The BBC News Science/Nature division has an arriticle out there called “‘Artificial life’ comes step closer”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4104483.stm, with of course the giveaway quotes around “artificial life” meaning as usual, “no, not really, but let’s sensationalize so it can be a big headline”.
What they’re congradulating themselves for is basically taking parts of living things and putting them together. Then they add some more parts of living things, and when it does something, they think they’re the next step towards proving intelligent design over secular humanism’s creatorless evolution since they will have had to use intelligence to “create” (note the quotes) something “living”. Well, they don’t agree with me on that last part. Of course they don’t, otherwise would they be in BBC News?
They first describe what they did in layman terms, then stick a pharagraph in there that says:
Albert Libchaber, who heads the project, stresses that these bioreactors are not alive – they’re performing simple chemical reactions that can also happen in cell-free biological fluids.
So they admit they haven’t really created life, they’re just doing chemical reactions experiments. Those quotes from the headline are beginning to take on more significance.
Picking another interesting paragaph,
Two years ago, another team showed that polio viruses could assemble themselves from off-the-shelf chemical components mixed in a test-tube.
reveals that they apparently think they can ignore the “team showed” part and focus on the fact that the viruses could “assemble themselves.” If the viruses could do so much on their own, what was the team needed for? Maybe to carefully setup the experiement and observe their careful creation‘s chemical reactions take place? Granted this is more of a nitpick than strong evidence for the weakness of their thory. But it does go to show the bias of the assumptions of the position that they’re coming from.
More meaningful are the pharagraphs near the end of the article:
As these constructs become more lifelike, the rest of us will have to start rethinking the nature of life.
“This is rather philosophical,” says Dr Libchaber.
“For me, life is just like a machine – a machine with a computer program. There’s no more to it than that. But not everyone shares this point of view,” he told the BBC.
And there we have it. Apparently, as they come closer to designing things that are lifelike (they resemble, not duplicate, life), the reporter (those so-called impartial people) stipulates that this will require us all to rethink the “nature of life.” Why? Well I’m not exactly sure, but it probably has something to do with the fact that the reporter and scientist wish everyone else had their worldview and that this will somehow convince everyone else to “join the club”.
Which the statement in the next two paragraphs of the above quote by Dr Libchaber shows, of course.
Debunking this stuff is not hard but does require a lot of time and space to lay everything out. You have to lay the foundation of a correct worldview before you can successfully make arguments to those with other worldviews. I agree with Dr Libchaber that “this is rather philosophical,” and I now defer to probably the most excellent work I’ve read on this topic, a book entitled “I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be an Atheist”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1581345615/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2 by “Norman L. Geisler”:http://www.normgeisler.com/ and Frank Turek.
So far everything philisophically implied by the article I mention has been soundly debunked with reason and logic (using general, not special, revelation (not one Bible verse relied upon)) within the first two hundred pages. And I’m not even done with the book! It presents a “12-step guide”:http://www.impactapologetics.com/12points.asp leading from “is there absolute truth” through to the conclusion that the Bible is the Word of God. I may review this book in more depth here soon, but for now there are two really great quotes from a review of this book over at Amazon, both from reviewer Mike:
Having read quite a few Christian apologetics books, I feel I can say that this one is by far the best in scope, logic, and wit. The authors convincingly build up their case in layers, starting with well-reasoned arguments why God exists, and building in stages as to why Jesus is the way to go, once everything else is accepted.
He goes on to say that the book covers the variety of areas required in a complete defense of a worldview, specifically, “cosmology, life origins, evolution, morality, and a defense of the Bible.” His conclusion?
No honest atheist can read this book without being impressed by the quality of the theistic arguments as presented by the authors. The objections of skeptics are confronted with confidence. Did it change my mind? It may have planted a seed.
So he gave a glowing, five-star review of this book, probably stated my points better than I would have, and he doesn’t even believe it’s conclusion yet! I’d say that speaks volumes of the books readability, and the soundness of its arguments.
I think the “life” article talks about an interesting experiement. But it also promotes a worldview that I can’t possibly believe in, because, as my new favorite book says, I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist!