Are Scientists About To Discover The Truth?

Are The Evolutionists About to Stumble Onto the Truth?

The following is an article I copied from CNN's Website on August 20, 2007.

I've always thought that one day scientists would make a discovery that proved either the
fact of creation or the impossibility of evolution.  In recent days the claim has been
made that scientists are on the verge of creating life.  I'm starting to think that their
failure will bring one of my "predictions" to pass.

This article comes from CNN.  I'm especially intrigued by the admission of Jack Szostak at
Harvard Medical School that it takes an intelligence greater than the human mind to bring
life into being.  He calls it "evolution."  But the underlying assumption is
that there is an intelligence involved that is wise enough to create life.  If he ever
follows his thinking to its logical conclusion . . .

Enjoy!

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life
from scratch and they're getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now
little-known field of "wet artificial life."

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark
Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race.
"We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental
ways -- in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

That first cell of synthetic life -- made from the basic chemicals in DNA -- may not seem
like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you'll have to look in a microscope to see
it.

"Creating protocells has the potential to shed new life on our place in the
universe," Bedau said. "This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries
about creation in the universe and our role."

And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for
solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to
eating toxic waste.

Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life:

   * A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones,
and the ability to multiply.

   * A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce
and mutate in response to environmental changes.

   * A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then
changes it into energy.

     One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts
that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step --
creating a cell membrane -- is "not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty
acids in that effort.

     Szostak is also optimistic about the next step -- getting nucleotides, the building
blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system.

     His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the
right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over.

     "We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard
work and then we figure out what happened," Szostak said.

     In Gainesville, Florida, Steve Benner, a biological chemist at the Foundation for
Applied Molecular Evolution is attacking that problem by going outside of natural
genetics. Normal DNA consists of four bases -- adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine
(known as A,C,G,T) -- molecules that spell out the genetic code in pairs. Benner is trying
to add eight new bases to the genetic alphabet.

     Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could "run
amok," but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before
that is a problem.

     "When these things are created, they're going to be so weak, it'll be a huge
achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab," he said. "But
them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen."

     Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/08/20/artificial.life.ap/index.html