Extra, Extra, Read All About It!
There’s been a scientific achievement that I want to share with you, word for word, so you know I’m not making this up… Here’s what it says:
“Scientists have created the world’s first synthetic life form in a landmark experiment that paves the way for designer organisms that are built rather than evolved. The controversial feat, which has occupied 20 scientists for more than 10 years at an estimated cost of $40m, was described by one researcher as “a defining moment in biology”.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-synthetic-life-form
Well, that’s probably the first $40,000,000 cell in history, huh?
But it’s a defining moment in biology because they arranged the four basic building blocks of DNA into a new genetic code, and the result is a new form of life that didn’t exist before.
(They also inserted watermarks into the code that will identify it forever as a synthetic life form. Not only that, they inserted an email address into it, so that anyone who cracks the code can contact the designers!)
Designer life forms?
Who knows where genetic engineering will lead?
But what I want to focus on, is the word CREATED.
The story declares that, “Scientists have CREATED the first synthetic life form”.
Well?
Have they really created life?
I won’t keep you in suspense, folks…. NO. They haven’t.
When a composer arranges musical notes into patterns that are pleasing to him, he says he created music. But what he created was a form of music that didn’t exist before, even though the musical notes did. Music is our perception of sound waves. The composer is making a new arrangement of sounds.
A painter applying colors on a canvas declares that he’s created something, a painting. But the colors already existed. The painter manipulates the colors into a pleasing pattern, but he didn’t create them.
A sculptor shapes stone, but he didn’t create stone.
We have been provided with enough raw material for an infinite variety of expression; enough for all of us, until the end of time. But we can’t confuse expression with creation.
Did you create that peanut butter and jelly sandwich?
It might feel like a tasty accomplishment on your part, but think about how much effort went into it. What part did the peanut grower play? and the berry pickers? and the people working the cane fields? and grain harvesters? the bakery? truckers? We all collaborated on that sandwich, but all of us put together couldn’t create a sandwich.
Getting back to the scientists who created the new life form… Here’s what they did; they arranged the four basic building blocks of DNA into a new genome of a bacterium, kind of like assembling a jigsaw puzzle.
Then they inserted the new code into a living cell, so that when the cell reproduced, the copies had the new pattern instead of the old one. But the cell was already alive when they injected the new code.
So technically, this team of scientists intentionally designed a new form of life, but that doesn’t mean they created life.
Nope.
That has never happened, and if it ever does you’ll hear it being broadcast around the world! But it won’t, because manipulation is different than creation.
You could give all the smartest scientists in the world all the financing in the world, and all the equipment in the world, all the resources in the world, and everything working together won’t be able to create a single living cell from scratch.
Forget about trying to create it with enough complexity to feed itself, or repair itself, or reproduce itself, on its own.
Never.
So, just think about it. Think about every single living thing you have ever seen; flowers and spiders, trees and grass, bacon and eggs and orange juice, too. To the best of our knowledge, every single living cell on this whole planet came from ANOTHER living cell.
So if you read a headline or hear an announcement suggesting that scientists have created life, don’t believe it.
They haven’t created life any more than you created that peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
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