Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 63 (9161 total)
1 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,585 Year: 2,842/9,624 Month: 687/1,588 Week: 93/229 Day: 4/61 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Building life in a lab - Synthetic Biologists
AnEmpiricalAgnostic
Inactive Member


Message 151 of 152 (242423)
09-12-2005 9:08 AM
Reply to: Message 145 by Brad McFall
09-08-2005 10:53 PM


Brad McFall writes:
The question was, unless I need to reread it, what is a creationistic response to the domain of synthetic biology?
The quote you cited from me here, was in the cases where an IDist's ideas might govern the direction of synthetic biology itself.
I admit that economically, at present, this is an unlikely supply but the demand for it IS high, in my opinion.
I dont know if you are struggling to comprehend the cases were ID might so govern ( I fully realize that this is the place in the conversation that many people will raise at LEAST an eyebrow) or if it is rather due to a general lack of having yourself and the world at large supplied with information that had led me to exclaim that even just thinking the whole thing through takes more than 7 days in the week??
I understand now. It’s a bit strange to me but I’ll have to admit that ID (in it’s most basic form) is not so offensive to me. Simply positing that life on Earth was seeded intelligently in some way seems like a reasonable guess at first blush. My first fear is that ID itself was Intelligently designed to be as non-offensive to the scientific community as possible (wedge strategy). I can see how life on this planet may have been sparked by a comet. I can fantasize that this comet may have been synthesized by a superior race and sent out for the purpose of seeding the cosmos with life. The first problem is that the ID concept has been hijacked by the religious zealots and is used as a marketing campaign to spread religious propaganda. The second problem is that no matter what “designer” an IDist posits, you will always be faced with the “What designed the designer?” question. The religious zealots have no problem with this since their god is exempt from the rules whenever convenient but I see this as a major problem with positing a designer.
Given that you are still responding to me. I must commend you indeed. Thanks for the effort.
Thank you for making an extra effort (or possibly an extra lack of effort) so that I may understand you better. I realize that I may be able to glean a lot of information from you and that you will at least invoke a lot more thought from me than most of the other participants I’ve encountered on other forums.
I am somewhat dismayed if your lack of apprehension (which could be as much my fault as yours) is of the latter variety for it would indicate that my posts over the past 1/2 year have been to no avail, but then again I doubt you have been lurking here for that long (sans what Ben recently asked me). The recent article in Science on the Kansas situation is a case in this point, which I will probably bring up elsewhere on EvC.
No, I am very new here. I have been a participant on another forum for awhile but found the debate there to be a bit too mind numbing at times. I was turned onto this forum by another participant there.
You see because I do not feel that there is a seperation of magesteria I full DO expect that creation scienists will contribute to changes that synthetic biology affords evolutionary theory. You dont want to call what they do or might do science. OK I understand that position. I think however the CBS article is a little over dramatic and not really expressive of what will actually happen to the discipline of biology even if it seems like "pockets" of biological research are following that somewhat blue perspective.
I think every article is over dramatic. I think to be a journalist you must first master the art of sensationalism before they even allow you to practice in the field. I know there are good scientists that are also creationists. I think that they know how to properly separate the two. There are others that I have seen that call themselves “creation scientists” and make statements of faith before they even start their “scientific” work. This, I will maintain, can not be called science. Reading a Statement of Faith really helped put that into perspective for me. No person starting out with that kind of slant can perform science IMHO.
There is an extra level of control necessary to actually DO synthetic biology. I do not know that this is fully realized. It was not even thought to be an issue in 1992 when I was doing monoclonal antibodies and in vitro fertilization. I had found 1 out of 30 cells SQUASHED by me to be symmetrical. This could be telling me something about how cell development works OR it could be due to the shear forces I applied to the cell during the preparation to view it with tagged antibodies etc. The applied profs at Cornell were not even aware that this added extra data seperation was necessary to make determinative statements. I think this kind of engineering issue applies just about any time any ETHICAL feeling arises in this topic in this thread even if it is not completely justified.
It is smarter to let the ethics determine policy until the procedures are all under control and for this reason alone (no matter what the economics are) I am personally interested in the angle of creationists first. That is not what is happening as the link suggests. I am only saying I think it should be. I know you can keep things"" seperate and be "just" as ethical and if the controls were being controled for in the 'brave new world' of synthetic biology I would not protest from which side one leans tentatively but seeing that there is not even a widespread understanding of how ID *might* open the social possiblilites of synthetic biology I pray we come to some understanding sooner than later . You me and iano are not going to solve the world's problems trying to be the three musketeers.
I have to admit that I take a bit of offense that you feel you have to seek a creationist to glean an ethical viewpoint on any issue. Just because I don’t believe in a god doesn’t automatically mean I have no (or a lesser) concept of ethics. This is a false dichotomy that I see portrayed too often.
I hope this style of posting was better for you.
Much better. Thank you again.

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
-- Stephen Roberts

This message is a reply to:
 Message 145 by Brad McFall, posted 09-08-2005 10:53 PM Brad McFall has not replied

  
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 152 of 152 (242524)
09-12-2005 11:52 AM
Reply to: Message 150 by iano
09-12-2005 9:06 AM


Re: How do you eant an elephant?
Not many believe in fairies.
Evidence? Not as many I am quite prepared to believe but I doubt you have any idea of actual numbers. There are a number of communities in scotland, such as the findhorn community, where fairy belief is widespread. The volume of belief is entirely irrelevant to the supernatural status, or indeed existence, of any particular entity.
To compare the two as you frequently do (if memory serves me correctly), to be or the same order is do YOU no justice.
Your memory doesn't serve you correctly at all.
You may chose to see it as opening up to probabilites something which currently appears improbable.
That isn't how I see it at all. It probably is relatively improbable, improbable things happen all the time. The question is how improbable and which mechanisms are least improbable.
For you it would be a step forward in copperfastening your existing belief (No God). It is illustrative that you might be looking forward to the day when life-in-the-lab occurs will give you further assurance.
I'm not sure why you consider yourself to be familiar with what my beliefs are, especially since you appear to be under the apprehension that you are talking to someone else. One would have to be a very strange sort of atheist to need 'life-in-the-lab' to give them assurance. I doubt that most atheists consider the probability of abiogenesis from one year to the next.
It doesn't make it more probable to presume by even one iota. Not one shred of a hand-up is offered towards the conclusion of life-by-accident by man -designing - life.
No it doesn't make it any more probable, it just allows us to more accurately guage what the probabilities are. It is the creationists who love to make up probabilities off the top of their heads based on bog all evidence and naive assumptions, the better approach is to gather a mounting body of data to allow you to make some reasonable estimates about probabilities involved.
The probability of any particular chemical reaction happening in a particular environment is not affected by whether that environment came about by chance or was created artificially, provided that the environment itself is the same, do you have any concievable reason to assume that it would be?
Nothing designed can be taken to indicate something by accident. That would be, I'm sure, a form of non-sequitur.
I would have thought then that a suitable corrolary would be that since nothing designed could be used to 'indicate', however you are using that term, something by 'accident' all intelligent design arguments must be based on the a priori assumption that what they are looking at is designed, the very thing which they are supposed to be showing.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 150 by iano, posted 09-12-2005 9:06 AM iano has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024