Re: Re: thoughts on Jesus

On Mon, 26 May 2008 17:33:06 +0100, "alwaysaskingquestions"
<alwaysaskingquestions@xxxxxxxxx> enriched this group when s/he wrote:


"Mark VandeWettering" <wettering@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:slrng3lmjj.mft.wettering@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 2008-05-26, alwaysaskingquestions <alwaysaskingquestions@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

"Mark VandeWettering" <wettering@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:slrng3jrk2.j7v.wettering@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 2008-05-25, alwaysaskingquestions <alwaysaskingquestions@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


[...]

Care to explain how man is dominated by cold viruses?

The 1918 influenza pandemic killed between 20 and 40 million people.

About 1-2 % of the world's population at that time which incidentally
grew
from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 2 billion by 1927 so it didn't even do much
to
slow that down. I'm afraid that our concepts of "domination" are somewhat
different.

You might have thought differently had you been living in 1918. Or,
say during the years of the Black Death.

Without wishing to appear in any way callous about the people who directly
suffered from these things, in the context we are discussing I have to ask
"so what?" People die and they do so of various causes. I don't know what
percentage of total human deaths in any given period are due to viruses but
I would suspect that they account for a lot less than other causes such as
heart disease and cancer.

At the times of the great epidemics you would be very wrong.

Or smallpox. Despite being
essentially irradicated by the end of the 20th century, it *still*
managed to kill 300-500 million people. When I was a kid it was still
killing upwards of a million people a year.

Do you even think about what you are writing? You are claiming that viruses
domninate Man and then you give one of the best - but far from the only -
examples of man overcoming a virus.

Yes, viruses still dominate man. And even smallpox could still return
to kill us all.

BTW, on the general subject of viruses, where did HIV/Sars/Bird Flue
wipeouts go to?

HIV killed just under half a million people in the U.S. The WHO claims
that worldwide, there were 33.2 million people infected with HIV in 2007,
and 2.1 million died of AIDS. The majority are in Sub Saharan Africa,
where
somehow their largish brains and our ability to send people the Moon
aren't
helping them conquer the epidemic.

The problems in Sub Saharan Africa are related to a wide range of issues
beyond the virus itself.

True, the biggest problem is the churches, in particular the RC Church
and its sickening attitude to condoms.

The way that HIV has been brought largely under
control in the developed world shows that it Man is capable of overcoming it
and no reaso why he can't bring it under control in the Africa if he takes
the right approach.

The right approach would be to charge the Roman Catholic Church with
mass murder.


SARS only managed to kill 700+ people out of 8000 diagnosed cases,

but caused an international scramble that should suggest that health
organizations thought it was very serious indeed. Influenza normally
kills
less than 1% of those infected, and those usually either very young
children
or the aged. Killing 10% of those infected is a very, very serious thing.

Of course it's a serious thing but what was the percentage of total
pupilation exposed to it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_1918

The Asian flu epidemic in 1957 managed to kill over a million people, and
the Honk Kong flu epidemic of 1968 over three quarters of a million
people.
It would be convenient to point to mankind's ability to survive these kind
of disease outbreaks by pointing at his population growth during this
time.
If you'd like to do that, perhaps you should put it in context, by
comparing
them to the population curves for the influenza virus.


Whilst significant numbers of people died in specific areas, none of your
examples were a significant setback on man's ongoing development. On the
contrary, as you yourself have pointed out - and I could give other
examples - Man has quite a strong track record of coping with these viruses
and even eliminating some of them.

[...]

You belong to the school that think we never actually made it to the
Moon,
that it was all a giant hoax?

Uh, humans can't migrate there. We can't live there for more than a few
days. There are no human habitations there.

We've shown we can do it, it's just a question of increasing our
commitment
to do so for longer periods and to other places. BTW, Stephen Hawking
seems
to agree with me on this one.
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13748-stephen-hawking-calls-for-moon-and-mars-colonies.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/6krfuu

I see nothing saying that Hawking suggests that humans can migrate to Mars
at
the current time. I'll grant you that the technological challenges do not
seem insurmountable, but neither do the technological challenges
associated
with engineering life forms.

There is a major difference.

Nope.

Space travel is not hypothetical,

Travel to Mars is.

we have
actually done it,

Hardly.

the problems are now down to extending time and distances.

Oh if only it was that simple.

Abiogenesis hasn't even got off the starting blocks in terms of
demonstrating the creation of a life form.

I would say it is off the starting blocks, it has just not passed the
finishing tape yet.

[...]

--
Bob.

.

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