Science Creates Artificial Cell and Creationists Spin, Spin, Spin

A couple of weeks back, a bombshell of an announcement hit the scientific world: the first artificial cell has been synthesized in the lab. Needless to say, this is a big deal, because it not only has vast implications for bio- & genetic engineering, but the discovery can help fill in gaps in our knowledge of how life evolved naturally from non-life (see my previous blog post on this issue – The God-of-the-Gaps Just Got Smaller: Link Found Between Life & Inorganic Matter)

What’s also interesting is the reaction from some religious & creationist circles concerning this discovery.  First, there is the response from the Catholic Church warning scientists not to “play God”…

Catholic Church officials said Friday that the recently created first synthetic cell could be a positive development if correctly used, but warned scientists that only God can create life.

Vatican and Italian church officials were mostly cautious in their first reaction to the announcement from the United States that researchers had produced a living cell containing manmade DNA. They warned scientists of the ethical responsibility of scientific progress and said that the manner in which the innovation is applied in the future will be crucial.

“It’s a great scientific discovery. Now we have to understand how it will be implemented in the future,” Monsignor Rino Fisichella, the Vatican’s top bioethics official, told Associated Press Television News.

“If we ascertain that it is for the good of all, of the environment and man in it, we’ll keep the same judgment,” he said. “If, on the other hand, the use of this discovery should turn against the dignity of and respect for human life, then our judgment would change.”

I’m all for proceeding cautiously in this particular research, because there is the potential for abuse, just as there is with any kind of new technology.  But read between the lines of what the Vatican is saying – they seem to be implying that, somehow, this artificial life is fundamentally different from “normal” life simply because of the manner in which it was created.

The God-of-the-Gaps Just Got Smaller: Link Found Between Life & Inorganic Matter

If you’re familiar with various creationist arguments, you will no doubt recognize the infamous god-of-the-gaps argument. This is basically a variation on the classic logical fallacy called the argument from ignorance, which basically states that if we don’t understand some phenomenon with 100% clarity (such as the origins of life), then that must mean that “Poof! God did it”…

There is one fatal flaw with this kind of argument, which begs an interesting theological question: what happens to the god-of-the-gaps when we do come up with evidence & naturalistic explanations for the gaps in our knowledge?  Most scholarly theologians disdain the god-of-the-gaps argument precisely to avoid this trap, because they don’t want their god somehow diminished as science marches ever forward.

But not creationists, who usually take the intellectually lazy & dishonest route by simply dismissing the evidence filling in said gaps.  Only by ignoring and distorting the science can their god-of-the-gaps be maintained, so while the rest of us learn more and more about our universe and our place within it, creationists insist upon wallowing in their ignorance, content that their twisted reading of a 2000 year-old holy text (only one of many different supposedly “divinely inspired” holy texts out there) has revealed to them the truth.

So here’s the big news, and why the god-of-the-gaps just got a lot smaller: scientists have discovered a missing link between life and inorganic matter…

Philosophers and scientists have argued about the origins of life from inorganic matter ever since Empedocles (430 B.C.) argued that every thing in the universe is made up of a combination of four eternal ‘elements’ or ‘roots of all’: earth, water, air, and fire, and that all change is explained by the arrangement and rearrangement of these four elements. Now, scientists have discovered that simple peptides can organize into bi-layer membranes. The finding suggests a “missing link” between the pre-biotic Earth’s chemical inventory and the organizational scaffolding essential to life.

“This is a boon to our understanding of large, structural assemblies of molecules,” says Emory Chemistry Chair David Lynn, who helped lead the effort, which were collaborations of the departments of chemistry, biology and physics. “We’ve proved that peptides can organize as bi-layers, and we’ve generated the first, real-time imaging of the self-assembly process. We can actually watch in real-time as these nano-machines make themselves.” …

… The research is part of “The Center for Chemical Evolution,” a center based at Emory and Georgia Tech, for integrated research, education and public outreach focused on the chemistry that may have led to the origin of life. The National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy have funded the research.

Many groups studying the origins of life have focused on RNA, which is believed to have pre-dated living cells. But RNA is a much more complicated molecule than a peptide. “Our studies have now shown that, if you just add water, simple peptides access both the physical properties and the long-range molecular order that is critical to the origins of chemical evolution,” Childers says.

Origin of Life – How Will Creationists React?

Every now and then we are lucky enough to bear witness to a big scientific discovery, such as that outlined recently in the New York Times in the following article concerning the origin of life…

Chemist Shows How RNA Can Be the Starting Point for Life

An English chemist has found the hidden gateway to the RNA world, the chemical milieu from which the first forms of life are thought to have emerged on earth some 3.8 billion years ago.

He has solved a problem that for 20 years has thwarted researchers trying to understand the origin of life — how the building blocks of RNA, called nucleotides, could have spontaneously assembled themselves in the conditions of the primitive earth. The discovery, if correct, should set researchers on the right track to solving many other mysteries about the origin of life. It will also mean that for the first time a plausible explanation exists for how an information-carrying biological molecule could have emerged through natural processes from chemicals on the primitive earth.

There are those scientists who are skeptical of these claims, as they should be until further testing and corroborating evidence is revealed, but I am sure that the scientific community will reach consensus on this research soon.  What is more revealing to me is what the reaction of various creationist groups might be.

Life on Mars? Not so fast…

I just found out about some very exciting news! It seems that the hypothesis that Mars currently harbors some kind of microbial life just got a boost. Check out this article from NASA…

Martian Methane Reveals the Red Planet is not a Dead Planet

The basic premise of the article is that there are unexpectedly high levels of methane gas in the atmosphere of Mars. Because natural processes on Mars destroy methane quite quickly, for this much methane to be in the atmosphere means that something is producing it. Based upon what we know about chemistry, there are only two possible sources for so much methane – esoteric geologic processes and microbes, as in lifeforms.

Couple this with what we’ve learned over the last decade about Mars having had a much wetter (as in water!) past than we once thought, and the evidence seems to point in the direction of life. However, we do not yet know anything definitive (this is merely circumstantial evidence), and a good skeptic attempts to avoid excessive speculation in favor of critically analyzing the evidence at hand.

We do know that life is much tougher than we once thought, even as recently as 10-20 years ago, and that it pops up in many places that would surprise us. In addition, we’ve learned much about extremophiles (those surprisingly tough little critters), and recent scientific research regarding the origins of life has brought us closer to understanding how life may have arisen from non-life (what scientists call abiogenesis).

But is all of this definitive evidence of life having evolved on our neighboring planet, Mars?

In my opinion, no… not yet.

Remember that we know of two possible processes that can account for the extra methane in the Martian atmosphere: geologic processes and microbial life. That means that in order for us to be sure that there are little Martian microbes living under the surface of the Red Planet, we have to be able to rule out the potential geologic origin of that methane.

This is a good lesson in applying skepticism & critical thinking, because though I may wish for there to be life on Mars (boy do I wish it), whether or not there really is life on Mars is not up to me to decide.

The universe operates according to its own rules, which don’t take into account the wishes & feelings of sentient beings such as you and me. As I tell my students, we have to change our preconceptions & beliefs to fit the universe on its own terms, not the other way around. Only then can we really learn something about the world around us, and the best method for learning – in an honest, objective, and useful manner – about our universe is to use science.

It is unfortunate that so many people allow their preconceived notions about how they think the natural world should behave that they fail to understand that it is they who have to conform their beliefs to fit nature, not insist that (magically) nature conform itself to fit their beliefs. This kind of magical thinking is the source of much pseudoscience and woo.

So, in conclusion, is there life on Mars or out there in the vast gulfs of space? The most honest answer is, “We don’t know.”

But someday, if we work at the problem really hard and perhaps get a bit lucky, I think we’ll find out the answer.