> That is the holy grail?

At one end we're creating artificial life, the other we are creating artificial intelligence.

We're coming at everything we as the human race have known for millennia from both ends, simultaneously. We're recreating that, from scratch.

That is absolutely fucking wild.

Ironically this "holy" grail will end up being the thing that finally puts religious creation myths in their place (i.e. as bullshit) since we will be able to answer with 100% certainty that we are not alone or unique in the universe since we recreated life in the fucking petri dish so why not across the billions and trillions of other planets out there?

What a time to be alive.

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yreg an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> we will be able to answer with 100% certainty that we are not alone or unique in the universe since we recreated life in the fucking petri dish

I don't think we are alone, but this is not logically sound. The conditions in the petri dish might be easily so special that their natural prevalence is < 1 per universe.

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el_io 40 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You if believe creating life will end religion then you're wrong.

We thought evolutionary theory would do the same, now we got people who believe god directed evolution. Some believe everything evolved from a common ancestor except Humans.

So the believers will adapt to believe that Genesis was talking about exactly this.

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ZenoArrow 31 minutes ago | parent [-]

Science can't disprove religion. Consider the "big bang", is that any less of a miracle than "God did it"? Science is like "just give us one miracle and we'll explain the rest".

	▲	groceries8192 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The big bang theory isn't even incompatible with the idea that 'God did it'; the idea was first proposed by a Catholic priest, as a matter of fact! I think the anti-science stance of evangelicals has eclipsed in the modern consciousness the fact that modern science owes much to the Catholic church. > This startling idea first appeared in scientific form in 1931, in a paper by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest. excerpt from https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosm...

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kilobaud an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

(Disclaimer: on religion I try to be respectful, as an agnostic atheist) I do think our ability to “build tools that create life” is incredible, but to me has a limited argumentative impact on what I guess you could call the “prime mover” question: _But how did everything start?_ Does that seem reasonable or am I downplaying the implications you mentioned?

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system33- an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nah. The natural pivot is from “we have never observed abiogenesis” to “see? Life required a creator.”

You can’t win

	▲	groceries8192 10 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Thomas Aquinas made the argument that all life comes from other life in the 13th Century. I wouldn't classify it as a modern pivot so much as one of the central philosophical arguments for the existence of a Creator.
	▲	Windchaser 8 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Aye, but this will let us gradually work towards more and more basic cell forms, so that we can eventually figure out abiogenesis.

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AndrewKemendo an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That’s because we’re almost to the Technological Singularity

Kurzweil puts it between 2029-2032 and that seems right to me

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

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tsunamifury 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wait you think creating life disapproves creationism?

I’m no 7 day creationist but haha my guy…

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36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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