Why did God design and create Viruses

MooseJam · 18-02-2008 3:00pm #1

Rabies , the comon cold , Aids , influenza, hepatitis , SARS, Ebola etc etc

the list goes on and on, so why did God create them as they cause so much suffering and don't have any good points ?

sorry if this has been asked before, I did search.

PDN · 18-02-2008 3:13pm

It's difficult to hold a dogmatic view on this since we are not expressly told, but I can think of several possible reasons and factors.

1. Creation as we view it now is not creation as it was intended. When man sinned he messed up the entire created order.

2. Once death entered the world then it becomes necessary that we die of something. Fatal diseases are one way in which overpopulation, both among humans and other species, is prevented. The big question, and one I think is much harder to answer, is why certain diseases have to be quite so painful.

3. Some viruses may exist in one species and only cause harm when transmitted to another. I am not a scientist, so I may going out on a limb with this line of speculation, but does smallpox, for example, actually cause any pain or suffering in cattle? I can certainly envisage a situation where a virus could be carried by one species in a non-harmful (or even beneficial) way - but when transmitted to humans causes death and suffering.

mossieh · 18-02-2008 3:13pm

MooseJam wrote: »

why did God create them as they cause so much suffering and don't have any good points ?
.

Maybe he/she/it enjoys watching people suffer.

Soul Winner · 18-02-2008 3:45pm

mossieh wrote: »

Maybe he/she/it enjoys watching people suffer.

Ezekiel 18:23
Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?

Ezekiel 18:32
For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!

Ezekiel 33:11
Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'

Soul Winner · 18-02-2008 3:45pm

MooseJam wrote: »

Rabies , the comon cold , Aids , influenza, hepatitis , SARS, Ebola etc etc

the list goes on and on, so why did God create them as they cause so much suffering and don't have any good points ?

sorry if this has been asked before, I did search.

Same reason He gave pain in childbirth to women. God said for sin comes death. Adam opened the door God told Him not to open and what we have now are the consequences. We suffer the consequences for one man's sin but we are also beneficiaries of one man's sacrifice for those sins. God laid on Christ all our sins and sickness. Through one man came death and also through one man came eternal life. The word “salvation” (in the Greek is σωτήριον in English letters “Soterion”) doesn’t’ just mean to be saved, it means lots of other things including health and well being. When we trust in Him, God's promise is to forgive us our sins and to heal us from our sicknesses. But it can only be appropriated by continued faith in the promise.

Zombrex · 18-02-2008 3:49pm

Soul Winner wrote: »

Same reason He gave pain in childbirth to women. God said for sin comes death.

Would that imply that viruses and bacteria didn't exit before the Fall (we was that actually)? Or that they did but didn't interact with us as they do now? I ask because I would wonder how seriously you actually take the idea

Akrasia · 18-02-2008 3:58pm

Soul Winner wrote: »

Same reason He gave pain in childbirth to women.

Childbirth is painful for human women because of evolution
When we evolved to walk upright, our pelvis got in the way of the birth canal.

It had nothing do do with any punishment from God.

Soul Winner · 18-02-2008 4:12pm

Wicknight wrote: »

Would that imply that viruses and bacteria didn't exit before the Fall (we was that actually)? Or that they did but didn't interact with us as they do now? I ask because I would wonder how seriously you actually take the idea

Personally I don't know. Maybe viruses did exist before the fall and they could only affect Adam when He was stripped of God's protective life source. But don't viruses need a host in order to thrive? The Bible teaches that there was no death until Adam sinned. He brought death on everything on earth.

When was the fall? I also don't know. Who knows how long they were in the garden before they fell? Could have been eons for all we know.

Soul Winner · 18-02-2008 4:17pm

you?

Akrasia wrote: »

Childbirth is painful for human women because of evolution
When we evolved to walk upright, our pelvis got in the way of the birth canal.

It had nothing do do with any punishment from God.

So current apes who don't walk upright don't feel pain in giving birth? Why couldn't we just evolve a better pelvis to deal with this problem? We've evolved better everything else? Or is that has yet to come in the evolutionary process?

Akrasia · 18-02-2008 4:45pm

Soul Winner wrote: »

you?

So current apes who don't walk upright don't feel pain in giving birth? Why couldn't we just evolve a better pelvis to deal with this problem? We've evolved better everything else? Or is that has yet to come in the evolutionary process?

They probably do feel pain, as would most mammals, giving birth to live young is a very stressful process. But the human birth is especially difficult because of the way our bodies changed to allow us to walk upright.

We cant just 'evolve a better pelvis'. It doesn't work that way. We are a remarkably successful animal but by no means perfect. Evolution is about trade offs. It was so beneficial for us to have larger brains and to walk upright that it overpowered the negative effects of a very dangerous and painful birthing process. The advantage of bipedalism and intelligence are so good that they have allowed us to overcome most of the problems of birth through human ingenuity (tools, drugs and medical procedures) We won't evolve a more birth friendly pelvis because the pain in human birth is no longer an impediment to the success of our species.

Zombrex · 18-02-2008 4:56pm

Soul Winner wrote: »

So current apes who don't walk upright don't feel pain in giving birth?

Pain in child birth is related to how bipedal an animal is. Mammals that function on all fours don't tend to suffer painful child birth. The more upright they are, the more painful child birth is.

If painful child birth was punishment to humans it would seem puzzling that God would make some animals have painful child birth and others not. And that he would related it to a natural cause based on how upright an animal is.

Soul Winner wrote: »

Why couldn't we just evolve a better pelvis to deal with this problem?

We probably are at the moment, but because a non-painful child birth wouldn't exactly increase our survival rate, its most likely a very slow process. Give it a few more hundred thousand years.

PDN · 18-02-2008 5:00pm

Wicknight wrote: »

We probably are at the moment, but because a non-painful child birth wouldn't exactly increase our survival rate, its most likely a very slow process. Give it a few more hundred thousand years.

Wouldn't a quick painless birth process make it much easier for mothers and babies to survive?

I would have thought spending hours immobilised in labour would make it more likely that they'd get eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger or trodden on by a mammoth.

Zombrex · 18-02-2008 5:01pm

Soul Winner wrote: »

Personally I don't know. Maybe viruses did exist before the fall and they could only affect Adam when He was stripped of God's protective life source. But don't viruses need a host in order to thrive? The Bible teaches that there was no death until Adam sinned. He brought death on everything on earth.

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, if there was no death our bodies would be consumed by bacteria (the healthy kind, that we need to function) within a few minutes. Plus we would have a lot of trouble eating anything, as our bodies take in sustenances through dead organic material, while killing other organisms in the process.

Soul Winner wrote: »

Could have been eons for all we know.

Where does that fit in with the established chronological time line of the Earth?

Zombrex · 18-02-2008 5:07pm

PDN wrote: »

Wouldn't a quick painless birth process make it much easier for mothers and babies to survive?

In certain circumstances, yes, which is why most mammals have quick, painless (relatively speaking) births.

But the evolutionary advantage to functioning up right in humans off set the disadvantage of having slow painful child birth. Basically painful child birth was not bad enough to stop the evolution to bipedal mammals.

PDN wrote: »

I would have thought spending hours immobilised in labour would make it more likely that they'd get eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger or trodden on by a mammoth.

We only developed it when dangers like that could be prevented other ways, when climbing away from danger was more important than running away.

Akrasia · 18-02-2008 5:10pm

PDN wrote: »

Wouldn't a quick painless birth process make it much easier for mothers and babies to survive?

I would have thought spending hours immobilised in labour would make it more likely that they'd get eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger or trodden on by a mammoth.

Trade off. Dangerous and painful child birth probably led to an increase in child mortality and woman dying in labour, but the benefits of walking upright and larger brains meant that the children that did survive to adulthood lived longer and had more children themselves.

The fact that human and primate babies are so vulnerable for the first few years is also a key reason why humans evolved as such social creatures. and as social creatures, we would have protected and helped the mother during the birthing process thereby reducing some of the dangers of a long drawn out delivery.

death1234567 · 18-02-2008 5:18pm

mossieh wrote: »

Maybe he/she/it enjoys watching people suffer.

Maybe he/she /it doesn't exist and viruses are just a product of evolution.

Soul Winner wrote: »

Why couldn't we just evolve a better pelvis to deal with this problem?

Why couldn't we just evolve a third eye in the back of our head or evolve wings so we could fly.

Wicknight wrote: »

We probably are at the moment, but because a non-painful child birth wouldn't exactly increase our survival rate, its most likely a very slow process. Give it a few more hundred thousand years.

Got to take this one, Sorry Wicknight but the Homo spaiens are no longer evolving as we no longer conform to surivival of the fittest. Unfortunately any old joker can breed these days not just the ones with the best genes and hence our evolution has stopped. We are the pinnacle of evolution.

CaptainNemo · 18-02-2008 5:19pm

You can't start questioning viruses in isolation. Might as well ask why God created death or pain at all and why we aren't all already living in paradise. We are told that we sinned and that that is the reason for all imperfection in the universe we currently lived in, so it doesn't make any sense to pick on individual parts of it and go "Why is this nasty?" Ultimately, it's ALL nasty, and you're going to die, and that's just how it is here. Whether God made it that way, or it just accidentally got that way, is irrelevant - mortality is our situation.

CaptainNemo · 18-02-2008 5:20pm

death1234567 wrote: »

Got to take this one, Sorry Wicknight but the Homo spaiens are no longer evolving as we no longer conform to surivival of the fittest. Unfortunately any old joker can breed these days not just the ones with the best genes and hence our evolution has stopped. We are the pinnacle of evolution.

This is complete nonsense. The genetic evidence actually points to humans evolving faster and faster in recent history.

Zombrex · 18-02-2008 5:21pm

death1234567 wrote: »

Got to take this one, Sorry Wicknight but the Homo spaiens are no longer evolving as we no longer conform to surivival of the fittest

Well that isn't actually true, we are still evolving, though not as fast as some other species. A study was published a few weeks ago looking at how humans are evolving. A lot of recent evolution has to do with things like resistance to disease and our immune system, also things like skin colour and hair colour.

Zombrex · 18-02-2008 5:26pm

CaptainNemo wrote: »

You can't start questioning viruses in isolation. Might as well ask why God created death or pain at all and why we aren't all already living in paradise. We are told that we sinned and that that is the reason for all imperfection in the universe we currently lived in, so it doesn't make any sense to pick on individual parts of it and go "Why is this nasty?" Ultimately, it's ALL nasty, and you're going to die, and that's just how it is here. Whether God made it that way, or it just accidentally got that way, is irrelevant - mortality is our situation.

Well I think the point that is being made about the viruses is that it isn't actually "nasty"

The assumption made by religious people is that viruses exist to kill us, they are a method introduced by God to enact "death", a response to Adam's sin.

That would fit with an ancient view of the world, where people didn't understand concepts like disease properly, and they would view the most immediate action of the disease (the death of the human) as naturally the purpose.

But using modern understanding of disease we see that it doesn't really work like that. Bacteria and viruses are simply biological organisms attempting to survive as much as we are. They kill us not to kill us, but to survive themselves.

CaptainNemo · 18-02-2008 5:39pm

Wicknight wrote: »

Well I think the point that is being made about the viruses is that it isn't actually "nasty"

The assumption made by religious people is that viruses exist to kill us, they are a method introduced by God to enact "death", a response to Adam's sin.

That would fit with an ancient view of the world, where people didn't understand concepts like disease properly, and they would view the most immediate action of the disease (the death of the human) as naturally the purpose.

But using modern understanding of disease we see that it doesn't really work like that. Bacteria and viruses are simply biological organisms attempting to survive as much as we are. They kill us not to kill us, but to survive themselves.

I do agree with you here, I think I was responding to the original post really rather than the later responses from more scientific minds!

sdep · 18-02-2008 5:49pm

PDN wrote: »

It's difficult to hold a dogmatic view on this since we are not expressly told, but I can think of several possible reasons and factors.

1. Creation as we view it now is not creation as it was intended. When man sinned he messed up the entire created order.

2. Once death entered the world then it becomes necessary that we die of something. Fatal diseases are one way in which overpopulation, both among humans and other species, is prevented. The big question, and one I think is much harder to answer, is why certain diseases have to be quite so painful.

3. Some viruses may exist in one species and only cause harm when transmitted to another. I am not a scientist, so I may going out on a limb with this line of speculation, but does smallpox, for example, actually cause any pain or suffering in cattle? I can certainly envisage a situation where a virus could be carried by one species in a non-harmful (or even beneficial) way - but when transmitted to humans causes death and suffering.

When diseases jump species, they do tend to go haywire. Most major human epidemic killer diseases are thought to have crossed to us from animals, the majority from our livestock following the dawn of agriculture.

Now, it's not in the interest of a bug to kill its host, especially before it gets to pass itself on. In human prehistory, with small populations, if a bug wiped out the people in the area, it had nowhere to go. Consequently, less virulent strains tend to be selected. Hosts also evolve to cope with the more nasty things bugs do in order to transmit themselves. Over time, you expect bugs to adapt from killing their hosts rapidly to causing chronic and less symptomatic infections. Until, of course, they jump to a new species without that coevolutionary history, whereon they go on the rampage once more.

Archaeology shows early farmers to have been more diseased and dying younger than their hunter gatherer contemporaries. The parallel with the Greek 'Golden Age' myth and the Genesis Eden story has often been noted, with some suggesting that the stories are rooted in a 'folk memory' of the neolithic transition.

Soul Winner wrote: »

Same reason He gave pain in childbirth to women.

Well, our big brains have to go in big heads and that makes for difficult childbirth. So if you like, it is indeed down to our species having acquired too much knowledge. [Edit] Actually, I'll go with bipedalism, though.

Soul Winner · 18-02-2008 8:59pm

Wicknight wrote: »

Pain in child birth is related to how bipedal an animal is. Mammals that function on all fours don't tend to suffer painful child birth. The more upright they are, the more painful child birth is.

If painful child birth was punishment to humans it would seem puzzling that God would make some animals have painful child birth and others not. And that he would related it to a natural cause based on how upright an animal is.

Yes I agree that is puzzling.

But Pandas don't walk upright and they suffer great stress in baring their cubs.

From the Enchanted Learning website

LOCOMOTION
"Giant pandas have a rolling gait. Like people and other bears, giant pandas are flat-footed (plantigrade - that is, both heel and toe touch the ground when walking).

Pandas are good tree climbers, using their short claws to grab onto the bark. Sometimes they take afternoon naps high in the trees.

Unlike many other bears, pandas cannot walk on their hind legs."

Wicknight wrote: »

We probably are at the moment, but because a non-painful child birth wouldn't exactly increase our survival rate, its most likely a very slow process. Give it a few more hundred thousand years.

So you wouldn't go long with Akrasia that: "We cant just 'evolve a better pelvis'. It doesn't work that way. We are a remarkably successful animal but by no means perfect. Evolution is about trade offs. It was so beneficial for us to have larger brains and to walk upright that it overpowered the negative effects of a very dangerous and painful birthing process. The advantage of bipedalism and intelligence are so good that they have allowed us to overcome most of the problems of birth through human ingenuity (tools, drugs and medical procedures) We won't evolve a more birth friendly pelvis because the pain in human birth is no longer an impediment to the success of our species." ???

Giving that child birth is a very important process in human reproduction don’t you think that the gamble evolution took for us to walk upright was very risky indeed? Given the time needed to transition from an ape like gait to an upright gait would be very long and has no evolutionary advantage in survival situations? Unless of course we are sure that our brains did in fact get bigger the more upright we got and therefore would balance out the negatives in the transition of the various gaits.

Do you think that the use of drugs to reduce pain in childbirth might have an adverse affect on how we evolve in the future or even drug use in medicine in general?

Soul Winner · 18-02-2008 9:23pm

Wicknight wrote: »

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, if there was no death our bodies would be consumed by bacteria (the healthy kind, that we need to function) within a few minutes. Plus we would have a lot of trouble eating anything, as our bodies take in sustenances through dead organic material, while killing other organisms in the process.

From a scientific point of view what is death and do scientist have theories on how it came into being? If life appeared at random then how did death apear? What is death? Has it ever being studied scientifically?

Wicknight wrote: »

Where does that fit in with the established chronological time line of the Earth?

The literal of Genesis1:1 and 1:2
"In the beginning Gods (Elohim plural for El which is God) created the Heavens and the Earth. And the Earth became a waste and a desolation."

Nobody knows how much time elapsed before God re-created the Earth not a waste and a desolation. That is what Genesis describes, a re-creation process. Why would God tell Adam and Eve to "re-plenish" the Earth as apposed to just "plenish" it? To say re-plenish suggests it had already been plenished at an earlier time. Who knows how much time elapsed? Jeremiah describes seeing the Earth not a waste and desolation in a vision where he described it as having cities (literally meeting places of intelligent beings) but that there was no man? Who were these beings? I don't know? Mere speculation but maybe angels before they fell? Maybe other man like (in structure at least) creatures destroyed in an earlier un-recorded calamity that struck the Earth. Who knows?

Akrasia · 18-02-2008 11:41pm

Soul Winner wrote: »

Yes I agree that is puzzling.

But Pandas don't walk upright and they suffer great stress in baring their cubs.

From the Enchanted Learning website

I think the obvious question here is, Why does god hate pandas?

obviously nobody is suggesting that humans are the only species that experience a painful childbirth. The point of this side conversation, is that painful childbirth is a feature of anatomy and evolution, and has absolutely nothing at all, to do with any kind of punishment from god.

Giving that child birth is a very important process in human reproduction don’t you think that the gamble evolution took for us to walk upright was very risky indeed?

I don't mean to be rude, but you clearly don't understand evolution at all. Natural selection is not a conscious process, there is no design, there is no master plan, and there is no gamble.

In the course of reproduction small mutations occur in the offspring. If those mutations are beneficial, they prosper, if they are damaging, they are rejected. Over hundreds of thousands of years, primates evolved where standing upright was more of a benefit than a hindrance. Standing upright has loads of advantages. It allows tool use, it allows access to low hanging fruit, it makes animals appear bigger than they really are...... (male gorillas stand upright to intimidate potential rivals.... the dominant males bred more... the offspring of those males would be good at standing upright)

Given the time needed to transition from an ape like gait to an upright gait would be very long and has no evolutionary advantage in survival situations?

It had loads of evolutionary advantages. In a dense jungle environment, the ability to raise your head above the scrub would be very useful for hunting and protection. Bipedal animals could wade through deeper water giving them a larger territory. Bipeds can reach high speeds and can travel long distances efficiently, but tool use was probably the most important advantage that bipeds have over quadrupeds. Having 2 limbs free to manipulate the environment is what facilitated our evolution from jungle mammals, to the overlords of the planet that we are today.

Unless of course we are sure that our brains did in fact get bigger the more upright we got and therefore would balance out the negatives in the transition of the various gaits.

Our brains got bigger when we started to make tools and communicate with each other. the ability to make better tools and communicate better was a huge advantage and natural selection favoured the best toolmakers and the best communicators.

Do you think that the use of drugs to reduce pain in childbirth might have an adverse affect on how we evolve in the future or even drug use in medicine in general?

There are no adverse effects in evolution. Its all about favouring the features that are best adapted to their particular environment. conditions shape evolution. If humans are evolving in a 'negative' way, it is because we are creating conditions that reward that negativity.

Akrasia · 19-02-2008 12:00am

Soul Winner wrote: »

From a scientific point of view what is death and do scientist have theories on how it came into being? If life appeared at random then how did death apear? What is death? Has it ever being studied scientifically?

Life evolved as self replicating organisms. It was not any kind of intention or design, it just so happened that organisms that replicated had a huge advantage over any other kind of organism, and this became the template for all of life. It is all a competition for resources, and a compromise between defence and growth. For any species, it is by far the most successful strategy to reproduce as much as possible on the basis that a certain proportion of young offspring will survive to become adults and reproduce in turn themselves. Life is sustained in a cycle. Some types of life evolve to extract energy from the sun, other types of life evolved by extracting energy from those green plants. The whole cycle of life is based on recycling energy, everything either eats or is eaten (usually both).
Some species of life have evolved to live for hundreds of years, but they are outnumbered by about a gazillion to one, by the species that live for a short period of time and reproduce in great numbers.

The literal of Genesis1:1 and 1:2
"In the beginning Gods (Elohim plural for El which is God) created the Heavens and the Earth. And the Earth became a waste and a desolation."

Nobody knows how much time elapsed before God re-created the Earth not a waste and a desolation. That is what Genesis describes, a re-creation process. Why would God tell Adam and Eve to "re-plenish" the Earth as apposed to just "plenish" it? To say re-plenish suggests it had already been plenished at an earlier time.

Considering the fact that the bible is a translation of a translation of a translation, i don't know how much of a distinction you can make between plenish and replenish

Who knows how much time elapsed? Jeremiah describes seeing the Earth not a waste and desolation in a vision where he described it as having cities (literally meeting places of intelligent beings) but that there was no man? Who were these beings? I don't know? Mere speculation but maybe angels before they fell? Maybe other man like (in structure at least) creatures destroyed in an earlier un-recorded calamity that struck the Earth. Who knows?

they were probably dinosaurs. or smurfs.

Soul Winner · 19-02-2008 2:37am

Akrasia wrote: »

I think the obvious question here is, Why does god hate pandas?

Does He?

Akrasia wrote: »

obviously nobody is suggesting that humans are the only species that experience a painful childbirth. The point of this side conversation, is that painful childbirth is a feature of anatomy and evolution, and has absolutely nothing at all, to do with any kind of punishment from god.

So what is the evolutionary benefit for pain in child birth? Why can’t it be a pleasurable one like sex or defecation? Why is there pain?

Akrasia wrote: »

don't mean to be rude, but you clearly don't understand evolution at all. Natural selection is not a conscious process, there is no design, there is no master plan, and there is no gamble.

Ok I’ll pull you up on this in a sec. And you were not being rude. I get that a lot when talking about Christianity to people who ask stupid (from my expert position) questions about it, that by their questions they reveal how little they know or understand it.

Akrasia wrote: »

In the course of reproduction small mutations occur in the offspring. If those mutations are beneficial, they prosper, if they are damaging, they are rejected. Over hundreds of thousands of years, primates evolved where standing upright was more of a benefit than a hindrance. Standing upright has loads of advantages. It allows tool use, it allows access to low hanging fruit, it makes animals appear bigger than they really are...... (male gorillas stand upright to intimidate potential rivals.... the dominant males bred more... the offspring of those males would be good at standing upright)

Ok I’m pulling you up. Rejected by what and why? What does the rejecting? Who or what decides what is beneficial and what’s not? Why does the process of natural selection strive for goals? Obtaining the low hanging fruit for instance? Why not just eat roots like other animals or grass?

Akrasia wrote: »

It had loads of evolutionary advantages. In a dense jungle environment, the ability to raise your head above the scrub would be very useful for hunting and protection.

A dense jungle environment would require a very tall person to have the ability to raise its head above the scrub wouldn’t you agree? And how would it be useful for protecting?

Akrasia wrote: »

Bipedal animals could wade through deeper water giving them a larger territory.

So can crocodiles.

Akrasia wrote: »

Bipeds can reach high speeds and can travel long distances efficiently,

But they wouldn’t have anyway near the stamina of what they were hunting would they?

Akrasia wrote: »

but tool use was probably the most important advantage that bipeds have over quadrupeds. Having 2 limbs free to manipulate the environment is what facilitated our evolution from jungle mammals, to the overlords of the planet that we are today.

I thought dolphins were more intelligent that humans? Why don’t they rule? Why haven’t they evolved the limbs that we have? Or are they overloads of the sea?

Akrasia wrote: »

Our brains got bigger when we started to make tools and communicate with each other.

I thought we communicated with each other because we had bigger brains? Why do we only use 10% of its capacity? Why evolve a brain that we do not use?

Akrasia wrote: »

the ability to make better tools and communicate better was a huge advantage and natural selection favoured the best toolmakers and the best communicators.

Selected them for what? Why do we still have morons and useless gits then?

Akrasia wrote: »

There are no adverse effects in evolution. Its all about favouring the features that are best adapted to their particular environment. conditions shape evolution. If humans are evolving in a 'negative' way, it is because we are creating conditions that reward that negativity.

So what about natural disasters that wipe out whole species of animals? I’d say evolution finds that very annoying when that happens. After all that evolving and all.

Look I know I’m trying to be a smart arse but that is the kind of attitude that us religious folks have to contend with. You must admit some of the stuff you guys believe in is even more OTT that the belief that a creator created it and designed it. The fact that the creator of what is created cannot be studied by the empirical scientific methods employed today also means that His existence cannot be disproved by it. I love science and I love that people test theories and do experiments to substantiate and or refute theories but lets have an even playing field when it comes to the put downs shall we. A bit of humility on both sides is what’s needed.

Akrasia · 19-02-2008 8:37am

Soul Winner wrote: »

Does He?

Why else would he punish pandas by giving them painful child birth?

So what is the evolutionary benefit for pain in child birth? Why can’t it be a pleasurable one like sex or defecation? Why is there pain?

It is painful because of all the twists and turns the child has to do to pass through the birth canal, and because it rips and stretches tissue. Defecation (seeing as you brought it up) isn't always a pleasurable experience, if you tried to pass a very large, hard stool, then it would hurt a lot.
Evolution didn't 'choose' to make child birth painful, it just happened as a side effect of the other evolutionary changes that occured.

Ok I’ll pull you up on this in a sec. And you were not being rude. I get that a lot when talking about Christianity to people who ask stupid (from my expert position) questions about it, that by their questions they reveal how little they know or understand it.

Ok I’m pulling you up. Rejected by what and why? What does the rejecting? Who or what decides what is beneficial and what’s not? Why does the process of natural selection strive for goals? Obtaining the low hanging fruit for instance? Why not just eat roots like other animals or grass?

Natural selection doesn't strive for goals, it is not a conscious process. Its very simple. If there is a mutation or a particular genetic trait that confers big advantages onto an individual, then that individual will live longer and breed more than individuals without the trait and pass on that gene onto future generations. In a competitive natural environment, the best adapted to survive will be the most successful and will breed the most. If there is a shortage of food. the animals that are best adapted to finding and getting food will survive, and the animals less well adapted will die out (unless they can find their own niche in which case they might survive as a separate species.

A dense jungle environment would require a very tall person to have the ability to raise its head above the scrub wouldn’t you agree? And how would it be useful for protecting?

Its a marginal difference that counts. there are loads of different factors that might have resulted in natural selection favouring tall bipeds rather than small quadrapeds. It could be as simple as sexual preferences (females might have preferred taller mates so males might have evolved to impress the women)

So can crocodiles.

And look how successful crocodiles are.

But they wouldn’t have anyway near the stamina of what they were hunting would they?

Humans never relied on speed or stamina to catch prey. We had a much more complex hunting technique.

I thought dolphins were more intelligent that humans? Why don’t they rule? Why haven’t they evolved the limbs that we have? Or are they overloads of the sea?

You think wrong. Dolphins are very intelligent, but humans beat them hands down. They haven't evolved limbs like humans because they live in water. They are perfectly adapted to their environment, that is what evolution does.

I thought we communicated with each other because we had bigger brains? Why do we only use 10% of its capacity? Why evolve a brain that we do not use?

That 10% of our brains thing is a myth, and the question is irrelevant. Humans have appendix and tail bones. We have vestigal organs that we don't use anymore. There might be parts of our brain that we don't use anymore but as long as it doesn't pose any serious disadvantage to the individual or species, then there isn't much of an evolutionary impetus to change it.

Selected them for what? Why do we still have morons and useless gits then?

Because in human society, anyone can breed. Perhaps if we had an alpha male system where only the 'lord' got to mate with all the women we might have a more pure race, but we choose a different kind of society.

So what about natural disasters that wipe out whole species of animals? I’d say evolution finds that very annoying when that happens. After all that evolving and all.

Evolution is not a conscious thing so it can't be annoyed. But natural disasters do have a place in evolution. Anything that changes the balance encourages other creatures to fill the void left behind. If the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out, humans might never have evolved.

Look I know I’m trying to be a smart arse but that is the kind of attitude that us religious folks have to contend with. You must admit some of the stuff you guys believe in is even more OTT that the belief that a creator created it and designed it.

I don't admit that

The fact that the creator of what is created cannot be studied by the empirical scientific methods employed today also means that His existence cannot be disproved by it. I love science and I love that people test theories and do experiments to substantiate and or refute theories but lets have an even playing field when it comes to the put downs shall we. A bit of humility on both sides is what’s needed.

just because something can't be disproved doesn't mean we should believe in it.

Zombrex · 19-02-2008 11:04am

Soul Winner wrote: »

But Pandas don't walk upright and they suffer great stress in baring their cubs.

Well as your quote stated, they are good tree climbers, and bears, most of which can walk on hind legs. They walk on all fours, but have developed two different functions for their front "feet" (hands) and their back feet. They eat using their front feet, and climbing using them. This has evolved a more upright position, similar to other bears.

You would never see a dog or a cat positioned like that.

The evolution of "uprightedness" (sure there is a more scientific term than that

) is related to how much separate use as species develops between the back and front feet. If a species uses its front feet for complicated functions (eg preparing food) it will develop a more upright position so it can rest and steady itself while freeing its two front hands to perform what ever function is required (ie stripping bark from food)

Soul Winner wrote: »

So you wouldn't go long with Akrasia that: "We cant just 'evolve a better pelvis'

I certainly would, evolution is not a goal based process. A species doesn't develop a new adaption because it needs it.

Soul Winner wrote: »

Giving that child birth is a very important process in human reproduction don’t you think that the gamble evolution took for us to walk upright was very risky indeed?

That is irrelevant. The "gamble" (that is a very inaccurate way of describing it) could have just as easily not worked and the ancestors of our species would have become extinct 25 million years ago. Plenty of evolutionary paths end up being what is known as evolutionary "dead ends" Evolution has no concept of whether changes brought on by mutation will work long term. It simply goes on whether it is working (ie providing advantage) at the present moment.

Soul Winner wrote: »

Given the time needed to transition from an ape like gait to an upright gait would be very long and has no evolutionary advantage in survival situations?

It had huge evolutionary advantage in certain environments, such as forests, which is where our older ancestors lived some 20 million years ago. Once we came down from the trees the only way to go was more upright to increase agility on flat land, as going back to all fours would have been evolutionarily difficult as we had already developed complex hands.

Soul Winner wrote: »

Do you think that the use of drugs to reduce pain in childbirth might have an adverse affect on how we evolve in the future or even drug use in medicine in general?

Depends on what you mean by "adverse" All medicine certainly effects how humans as a species would evolve compared to if we didn't have the medicine, but there is no such thing as a good or bad way to evolve. Evolution works simply on adaptation, it is neutral in terms of concepts like "good" or "bad". To me what is important is helping people

Zombrex · 19-02-2008 11:50am

Soul Winner wrote: »

Ok I’m pulling you up. Rejected by what and why? What does the rejecting? Who or what decides what is beneficial and what’s not?

The environment. If you or your ancestors who carry our mutated genes, don't die, or die slower, than everyone else, then the mutation was a benefit and is "selected" by natural select. By that I mean that because your ancestors continue to carry that mutation or set of mutations, your mutated genes (passed down over a long time) adapt better, to the specific environmental challenge, than non mutated genes in the ancestors of everyone and eventually your genes find themselves across the whole species because they are more successful at mating.

Of course while this is happening in your ancestors with this specific mutation it is also happening with other mutations in your ancestors, and other mutations in the ancestors of all the others.

It is very difficult to visualize this. People either pick one mutation in one animal and try and see how that would effect the animals child or grand child. That is far too small a sample to see any major effect (but it is why Creationists who don't understand evolution "challange" evolution to produce a cat that gives birth to a dog). Or they try and visualize millions upon millions mutations across a whole species being passed on for thousands of years through the species. That is too big for the human brain to visualize (and can make your brain leak out your ears).

One of the best ways to look at mutation is through computer models. It is relatively easy to design a simple simulation of simple replicating units in a specific environment and then run this simulation for a like a million of them replicating over a simulated period of a few million years. You can take snap shot and see how they evolved. The results are often fascinating, particularly when this simulated evolution takes a dead end and you end up with a million dead computer people.

Soul Winner wrote: »

I thought dolphins were more intelligent that humans? Why don’t they rule? Why haven’t they evolved the limbs that we have?

Because they live in the sea, where limbs like we have would be a major disadvantage.

Soul Winner wrote: »

I thought we communicated with each other because we had bigger brains?

It evolved in tandem. Humans with mutations that produced better communication ability had an advantage over those that didn't have this ability. These mutations continued to happen, and they continued to develop better communication, and because of this they continued to be selected by natural selection as "keepers".

It is a very slow process, but over hundreds of thousands of years, and literally trillions of small changes produced by mutations that were kept in the species by natural selection, we developed the brains we have today. And in fact our brains are still evolving.

Soul Winner wrote: »

Why do we only use 10% of its capacity?

That is actually a myth, largely attributed to a misunderstanding at a science lecture. We use different parts of our brain depending on the different things we are doing at the moment, but over the course of a day you will probably use 100% of your brain.

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percent.asp

Soul Winner wrote: »

Selected them for what? Why do we still have morons and useless gits then?

Well becase, as Akrasia says, morons still breed. Often more successfully than others.

What you won't find is that many people who are infertile.

Soul Winner wrote: »

So what about natural disasters that wipe out whole species of animals? I’d say evolution finds that very annoying when that happens. After all that evolving and all.

Evolution is a natural process. Saying it got annoyed would be like saying the river got pissed off because of an Earthquake blocked its path.

Soul Winner wrote: »

You must admit some of the stuff you guys believe in is even more OTT that the belief that a creator created it and designed it.

Well not really. Evolution is a pretty simple process. Yes it is very difficult to visualise it over millions of years, but the actual process itself is not that complex. You just need to repeat it billion of times. The only people who have problem with it (in my experience) are people who don't want it to be true, for what ever reason (mostly religious). Evolution explains, pretty accurately, why biological life is the way it is on Earth, something the idea of a creator doesn't do.

Soul Winner wrote: »

The fact that the creator of what is created cannot be studied by the empirical scientific methods employed today also means that His existence cannot be disproved by it.

It certainly does. But then a creator is rather redundant. We know how life on Earth could develop without a creator. So why have a creator at all?

As is often said on the Creationist thread, the universe look like it wasn't created, at least not created to any creation myth humans have. There are two explanations to that. One is that is wasn't created by an intelligence with purpose. Two it was created by an intelligence with purpose, but made to look like it wasn't

To get a creator into the model you have to make a heck of a lot of excuses for why he would make a universe that looks like he didn't make it. It is just easier to think it looks like he didn't create it because he didn't created than because of some convoluted guess as to why he would do this.

Of course you can believe the opposite, that it was created but created to look like it wasn't created. Science can't, by definition, tell you that you are wrong.

But you have to ask yourself why would you believe that in the first place?

MooseJam · 19-02-2008 1:18pm

Does anyone know what the ratio of beneficial mutations to adverse mutations are, I assume adverse mutations lead to illness and birth defects

Why did God design and create Viruses

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