Granted, Marie and her husband died of radiation exposure. But now X-ray machines routinely save lives, and by God’s grace humanity stumbled through the Cold War without nuking itself out of existence. The only credible nuclear threat today comes from rogue nations like North Korea or blindly nationalistic ones like Iran and Pakistan, and one-off weapons that might fall into the hands of terrorists. Neither of these will result in Oppenheimer earning his crown as “destroyer of worlds,” though they would be awful.

As we learned on 9/11/01, terrorists don’t need nukes to kill thousands and change a city’s skyline and shift an entire nation’s security consciousness. Yet Donald Douglas isn’t known for refining and popularizing the death-dealing passenger jet, tool of terror, he’s known for his major role in “making the earth smaller” via affordable jet travel.

Craig Venter isn’t “Splicing” like hapless Clive & Elsa. He’s opening an unpredictable new frontier of science, one that is wide enough to contain great good, great evil, and vast grey areas that call for M operatives to explore.

Let’s wait to castigate until actual evil occurs. Right now all I see is a microscopic biological feat of genetic engineering. Impressive? Maybe. Let’s see where all this goes.

Better yet, let’s join the geneticists’ conversation and try to steer it wisely.

To prepare for that, let’s explore what “wise” looks like on the frontier of biological engineering…

“The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.”
–J. Robert Oppenheimer

“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
–J. Robert Oppenheimer

No, the time is now. And we are not playing ethical Sudoku here. These issues are theoretical only because the practical effects are difficult to foresee. But unless Jesus returns and cuts this process short, there WILL be practical applications or expressions of this technology, and human lives WILL be affected. Even if you or I do not have “spliced” children ourselves, or do not battle Frankensteinian monsters like the one in the movie, new human capabilities and achievements will change how we see ourselves and even reality itself.

The temptation is to stop the whole process before it really begins, which we have done with two other frontiers that showed tremendous promise mixed with “Pandora’s box” fears: the ocean floor, and space. Our commercial development, and therefore our exploration, of both is hobbled by conventions and treaties based on fear of exploitation, fear of unintended consequences, fear that others will claim the benefits for themselves and abuse them, leaving us out as paupers or suffering as victims… or slain as prey.

Craig Venter and his fellow genetic entrepreneurs may bring great benefit (dare I say blessings?) to humankind. They may indeed change, or at least complicate, the definition of “life” and of “human”. There will certainly be unintended consequences of such things, just as the Industrial Revolution and the Internet had unintended consequences galore. Very few of the grand promises of industrial or technological Progress came to pass, in fact their failure highlighted the ancient truths of premodern culture. The same will be true of this genetic revolution, if that’s what it turns out to be. And human ingenuity found ways to solve or at least ameliorate the downsides of those earlier revolutions of society and identity and commerce; let’s step into this new revolution as bravely and as wisely as we can.

How sad it would be if the rich and dangerous wilderness of Life Itself were, like space and the ocean floor, made into an esoteric and expensive reserve for intrepid scientists and doctoral students, never to be embraced and explored…

Hat tip to Lan and his Math professor friend for this POV.

Did the Science Journal rush to announce these findings too quickly? Will they retract their announcement after further investigation?

OR

Is there now on earth a life that does not have ancestors only a human creator?

I only had time to skim your post, and I am probably sympathetic to your position (as I agree with Gnotek’s last bit), but even a cursory glance notices that you aren’t really dealing much with Alex’s argument. You have set up a straw man, one that Alex specifically tried to step away from.

Examples: Alex says “just because something is written by humans does not automatically make it false”, yet you seem to say that Alex IS arguing for the inadequacy and falsehood of the scriptures… and Alex says “the Bible is inspired by this encounter between God and humans and the sustained relationships (both individual and societal) that follow”, yet you seem to argue that Alex is rejecting any inspiration that might come via the Bible.

At some point I’ll sit down and read your essay more carefully. Perhaps I’m off base.

But if I write my own essay in reply to you or to Alex, I’ll post it on my own blog, under my own name, with a trackback or pingback to this original post so folks can follow me over from here.

Wow.

The 20th Century kid in me, raised in the Space Race, is raising his hand tentatively and saying “So, are we still going to Mars someday?”

Maybe, kid, maybe… right now we’re talking about who and what “we” will be.