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Lazar wrote:Um... Albert Einstein was a Jew.

Einstein must be called a Jew since there's no other category that fits him, but my understanding is that his views on religion (as with more or less everything) were highly individual. His outlook tended to be distinctly his own to a greater degree than most people can manage -- no doubt a factor in his development of unprecedented physical theories. Half his genius was simply a marked tendency to "think outside of the box."

Oh definitely, I mainly just meant it in the sense of "not a Christian" as in that chain letter. His family was nonreligious, and as best I can tell, he ended up adopting a pantheistic worldview.

He always struck me as essentially Deist.

stitch626 wrote:Thats exactly what I was referring to. There are six dozen and a half theories, and every one of them ends in "but we can't be sure".

As one of my Biology professors put it "Until we create life from nothing in a lab, we cannot for sure know how it happened, or even if it is possible within the natural order of the universe."

It's been done already. They've created a 100% artificial life form from scratch. They built the DNA from the ground up, not from parts taken from any existing species.
Ref Despite the tone of the reference it did happen.

Here's another reference. Pretty cool.

Thank you Ian, I look forward to reading that.

IanKennedy wrote:

stitch626 wrote:Thats exactly what I was referring to. There are six dozen and a half theories, and every one of them ends in "but we can't be sure".

As one of my Biology professors put it "Until we create life from nothing in a lab, we cannot for sure know how it happened, or even if it is possible within the natural order of the universe."

It's been done already. They've created a 100% artificial life form from scratch. They built the DNA from the ground up, not from parts taken from any existing species.
Ref Despite the tone of the reference it did happen.

There is something here that is confsuing me, he purchased fragments of DNA from a mail-order catalog? This is not making DNA from scratch to me.

THe thing is to me it looks like they didn't create DNA but simily moved parts around to make something new from something old.

Personally, I think science can answer most of the questions except for the most basic one humans have been trying to figure out as long as they can remember, which is why are we here.

Or put more specifically why is there something rather than nothing? We might be able to explain how it all works, how the universe might collapse and regenerate thousands of times over, how life comes to be from organic matter. But we can't explain why these things exist rather than nothing existing. That is the fundamental question that many people are trying to get to the bottom of through religion and philosophy in my view.

BigJKU316 wrote:Personally, I think science can answer most of the questions except for the most basic one humans have been trying to figure out as long as they can remember, which is why are we here.

Or put more specifically why is there something rather than nothing? We might be able to explain how it all works, how the universe might collapse and regenerate thousands of times over, how life comes to be from organic matter. But we can't explain why these things exist rather than nothing existing. That is the fundamental question that many people are trying to get to the bottom of through religion and philosophy in my view.

Exactly! That's what I've been trying to say since I joined this board, and at least twice in this very thread. Science and religion aren't in competition because they don't seek to answer the same questions.

Science to me is the how, when and where with religion being the who and why. Calling this thing the "Creator" is just silly since he didn't really create but shuffle. Though I don't think that at all takes away from the advancement he's shown with his work.

Damn, symo!

Vic wrote:There is something here that is confsuing me, he purchased fragments of DNA from a mail-order catalog? This is not making DNA from scratch to me.

Deepcrush wrote:THe thing is to me it looks like they didn't create DNA but simily moved parts around to make something new from something old.

That's not the case, the DNA used in the experiment was 100% created from single base pairs. I've seen a full length documentary about it. If the article claims it was otherwise then it's wrong. I'm trying to track down the documentary on-line but haven't found it yet.

Here's a better article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10132762

Please forgive me for being a dense old fart, they have created genetic base pairs and then replicated(?) them for the desired function?