THIS is another follow-up to Craig Venter‘s announcement that his lab has created a bacterial cell with a synthetic genome. For earlier creationist reactions see Part 1 and Part 2.
We found this in the Christian Post (Singapore). The article is titled First ‘Synthetic’ Cell Strengthens Case for Design. Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:
A biochemistry expert at the science-faith think tank Reasons to Believe is among those hailing the recent creation of the first-ever “synthetic cell,” though not for the same reasons as most.
Here’s their website: Reasons to Believe. In their “about us” section they have the usual statement of belief one finds at creationist websites, which begins:
We believe the Bible (the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments) is the Word of God, written. As a “God-breathed” revelation, it is thus verbally inspired and completely without error (historically, scientifically, morally, and spiritually) in its original writings.
Okay, we know what we’re dealing with. Here’s what they say about Venter’s work:
“From an apologetics standpoint, this is exciting work that I’m happy to see pursued and would like to see even more effort devoted toward this because it’s giving us a very powerful case for [Intelligent] Design,” said Dr. Fazle Rana on Friday, referring to the idea that holds certain aspects of nature are so complex that they could not have come about by evolution alone but instead point to an intelligent designer.
But wait — there’s more:
“In fact, I even would go so far as to say that this is even a brand new class of arguments for Design,” he added during RTB’s flagship podcast.
Amazing. One more excerpt:
“This is a third approach that says, ‘We think that life is the work of a designer because we know from empirical experience now that to make life requires ingenuity, careful planning, careful manipulation of chemicals in the lab under exacting conditions in order to generate lifeforms,’” Rana said.
“I think it shows conclusively in the most compelling way possible that life requires a mind,” he added.
So the creationists have flip-flopped completely. They started out saying “ID is true because life is so complicated that only the magical Designer can do this.” Now they’re saying “Yippee, ID is true because mere men can do this!”
In other words, ID is true no matter what happens. To the rational mind, therefore, ID is worthless as an explanatory concept.
Update: See Creationists React to Venter’s Breakthrough, Part 4.
Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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Curmudgeon: “So the creationists have flip-flopped completely. They started out saying ‘ID is true because life is so complicated that only the magical Designer can do this.’ Now they’re saying ‘Yippee, ID is true because mere men can do this!’”
You probably noticed that they do that for every advance in origin-of-life. By “they” I mean that at least one creationist can be counted on to contradict another, just as they do with questions of “when,” “which is the ape, which is the human,” “is evolution falsified or unfalsifiable,” etc. But they also even contradict themselves. Not as in reasonable change of opiniondue to new evidence, but flip-flops to suit the argument at hand.
Politicians, including many liberal ones, like creationists because creationists are politicians.
“Life. So easy even a caveman can do it…”
We also get to see an example of creationists second favorite activity: Moving the goalposts.
OT: Martin Gardner died.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR2010052304271.html
What Asimov was for SC, Martin Gardner was for me (and so was Asimov, in fact).
Gabriel Hanna says: “OT: Martin Gardner died.”
True. A very good man. I didn’t know how to fit it in here, so I didn’t post about it. But chat about him all you like. Comments about Gardner would never be unwelcome around here.