Science on Verge of Creating Life

A common objection to evolution is that scientists have proven unable to create life from scratch - therefore, they don't understand enough about it in order to say that it could have developed naturally. Creationists seem to believe that their god can somehow be preserved so long as scientists cannot create life - but if that is the case, then their god may not exist much longer.

The Sun-Sentinel reports:

[M]ore than 100 laboratories [are studying] processes involved in the creation of life, and scientists say for the first time that they have just about all the pieces they need to begin making inanimate chemicals come alive. Unlike any other technology invented by humans, creating artificial life will be as jarring to our concepts of ourselves as discovering living creatures on other planets in the universe would be. It also would bring into sharper focus the age-old questions of "What is life?" and "Where do we come from?"

[T]he first artificial life also is likely to shock people's religious and cultural belief systems. "People from many different backgrounds have special views about what life is: how it originates, the special sanctity it has, the special dignity it deserves," Bedau said. "The ability to make new forms of life will perturb all of that. We need to think through the implications and how we are going to react to them."

What makes life possible, scientists believe, is the natural tendency of atoms to assemble into molecules, and for molecules to assemble into increasingly complicated structures. All of the basic elements of life--the amino acids that make proteins and the nucleotides that make DNA and its sidekick RNA--have been produced in the laboratory from chemicals thought to have been present on primitive Earth: hydrogen, methane, ammonia, formaldehyde, cyanide, thiols and hydrosulfide. Some of these elements are so easy to self-assemble that amino acids are found on meteorites originating at the beginning of the solar system. The Murchison meteorite, for example, contains a wide variety of chemicals, including simple amino acids and fats called lipids. When put in water, lipids spontaneously form bubble-shaped membranes that resemble cells.

There are many who still believe that there is some irreducible, non-mechanical essence that separates life from non-life. This may be a soul of some sort or it might not, but whatever it is there may be some difficulty in maintaining belief in such a thing when humans are creating life from scratch. This will show that life doesn't need supernatural or mysterious origins to exist - and that may post problems for people with especially narrow and rigid religious views.

Read More:

• Evolution vs. Creationism
• Science vs. Religion
• What is Science?