to life.

A Catholic Priest Discusses the Moral Issues

Please Go to Part 2 for:

Is Craig Venter a God?

At What Point Do You Become God?

Is It Ethically Acceptable to Make A Slave?

Bad With God – What Will We Be Like Without God?