Queen of Swords

Originally posted by WWSD
God designed phages to carry cDNA expression libraries.

LOL!

Yellum Notnef

I like a god with a slow hand.
I like a god with an easy touch.



Damn those country music commercials!

christ-on-a-stick

On this 2nd page, WWSD & QueenofSwords have expounded much more eloquently than I could on the question of how exactly "good" viruses became "bad" (if not "designed" that way by God). Since your answer to me was that it just "happened", do you think you could have a look at their posts and venture an answer?

Thanks!

(WWSD - LOL @ "when bacteria & viruses GO BAD!!!" I wouldn't be surprised to see it on FOX...)

Cipher Girl

Magus you said
HAAAHHAAAAAHHHHAAAAA Funny Funny Funny.
All mathematics involves assertions. All branches of mathematics have assertions (postulates) upon which theorems are based. And unlike religion, these assertions (postulates) are kept consistant throughout any work or discussion. In fact all proofs require assumptions, as without assumptions what would there be to prove? Assumptions can be true or false. For the sake of a proof, all assumtions are assumed true. False assumptions lead to contradictions in proofs, this is called Proof by Contradiction. The origional assertion has been proved non-true.

And anyway WTF are "NON-LIVING ATOMS"? And the converse "LIVING ATOMS"? or they "ALIVE IN THE HOLY SPIRIT"?

orac

I'm hoping you meant what you said.

Apparantly if we can find a hundred or so expert biologists, geologists, astrophysicists and other assorted scientists (many of them nobel prize winners) who accept that there is no God, and that no God is required for the universe and life to exist, then you will also accept that God does not exist.

Or are you going to dispute Math by doctors and nobel prize winners just because you [really] are so bent on the idea of God existing?

After all, you're the one saying that appeals to authority are valid as proof, and there are plenty of authorities with all the Math you could ask for who aren't religious.

So, you have two options:
[list=1][*]Appeals to authority are not valid proof of God, and your post was kinda silly[*]Appeals to authority are valid, and thus there is no God, in which case your post was sensible, but you've got a real problem with your priests[/list=1]

Which is it?

spurly

I've been thinking about the post I wrote about viruses deteriorating to what we have today. that could have happened, remember it is just conjecture.

Another possibility is that in the beginning, before the fall, we had bodies that were immune to viruses such as those you mentioned. Life was meant to be forever, so the human body may have been immune to viruses like that. That may have been why pre-flood humans lived so long.

As the body gradually declined, with the fall, part of the curse may have been that the body was no longer immune to such viruses anymore. But remember, this is all conjecture. We will never know the truth about how things were in the beginning until the end. But it is fun to think about.

What is your best conjecture?

Kevin

christ-on-a-stick

Hi spurly... I fear that you are treading on dangerous ground, my friend, if you wish to keep your belief system intact here

If what you wrote above was the case, Kevin, then wouldn't it be true that God intended for "The Fall" to happen? And designed exactly what would happen once it did?

You may think something along the lines of "well he didn't INTEND for it to happen, just knew it would..." but if *that* was the case, why would he design things to go so horribly wrong (and design the intricacies of the suffering to be entailed) once The Fall DID happen? Could any lesser amount of suffering be "acceptable"? Is there an outside authority forcing him to make the consequences of the fall "x-level of suffering"? Is he not all-powerful? Could he not have made the "consequences" of The Fall be, say, bad colds & stubbed toes instead of the Black Plague, ebola virus, malaria, starvation, muscular dystrophy??? If not, why not???

Since you asked...

That the bible was right on one point (at least).

The rain falls on the just and the unjust.

Because the horrid (to us) things that we encounter in the natural world don't have to be attributed to a "magical man" in the sky.... they just are , a "brute fact" as one philosopher put it, and are not a reward or punishment for the imagined transgressions of humans (or our "good" deeds for that matter).

That in the big picture, the universe is indifferent to us... as humans we are but a blip on the radar screen, but a hiccup in the vast reaches of space.

Whether or not it is "comforting", it DOES make more sense to me that way... makes more sense as to why "good" people suffer, and "bad" people prosper... why bad things happen to good people and innocent children die... because regardless of how unfair it seems the universe doesn't revolve around us (humans).

We are like specks of dust in a vast universe. Making up stories to reassure ourselves that we are "special" may be comforting, but it doesn't make the "brute fact" of our existence any less real.

Kevin, I would recommend reading up on Camus' concept of "absurdity". It is interesting reading

joedad

How do "living" carbon atoms differ from "dead" ones?

joe

-RRH-

Well, I realize that the thread has wandered a long way from the opening post, but I feel like responding to it anyways.

First up, I would expand on something that's already been said by others. I would believe in a god that had more evidence for its existence.

I would believe in a god that had more trustworthy representatives than the ones the gods get now. I would believe in a god that didn't appear to be hiding from us. I would believe in a god that inspired a bible that didn't sound like all the other stuff made up by humans. I would believe in a god that actually took part in this world in which we live.

Of course, the reason I don't believe in this god, is that there is no evidence for it.

On the other hand, if I somehow had to believe in a god, I would believe in a very deist, hands-off, not-that-anthropomorphic and not-terribly-concerned-about-whether-humans-worship-it-or-not god, because those characteristics best fit the evidence.

That said, I would like to turn the question back on theists. Now, presumably you know which God (or gods) you believe in, but I want to ask, "Why?"

Why do you believe in that god, but no others?

WWSD

Originally posted by spurly
I've been thinking about the post I wrote about viruses deteriorating to what we have today. that could have happened, remember it is just conjecture.

It is indeed. But it is a conjecture witch rests solely on an assumption that a fall did actually occur. This assumption comes with a whole host of other problems, scientifically and theologically, that make it untenable IMO.


Another possibility is that in the beginning, before the fall, we had bodies that were immune to viruses such as those you mentioned. Life was meant to be forever, so the human body may have been immune to viruses like that. That may have been why pre-flood humans lived so long.


Once again we have the whole "Before the fall/after the fall" scenario to deal with.
One must demonstrate that "the fall" did indeed occur in order to discuss these things. But the merit of the argument, or conjecture I suppose, rests solely upon the assumption that the fall did indeed occur, and I see no evidence for its occurance.
Thus this conjecture also becomes fairly untenable.

But, just for funsies, let's entertain this for a moment. What were things like smallpox doing before the fall? The only known resevoir of smallpox is humans. Did smallpox occur before or after the fall? And what was it up to before, when humans were immune to it and could not be infected. Smallpox relies on infection to increase its numbers.

Thus it must have been non-existant before the fall, or held up somewhere waiting for the day when humans became susceptible.

If we are going to assume that smallpox, due to its complex and intricate nature, did not evolve, we must assume then that it was designed or just popped into existance fully formed and ready to decimate.

I think you would not agree that it simply poofed its way into the universe. That would open up a whole floodgate of ridiculousness.

Why then was smallpox designed? To infect humans after the fall? What purpose might it have served prior?

We can speculate about this forever, but it is all jsut fanciful speculation.

I myself will stick with science to explain such things as viruses and human life spans.


As the body gradually declined, with the fall, part of the curse may have been that the body was no longer immune to such viruses anymore. But remember, this is all conjecture. We will never know the truth about how things were in the beginning until the end. But it is fun to think about.


Indeed. However, fun as it might be to speculate about these things, the truth of the matter is that the scenario as written in the bible does not agree with the data from the real world. And, as objective as I try to be, I have to reject it as a valid source of information about the beginning of the universe.


What is your best conjecture?

Kevin

What do you mean exactly? What's my own explaination for viruses and the like?

Selective pressures, the evolutonary arms race between parasitic entities and thier hosts, things of that nature.