The Venter Institute has made headlines with its recent efforts to create synthetic life. You know -- the Sci-Fi dream in which a few chemical compounds are added to a bubbling beaker, and suddenly some smoky reactions occur. Behold, man has finally caught up with God...!
Well, not quite. And very likely, not ever. What Venter's team actually did was boot up a cell from a synthetically created genome. A far step from the process which allows inert undirected compounds to assemble into living, self-replicating cells. However, the quintessential issue here is not if or when this can be done.The break-point issue is why are we trying so mightily to create life when our priority should really be to enrich life. To enrich the life we already have.
In other words -- replicating what we already are is far less stunning than finding ways to become better than we already are. I mean, isn't that the real dream? The real mission? The real breakthrough?
Funny thing, long long before dreamers were experimenting with their bubbling beakers, other dreamers were experimenting with our bubbling essence. Not scientists, these dreamers were known as prophets ...messengers ...founders. Buddha, Abraham, Jesus, Mohamed. They looked at our flawed humanity and chose not to replicate us, instead to improve us.
To be sure, their methodology has become so altogether flawed and familiar, it seems rather dated by now. "Oh, yeah, that religion stuff!" But simply because their dreams have yet to be fulfilled does not make their dreams one whit smaller on the scale of human existence. And while their dreams are far more elusive than Venter's, we should think them not one whit less spectacular....
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THIS JUST SAYS IT ALL...
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