How Do Creationists Explain The Existence Of AIDS?

[ThomWV]

When George Bush was just a boy and Billy Graham was in his 1950's prime AIDS did not exist, now it does.

What answer do you get if you ask a Creationist this question: If all living things were created in 7 days (however defined) where did the AIDS virus come from?

[Christa]

1. It came from Satan

:evilgrin:

[OneBlueSky]

2. God's punishment of gays and other "undesirables" . . . n/t

.

[Deep13]

3. God's vengence on gays.

Disease is of divine origin in their minds.

[yurbud]

9. from the earliest awareness of the disease they said this

God is punishing the Sodomites (who charge us too much per visit and won't validate our parking).

[nebenaube]

4. a lab in Bethesda? n/t

[Lerkfish]

5. your premise is false

you're assuming that you can ask a creationist a question containing logic that will elicit an unexpected response based on information.

:)

[Liberal Veteran]

6. I can think of two ways they will inevitably explain it.

1) It always existed and was undiscovered until this century

2) God whipped it up in the 70's because to punish people for being gay, promiscuous, using drugs, having a spouse that cheats, being born with hemophilia, having a blood transfusion, and being born poor and not white in Africa or Asia (and given that the majority of HIV cases are in Africa, apparently God really hates poor people in Africa)....remarkably however, he seems to really like lesbians.

[Jim__]

7. I think even creationists accept "microevolution".

Its sort of hard to deny.

From a review of Darwin's Ghost:

Creationists find it easy to accept the science of AIDS. Its arrival so close to the millennium and the Last Judgment is a useful illustration of God's wrath. Homosexuals, they claim, have declared war on nature, and nature has exacted an awful retribution. Fundamentalists admit the evolution of a virus as nature's revenge but will not concede that the same process acts upon life as a whole.

Even to anti-evolutionists, AIDS is proof of descent with modification because they can see it happening. Its agent has changed in its brief history and has adapted to overcome the many challenges with which it is faced. As death approaches, a patient may be the home of creatures-descendants of those that infected him-as different as are humans and apes. Every continent, with its own sexual habits, has its own exquisitely adjusted set of viruses; and AIDS has relatives in animals quite different from ourselves. Darwin would have been delighted to see the workings of his machine so starkly exposed.

Then again, even if you accept that all living things were created in 7 days and that AIDS is caused by a new virus, you could always argue that viruses are notliving things.

[ThomWV]

10. Your 2 Arguments ....

You and your article point to two parts of the argument that I do not know how to respond to. Here they are:

First; AIDS comes from a virus and viruses are nonliving things.

Second; God didn't have a clock and who is to say that we are not still in the embrace of the 7th day of creation with God's good works continuing?

Got any good counter arguments for either one of those?

On Edit: Typo

[Jim__]

14. A problem with trying to counter creationist or intelligent design arguments ...

... is that they are usually not falsifiable. That's what makes them not science.

How could you possibly argue with the assertion that the 7th day of creation is continuing? If they make an argument that can be falsified, they may concede that argument, but they never have to concede the general case: god is omnipotent, so he can do anything.

I am not sure how biologist classify viruses. But, even if biology classifies a virus as a living thing, a creationsist has no problem just claiming that science is wrong - with absolutely no evidence to back their claim.

The only creationist or intelligent design arguments that I think are worth debunking are the one's that make false claims about science.

[BlueEyedSon]

8. Come on, they don't EXPLAIN anything!

unless you consider "it's god's will" an explanation.....

[The Wielding Truth]

11. Yes, it's because they say so. No logic just mantra. Silly believers.

Yet they can't always be wrong, and that encourages them to gamble and drink again from the cup of ignorance.

They become drugged with denial and intoxicated by their own illusions. No wonder they want everyone to be of the same mind.

The simpler the answer the easier to push their view and have their way.

This childish method however makes it is impossible to attain peace, because all laws are ultimately interpreted by nature and not man. In nature there is only change, not peace. Nature should be observed and respected. God and nature evolve.

[seabeyond]

12. aids and katrina, gods wrath against sinners. n/t

[mondo joe]

13. Your error is in holding creationists to reason or logic. NT

[nealmhughes]

15. I seem to recall a verse from long ago: "God causeth the rain to fall on the just and the unjust

alike."

The puppet master vengeance-seeking God of the Oldest Old Testament seemed to have a tremendous liking towards collective punishment. Somehow, after contact with the Persians,that seems to have changed...

Fundamentalists seem to love El the desert sky god who lusted after blood, and the more mainstream Christians the benevolent forgiving God. One wonders at time if they are even the same entity.

[PVnRT]

16. Fag cancer

Yes, I can remember when it was called this. And that's why it's a raging epidemic today, because back in the early 1980's, it was just fag cancer, and who cares about those dirty homos? Thanks, President Reagan!

[AndreaCG]

17. God hates f-gs

And Africans.