She shot him with her finger

tlb wrote:As "proofs" go, that is about on par with the rest (for example: "the Act of Creation implies a Creator").

cthia wrote:Every time I come across this in academia, it makes me want to sue my teachers, or choke them. Because they all taught me that the root word of creation... is create. Hello? Anybody home?

If God didn't create creation, then tell me who did. Or tell me "what" did. And I will gladly strip the title from God and bestow it upon "whomever it may concern." Or to "what it may concern." I'm flexible.

The problem with this point is similar to that of the Ontological Proof: applying a label to something does not change its basic nature and certainly does prove other attributes of the word exist. The formation of the Universe was called "Creation" by people who believed that it was the action of a God or Gods; therefore the term itself only "proves" that it was bestowed by people who believed in Divine Intervention (saying it proves the existence of God is another circular argument). As for the actual cause, perhaps it is God or perhaps it is Kurt Vonnegut Jr's Universal Will To Become; we do not know, except through an act of faith.

tlb wrote:My favorite proof is the Ontological one; it fails, but more creatively than most proofs do.

PS. Free Will has nothing to do with whether things will be attempted; it only speaks to whether the attempts and results are foretold or not.

cthia wrote:I was a sounding board for a professor who was writing a book... covering Ontology. Proof. And Cultural Consciousness.

Free Will has to do with whether things CAN be attempted.

Only in the sense that in a deterministic world anything in the script must be attempted and anything not in the script may not be attempted. That would mean that History is fixed as though the current time is a point at which someone is reading the book of reality; the reader might not know what is in the following pages, but the outcome is already printed waiting for them to read.

Free Will on the other hand requires that the book of reality is only written to the current time and by present actions the unknown future is called into being.

Your saying that something can only be attempted if Free Will exists is a statement of faith, not necessarily of fact. In a strictly deterministic world the attempt could be made and succeed within your own rules, because that would be an act of God - not man.

I expect Physics will work the same whichever is true, the only difference is whether there is a moral dimension to our actions. If we can only do what we were fated to do, then we are automatons, not moral actors.

cthia wrote:That is my point. It is what I have been saying the entire thread. Man cannot create life. Certainly not with our present know-how, and with our present tools.

You mean, aside from the way we've been doing for the last 200,000 years and have created over 100 billion of us?

Cthia. One point illustrates the difference between us. You say that man was created by God in God's image, as the Bible says. That is a direct assertion that out of the estimated 5,000 religions throughout mankind's time, that Christianity is the only real deal, and the Bible is accurate in portraying the "truth". I'll just say that I disagree.

cthia wrote:That is my point. It is what I have been saying the entire thread. Man cannot create life. Certainly not with our present know-how, and with our present tools.

It would be nice if it were true. Unfortunately, we have actually done so. Admittedly, copying life that already exists rather than going from scratch, but it has been done.

This was at the level of viruses--take a computer file and spit out a working virus. While what they created was simple and harmless the technology isn't limited to that. Last I knew it was still at the level of requiring a highly skilled person to do it and so far they appear to all be on the path of light. The companies that turn computer files into chemicals won't make anything that looks like part of variola major, though.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:That is my point. It is what I have been saying the entire thread. Man cannot create life. Certainly not with our present know-how, and with our present tools.

You mean, aside from the way we've been doing for the last 200,000 years and have created over 100 billion of us?

Perpetuation is not creation. Multiplication is not creation. God gave us Man and Woman as the multiplicands and the decree to go forth and multiply. To perpetuate. Man didn't create anything. We just, and must, keep kicking the can down the road.

cthia wrote:That is my point. It is what I have been saying the entire thread. Man cannot create life. Certainly not with our present know-how, and with our present tools.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:You mean, aside from the way we've been doing for the last 200,000 years and have created over 100 billion of us?

cthia wrote:Perpetuation is not creation. Multiplication is not creation. God gave us Man and Woman as the multiplicands and the decree to go forth and multiply. To perpetuate. Man didn't create anything. We just, and must, keep kicking the can down the road.

Loren Pechtel wrote:It would be nice if it were true. Unfortunately, we have actually done so. Admittedly, copying life that already exists rather than going from scratch, but it has been done.

This was at the level of viruses--take a computer file and spit out a working virus. While what they created was simple and harmless the technology isn't limited to that. Last I knew it was still at the level of requiring a highly skilled person to do it and so far they appear to all be on the path of light. The companies that turn computer files into chemicals won't make anything that looks like part of variola major, though.

Procreation is not really what the thread has been talking about, as Cthia says. However from Loren Pechtel it appears that we can create life in the lab, just not yet intelligent. True, it is said to be a copy (at the moment), but we are already taking life up to the level of algae and genetically modifying it into something that is more useful to us (actually we have gotten to the point of modifying goats to produce spider silk). So it is just a matter of time before those two processes are put together to create something totally new. Just as the first transistor evolved into the integrated circuit.

tlb wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:It would be nice if it were true. Unfortunately, we have actually done so. Admittedly, copying life that already exists rather than going from scratch, but it has been done.

This was at the level of viruses--take a computer file and spit out a working virus. While what they created was simple and harmless the technology isn't limited to that. Last I knew it was still at the level of requiring a highly skilled person to do it and so far they appear to all be on the path of light. The companies that turn computer files into chemicals won't make anything that looks like part of variola major, though.

Procreation is not really what the thread has been talking about, as Cthia says. However from Loren Pechtel it appears that we can create life in the lab, just not yet intelligent. True, it is said to be a copy (at the moment), but we are already taking life up to the level of algae and genetically modifying it into something that is more useful to us (actually we have gotten to the point of modifying goats to produce spider silk). So it is just a matter of time before those two processes are put together to create something totally new. Just as the first transistor evolved into the integrated circuit.

I don't think we are at that level yet.

We can write a gene to produce any protein we want and we can insert the gene into any existing cells or we can assemble a virus from scratch. That does not give us the big picture--what pieces do we need to put together to make something living. We also do not have the ability to build cells from scratch, only to reprogram existing ones.

Simply merging the two technologies isn't enough--we don't know how to design the biological machinery, we only know how to hijack it.

tlb wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:It would be nice if it were true. Unfortunately, we have actually done so. Admittedly, copying life that already exists rather than going from scratch, but it has been done.

This was at the level of viruses--take a computer file and spit out a working virus. While what they created was simple and harmless the technology isn't limited to that. Last I knew it was still at the level of requiring a highly skilled person to do it and so far they appear to all be on the path of light. The companies that turn computer files into chemicals won't make anything that looks like part of variola major, though.

Procreation is not really what the thread has been talking about, as Cthia says. However from Loren Pechtel it appears that we can create life in the lab, just not yet intelligent. True, it is said to be a copy (at the moment), but we are already taking life up to the level of algae and genetically modifying it into something that is more useful to us (actually we have gotten to the point of modifying goats to produce spider silk). So it is just a matter of time before those two processes are put together to create something totally new. Just as the first transistor evolved into the integrated circuit.

Loren Pectel wrote:I don't think we are at that level yet.

We can write a gene to produce any protein we want and we can insert the gene into any existing cells or we can assemble a virus from scratch. That does not give us the big picture--what pieces do we need to put together to make something living. We also do not have the ability to build cells from scratch, only to reprogram existing ones.

Simply merging the two technologies isn't enough--we don't know how to design the biological machinery, we only know how to hijack it.

Copying something that has already been done has never held up in a court of law. Never!

You aren't even allowed to reuse programming code that has already been written.

cthia wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:I don't think we are at that level yet.

We can write a gene to produce any protein we want and we can insert the gene into any existing cells or we can assemble a virus from scratch. That does not give us the big picture--what pieces do we need to put together to make something living. We also do not have the ability to build cells from scratch, only to reprogram existing ones.

Simply merging the two technologies isn't enough--we don't know how to design the biological machinery, we only know how to hijack it.

Copying something that has already been done has never held up in a court of law. Never!

You aren't even allowed to reuse programming code that has already been written.

Sure, we can modify existing bacteria. Programming bacteria to produce a protein you want is an existing technology.

We have to leave the basic structure of the bacteria alone, though, we do not have the knowledge to mess with them to any substantial extent.

Since this thread is in a lull, does textev mention what calibre of bullet is in Honor's finger? Women have slender fingers: dunno about Sphixians. But a .22 calibre bullet isn't the calibre of bullet that I imagine Honor has.