Playing God!

“Scientists have created the world's first synthetic life form in a landmark experiment that paves the way for designer organisms that are built rather than evolved”
Read the complete news item here.

When US Geneticists researching in Craig Venter’s team announced their success in producing “life” in a laboratory from chemicals, mankind has seemingly “progressed” in its capabilities to develop the rudimentary forms of life in a test tube. Media was quick to observe how the human race had crossed the threshold of divinity by developing the ability to create life forms, albeit just micro-organisms at this point in time, thereby describing the development as “playing God” by creating “life”. Some writers have been quick to imagine the consequences of such scientific advancement to lead to some disastrous results. Such life forms, some religious groups argued, are capable of forming variants and mutants, which can develop into other life forms and spread on our planet and cause environmental and ecological havoc! Besides, they would not be in our control – at least not in control of those who created them!

Skeptics would wonder whether we need these micro-organisms or their variants or mutants or whatever to cause environmental havoc on this wonderful planet when we have been doing a perfectly good job ourselves? Or do we really think we can create life in our laboratories and then have complete control over these synthetic creations? Must we not first try and control our teenage sons and daughters before even contemplating control over other life forms? Come to think of it, one wonders whether creators even seek control over their creation.

Man may not have yet understood how the human body works – but one cannot take away the credit for the success for having developed some kind of life form to the 20 scientists who toiled for 10 years , spent Millions of US$s and achieved just that! And although skeptical, religious, social opposition of the kind that had previously opposed the scientific advancement into cloning, takes effect and announces some kind of ban for the creation of such life forms in laboratories on this planet, let us salute this great achievement! I would also like to thank the scientists for naming the first synthetically created life form with a name that is more difficult to remember than mine:
1.08-Mbp Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 genome!

That said, I continue to wonder about the “playing god” by “creating life” part of the news item. What exactly is playing God, btw? To approach this question, one must face the sorting hat of the Harry Potter kind that one sees in society today. We have, I learn the following kinds of people on our planet:

Theists – who believe in the existence of God – Monotheists believe in one God. Polytheists believe in multiple Gods.

Atheists – who don’t believe in the existence of God. How boring!

Pantheists – those who believe that all existing living forms are one entity – God!

Agnostic – those who find it difficult to decide whether god exists or not. Coined by Thomas Huxley, he originally meant it to mean those who would not believe anything until proven or disproven.

But for the purpose of simplicity, let us restrict the discussion to Theists of any kind (btw I belong to the Polytheist category and am comfortable with 330 million Gods and my pranaams to each one of them).

So “Playing God” to us, Theists, is creating this universe to which this wonderful planet belongs, all the lovely life forms on earth (except of course 1.08 MBP-whatever-whatever genome) and – hold your breath – controlling all that’s going on here! Now that’s a long way from creating a microorganism called 1.08 whatever….. Nevertheless, we Theists cannot stop marveling about the several life forms – the several thousand species of birds, animals, insects, fish, trees - their beautiful manifestations in nature, their role in maintaining the ecological balance of the earth. Theists would be eternally amazed and grateful to the Creator for the world in which we live.

One cannot but admire how thoughtfully, God has given the camel its hump to store water in the desert or the giraffe the long neck to reach higher leaves on which it lives or the pouch in the Pelican’s beak to store food for more than a week; and a pouch for the Kangaroo to hold its offspring… ! One could go on and on. How could HE have done it all by HIMself, one would wonder? For Theists, it is a matter of whether to believe in one god or 330 million? But for a Monotheist, One God is enough - HE is God, after all!

But after spending some time appreciating the thousands of species of animals and birds, let us turn to the latest creation from God – Mankind! Now this animal is capable of intelligent thinking, analyzing, talking, discussing, debating, socializing, - finally of making scientific inventions! Inventions to make life easier and inventions that could blow up this planet with the nuclear arms build-up by superpowers. Mankind had already acquired capability to destroy all God’s creations on earth – before beginning on the path and taking this first step – of creating life in its micro-organismic form!

Like CERN, who believes that if matter exists, so would anti-matter, theists too believe that if God exists, so does anti-God, the Satan or Shaitan (wonder Shaitan came from Satan or otherwise). So we have plenty of scientific advancements that are depleting our resources, polluting our rivers, polluting the very air we breathe, posing a threat to the ecological balance of our planet.
One can only hope that we are closer to playing God and saving this planet than playing Satan and destroying it! Just had to post my thoughts that came to my mind on this World Environment Day 2010! Wishes for the World Environment Day to all!

Blogger's Postscript: My apologies to my readers if this post didn’t make enough whatnonsanz. You'd rather be polite and say it makes a lot of sense! My apologies too if it was too long – but then I did not even touch upon the subject of destiny – who decides about my next post btw…