22 Apr 20
-Removed-Your quote from Christianity Today reminds me of all the times you've said that organized religion is often just people full of themselves. I can agree with that in this case.
But nope, I don't think a case can be made that anything from science can be 'demonic interference'. The people who say so, though, are another story.
-Removed-Surely the assertion that the virus is from some kind of supernatural origin is no more or less credible than the notion it was brought to Earth by extraterrestrial beings? What credence or import do assertions made by whover the people are at "Christianity Today" have? What legitimate standing do they have when it comes to epidemiology?
23 Apr 20
-Removed-People always assume that God or Satan has their hand in everything, from the outcome of football games to the tastiness of your mom's apple pie.
That doesn't mean it's so. I believe that creation resulted in a world that runs well, even with no 'hand on the wheel'. And this is due to science, the basis of everything in the physical world. God's blueprints. Viruses had a purpose at one time, perhaps in DNA sharing among early organisms, to fuel evolution. Today, their purpose exhausted, they may usher in the last 'plagues' of mankind. The best we can do in our fallen state is to see through the glass, darkly. Just because we don't know the true purpose of some things is not to say there is none.
23 Apr 20
-Removed-Well, if we're going to go with the Garden of Eden story as literally true and select a bit of science to augment it to explain virogenesis then the first thing to do is select a scientific theory that seems to fit the meta-narrative imposed on the Book of Genesis by insisting on its literal truth. A theory of the origin of viruses is that they are the result of sequences of DNA or RNA "going rogue". There are particles called viroids which are like viruses, but lack a protein coat. It's not a big step for them to acquire a protein shell by random mutation. The main requirement is that they can use a host cells cytoplasm to replicate themselves and can enter and leave cells. So, if our meta-narrative has human and, for that matter, any other species' DNA becoming less stable after the fall we have a mechanism for virogenesis built in. Human DNA or mRNA goes rogue and becomes a viroid, selection pressure on the resultant viroid eventually produces a protein shell and viruses come into being.
So I don't think that there's any particular requirement for demonic intervention. On the other hand, by the time we've accepted the Bible as literally true, I don't see any particular reason why not except that demons are meant to tempt humans into sinning and there's rather less scope for sinning during a lock down. One sort of needs a bit of company to commit any really satisfying sins.
-Removed-The quotation contends that god made everything, except of course bad things like killer viruses, he/she/it only made the good viruses, and if anybody truly believes this then there's really nothing more to be said, whatever gets you through the night.
As to what a virus is, it's life, Jim, but not as we know it. No matter how we classify or characterize it, it's as much a part of the natural world as weasels or cockroaches, it infects and kills blindly and without conscious intent or discrimination, in order (again unconsciously) to ensure its' continued survival, in other words it behaves exactly as does everything else in the natural world.
Only we as (the only) self - conscious animals try to label things as 'good' or 'bad', and rally around our inherited beliefs to try to make some sense of it all, when there is no sense to it all; we for example created the Catholic church, which some of us call 'good' , because it worships a good god, who, remember, created all good things, and nobody expects the Spanish inquisition.... 'Good' and 'bad' are subjective concepts, and a virus is neither, it just is, trundling along trying (unconsciously) to survive by doing what it does best.