So what does God think about Craig Venter's creation of 'artificial life'?
Well, it's a resounding 'no comment', according to his closest confidants, although some hope to get his opinion soon.
You'd think he'd have some thoughts on the matter. Treading on his toes just a bit, geneticists at the Craig Venter Insitute have created what they call the world's first artificial living cell.
They carefully crafted DNA, base pair by base pair, and inserted it into an emptied-out yeast cell to create a self-replicating bacterium controlled entirely by the artificial DNA.
The use of the yeast cell means there's some argument over whether it can really be called artificial life. But if this isn't it, well, it's pretty clear it's not a long step.
Creating life isn't difficult - millions of people do it by accident every year. But doing it from scratch, to order, has so far been the monopoly of one particular entity.
But over the last 24 hours, God has been surprisingly quiet on the subject, say the people with the hotlines.
"It's too early a stage to have a comment," said a spokeswoman for the Catholic Communications Network.
And the Baptists haven't heard a word, either: "It's a very new thing, and I haven't heard anything," said a Baptist Union of Great Britain spokesman. "I don't know if there'll be a statement."
No comment either from the Mormons, Muslim Council of Great Britain... well, anyone, really.
Even medical ethicists seem to have no strong opinions either way - a bit of a swizz, you might think, seeing as that's actually their job and all.
“Synthetic biology certainly raises deep philosophical and moral questions about the human relationship to nature,” says Gregory Kaebnick, of the Hastings Center, a bioethical research institute.
“It’s not clear what the answers to those questions are."
Where there is any opinion, it centres around the practical implications of synthetic life, rather than the ethical ones.
"Developing synthetic life forms such as synthetic viruses or bacteria with no natural predators is extremely dangerous," says Dr Stephen Napier, ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center.
"Bioterrorism and environmental degradation, from synthetic life escaping into the wild, are serious consequences - and if no strict protections are in place for preventing such events, there should be a moratorium on the research."
The fact that religious groups are so slow to jump in with opinions just goes to show how well they appreciate the importance of this research.
Synthetic life is one of those discoveries that really could change the world. Applications include biofuels, vastly improved vaccines and drugs, even organic computers - but may well go much further than that.
If religious groups get the party line wrong now, it could make things a tad difficult in future. Forgoing contraception or blood transfusions could start to look easy in comparison.
Please don't mention interfaith dialogue....
Wrong. They're slow to jump in with opinions because they don't know what to make of it. They have no answer. Fortunately, they will realize they've already got a cop out to use. Same one they've always used. That only human beings have souls and spirits. They've long stated that animals and bacteria don't have souls or spirits. So they will likely jump that bandwagon and simply say that yes - bacteria have always just been little "soulless machines" in the eyes of the church. Now when they make a human out of synthetic DNA then you've got a problem. Until they relaize they can just say that God always infuses a spirit into anything that comes to life. Then you've got a new answer that will tide people over. There will always be a loophole when you get to make up your own man made God rules :)
In other news, the A T and T coverage map now extends well into the Gulf of Mexico, whose new motto is
"we'll all be orange all over and in the black in no time"!
I expect that God would think that BP owes him quite a lot of life.
I do have to agree with BoB, though - I would guess that we'll eventually see the typical circular, illogical cop-out answer we get from most theologians: Cotton candy rhetoric with a side of "GODDIDIT!"
Oh, and @Muslim: Which god? After all, there are thousands of them, and none of you have provided any sort of valid evidence, or even a credible argument as to why the god you follow through circumstances of birth and/or occurrence is the correct one.
1. Intelligence is necessary to come up with the idea to do this experiment - Was it 2002 that we heard the first of it? ( I dont suppose anyone would like to argue that Venter is stupid);
2. Intelligence is required to plan and overcome the many obsticles to get to the stated results;
3. Hard work and an understanding of the controlling rules and laws is required;
4. Problem solving ability and ingeniuty is required to solve the problems;
5. Apart from all the intelligence, understanding and help from other researchers - time and a lot of it was required to achieve the results;
6. If all the chemicals and stuff was left in the lab with no interference no one would expect any result.
What was achieved?
1. Existing DNA material was used and a new DNA strand was build based on an example, Thus existing material used;
2. This new DNA strand was inserted in an existing cell. this cell has all the mechanisms, intellectual property (IP) to read the DNA and reacted as normal.
3. No original material used to generate DNA, No new Cell created etc.
4. It was shown then in the end that intellegence is necessary for someone to copy an excellent design.
5. It disproves that there exist any chance that life could start from no intelligence.
What would God's response be? " I declared my glory to you in creation and I allowed you to see more and more of my glorious design and intelligence. You have more know-how and know-why than Darwin had but youir logical ability is blinded and you will be accountable before me - Oh foolish man when will you believe?"