Viruses, Coronaviruses and How They Disprove Evolution

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Article #343

by Bill Nugent  3/31/20

 

Do you know it’s impossible to kill a virus? That’s because viruses are not living organisms. Viruses do not eat and they do not excrete. Viruses have no respiration. Viruses consist of a protein sheath that surrounds a small genome consisting of DNA or RNA. Antibiotics kill bacteria but have no effect on viruses. You can’t kill viruses but you can destroy them.

 

Viruses can’t reproduce by cell division like bacteria. A virus invades a cell, such as a bacterium or a human cell. The virus then hijacks the cell’s reproductive machinery and forces the cell to reproduce viruses. A disease causing virus causes a human cell to become full of viruses and explode and die, releasing viruses and toxins into the body causing illness and death. Since viruses invade the DNA of host cells, viruses can also cause cells to mutate into cancer cells.

 

There are approximately 37 trillion cells in the average human body. There are approximately 20 times that number (740 trillion) microorganisms in the human body, consisting of bacteria and viruses. Human cells are much larger than the microorganisms. Some of the microorganisms are so small, 400,000 of them could fit inside one human cell. Most of the microorganisms are either neutral or beneficial to the body. A small fraction are harmful or pathogenic.

 

Most of the 150 trillion viruses estimated to inhabit a human body are harmless and they destroy bacteria. There is much scientific literature these days discussing the fact that many viruses are actually beneficial to the human body.

 

Harmful viruses include: rhinoviruses (cause common cold), influenza viruses (seasonal flu virus), measles virusHIV (AIDS) viruses, and coronaviruses  which inhabit animals, can cause the common cold in humans and cause SARS, MERS and the present deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

 

During reproduction of viruses, there are often transcription errors that cause mutations in the DNA of the newly reproduced viruses. All viruses mutate over time. Some viruses mutate very rapidly into more deadly or less deadly forms.

 

Other viruses are very stable and seldom mutate at all. For instance the virus that causes measles is in nearly the same form that it was back in the 1950s. The HIV (AIDS) virus is also rather stable and not prone to much mutation, though there are several strains of HIV virus now.

 

The seasonal flu virus mutates rapidly and the mutations are often predictable. Microbiologists studying flu viruses can predict, with some degree of accuracy, how the virus will mutate and develop a vaccine in advance of that mutated strain of virus. This is why we have different flu virus vaccines every year. Personally I never get a flu shot. The record of the flu vaccine in actually preventing the flu is a bit spotty. Vaccines also carry other health risks but that’s a topic for another article.

 

Seasonal flu viruses usually arise in east Asia. The reason for this is the type of intense animal husbandry practiced in densely populated east Asian lands. Chickens, ducks, geese and pigs are raised in extremely close proximity on Asian farms and ranches. Pigs are often fed chicken dung as their primary food source. This causes viruses that infect fowl (avian viruses) to cross over into pigs. The avian viruses and swine viruses can on occasion infect the same cell in the body of a pig. The two viruses sometimes form a mutated hybrid under these conditions. Some strains of these new hybrid flu viruses can infect humans and be transmissible from human to human.

 

The influenza virus of 1918-19 was especially deadly. It infected about 500 million people, almost a third of the world population at the time. Estimates of deaths range from 30 million to 100 million, including 675,000 in the United States. It progressed in three waves, the first being deadly but mild compared to the fierce second wave. The virus mutated to a deadlier form by the summer of 1918 and the peak month of deaths was October 1918.

 

The 1918 pandemic was caused by an avian virus (H1N1) and the geographic origin is unknown. It followed an unusual seasonal flu virus timeframe, peaking in the summer and fall of 1918. Most seasonal flu outbreaks peak in winter. My own family lost a great-aunt in the pandemic. My maternal grandfather’s sister, Marie May (1894-1918) died of the flu in December 1918. It was just three months after she was maid of honor at my grandparents’ wedding. She was sick only three days.

 

This brings us to the present coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that originated in Wuhan China in December 2019. Some have speculated that it’s a bio-engineered virus and it was either deliberately or accidentally released from the virus research lab in Wuhan China. Air travel was suspended inside China to contain the virus’s spread in China yet air travel from China to other nations was not suspended. This is certainly disquieting and leads some observers to contend that China deliberately allowed the spread of the virus worldwide.

 

The rapid spread of COVID-19 from human to human is very alarming. The high death rate (over 39,000 deaths among 810,000+ cases, as I post this on 3/31/20) gives a death rate far higher than that of seasonal flu. Contagious and deadly is a bad combination. It is more severe than the SARS virus (2002-2003) and the MERS virus (2012- present) which are also coronaviruses. The MERS virus spreads very inefficiently from human to human. SARS was also suspected to have been transmitted from bats to humans.

 

This year’s seasonal flu has infected over 34 million Americans so far, causing about 350,000 hospitalizations and over 20,000 deaths.Seasonal flu runs from October to April. If COVID-19 were allowed to infect 34 million Americans, it’s high death rate would likely cause over 350,000 deaths.

 

We can be thankful that viruses mutate over time. A genetic mutation is a destructive error that occurs in the genome (DNA or RNA) of the virus during the reproduction of the virus in host cells. Mutations cause a rearrangement or loss of nucleotide base pairs in the virus DNA or RNA. (Some viruses have genomes that consist of DNA and some have genomes that consist of RNA.)

 

Mutations don’t bring a new strand of base pairs to the virus genome but rather scramble pre-existing base pairs in the genome. Even transfer of base pairs from virus to virus is not a new strand of DNA but merely a pre-existing strand of DNA from the other virus which would cause hybridization. Mutations result in an overall net loss of information in the DNA or RNA of the virus gene pool. This loss of information is called genetic entropy  and it is the breakdown of virus genomes over time. (See book: Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome by Dr. John C. Sanford, FMS Publications, 2005.)

 

The genomes of all the viruses of a particular kind tend to mutate in the same way at the same time because of vulnerabilities in the structure of the viral genome. Let’s pray that the COVID-19 virus quickly mutates to a mild, non-deadly form and this pandemic ends now!

 

Viruses are far simpler than bacteria but are nonetheless extremely complex organisms. Bacteria are smaller than a thousandth of a millimeter. Viruses are far smaller than that. A bacterium is more complex than a smartphone. A virus is more complex than a wristwatch. Neither of them could ever form by chance. They had to be created.

 

Evolutionists can’t explain how the first virus could have formed by random collisions of atoms in the prebiotic earth. Viruses can’t reproduce without host cells such as bacteria. So in the evolutionist mind, which came first, the bacteria cell or the virus? That’s the question Dr. Andrew Fabich, as an undergraduate, asked his virology professor. The professor couldn’t answer him and candidly said that he had no evolutionary explanation for the origin of viruses. (See “Celebrate Your Inner Virus”  by Dr. Andrew Fabich, available at answersingenesis.org.)

 

A coronavirus is an RNA-based virus and its single nucleotide strand consists of roughly 26,000 – 32,000 nucleotide base pairs, all properly sequenced. To say that such a long chain of nucleotides just randomly fell together in the prebiotic earth by random churning of atoms is a probabilistic absurdity. The number of possible sequences of 26,000 base pairs is an astronomically huge number.

 

I’ve shown in a previous article that the number of possible sequences of the cards in an ordinary 52 card, playing card deck is factorial 52 which is 52 x 51 x 50 x 49 . . . 3 x 2 x 1 which yields a number larger than the number of atoms in the known universe. Can you imagine the number of possible combinations of base pairs in a 26,000 nucleotide RNA chain? A viable coronavirus RNA couldn’t form in a trillion years of random churning of atoms.

 

Secular evolutionist biologists have great faith in chance to produce complex organisms. Viruses, bacteria and all organisms were created by God. Many viruses are good. However, some viruses became deadly after the fall of creation into sin, which brought the curse of evil on the earth.The fact that the theory of evolution can’t explain the origin of viruses is just one more piece of evidence that serves to disprove evolution.

 

Many scientists are taking a fresh look at Christianity. God sent Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah of Israel, to be the redeemer of humankind. Christ came in fulfillment of over three hundred prophecies that were written in the Old Testament hundreds of years before His birth. Additionally, Christ worked miracles of healing in front of eyewitnesses. Miracles of healing still occur today in answer to prayer in Christian gatherings all around the world. The fulfilled prophecies and the miraclesprove Christ is the Son of God.

 

The prophet Isaiah foretold that Christ would suffer and die, taking upon Himself the punishment that we deserved because of our sins. “He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5). Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead to offer forgiveness of sins to all who turn to Him in repentance. I invite you to turn to Jesus Christ today to receive forgiveness of sins.

 

Sources: CDC websiteWikipedia, book: Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome by Dr. John C. Sanford, FMS Publications, 2005 and article: “Celebrate Your Inner Virus” by Dr. Andrew Fabich at answersingenesis.org.

Steps to salvation:

Jesus said “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).

  • 1) Believe that God created you and loves you and sent the Messiah (Messiah is Hebrew for Christ) to redeem you.
  • 2) Believe that Jesus Christ came in fulfillment of over 300 Bible prophecies to die for you, to take upon Himself the penalty of your sins (Isaiah 53:5-6, John 6:29, Romans 4:5, First Peter 3:18).
  • 3) Turn from sin and call on the name of Jesus to receive forgiveness of sins (Romans 10:13).
  • 4) Receive Jesus as Savior and experience the new birth (John 1:12, Acts 2:38).
  • 5) Follow Jesus Christ as Lord (John 14:21).

Prayer to receive salvation:

“Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13).

To receive the salvation that Jesus purchased for us at the terrible cost of His suffering and death on our behalf I invite you to pray this simple prayer:

“Dear heavenly Father, I thank you for sending Jesus, the promised Messiah, to die for my sins. I admit that I am a sinner. I repent of my sins and I ask for your forgiveness on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I ask you to fill me with your Holy Spirit to empower me to serve you under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, Amen.”

If you prayed this prayer in the humble sincerity of your heart then you have received everlasting life, which includes power to live right in this life and entrance into heaven in the afterlife!



(C) 2016 William P. Nugent, permission granted to email or republish for Christian outreach.

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