Evidence of Design

One thing that has really struck me in reading "The Great Influenza" has been the description of the virus itself, given on seventeen pages (98-115). You can't read these pages without having a profound sense of awe at the complexity and design of the virus:

"Highly evolved, elegant in their focus, more efficient at what they do than any fully living being, they have become nearly perfect infectious organisms. And the influenza virus is among the most perfect of these perfect organisms." [p100]

You might as well say perfect killing machines, because this is what they do - kill. Any cell they infiltrate, they kill. Enough cells die - you die. Why do I want to agree with the author when he calls these killers "highly evolved"? It's because I don't want to think of the alternative. What reason could there be for creating such a...thing? A being that is not truly alive - it doesn't eat, burn oxygen, create waste products, or even reproduce - that is able to mutate at staggering levels, hiding from the immune system, sticking perfectly - like a key in a lock - to respiratory system cells, infiltrating them, hijacking their DNA and forcing them to make millions of copies - with thousands of mutations - of themselves? Its only goal in its "life" is to make more of itself, but as a side-effect it creates untold misery. Can we call this killing a side effect at all, when the thing that does the killing has no life of its own, therefore has no reason to exist? I think you could compare it more to a weapon than to a living thing.

For example, the surface of the virus is covered in two kinds of protuberance, the antigens hemagglutinin and neuraminidase. These are the "H" and the "N" in H5N1, the latest "flavour" of influenza that has got us all so worried - by drift (gradual) or by shift (sudden and substantial) it is change in these antigens that can create more or less lethal types of influenza. The "H" antigen sticks to and gains access to the cell, it is the sticky, spiky part of the virus surface mentioned above - the key to the lock of the cell. However, imagine that once the cell is full to bursting - that is literally what happens to the cell - with copies (exact and mutated) of itself, won't these copies just stick to the remains of the surface of the cell in which they were created, and be rendered useless? They would, if it wasn't for neuraminidase. Its job, once inside a cell, is to break up the binding agent on the cells surface, hence allowing new viruses to escape to invade other cells.

What design.

So, why the virus? I suppose, being honest here, they're only small versions of what we see in the visible world - whilst not alive, is a virus any less obviously designed and suited to destruction than say, a lion? Is the virus the link that connects both ends of the food chain, that claims the "top dogs" - man - whilst also being the smallest and "simplest" of creatures and food to other more complex creatures, for example white blood cells? I don't think so - how can a virus be part of a food chain when they don't eat?

It's hard to imagine a reason for their existence, but you have to if you want to reconcile them with a belief in a loving God. There isn't an obvious reason, otherwise it would be obvious, wouldn't it? So we could postulate that H.G.Wells was right perhaps, that God in his wisdom seeded the planet with such things as these, and bacteria, to thwart any foreign "invaders", of the space kind? This is far fetched, and only appears in a work of fiction, and I think we all rightly see it as just that.

The only other - and most far fetched yet - reason I could think of, though obviously God in his wisdom may have reasons that are not obvious to us, is that God didn't make viruses - the devil did. Like two great generals in a battle, fighting biological, or viral, warfare, for the literal hearts of men - an invisible war, in every sense! Of course this is utter rubbish, why credit someone else for a brilliant bit of design - did the devil, or an "evil spirit creature", make lions too?

So the question remains, a question so great as to merit asking questions about the question itself. Maybe God didn't make these things, because God didn't make anything - if the world is neither malign nor benign, as it appears to be, it speaks more strongly for either a designer who is neither good nor bad, or for no creator at all - just two great opposing forces, neither good nor bad - perceived in life and death, change and stasis, the fit and unfit fighting - creating a history and a universe that we can perceive with our conscious brains.

Or maybe, as Philip Carey suggests (echoing the words of some forgotten philosopher), God purposely avoided making the perfect world - trees, plants and butterflies, the sort of world you can only see in your imagination, a sort that if God existed and so desired He could easily make. What that world would lack though! Where would be the goodness, courage and strength? For it seems every good quality is good because it is the denial of, the antithesis of, or the battling (and even beating of) a "flipside" bad quality - and perhaps the only world that could truly complement God, the only world in which man could truly serve him, and perhaps the only possible world containing subjects with free will, would be one where man could choose not to serve God, one where good existed because bad existed, each giving the other substance, as light gives substance to dark? Does free will explain the existence of the lion or the virus? Or are these things at least living (or almost living) extensions of the principle of a world in which good and bad can exist, but where man can choose the good, can choose to serve God, can choose life over death?

The notion of the happy (and unhappy) coexistence of evil with good, of sickness with health, and of opposite things being part of the fabric of life, part of its design, is familiar to many. I've heard people say "being ill makes you appreciate being well" - what a strange concept! Yet perhaps it holds a deep truth.

I think I'm equating the existence of a virus with the existence of evil, something that religious people have struggled with since - well since religious people. This struggle is like the struggle of good against evil itself - I think each of these struggles will exist as long as the other.

On a more practical note, there is some good information in the governments report into preparation for the impending pandemic - it's funny, in a non-haha way, how the time we are living in now is termed the "inter-pandemic period". Be prepared, be very prepared!

Interestingly, though it isn't specifically recommended, in both this report and the book on the Spanish influenza, it is suggested that at least partial immunity is granted to those people afflicted by the "first wave" of a virus - usually a far milder virus than the following waves. Perhaps I will do something foolish in order to be wise - deliberately put myself and family in the way of the first strain, if and when it appears. Would this be an acceptable risk to take for our lives? Only if we live.

The Virus of Death

I'm really worried, lets not beat about the bush here, by the expected H5N1 bird-flu outbreak - whether it will be called Bird-flu, H5N1, or something more exotic if/when it happens (the Hong Kong Fluey? Shouldn't joke...) - we'll have to see. Of course, scientists now know that the Spanish Flu of 1918 was itself an avian flu - unlucky Spaniards got the blame, when it was our feathered friends (enemies?) who were the culprits. Actually, that's not strictly true - Spanish Flu got its name because of the high numbers of deaths reported in Spain from the virus. Anyway, this is what scares everyone the most I think (it's what scares me), thinking that we could have something on that scale on our hands.

I think there's probably a lot that can be gleaned, if only in order to prepare ones mind for such a disaster (if that's possible), from studying that outbreak in 1918. We sat and watched the PBS documentary Secrets of the Dead:Killer Flu last night, and very cheery it was too (not). I've ordered this book also, and will post any possibly helpful or insightful points here as I read.

I think what I got most from the program is probably something not a lot of people would take from it, and I would describe this as a sense of the tragedy of old age! Maybe it's because of my religious upbringing, but I just don't - can't- see any sort of death as being natural, as opposed to one that is unnatural. Death to me seems unnatural'.' [period] This is what I mean: an old lady was interviewed who was alive in 1918, who could remember her mother dying from the Spanish Flu. The program kept flicking between the old woman's face and the face of a young victim of the flu. Now, here's my point: the old woman looked - looks, as she is alive - no less destroyed, in fact more destroyed - than the influenza victim. Why should this be any less sad? I think that an advanced, perhaps immortal species, lets say, would be more horrified by the old woman's face if they happened to receive this one program across space - "uuugh! What's happened to her!" - than by the face of the deceased victim. Two faces of death I would call them, neither one more natural than the other. Except we do view the old woman's "condition" - old age - as natural, and I suppose by any definition it is, for it's the only thing we've ever known. Well, even if this is the case, I feel no less sad looking at her than I do looking at any dead persons face, and we all have those faces, don't we? In the way that we are not our faces, that it is the unchanging person inside us that dies - we all have the same death, and so death is never more or less tragic for any of us.

I can't help thinking that death is a virus, unseen, which has come from who knows where, and that may yet disappear from our species. Is this because I've been brought up being told it comes from here and will disappear whence it came? I want to believe it.

What I'm getting at in a roundabout way is that any death annuls life completely, as if I/you were never here, no matter how or when that death takes us. There's no such thing as a good innings (as I've said before). If there is no prospect of eternity in our future, then life is futile - at least in the way that the life enjoyed by someone in Norway who lived 400 years ago, who is not remembered, who has no gravestone, was a futile life. He or she may as well never have existed. Only eternity can make sense of eternity, anything less than an eternal existence is no existence at all, in my opinion.

So the predicted pandemic worries me, but only in the way that life worries me, knowing that I will die. Given that it doesn't matter when and where I die, I think the thing is to be prepared to die, anywhere, at any time. This doesn't mean accepting it with a shrug, or not trying to live as long as possible - a seemingly irrepressible instinct. Should I then try and get hold of some tamiflu, whatever the cost? Should I be buying tinned corned beef and toilet paper, knowing that the virus could cause economic collapse, and that the lorry drivers who bring our supermarkets food are just one weak link in a long weak chain? I don't know. Should I buy a gun to protect my family from people after our food, or worse, just in case things get really bad? I don't know.

It's weird and incorrect I know but the image that keeps springing to mind when I think of this pandemic is that of a group of Africans sitting around a TV in some remote village watching us die (for a change). Think about that. I know that Africans have just as much chance of dying (perhaps more given the high H.I.V. infection rate) as us, but there you go. Thinking about the TV, a major source of our information on this subject: things on the TV just don't seem as real as real life to me, especially when fact and fiction are mixed up so well. TV death seems less real than real death too: past death (Spanish Flu guy), present death (starving Africans) but especially future death all seem unreal. This is how I think about future death: the bird flu pandemic could be likened to watching the weather on TV, and being warned that the place you live is in the path of a hurricane. Even though it's a lovely sunny day outside, you've still got to get the hell out of there, or if you can't, you've got to prepare yourself. You have to picture what will happen: the windows blowing through, the roof blowing off, people around you dying, perhaps you dying, and try to prepare for all that. It may seem so unlikely given the situation outside your window, but you've got to SEE it happening to you, really put yourself in that position, convince yourself that it's not unlikely, but just the opposite - see the future reality, see the future death - to be the most prepared. The satellite image of the moving hurricane is like the new cases of avian flu popping up on maps of Europe, getting closer and closer, if and when the pandemic strikes. We are ALL in it's path if that happens, there's nowhere to evacuate to, so we need to prepare ourselves, mentally if nothing else.

To finish on a positive note (no pun intended), the possible futility of life needn't in my opinion mar the enjoyment of it, it may even heighten the value of the time we have to enjoy, precious as it's limited supply makes it. Kurt Vonnegut gives us a nice way to look at things - here's an extract from a recent interview:

"In A Man Without a Country, he repeats something his Uncle Alex used to say when they were sitting under an apple tree, chatting and drinking lemonade.

"Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.' "

It is a saying he now carries around with him, and he urges everyone to "please notice when you are happy." "

The Greatest of These is Love

"And so there remain Faith, Hope, Love-these three; and of these the greatest is Love." - 1 Corinthians 13:13 (WEY). And so sayeth the Bible: Love is greater than Faith. This scripture has come to mind in conversations I've had over these past few days with Peter (my friend from university, newly converted to Islam) and Ollia (my fellow placement student - also a Muslim). The reason it's sprung to mind - resurfaced might be a better way to put it, as with any scriptural texts that are embedded forever in my psyche - is Peter's leap of faith, a leap so huge (from my perspective) it calls to mind the skateboarding Homer, jumping the gorge in the Simpsons ("Gonna make it! Gonna Make it! Gonna make it? Aaaaaggggghhhh....") - you know the episode. Except Peter made it - with room to spare. Last year he refuted for example, the claim that Jesus even existed: this year he considers Jesus a great prophet (which you've got to exist to be). Those were his exact words actually, referring to the change of viewpoint on the Jesus thing: "that was the biggest leap of faith for me". So what happened between then and now: has he spent his time examining the proofs for and against Jesus existence? No, but then faith isn't like that: it's the antithesis of such scientific enquiry, isn't it? As a scholar once put it: "I don't believe in proofs for the existence of God; however I do believe in the existence of God". And there's the rub - where Peter has gone, it seems I cannot follow, even though I want to. It seems to be a very personal thing - a decision? - and suddenly you find yourself looking at the world in a very different way. No longer Godless or even godless. There is now a reason and an explanation for the way things are; you too have a place in this universe. Now who wouldn't want to believe that? Yet I can't see that there exists a logical path from disbelief, or even doubt, to belief. I think that path, as Peter would admit (I think), is a path of Faith.

That's what got me to thinking on the above verse: would a loving God deny access to one of his children, if he could not walk this path? And if love is more important than faith (as the above scripture says it is), surely God would reach out to such a one - the old analogy I made of it not being up to the lost child to find his parent? Again: if love is more important, surely God would not judge a faithless man adversely, if that man be good and loving in his life, and yet admit into his favour a cold, unloving priest for example, who has a strong "faith"? The bible itself says "Faith is not the possession of all people" - and it also says man is made "in his image", if the Bible be true, then I think it gives further support to my theory in this: God does not posses faith (he does not need to believe that he exists because he knows it), and if we are made in his image, why would we posses it?

And if the Bible is not true, and if there is no God, faith suddenly becomes - and slots disconcertingly easily into this position - the man made image of God in the seemingly empty sky - the heavens are silent, so there must be a good reason, so it must be for our good, so we will call this faith, which is the quality of accepting the way things are as being the way things should be, the quality of seeing something in the sky that is invisible, of seeing something in the past that does not appear now, of seeing something in the future that I may never see in my life. When one looks at it like this, and if it is this way, it seems to be the worst thing someone could do with his mind, to push everything aside and say "I understand". Surely one cannot push everything aside, one has to examine things in order to understand them? Yet this seems to be the closest analogy to the person having faith, who previously did not: I think of a mathematician who after a lot of work solves a hard equation, and feels very good for having got at the answer. To the man or woman of faith: are your questions really answered, or have you just skipped over the answer bit and gone straight to the good feeling? My argument is that this is empty, it's like the hungry man dreaming about eating a meal: he wakes up still hungry.

Anyways, why would God make such a weird and unnatural quality, one that fights against all reason - that causes our "God given" brain no end of distress - the most important quality of all, a prerequisite to loving him? I don't think that it can be this way. I think there is another reason - as yet unknown -, or no reason, to explain the silent heavens. For if "God is Love" than he would be with us, as promised in Revelation. And if he could not be, then he would explain why, in an obvious manner (as Carl Sagan suggested, writing a huge message on the moon perhaps) that would not involve some weird, unreasonable, artificial and godless quality of "faith" to perceive. This obvious manner wouldn't involve using a book (Bible or Koran or Book of Mormon etc) written by men, because it needs the above mentioned quality to perceive it as anything other than that.

This also involves the ability to pray to God, or to have any relationship with him. Apparently Jesus let Thomas put his hands in his wounds, and Thomas was (and continued) a faithful Christian. Well then, this is how obvious Jesus needs to be to men, who are all doubters, for them to serve God in Love. What does Peter feel when he prays, three or five times a day? Probably what I felt: and that is the answer. I felt I was close to God when I was praying, but was I close to God? The inability to distinguish between these two different things - as different as life is from death - that of feeling close to God and being close to God - casts doubt on the whole process in my view. I can feel close to Julia Roberts for example (as a "fan" - never having met her in person or even seen her in person): have all her films, know everything about her, even talk to her (some crazy fans do this sort of thing), in a sense, and this is the right word, worship her. Am I close to her, or put the right way round, is she close to me? She doesn't even know me! (I don't really worship Julia Roberts by the way. Scarlett has taken her place ;-)

It seems that anything that involves faith is suspect, for the above reasons. I am a good and loving man, or I try to be, and if God is good and loving - and there - he will know it.

My do it!

Joni's favourite thing at the moment is doing, well, everything that we would normally do for her. Like buttering her toast "my do it!" or opening the fridge "my do it!" or putting toothpaste on her toothbrush "my do it!" or pressing the button to call a lift "my press it!". She's very independent, this can be a bit worrying crossing busy roads when she doesn't want to hold your hand (my cross it?). Of course we don't let her do that - just everything else.

She loves (doesn't every British kid?) CBeebies, and basically believes she has exclusive rights over the TV to watch this channel, so you can imagine each morning and evening when Daddy wants to watch the News (just the headlines!) there are some heated arguments between me and the little girl (I win, honest). Well, CBeebies ends at 7pm sharp each night, with a goodnight story. The screen then goes blank - Joni knows it's her bedtime. So the other night she wanders through to the bathroom, where I was shaving, it having just gone 7, and asked me (sooo nicely), "watch news Daddy?" - in other words, I'll watch the news with you now Dad, so long as I can stay up! I laughed so much, I actually did sit down and watch it with her. Pretty depressing stuff though, how could I explain to her how God had let schools collapse on hundreds of children like herself in Pakistan, if she had asked me? I've got a bit of time before she starts asking things like that I hope, but it wont be time enough. My spiritual bank balance is so low - happy am I who am in the red, since I will be put into the black?