Man Has Officially played God

[Ultima22689]

The fundies are going to love this:   http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/ ... etic-life/


Man has created synthetic life from raw materials. Yeah, if God is real I bet he just got jealous or maybe proud we used our brains to be just like Daddy.

*puts on Ray Kurzweil hat and Bill Nye foam hand*


GO SCIENCE!!!

[curiosityandthecat]

I was going to post this today but got distracted.  

[Davin]

I was going to post this today but got distracted.  

No worries, it was already posted (though not exactly the same article) here by elliebean:
http://www.happyatheistforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4862&start=15#p66163

[theTwiz]

My mind is torn between three different replies, so I'll just list them out.

1. In before fundies say "$30 MILLION COULD HAVE VERB NOUN"

2. This experiment was an elaborate yet failed attempt to spoiler the movie Splice

and

3. I forgot.

[harriet_tubman]

i really shouldn't be in this forum because each time i enter one i get sucked in for a 100 hours and can't get out, they're very addictive.

in any case, after a two year period of sobriety from these forums i can't resist this is going to be good.  

i love this a lot of atheists think the fact that man has created life proves evolution, materialism, atheism, whatever, once and for all.  

how ridiculous.  hello, guess who made that life, a designer, a human, someone with a brain and a plan.

it's as if someone else created a plan, it crashed, and a human reverse engineered it from the remaining pieces.

[JillSwift]

i love this a lot of atheists think the fact that man has created life proves evolution, materialism, atheism, whatever, once and for all.

Anyone else smell straw?  

[curiosityandthecat]

i love this a lot of atheists think the fact that man has created life proves evolution, materialism, atheism, whatever, once and for all.  

how ridiculous.  hello, guess who made that life, a designer, a human, someone with a brain and a plan.

it's as if someone else created a plan, it crashed, and a human reverse engineered it from the remaining pieces.

[Whitney]

i love this a lot of atheists think the fact that man has created life proves evolution, materialism, atheism, whatever, once and for all.  

If throwing around strawmen is going to be how you normally conduct yourself going forward then this is not the place for you.  If you had actually read the thread you would have noticed that no one ever said "evolution ftw" "this proves god is false" "yay now I'm a materialist" or any other things that would justify your comment.

PS.  Evolution being true has nothing to do with the existence of a god only fundamentalist Christians who don't understand evolution think it disproves god.  Religious people who follow other religions and normal Christians don't tend to take issue with valid science.

[Dretlin]

The fundies are going to love this:   http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/ ... etic-life/


Man has created synthetic life from raw materials. Yeah, if God is real I bet he just got jealous or maybe proud we used our brains to be just like Daddy.

*puts on Ray Kurzweil hat and Bill Nye foam hand*


GO SCIENCE!!!

I remember seeing this the other day - what can I say, apart from - wow! Very exciting stuff!

Playing god? Which god? The ones that are not creators aswell? The amazing march of knowledge continues!

[Kylyssa]

i love this a lot of atheists think the fact that man has created life proves evolution, materialism, atheism, whatever, once and for all.  

I love how fundamentalist Christians throw around the word materialism.  Believing that life, the universe and everything probably have a rational explanation, based on physical reality doesn't make one a materialist.  Worshiping material goods (like many Christians, and most fundamentalist Christians do) is materialism.  Look inside the Vatican, inside huge churches, and at the luxury cars and opulent homes of religious leaders and then we can talk about materialism.

Where are this lot of atheists you are talking about?  Right here are just some atheists saying, hey, cool, man has created self-replicating life forms.  You are the one feeling threatened and squealing that it proves your religion is wrong.  If you are so frightened of science, why are you so comfortable using a computer?

[harriet_tubman]

I love how fundamentalist Christians throw around the word materialism.  

i'm not a fundamentalist

Believing that life, the universe and everything probably have a rational explanation, based on physical reality doesn't make one a materialist.  

materialism is the belief that anything that exists can be measured or detected by the senses.  take a decision, for example, the materialist believes that a decision is the result of synapse x, y and z firing.

Where are this lot of atheists you are talking about?  Right here are just some atheists saying, hey, cool, man has created self-replicating life forms.  You are the one feeling threatened and squealing that it proves your religion is wrong.  If you are so frightened of science, why are you so comfortable using a computer?

i actually really like science

[Davin]

materialism is the belief that anything that exists can be measured or detected by the senses.  take a decision, for example, the materialist believes that a decision is the result of synapse x, y and z firing.

If this is the definition of a materialist, I know of no atheist that is a materialist. There is a difference between only believing in what can be detected, and believing that what can be detected is all that there is.

[JillSwift]

I'm happily materialist, though I doubt my definition will entirely fit harriet_tubman's.

The information we can have comes via our senses. Our senses are material in nature. If we are to detect anything it must be either:
[list type=I][li]Material itself.[/li]
[li]Something that effects the material in a predicable way.*[/li][/list]
Concepts outside these parameters can't be tested objectively, and so can neither be proven nor disproven. As such they lose any actual meaning.






*Which would suggest the operator would be, itself, part of the material world.

[Davin]

I'm happily materialist, though I doubt my definition will entirely fit harriet_tubman's.

The information we can have comes via our senses. Our senses are material in nature. If we are to detect anything it must be either:
[list type=I][li]Material itself.[/li]
[li]Something that effects the material in a predicable way.*[/li][/list]
Concepts outside these parameters can't be tested objectively, and so can neither be proven nor disproven. As such they lose any actual meaning.

I agree with that definition. Speculation about that which could be there, while is fun make believe, is completely useless to any degree.

I would like to add to my statement before I get all straw manned: Of course speculation could become useful if ever the speculation could be proven and predictable.

[Tank]

Man has not played God any more than when humanity put together the computers and equipment that made this biological construction. I would expect the software and hardware use to create 'Synthia" were more complex than that which they produced. Synthia is just a new biomachine with unique characteristics, just like us.