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Biology

Recent advances in scientific research claim to create "artificial life". They are only replacing DNA in living cells. I cannot find research that describes what life is, where it comes from, how it permeates inanimate molecules and makes them "live". Putting aside the impossible complexity of living cells required to capture and retain life, where does life come from in the first place? We've discovered dark energy and dark matter as being necessary to maintain the state of the universe, yet we can't detect them. We have no idea what gravity is, but it may originate in alternate dimensions. Is it plausible to consider life to be an energy that exists as dark energy exists? Is it all around us and only manifests itself within the proper matrix? Would it exist even if nothing was "alive" in the universe? What is it?

What is the difference between a living thing and a non-living thing? What is "vitality"? This is a difficult question. Once upon a time, it was widely believed that living things are distinguished by possessing a certain substance (an "elan vital") or perhaps by a certain force being present in them alone. This was a legitimate, testable scientific theory ("vitalism") that now appears to be false, since living processes can take place outside of living things (as when digestive enzymes can break down food in the test tube). Another notable family of views on this question is that living things are alive in virtue of the fact that they carry out certain "life functions" such as growth, self-motion, metabolism, reproduction, and so forth. This view would account for the intermediate cases between life and non-life (such as viruses and whatever entities existed in the early stages of the origins of life on Earth). The intermediate cases could presumably carry out some but not all of the life functions. ...
Biology

If reproducing is our "ultimate goal" in life, is it possible that evolution made an "error" of some kind by allowing us to think? Biologists say that evolution happens to allow a species to thrive more than it previously did, and that evolution experiments with combinations of properties that species have. Is it possible for evolution to undo our ability to think? Could you say according to this theory that instead of the human species being smarter it has actualy masked itself from its ultimate goal by being able to ponder the question "why?". These days, some people have no plans of creating offspring because they can choose whether or not they want to have children, and I believe choice is a product of thought. Is this theory plausible?

Yes, the theory of natural selection implies that a trait is more likely to spread insofar as (roughly speaking) the creatures possessing it are better at producing greater numbers of fertile offspring. But this does not mean that the "ultimate goal" of a creature is to reproduce. To speak of a creature as having such a goal suggests that the creature has this goal consciously in mind, and also that the creature's value or worth is to be judged (at least in part) by how well it achieves this goal. Evolutionary theory says no such thing. (Perhaps you realize this, and that's why you put the word "error" in scare-quotes in your question.) Furthermore, even setting this point aside, our ability to think surely contributes greatly to our evolutionary fitness. Of course, it also allows people to choose not to reproduce, as well as to create technology that might (with careless application) sometime lead to the demise of the human species. But it seems to me that overall, being able to think contributes...
Biology
Religion

I was reading up on the study of whether biologists who accept the evolutionary theory believe in God(s) and other theologistic happenings. Many of them say that they find no conflict between the two whatsoever. How is this possible? Isn't the theory of evolution itself based on random, natural selection?

See my answer to a very similar question from December 2.
Biology
Religion

I've recently been following the debate between proponents of evolutionary theory and those of intelligent design. It seems to me that the crux of their disagreement is around the existence of chance. Both parties seem (more or less) to agree on the mechanism (incremental development of species over time through selection of beneficial traits); but evolutionary theory states that these changes are random, the product of chance uninfluenced by God, while ID seems to think that God directs what we think of as chance, in effect denying the existence of randomness. But the question arises: if God doesn't influence chance, if true randomness occurs in nature, then what *does* God influence? Can a belief in evolutionary theory, or any theory that relies on chance occurrence, be compatible with a belief in God?

If irreducibly chancy processes occur in nature, God could be responsible for setting up laws of nature that specify those chances. Here is what I mean. Even irreducibly chancy processes are governed by laws. For instance, a given radioactive isotope has a given half-life L. (That is to say, for any given atom of that isotope existing at time t, there is a 50% chance of its decaying before time t+L.) That atoms of this isotope have half-life L is fixed by some laws of nature. Some philosophers believe that God is responsible for installing those laws. In this way, they believe, God arranged things so as to make it possible (even probable, perhaps) for intelligent creatures to evolve. So the laws of nature are something that God could "influence" even if God does not determine the outcomes of chance processes. Needless to say, it is far from obvious that the fundamental laws of nature are best explained by God. Some philosophers would contend that the fundamental laws of nature are brute facts...