One of the banes of my existence are new earth creationists. Another wrench has just gotten thrown into one of their arguments, and science, as it always has, proves that an all seeing, all knowing magical being with all power isn’t needed to explain the order of the cosmos. I have had the chance to converse with a multitude of people all of whom believe that the world was created around six thousand years ago. One of their pillar arguments is the existence of life, claiming that a divine spark is needed to give matter….life. In the last few years, scientist have been able to play the role of god and create the building blocks of life in a test tube. They created RNA base pairs by and through chemical processes; these RNA strands were able to replicate and more importantly mutate (key ingredients of life).
Unfortunately, for the replication to occur, scientists had to assist the splitting of the RNA pairs by adding enzymes to their environment. Now scientists have been able to achieve synthetic life that self replicates. They did this through several complex procedures, and they used an already existing cell structure. While not creating life completely from scratch, we are so close we can taste it, and we are doing it without magic or god.
The best way for religious people to avoid embarrassment as these gaps are filled is to base their beliefs on non-falsifiable claims. Those who believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon, for example, are safer embracing the “limited geography” interpretation because it is more difficult for science to disprove. Religions should focus on delusions like having a personal relationship with Jesus, rather than empirically falsifiable beliefs like young earth creationism.
Of course this is a double-edged sword as far as keeping a religion viable. Because if a church becomes too ecumenical and non-literal about scripture, it becomes less of a uniquely defined ‘cause’ for the members to rally around. The Community of Christ (RLDS) is perhaps an example of this. They have backed off from literal claims about the Book of Mormon and changed from a closed communion to an open communion. And they have lost many members in the process.
It seems like most religions that endure change their doctrine, or what doctrines they focus on, as science shows us more and more how things actually are. God seems clearly absent from this process in my opinion, but perhaps he just moves in mysterious ways…
Yes, He moves in mysterious ways that are oddly in accord with pure materialism.
Venter’s accomplishment is one of those strange dis-junctures that happen when people don’t fully realize the true state of the world, only to be pulled violently into a present that they thought was going to forever lay in the future. It’s like looking in the mirror and suddenly realizing you’re not as young as you once were. At its base, life is the mere interaction of molecules, and this advance brings that uncomfortably into focus. For a lot of people, this is going to be very, very discomfiting.
Guys, you all are getting way too far ahead of yourself…
Even I can tell that creationists will use this as evidence of creationism. For example, when people talk about Venter’s accomplishment (including the original author), they usually say he was “playing God,” not that he was “playing evolution.”
However, I guess you’re right that this shows that an “all-seeing, all knowing magical being” isn’t necessary to produce life. Not-quite-all seeing, not-quite-all knowing decidedly nonmagical beings can do it too.
On Pharyngula, PZ Myers compares it to Friedrick Wohler’s synthesis of urea in 1828, an event that broke the spell of thinking there was something that separated organic matter from other types of matter. I think this is the best analogy. Even though Venter hasn’t done anything that monistic materialism doesn’t predict, the very fact that an organism that is apparently living and reproducing has been synthesized from a batch of chemicals is a milestone. (The single caveat being that another non-synthetic cell body was used to host the synthesized DNA; however within several generations that will be replaced by material generated by the new nuclear material. As Venter says, the software can make its own hardware.)
There was no wall encountered between the material and the life it generated; there was no step that could not be accomplished because it needed to be signed off by God. That’s why this is has huge significance.