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.
"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.
posted by John Doran-Armstrong at 12:25 PM
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