The Creation of Life
I follow what creationists say on YouTube quite closely since I find it an endless source of amusement. One of their main themes is that no lab work has ever produced artificial life which they take as evidence that life cannot have arisen by natural means and therefore require magic (though they don't phrase it that way). Recently an organic chemist with tenure at a secular university boldly asserted this. I left a comment calling him out for bearing false witness. One of his minions responded that I was unfair for making this baseless claim. So I responded with a half dozen links from pubmed that highlighted exactly how much work has been done in this area (they've actually made a construct that fully functions as a cell). The professor’s video just ignored this. The response was silence.
However, I read an article the other day about how creationists have latched on to the gain of function research going on in Wuhan and elsewhere as the artificial creation of life (which it isn’t). The rhetorical line here is that blasphemous atheist scientists are trying to set themselves up as god by creating life.
This pure double-think. Scientists can't create life except when they do to mock god. It amazes me that people want to think like this, that they carefully guard themselves from wanting to find out the truth. Although 2+2=5 gets all the attention, O'Brien' exposition of pure IngSoc takes the form of young earth creationism (the Earth is no older than the Party and there were no dinosaurs). That was true prophecy.
However, I read an article the other day about how creationists have latched on to the gain of function research going on in Wuhan and elsewhere as the artificial creation of life (which it isn’t). The rhetorical line here is that blasphemous atheist scientists are trying to set themselves up as god by creating life.
This pure double-think. Scientists can't create life except when they do to mock god. It amazes me that people want to think like this, that they carefully guard themselves from wanting to find out the truth. Although 2+2=5 gets all the attention, O'Brien' exposition of pure IngSoc takes the form of young earth creationism (the Earth is no older than the Party and there were no dinosaurs). That was true prophecy.