Why is God intelligently designing Avian Influenza viruses to jump to humans?

Except that an omnipotent creator could have created a reality where pain or evil was unnecessary for growth or love. So it's not a silly way to look at things.

 

Maybe it is dealing with issues of pain and suffering that are at the root of what it means to love.

You haven't really defined what you speak of when you speak of love. You must also take into account free will, which isn't so much of a scientific issue as it is a philosophic.

I guess a world in which we intrinsically knew love and what was right from the start would be....um. .... Paradise?

 

As a Christian myself, I believe in literal Creation as described in Genesis. Now Genesis is not is not a science book, but there is no reason to believe that science and God have to be antagonistic. In fact the father of the modern scientific method was Sir Fancis Bacon, a man that believed in science and God as Creator. It seems to me that God is the one who created science in the first place and all of the laws that govern our universe. Given that God himself exists outside of space and time, it is no stretch for me to believe that he did in fact create all that exists. I don't believe he used evolution to do it either because we were created in His image among other things. The reason science cannot prove, or disprove for that matter, the existence of God is because it presumes that there is a natural answer to every question. It does not recognize or even consider the possibility that there are spiritual answers to physical questions. I suppose my main objection to the theory, or perhaps more aptly called hypothesis, of evolution is that eventually no matter how far back you want to go to the ageless past, in order for evolution to be true something would have to had come from nothing. If you subscribe to the big bang theory then two somethings would have had to come from nothing and collided causing said big bang. And further that the resulting chaos that would follow such an explosion would produce the order that we see in our world.

Now as for Creation is tells me that there was a designer. William Paley illustrated it as taking a walk in the woods and happening upon a watch. It would not be assumed that the watch assembled itself by random chance, but rather there must be a watchmaker. Some would argue that this is too simplistic and does not correlate to living systems, but I disagree. Some would ask where did God come from? The Bible tells us that he has always existed (Isaiah.40:28), and he also exists outside of time and space so he is not bound by either. The matter at that point becomes one of faith. In the end they both boil down to faith since neither can be conclusively proven to the satisfaction of their respective detractors. What do you choose to believe? Does it make me foolish or inferior to believe in a literal Creation? I don’t think it does. To me a major reason to believe in Creation is because if I cannot trust in the first chapter of the Bible, how can I trust in any chapter that follows? I wonder if those who confess to be Christians and yet purveyors of evolution believe in the historicity of Jesus as both a man and the Son of God, in his virgin birth, life, death, and most importantly His Resurrection. To deny those things makes being a Christian noting more than a label with no real faith involved. The Bible refers to such as having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.

One thing concerning evolution that I rarely see discussed that I see discussed about the Bible and Christianity ad nauseam is the amount of wrong that has been done in it's name. Evolution tells us that we are insignificant, and the mere culmination of random accidents. This thinking can inspire a feeling of superiority in some, and insignificance in others. We, sadly, only need look at the Twentieth Century for examples of the destruction that evolution can cause. One of Adolf Hitler's primary influences was Charles Darwin. It was his belief in evolution that in part inspired his hatred of the Jews as, in his eyes, a sub-species. He referred to them as nearly full blooded apes, and just above them were the black Africans and Indians who were only half ape. And then of course there was the abhorrible practice of eugenics. Just consider the full title of Darwin’s revered work “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”. Such beliefs led to the slaughter of some six million Jews, and Hitler had no plans of stopping there. After all his belief in evolution told him that, according to his interpretation of it, his beloved Aryan race was superior to other inferior races. Does this mean that everyone who subscribes to evolution is a Nazi sympathizer? It is not my intention to assert that, of course not.

But it brings me to a further point, and that is human imperfection. When I refer to this I am mean the fact that we all make mistakes and fall short of the mark, whatever we hold that mark to be. And let us not leave out the concept of free will either. As a Christian I believe it is a gift from God that can become a terrible burden when we make poor decisions. There are consequences for our actions. If we hold evolution to be true then there is no true justice in the world. The reason I bring this up is that we are not witnessing Creation as God intended it to be. He never intended for there to be death, sickness, disease, natural disasters et cetera. This world is broken, and as a believer I attribute that to sin, another may disagree and attribute the state of our world to environmental abuse. I do not pretend to have an answer to every question, though I wish I knew all I do not. I only have a finite mind, and still have questions that I would like to be answered and I feel in time they will be.

In the meantime I will take the advice President Lincoln offered to his friend Mr. Speed in a letter he wrote less than a year before his death in April of 1865. He wrote, ”Take all of this Book on reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man.” Keep in mind that Lincoln was raised in a Christian home, but was an admitted atheist into his early forties. It was not until after his son Eddie died short of his 4th Birthday that he began to reconsider his faith in God.

 

I'd like to just point out that evolutionary biology doesn't say either of these things

the opposite actually

 

A lot of Christians want to think that.

NOTHING happens by accident. That doesn't mean that there is a supernatural being causing everything to happen.

 

rhester - you are good for my faith. You are good for this board. I KNOW the temptation to respond angily and respect your restraint.

 

When you set off an atomic bomb does "something come from nothing"? In a previous thread I calculated total ergs of energy to hit the earth in 4.5 billion years. It could hardly be considered "nothing".

Here's the primary problem I have with your mode of thought. You seek to apply "common sense" solutions to problems that are outside the realm of common experience. Nobody in the history of the world is capable of wrapping their mind around the size or age of the universe. The concept of time dilation seems absurd on the surface, but Einstein's theory, which was right in so many other ways, said it must be so and for 50 years people accepted it grudgingly. Then in 1971 a test was made and the theory was proved sound.

We work with the hypothesis that best describes the outcome that we see today. Therefore when we see stars that are several million light years away, we rationally make the deduction that the universe is several million years old since that light must have been traveling for a while. The creationist answer to this quandry is to assume that god created the light "on the way" from a couple of thousand light years away so that it only appeared to be from several million light years away. This just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Imagine watching an episode of CSI where Joe was shot from where Bob was standing, and Bob's gun had residue in the barrel and the conclusion is that God spontaniously created the bullet in flight and added the other evidence afterwards. It's just silly.

There is forensic evidence for a big bang, there are other interpretations of the data and people trying to disprove the big bang. The difference is that these people are making a case from evidence that someone else killed Joe while your case is entirely built around the fact that you don't think Bob could have done it.

As an aside -

It is my understanding that Intelligent Design in it's true form is based on the idea that all of the information for human beings was coded into the DNA of the earliest life and cycled through to expressing itself in humans. This would account for many of the design problems with human species. The earlier manifestations in development would require forms that would be retained through the more advanced models and might not be ideal expressions of pure design.

Personally I prefer the idea that God could "throw the dice" with genetics and know in advance how every “roll” would turn out. God could create a big bang or crash branes into each other or do any of a billion myriad other things that would appear to leave creation of mankind to chance with a perfect understanding of how the process would play out.

Finally, I find that most of the people who believe in “intelligent design” are actually creationists hiding behind the intelligent design terminology and using it as a vanguard movement to a return to strict Creationism. I have no issue with the people who use scientific data to try and prove the concept of Intelligent Design. A quick review of this thread, however, shows me that there are very few who would meet this criteria here. Note that the Superintendant who set the policy for "Intelligent Design" in the recent Pensylvania case claimed that he had no personal belief on the subject in open court, until piles of information were found that showed he advocated teaching Creationism on an equal footing with Evolution. Oops.

I am reminded of how ardently on religious grounds people argued against a Sun-centric solar system when all the data said otherwise. I think even the strongest supporters of Creationism today accept that the Earth orbits the Sun.

 

Well I've never been baptised, never been Christian, and never will be. Personally - I feel that I would be rejecting my own culture if I ever subscribed to such a faith. I just think this thread is an attempt to annoy/pester the many Christian people on this board. A lot of atheists out there like to denigrate and ridicule Christianity while respecting Judaism and Islam. We all know the comments about "ID" being an "idiot" were directed at Jebus and not Yahweh or Allah.

 

The alternative argument being that a supreme being existing outside of space and time has always existed, came from nothing, and created everything? Science can't disprove what only exists as a matter of faith and belief.

I must point out the dangers of using spiritual arguments to explain the world around us. Throughout world history, spiritually based explanations have continued to come out on the losing end against science.

 

I would just like to say, as an atheist, I hold Christianity, Judaism and Islam in the same regard.

 

If I'm not mistaken but devout Jews and Muslims also believe in Creationism. Also Yahweh and Allah are synomomous with "God" and are the same God as what Christians worship.

 

I couldn't have stated this better so thanks for saving me a reply. Although I am compelled to answer to this:

Yes Hitler might've been influenced by a Darwinian belief but how is that any difference than that the Crusades, Inquisition and a host of other horrors were influenced by Christianity? You're claiming that secular materialistic idea like Evolution is dangerous because it makes us insignifigant what does that say about a spiritual belief that supposedly doesn't make us insignifigant still leading to horrible attrocities done it its name?

On this basis alone I don't see how you can argue that somehow a Christian creationist view is superior to a secular evolutionist view when apparently followers of both have committed attrocities.

This is a total misunderstanding because Evolution is a scientific principle not a moral or philosophical principle. It has as much to do with justice as aerodynamics does.

 

Here's something I think everyone can enjoy (or maybe just me):

HOW IT HAPPENED - Isaac Asimov

My brother began to dictate in his best oratorical style, the one which has the tribes hanging on his words.

"In the beginning," he said, "exactly fifteen point two billion years ago, there was a big bang and the Universe--"

But I had stopped writing. "Fifteen billion years ago?" I said incredulously.

"Absolutely," he said. "I'm inspired."

"I don't question your inspiration," I said. (I had better not. He's three years younger than I am, but I don't try questioning his inspiration. Neither does anyone else or there's hell to pay.) "But are you going to tell the story of Creation over a period of fifteen billion years?"

"I have to," said my brother. "That's how long it took. I have it all here," he tapped his forehead, "and it's on the very highest authority."

By now I had put down my stylus. "Do you know the price of papyrus?" I said.

"What?" (He may be inspired but I frequently noticed that the inspiration didn't include such sordid matters as the price of papyrus.)

I said, "Suppose you describe one million years of events to each roll of papyrus. That means you'll have to fill fifteen thousand rolls. You'll have to talk long enough to fill them and you know that you begin to stammer after a while. I'll have to write enough to fill them and my fingers will fall off. And even if we can afford all that papyrus and you have the voice and I have the strength, who's going to copy it? We've got to have a guarantee of a hundred copies before we can publish and without that where will we get the royalties from?"

My brother thought a while. He said, "You think I ought to cut it down?"

"Way down," I said, "if you expect to reach the public."

"How about a hundred years?" he said.

"How about six days?" I said.

He said, horrified, "You can't squeeze Creation into six days."

I said, "This is all the papyrus I have. What do YOU think?"

"Oh well," he said, and began to dictate again, "In the beginning -- Does it have to be six days, Aaron?"

I said, firmly, "Six days, Moses."

 

That's true. The Muslims, Christians, and Jews all believe in the Old Testament (if I'm not mistaken).

I just think the purpose of this thread is annoy Christians. I've run into many atheists who hold Christians in utter contempt - yet will defend Islam, and to a lesser extent, Judaism (but that's running out of fashion these days fast..). Equal opportunity atheists seem rare and I just think the creators of this thread were using the potential flu crisis to jab fun at Amercia's religous right. Aww - I'm just a bitter, crotchety old man.

 

Sometimes, one needs to have the humility to say, "I don't know."

...but that's scary, ain't it?

A Chinese saying I like;

"Being uncertain is uncomfortable, but being certain is ridiculous."

 

The only way the Avian flu would be a problem for intelligent design is if one went by the assumption that the intelligent designer never wanted people to get sick and die. Also, it isn't precisely true that Muslims, Christians, and Jews worship the same God. Christians worship a deity that sent a human son to earth to die and wash away the sins of the world. Muslims and Jews don't worship a god that did that. It would be more accurate to say that Muslims and Christians both claim that their god is the same as the Jews' god, and that other's who worship the same god but follow the older religion(s) just aren't seeing the whole/accurate picture. To a Christian, Jesus is God, but to a Musli, he is only a prophet, and to a Jew, he is just a nice guy that had some good ideas.

 

I guess I'm still not following; Does ID only deal with issues of life, not issues of earth, universe, water, elements, fire, and life? It would seem silly to seperate the two.

I'm not anti-evolution in any way; I just am not quick to accept the version that is out there.

As far as metaphors and the bible goes; why is it so hard to view it as inspired literature. Maybe I'm just silly in still believing in angels and persons that exist in the intellect, but I feel they have this profound effect on the human intellect and our imagination. Still, the ideas and visions the inspire must be expressed in human language, even though an event such as creation is unfathomable to the human mind....

And as far as intelligent design is concerned, I think its a valid topic to learn about in school, just as one would learn about any religion in a public school. Schools need to move towards teaching the universal as percieved through the mind of us humans, thats a large part of what education is about; not just the teaching of facts that we have proven; but the speculating; the learning of how to approach the grey areas in education...in life...

Else, you move towards eugenics, totalatarianism, hate....

 

I must have missed this class back in highschool.

 

you didn't learn about world religions in a world history class? in texas...at least when i was in high school in the early 90's..that was mandated stuff. we studied christianity, judaism, islam, hinduism and buddhism.