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> 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 h

> 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.

AndrewKemendo 4mo ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
kilobaud 4mo ago
(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?
system33- 4mo ago
Nah. The natural pivot is from “we have never observed abiogenesis” to “see? Life required a creator.” You can’t win
- groceries8192 4mo ago
  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 4mo ago
  Aye, but this will let us gradually work towards more and more basic cell forms, so that we can eventually figure out abiogenesis.
yreg 4mo ago
> 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.
- gmueckl 4mo ago
  The first time this happens in a petri dish will likely have to be under extremely controlled circumstances. But the process will be modified and toyed with once it exists and I think that this will eventually lead to whole spectrum of (quasi?)biological systems that together cover a broad range of environmental conditions.
el_io 4mo ago
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.
- ZenoArrow 4mo ago
  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 4mo ago
    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/cosmic-horizons-book/georges-lemaitre-big-bang https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosm...
  - nathan_compton 4mo ago
    I think this is really the wrong framing. Science can't disprove religion. The question is whether it makes any sense to believe in the religion in the first place, given what observation and science say about the universe. Science can't prove that God didn't create the universe a nano-second ago in exactly the state to produce this temporal evolution, but no one believes that because its not explanatory and also fails a bunch of other, not-necessarily scientific, but rationally motivated epistemological tests. The way I see this is that science cannot disprove any particular religion, but it can probably offer more compelling explanations for the state of the world than religion can offer. People haven't flocked away from religion because explanations for the state of the world aren't really what people want from religion. They want a sop for their anxieties. they want community, etc. I think believing in nonsense is a real shitty way to get these things, but I'm not most people.
deleted 4mo ago
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tsunamifury 4mo ago
Wait you think creating life disapproves creationism? I’m no 7 day creationist but haha my guy…
namero999 4mo ago
I might in some sense agree with you but check your wording: creationism... we recreated life... see where I'm going?
graemep 4mo ago
> 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? How does it affect religious ideas per se? its something many religious people long to find https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/06/disclosure-day-aliens-catholicism/687580/ https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/06/disclosure-day-a...
lo_zamoyski 4mo ago
Not really. AI isn't intelligent by any stretch. To make that claims requires ignorance of what constitutes "intelligence", especially the most essential element of intelligence, viz., intensionality. LLMs or expert system or whatever absolutely lack intensionality by definition because computation is by definition a purely syntactic process. > Ironically this "holy" grail will end up being the thing that finally puts religious creation myths in their place I think you're way out of your depth here and making things up. The first tell is that you use "religion" as a blanket term as if all religious traditions make the same claims, which they absolutely do not. You can discredit, say, Mormonism much more easily than, say, Islam (though, ironically, there is a strange structural similarity between the two). > we will be able to answer with 100% certainty that we are not alone or unique in the universe since we recreated life [..] so why not across the billions and trillions of other planets out there? Who exactly claims that human beings or, generally, life on earth is the only life in the universe? None of the major religions do. I'm also going to assume that Christianity (or some caricature of it) is for you the paradigmatic reference point of what constitutes "religion", in which case there is nothing in Christian theology that excludes the possibility of life - even embodied intelligent life - elsewhere in the universe. (The latter is actually interesting from an ontological perspective. If the definition of "human" is "rational animal", then by definition, all rational animals are human. So, from an ontological perspective, even if an intelligent, phylogenetically distinct species were to be found on another planet, ontologically, they would also be human.)
wartywhoa23 4mo ago
> What a time to be alive. May well turn into a time to better be dead.

AndrewKemendo 4mo ago

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

kilobaud 4mo ago

(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?

system33- 4mo ago

Nah. The natural pivot is from “we have never observed abiogenesis” to “see? Life required a creator.” You can’t win

groceries8192 4mo ago
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 4mo ago
Aye, but this will let us gradually work towards more and more basic cell forms, so that we can eventually figure out abiogenesis.

yreg 4mo ago

> 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.

gmueckl 4mo ago
The first time this happens in a petri dish will likely have to be under extremely controlled circumstances. But the process will be modified and toyed with once it exists and I think that this will eventually lead to whole spectrum of (quasi?)biological systems that together cover a broad range of environmental conditions.

el_io 4mo ago

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.

ZenoArrow 4mo ago
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 4mo ago
  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/cosmic-horizons-book/georges-lemaitre-big-bang https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosm...
- nathan_compton 4mo ago
  I think this is really the wrong framing. Science can't disprove religion. The question is whether it makes any sense to believe in the religion in the first place, given what observation and science say about the universe. Science can't prove that God didn't create the universe a nano-second ago in exactly the state to produce this temporal evolution, but no one believes that because its not explanatory and also fails a bunch of other, not-necessarily scientific, but rationally motivated epistemological tests. The way I see this is that science cannot disprove any particular religion, but it can probably offer more compelling explanations for the state of the world than religion can offer. People haven't flocked away from religion because explanations for the state of the world aren't really what people want from religion. They want a sop for their anxieties. they want community, etc. I think believing in nonsense is a real shitty way to get these things, but I'm not most people.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

tsunamifury 4mo ago

Wait you think creating life disapproves creationism? I’m no 7 day creationist but haha my guy…

namero999 4mo ago

I might in some sense agree with you but check your wording: creationism... we recreated life... see where I'm going?

graemep 4mo ago

> 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? How does it affect religious ideas per se? its something many religious people long to find https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/06/disclosure-day-aliens-catholicism/687580/ https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/06/disclosure-day-a...

lo_zamoyski 4mo ago

Not really. AI isn't intelligent by any stretch. To make that claims requires ignorance of what constitutes "intelligence", especially the most essential element of intelligence, viz., intensionality. LLMs or expert system or whatever absolutely lack intensionality by definition because computation is by definition a purely syntactic process. > Ironically this "holy" grail will end up being the thing that finally puts religious creation myths in their place I think you're way out of your depth here and making things up. The first tell is that you use "religion" as a blanket term as if all religious traditions make the same claims, which they absolutely do not. You can discredit, say, Mormonism much more easily than, say, Islam (though, ironically, there is a strange structural similarity between the two). > we will be able to answer with 100% certainty that we are not alone or unique in the universe since we recreated life [..] so why not across the billions and trillions of other planets out there? Who exactly claims that human beings or, generally, life on earth is the only life in the universe? None of the major religions do. I'm also going to assume that Christianity (or some caricature of it) is for you the paradigmatic reference point of what constitutes "religion", in which case there is nothing in Christian theology that excludes the possibility of life - even embodied intelligent life - elsewhere in the universe. (The latter is actually interesting from an ontological perspective. If the definition of "human" is "rational animal", then by definition, all rational animals are human. So, from an ontological perspective, even if an intelligent, phylogenetically distinct species were to be found on another planet, ontologically, they would also be human.)

wartywhoa23 4mo ago

> What a time to be alive. May well turn into a time to better be dead.