We need to talk about how viruses and prions and other particles are a problem for us atheist folk because all we have to explain their origins are measly hypotheses. We don't even have theories about their origins! Oh boy.

*poof magic*

There, sorted

(November 22, 2010 at 5:26 pm)The_Flying_Skeptic Wrote: We need to talk about how viruses and prions and other particles are a problem for us atheist folk because all we have to explain their origins are measly hypotheses. We don't even have theories about their origins! Oh boy.

Well the history of scientific discovery has told us, that anything that is currently unexplainable by science does not always remain so and an a perfectly naturalistic explanation will be found eventually.

Hmmm well lets see, I won't claim to be the most intelligent person or that i have studied in this area of science. But I do enjoy taking a simplier view of things.

I believe viruses are living and non living organisms in the senese that they reproduce, but non living because their only made of dna strands and protiens. Infact their merely nothing more than the simplest parisitic lifeform on earth, and intriguingly the closest things to nanites there is. Up close they look like machines and every generation of a virus is different, so evolution is taking place and natural selection rewards only the strongest design. They could be and mostly likely are, one of the oldest lifeforms on earth. Even cells have their predators.

Prions, first time hearing of them so i looked them up but they just look like cancer cells, is that really hard to imagine?

"I don't know" would be the honest answer, but that doesn't shut down all enquiry and abandon the objective of trying to understand them.

Viruses are amazing in the sense, that they may be responsible for evolution by kick-starting self-organization and replication in other cells. They cause certain types of cancers. We learn more about them everyday.

We've recently discovered virophages, a group of viruses that prey on other viruses, such as the Sputnik virophage infecting the larger more complex Mamavirus. We haven't even established a virus classification for it yet. The discovery has forced scientists to review the criteria of life, as to whether viruses are in fact, alive.

We may depend upon them to survive, when antibiotics cease to have any effect against superbugs, Phage therapy may be the only option left...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy

"IN SOVIET RUSSIA, VIRUSES CURE YOU" x3