ARE WE DISCOVERING GOD?

Some people around the world have had their fears raised even further Monday with the announcement in Stockholm of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
The prize has been awarded to John B. Gurdon of the University of Cambridge in England and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan for their years of work and ultimate discoveries leading to advances in cloning and stem cell manipulation.

In a news report of the story for the New York Times, Nicholas Wade, the paper’s science writer and editor, wrote that the techniques of both researchers “reach to the beginnings of life, and have generated objections from people who fear, on ethical or religious grounds, that scientists are pressing too far into nature’s mysteries and the ability to create life artificially”

This raises the question: Is there such a thing as “artificial life”? Because we simply define “artificial life” as Life which is created in a way that does not involve intercourse, does that make it really “artificial?” Or are we actually, as a species, finally learning about the true nature of Life, and is it our definitions, our beliefs, and our religions that are creating “understandings of life” that are artificial?

Dr. Gurdon, who is 79, and Dr. Yamanaka, who is 50, share the Nobel Prize in their field this year for pioneering work that they conducted 40 years apart. Their separate research led to “the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent,” according to the Nobel committee.

The term “pluripotent” refers to the ability of a living human body cell to differentiate into another type of living body cell. The work of the two researchers has shown that completely mature cells can be induced to turn back the clock of their own maturation process, returning to their original state as immature cells—meaning that they become cells that are once again undifferentiated, and can differentiate in any way. The discovery that living cells of the human organism are both reversible and reprogrammable is monumental.

The ability to reverse and reprogram cells in a laboratory suggests that cells of any human being can be extracted from the body, induced to reverse their life cycle, turned back into undifferentiated cells, then reprogrammed to differentiate, or form themselves, into healthy cells that could replace injured, diseased or dying cells in that person’s body.

In other words, illness—and even deathly illness—might well be able to be reversed, by using the body’s own cells, simply regenerated.

This implies that ultimately—when continuing research moves to the next step forward—a person could live forever, simply by replacing degenerating body cells with regenerated ones. This approach, already being seriously explored as a means of abating disease, is called Regenerative Medicine.

Now might be a good time to point out that Conversations with God made it clear, in a statement that drew scoffs and skepticism years ago, that life in the physical was meant to be eternal, lasting as long as any individual wished to inhabit a particular body, and that it has been the Free Will decisions and choices made by our species that has created behavioral (smoking, no exercise, etc.) and environmental (pollution, global warming, etc.) factors leading to our own short live spans.

In other words, says the New Spirituality, it doesn’t have to be this way. And now Science is proving it—and giving us the means to actually reverse our own previous bad decisions. Could it be that there is no such thing as “artificial” life, and that there is only Life? Could it be that how it forms itself out of Itself is the mystery that creates Eternal Life? Could it be that this mystery is now being solved? And should humanity fear this knowledge, or celebrate it?

When we know more and more about How God Works, is this a cause for sadness?