Creating Life
I just got around to reading an article that was published on May 20, 2010 at Time.Com. Here is a quote from that article and you will understand my excitement (thus my hurry to read it).
“It’s the ultimate science experiment, really — taking a handful of chemicals, mixing them in just the right combination and presto — life! And after nearly 15 years of such toiling in his labs in Rockville, Md., J. Craig Venter, co-mapper of the human genome, has done just that. Reporting in the journal Science, he describes a remarkable experiment in which he and the team at his eponymous institute have pieced together the entire genome of a bacterium and then inserted those genetic instructions into another bacterium. The cell booted up, and life — by nearly any definition — was created.” (emphasis mine)
Well, if that doesn’t beat all. Following the lead of the original Creator, Dr. Venter (in a part of the story not told by Time) created his “handful of chemicals” by speaking them into existence. Fifteen years is a bit longer than a couple of days, but, whose counting? And don’t miss the exciting part (you have to read close) about how he took a handful of dirt and formed it into ” the entire genome of a bacterium” (a pretty complicated creature actually – that bacterium), put the whole thing together using “varying combinations of the four basic elements of DNA — the bases adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine” (which he made from the dirt in his front flower bed, I guess) and lo and behold – LIFE is created.
Wow! Wow! I am impressed. I mean I really am!!
But, Time, “creating life?” Give me a break!