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, and then Part 3, and lastly Part 4.
Our little series wouldn’t be complete without a response from Casey Luskin, everyone’s favorite among the neo-theocrats at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (a/k/a the Discoveroids). The Discoveroid blog offers this: “Artificial Life” Or Intelligently Designed Plagiarism? Casey says, with bold font added by us:
As Jonathan Wells recently observed, it’s being widely reported on internet news sites that biotech guru Craig Venter and his team have created “artificial life.”
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To be sure, this work is a technical accomplishment — with the potential to lead to applications in medical, pharmaceutical, and biological research. But did they really create “artificial life”?
This is starting out to be the mother of all straw-man arguments. Is Casey really going to belittle Venter’s work by beating up on a phrase used by the media? It looks that way. Let’s read on:
Venter and his team showed they can successfully identify the code necessary for a living bacterial cell. They sequenced the code, imported the code into a computer, and then outputted it. But we still don’t even understand how all the parts of a bacterial cell work. …
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Learning how to import the right code from a bacterial chromosome into a new bacterial chromosome doesn’t mean we fully understand all aspects of the code or the proteins and structures it encodes.
Casey is a demanding taskmaster. Venter hasn’t satisfied him. All Venter did was synthesize a bacterium’s DNA, insert it into an empty and lifeless bacterial shell, and then the newly created cell lived — and reproduced. Casey isn’t impressed. Venter never attempted to explain the entire universe to Casey’s satisfaction, but that “failure” is what Casey is complaining about. We continue:
And note also that they had to import the code into a pre-existing bacterial cell. That means that any epigenetic information that exists outside of the DNA was borrowed from the bacterial cell that they inserted the chromosome into — not created from scratch.
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Even Craig Venter acknowledges, “We didn’t create life from scratch.” That’s an understatement.
Golly! Venter actually confessed — he confessed! — that he didn’t create life from scratch. That proves Casey’s point! This is big news, dear reader. Casey has actually succeeded in beating up a straw-man. The Discoveroids should be sending out press releases.
Here’s more:
So now that intelligent agents have synthesized the DNA-based “software” necessary for life, another question arises: What, in our experience is the sole known cause of this software? William Dembski and Jonathan Witt think they have the answer in Intelligent Design Uncensored: “[T]here remains one and only one type of cause that has shown itself able to create functional information like we find in cells, books and software programs — intelligent design.”
Aha! Venter’s work vindicates Dembski — at least Casey says it does. Isn’t that amazing? Get ready now, because Casey’s last sentence is really crushing:
It seems to me that rather than creating “artificial life,” what they did was figure out how to plagiarize the intelligent designer’s programming.
The technique should be clear by now — regardless of what science learns or does, the creationists’ response will always be the same: We were right all along! Except, of course, they’ve never been right about anything.
Next update: See Creationists React to Venter’s Breakthrough, Part 6.
Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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Casey’s god (aka “the intelligent designer”) is apparently such a fool that a mere mortal like Venter can “plagiarize” his code.
Poor, pathetic, impotent weasel of a god.
Outfoxed by an evil mad scientist. Again.
Which, of course, causes Casey to wet himself and cry for his mommy.
I admit to not being up on the latest DisInformation Institute nomenclature, but did I just detect the faint smell of a smuggled premise? Just what information resides outside the DNA?
Longie asks: “Just what information resides outside the DNA?”
That’s where the magic Designer left his iPod.
Casey LOVES the word “plagiarize!” Too bad he doesn’t know what it means.
Following the Kitzmiller, Luskin was all a-twitter about Judge Jones PLAGIARIZING the plaintiff’s submitted findings. Gee, said Casey, NONE of the loser’s findings were mentioned by Judge Jones except maybe in the context of malfeasance. What a surprise!
Of course, Judge Jones attributed and cited every comment by the plaintiff’s legal team which is hardly “plagiarism.” Look up the word, Casey.
Thus, too, did Venter (hey, Casey, did you even read the article in Science?) attribute the source of the “code” he used in his experiment. Venter didn’t synthesize the entire genome and claim he did it all by himself from scratch. No, he wrote quite clearly where the genome came from, which parts he used, which parts he inserted and even identified a couple of mutations that good old Mother Nature made along the way.
Where’s the “plagiarism” Casey? How do you know, Casey, that Venter didn’t pray to the “intelligent designer” and get permission?
And Luskin wonders why rational people laugh at creationists.
In summary:
1. An intelligent designer is needed to form a living cell from scratch.
2. An intelligent designer can’t form a living cell from scratch.