Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Chris on May 22, 2011 at 6:52pm

My two cents: special is like morals and gods. Particular to individuals. That does not mean ethics are not important, but I don't have to think of bacteria as more special than crystal formations to consider how best to deal with each. Moreover, if life as a whole can be enhanced because some scientist manipulates a cheap tool in a lab, is it moral to object because of your personal sense of ethics? Or his? It seems to me that, as long as there is oversight, cheap tool manipulation is fine. We can and should introduce the notion of whether the cheap tool suffers in a meaningful way, and whether we a society will tolerate X amount of suffering in the name of progress, but the feelings of the scientist about his cheap tool are not under anyone else's purview.

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Permalink Reply by Daria Black on May 22, 2011 at 7:22pm

I agree with Nelson. I don't think scientists (or very few if any) think of life as just chemical reactions that should be exploited. I also agree that our technology has outpaced our humanity and that we really need to slow down.

 

However, I do think that our tendency as humans to try to add "meaning" to life is something that has kept us from throwing off the shackles of religion and superstition. It is my opinion that most people don't want to believe that life is inherently meaningless (thereby rendering us as just a cog in a wheel that keeps turning). So they make up these tales of being created by a "Superior Being" in order to make themselves feel relevant and special.

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Permalink Reply by Brandi Braschler on May 30, 2011 at 5:11pm

Life is amazing in its complexity and it is special in many ways. However, that doesn't mean that scientists shouldn't use it as a "tool". Life could be our most powerful scientific tool.

Also, if we don't manipulate life, there's no way we can successfully feed every human currently alive (the population is still increasing too).

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Permalink Reply by Nathan Palo on June 1, 2011 at 9:04pm

With a god, life is a trivial thing.  The god snaps his fingers and there is life.

 

Without god, life requires a particular set of circumstances to get started, and is easily snuffed out.

 

I think that makes it more special.

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Permalink Reply by Peter on June 5, 2011 at 7:14pm

exactly! If god created us, that means we were made to either worship him or suffer. There is nothing special about that.

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Permalink Reply by Rocky john on June 3, 2011 at 1:00am

Well if we arent going to play god then who will?

not like there is an actual god to do it

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Permalink Reply by R1Gami on June 3, 2011 at 1:49am

It's not true that 'life is not being special'/'life is less special' if there's no supernatural agent pulling the strings. As others have mentioned, realizing that life is based in chemistry does not diminish it.

As an aside - I find it interesting that many theists will talk up the 'statistical improbability of life' yet do not realize that if life as we know it is so fantastically improbable...that very same improbability is a good independent basis for considering life special.

 

As for the video, it's good to consider the ethical implications of how we use scientific advances.  Whether this presentation attempts to tilt the viewer's opinion one way or another is a different question.

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Permalink Reply by GOPI KANTA GHOSH on June 5, 2011 at 10:03am

There are arguments and counter arguments...please talk straight...creation is science and it is truth...

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Permalink Reply by Peter on June 5, 2011 at 7:12pm

To answer your question: No.
In fact, I see life as even more spectacular when it is a product of chemical reactions. What is so great about divine creation anyways? The way I see divine creation: You were made to make 2 choices (and only 2 choices), 1: suffer for eternity (hell), or 2: believe in fairy tales.
Just look at the universe. We are the only known intelligent life so far (according to us). This is an amazing thing which could have easily not occurred if the conditions on earth a long long time ago were even Slightly off from the setting at which life was able to start developing.

Your video is just a summary of how science has developed over the years. Yes there are ethical issues that arise, but these advances in science were bound to happen. Humans are both smart and dumb, this is just showing the smart side. (I am not referring to scientists as the smart side, just the advances in science which have been made. This versus advances in things such as... clothing fashion on runways... which I find utterly useless).

There are obviously both good and bad things that come from this. We all know that "with great power comes great responsibility" (spider-man). With the eel robot shown closer to the end, perhaps one day in the future, a baby that is bound to die could live on inside a robot (or cyborg by that time) with just it's brain and grow up to be a full grown adult (new body upgrades! woo!). Perhaps when the sun explodes, humans will have found a way to genetically modify themselves to be able to live without air and conduct space travel, resulting in the possible habitation of another planet in a different solar system. I would obviously miss our old "natural" selves if that were to happen, but this would call in the question between survival or extinction of our species.
The bad things that could happen: A religious extremist gets hold of brain controlling technology. We already know what happens from there. Upon the infinite number of bad things that could happen, they were already present for all the other advances in science since day one. The invention of the wheel - people using it to run over others. The invention of the light bulb - people using it to blind others. (lol....)

In any case, I digress.

I feel that as we advance further into each scientific field, we should try our best to stay sane and use this knowledge and power for the benefits of humanity. We humans are already capable of driving ourselves to extinction (which one could argue that we are already doing), so lets hope for the best and stay active on the decisions made (by government or w/e) which determine the paths our society follows.

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Permalink Reply by Michael on June 5, 2011 at 7:49pm

We do not know if there are higher dimensions yet, let along what dark energy and dark matter is yet.

 

Top physicist still have no answer to the anthropic principle and why there is so little antimatter in the universe.

 

And in regard to quantum fields, why so little particles are spontaneously produced by the vacuum.

 

What science has made evident is both the existence of the universe and ourselves is one big mysterious conundrum. With this as a back drop it is presumptuous to limit life to what is scientifically observable. 

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Permalink Reply by R1Gami on June 5, 2011 at 11:16pm

So...it's presumptuous to limit life to a the levels of observation that we know it exist?

Would it not be presumptuous to instead insert God and a spirtual dimension as explanations even though we have no evidence for either?  Even though they complicate the need for explanation rather than satisfying it?

 

Additionally, what other sort of observation beside the scientific is there when we're talking about the physical world and trying to provide an accurate, systematic understanding of it?

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Permalink Reply by Michael on June 6, 2011 at 1:08am

Take God out of the picture momentarily and just call it the truth.

 

Yet others call it God.

 

To be vehement, we're just some lucky sorts that wound up on the Brane membrane of the Multiverse in a Goldy Locks universe that is a complete conundrum to our understanding.

 

But to answer your question yes we would have to grow sensual organs that encompass the full eleven dimensions that string theory requires to have adequate physical observation.

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