Amoeba

Has any scientist been able to create an amoeba?

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But There is a God in Heavan.

"Create?" In what sense do you mean this?

They can culture amoeba and cause their reproduction, but no one can simply assemble the right chemical components into an amoeba.

Here is a recent press release about an viable organism being synthesized from ordinary chemicals in the lab. Viruses, in this case the polio virus, are not free living - but they are life nevertheless.

PRESS RELEASE

Researchers in New York have created infectious polioviruses from ordinary, inert chemicals they obtained from a scientific mail-order house, marking the first time a functional virus has been made from scratch and raising a host of new scientific and ethical concerns.

…

The Stony Brook team started with nothing more than a written copy of the virus's RNA code, a string of 7,741 molecular "letters" that tell the virus how to function.

The first task was to construct a strand of RNA that reflected that written blueprint. But since RNA is relatively unstable in the laboratory, the team first made a DNA version of the virus's code by ordering customized pieces of DNA from an Iowa-based company that sells made-to-order snippets of genetic material. The team assembled the molecules into a DNA equivalent of the full-length polio genome, then used an enzyme that turns DNA into RNA to make a working copy of the poliovirus's natural RNA core.

When placed in a tube filled with appropriate chemicals and enzymes, those pieces of RNA did what they do in nature: They copied themselves and started producing proteins, including protein shells into which newly made pieces of RNA were spontaneously packaged.

The result was countless functional polioviruses.

"This shows it's now possible to go from data printed on a piece of paper or stored in a computer and, without the organism itself. . . . reconstruct a life form," said John La Montagne, deputy director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. 1

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"We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture," Pastor Ray Mummert speaking out against teaching evolution in Pennsylvania schools
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The scary thing is that - even if a disease like smallpox were truely eradicated, it is possible to recreate it.

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"We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture," Pastor Ray Mummert speaking out against teaching evolution in Pennsylvania schools
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Mycoplasma genitalium is the "simplest" organism - capable of reproducing on thier own- known. In otherwords it has the shortest genome. Unlike viruses - which hijack the machinery of a cell because they lack the necessary structures, mycoplasms have the essencial structures are capable of reproducing on thier own. Scientists are currently working on generating an artificial life form based on the Mycoplasma genitalium's genome.

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"We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture," Pastor Ray Mummert speaking out against teaching evolution in Pennsylvania schools
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Today at 10:17 AM Jon said this in Post #1

Has any scientist been able to create an amoeba?

From non-living chemicals? No. However, scientists have made more primitive cells -- called protocells -- from amino acids

http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/
http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

How can scientist say that they know how an amoeba got here if they don't even know how to make an amoeba?
(just wondering.....)

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But There is a God in Heavan.

Amoeba are very complex cells even more complex then most of the cells in your body. With that in mind, about the time we are able to create amoeba's from scratch, we will be able to create totally functioning multicelled animals from scratch, maybe even humans.

Although we curently lack the technology and knowledge to create a cell from scratch, it is well known what needs to be done to reach that state. We know the kind of nano-technology that needs to be created, as well as a better understanding of how DNA is read, processed, and exceuted in cells to perform tasks and replicate.

So even though the answer is that we can't do it right now, we will be able to in the future. And as your young, it may even be in your lifetime.

Don't make the mistake of fitting God into the gaps of human knowledge and ability as those gaps close and have been closing on deists for 100s of years.

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"The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion."
- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
The Age of Reason

They don't know how amoeba got here, but they do have self-consistent theories that can explain how they did come into being that fit with observable data. 

Also, you don't have to know how to make something to know how it came into being.  For example, you could go to Gateway Computers and see them make a computer.  You know people and machines made them even though you don't know how to make one yourself.

Scott (Quath)

Today at 12:46 PM Jon said this in Post #7


How can scientist say that they know how an amoeba got here if they don't even know how to make an amoeba?
(just wondering.....)

What does that have to do with anything?  We can't make a galaxy, either, but that doesn't stop us from knowing how galaxies got here.

The amoeba, like us, is the product of 3.8 billion years of evolution.  And yes, we know natural selection can make things.  Since you like computer programming, maybe you'd like this paper:

 AI Samuel, Some studies on machine learning using the game of checkers.  IBM Journal of Research Development, 3: 211-219, 1964. Reprinted in EA Feigenbaum and J Feldman, Computers and Thought, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1964 pp 71-105.

In this study Samuel had Darwinian selection write a program to play checkers.  The program got so good that it eventually beat the human checkers champ.  When Samuel went back to examine the code, he found huge stretches of it that he had no idea what it did! So, Samuel couldn't make that program, but he knew Darwinian selection did.

We have seen that, when amino acids are dry heated or heated at hydrothermal vents, they form proteins. When water is added or in cooler water outside the vents, the proteins spontaneously make cells. 

As Melchior explains, don't try to jam God into gaps in human knowledge.  As the gaps close, God inevitably gets squeezed out.  There are other ways to view God's interaction with nature that don't involve gaps.