Re: only 50 genes away
George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Tue, 20 Oct 1998 07:00:57 -0400
Glenn R. Morton wrote:
>
> There is an article in the NY Times today that says that humans may only be
> 50 developmental genes different from chimpanzees. It talks about the
> possibility of inserting those 50 genes into a chimp embryo and seeing what
> happens. It can be found at
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/102098sci-chimps.html
>
> Question: Assuming (big if) that such a set of insertions actually moved
> the chimp toward the human form and cognition, what would people opposed to
> evolution then say to maintain the anti-evolutionary position? Would
> anti-evolutionary Christians finally be forced to admit that evolution
> might have occurred?
Glenn - Thanks for the reference. I can hardly speak for anti-evolutionists, but the
question you pose is part of a larger one which also arises with AI & cloning. Is there
any spiritual parallel to the Turing test? That test gives us a way (or a proposed way)
to test for intelligence, but some would maintain that that isn't identical with the
potential to have "true fear of God and faith in God". How would we test for the
latter?
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/