The creation of life can be considered from two viewpoints: the creation of human life and the creation of plant and animal life. From the LDS view, a living person is the combination of a physical body and a spirit-offspring of God. This combination is the human soul. The scriptures don't say when the spirit enters the body, that is, when life begins. Our living prophets haven't answered that question, either. And, science hasn't defined when life begins. Even if science were to define the beginning of human life, that definition would have no meaning in the religious view of life, since scientists have no knowledge or recognition of a "spirit" inhabiting our bodies. Any scientific definition of when human life begins may or may not be when the spirit actually enters a body such that the combination becomes a living soul.
Some scientists are researching life, how it began, how it can be created. They disregard (as well they should) the religious concept of human life being the combination of a spirit and a mortal body. Instead, they are attempting to determine if new life could be created as the result of natural laws. This post reviews some of their work.
Cloning
Cloning has been a successful technique to change the nature of organisms. The history of cloning history goes back to 1952 and continues to the present. The list of animals that have been cloned is long and includes sheep, monkeys, cats, dogs, cattle, deer, goats, horses, rats, mice, and water buffalo.
Cloning raises the question, "Is cloning the creation of life?" I expect that people will probably have differing answers to that question. My view is no. Cloning is only the creation of new life-forms, not of new life itself. Current cloning techniques involve changing the genetic material in an egg such that an embryo from that egg will have the new attributes. No new life has been created through cloning. The egg already had the "spark of life" (what ever that means), and cloning only changes the characteristics of the living organism that results from cloning.
New DNA/Genes
Of interest is the work of Craig Venter and his group. They created artificial DNA and plan to introduce that DNA into the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium with the hope that the chromosome will take over the bacterium. I agree that they have created an artificial DNA and if successful will have created new forms life that didn't exist before. In effect they will have bypassed the eons of time involved with evolution to create new forms of life. I do not agree that they will have created new life itself since the bacterium to be used in the experiment will already be alive. In 2010 Dr. Venter announced his team has produced new genes from basic chemicals.
Venter and his team at the not-for-profit J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), which has facilities in Rockville, Maryland, and San Diego, announced in 2010 that they had constructed the world's first completely synthetic bacterial cell. Using computer-designed genes made on synthesizer machines from four bottles of chemicals, the scientists arranged those genes into a package, a synthetic chromosome. When inserted into a bacterial cell, the chromosome booted up the cell and was capable of dividing and reproducing.
Creation of New Life
In 2002, scientists duplicated the polio virus using laboratory chemicals. They injected the virus into mice to demonstrate the virus was active. The mice became paralyzed and then died. Scientists are divided over the question of viruses being alive. If viruses are alive, the duplication of the polio virus would be a laboratory creation of an existing life-form but would not be new life, i.e. life that didn't already exist.
In order to create new life rather than to just modify or duplicate life, scientists would have to create new life from elementary elements in which the "spark of life" (what ever that means) did not already exist. Scientists at Harvard University announced in 2003 that they had created from basic elements a crude form of a cell. At that time, they did not claim to have created life, only to have created a primitive form of something, a "container", that is necessary for life to exist. Those scientists are now claiming to be on the verge of creating advanced or workable "containers" for new cells. ScienceDaily reported that scientists are trying to create new life-forms through the creation of re-programmable cells.
"We are talking about a highly ambitious goal leading to a fundamental breakthrough that will, -- ultimately, allow us to rapidly prototype, implement and deploy living entities that are completely new and do not appear in nature, adapting them so they perform new useful functions."
Is the creation of new genes the creation of life? I say "no", because the bacterial cell used by Venter already had the "spark of life". Venter and his group did create new genes, thus changing the characteristics of the cell, but they did not give the "spark of life" to the cell. I think the creation of new life would be the taking of chemicals and creating an artificial cell. Then artificial DNA and artificial genes would be inserted into the cell, and the cell would become alive and would replicate itself. My personal opinion is that this will happen at some time in the future. I think it is likely that science will progress to the point where scientists are able to create new embryos and the embryos will grow into living animals. If this is accomplished, will this "prove" there is no god? I say "no", because God works through natural laws, the same laws that scientists are discovering. In addition (from the religious viewpoint), in order to have new human life, a spirit-child would have to be placed into the body that was created via science, and that is something scientists can not do since their work only involves mortal matter while a creation of a spirit-child involves spirit matter.
Stem Cells
The recent announcement that scientists have successfully turned skin cells into stem cells has created a lot of attention and interest from the scientific and religious communities. The use of skin cells instead of human embryos for the generation of stem cells will bypass the touchy question whether the use of embryonic stem cells, which results in the killing of the embryos, is murder. In another blog, I have a page devoted to research on stem cells.
Now for a little speculation. I've been wondering if stem cells obtained from skin could be used to create human embryos and thus human life. In a technical sense, those embryos wouldn't be new life, since the stem cells were living and brought the "spark of life" from a living person. But, from the LDS viewpoint, the embryos would be new persons (or life-forms) if God allowed His spirit offspring to enter the bodies such that they became new souls.
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