Ok, just a quick rant. Just another rational thought about how Intelligent Design or Creation is illogical and therefore, irrational.

Pathology and disease is caused by numerous agents and mechanisms. There are auto-immune diseases, cancer, diseases caused by chemicals, diseases caused by parasites (bacateria, protists, funguses) and diseases caused by viruses. So first off, let me ask the question: Why would a creator who is the creator of EVERYTHING, create not ONLY pathogens, but also a flawed body that can become susceptible to disease? It just doesnt' make much sense that an omnipotent being creator of everthing would make such flawed design?

Also, here is another interesting fact that I have talked about in the past. Pathogenic organisms function as evolutionary selective pressures, proving evolution. A host which is susceptible to certain pathogens, it has been shown, will modify it's structural proteins to resist those pathogens. Most pathogens (such as viruses, and bacteria and even protists like plasmodium (malaria causing organism) need to bind to cell membranes in order for them cause pathogenicity. The way they bind is through the organism's ligand proteins which recognize proteins on a host's cell membrane. Certain hosts of these organisms have adapted to change the structure of their cell surfaces, therefore causing the host to adapt an immunity to that certain organism.

Let me explain how this mechanism works. And again, I will use Plasmodium as an example. The plasmodium parasite has to recognize and bind to red blood cells. The way this happens is that it produces certain proteins that bind to proteins on red blood cells. The binding process has to do with the chemistry of the proteins themselves, stereochemistry and the actual structure of the functional part of the protein have a lot to do with this. It's lind of like a lock and key mechanism. Now there are various isomers of proteins, this is due to random mutations that occur constantly throughout your body. Now just one simple point mutation (say a translational error which replaces a Guanine for a cytosine) on a critical gene, will make a slightly different cell surface protein (which happens to be a receptor for the malaria parasite). Now imagine the malaria parasite entering your body but not able to bind due to the fact that the protein has changed configuration and teh key now will not fit. You are now essentially "immune" to that specific malaria serotype. Now..imagine a population of thousands exposed to this same parasite who happens to kill off thousands of children, except those that have this mutation...these children survive, reach maturity and now will spread their new gene which is immune, while the rest die off and the "old" gene with them. This is what you call selective pressure.

Now...the game is played on both ends because the malaria parasite too evolves due to pressures. If it enters the body, and cannot reproduce it dies off...but what if that malaria parasite..then also has a point mutation, allowing it's protein to once again bind to red blood cells...this is how different species of malaria parasites have evolved....due to this selective pressure. Compound this process by thousands or even millions of years and you now have differentiation of parasite species. You can find these similiarities among all Apicomplexans (a phylum of parasitic protists: because their mode of infection is similiar all the families and species of apicomplexan share an apical complex: showing evolutionary lineages to each other) but these are different species that have speciated through time based on these mechanisms of natural selection. So to those that argue agaisnt evolution because they say it's impossilbe to speciate only because they can't breed a dog out of a cat..(such lunacy), here is proof that speciation does occur due to natural selection, the fundamental Darwinian principle. (Read here for more information on the evolution of different SPECIES of plasmodium: http://www.impact-malaria.com/FR/EPS/Formations_et_cours_internationaux/Formation_de_la_Liverpool_School_LSTMH/cours_liverpool/Unit_1/1_10_1.html )

So to finalize, if god was such a wonderful Intelligent creator, why create the human body so susceptible to disease? I dont' see much intelligence in this....and why would a god create disease? Another fallacy in the "logic" of "intelligent design". The ID/Creationsits...will ignore this evidence of speciation through natural selection, because they can't explain it otherwise, yet claim to be scientific in method. All they do is try to find flaws or holes in evolutionary theory (which most scientists are aware of anyway, except they try to figure out the answers scientifically) without proposing logic or methods to their own theory.

It's called the straw man argument. and as most of you know it goes like this:

One can set up a straw man in the following ways:

1. Present a misrepresentation of the opponent's position, refute it, and pretend that the opponent's actual position has been refuted.
2. Present someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, refute that person's arguments, and pretend that every upholder of that position, and thus the position itself, has been defeated.
3. Invent a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs that are criticized, and pretend that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical.

This is all the ID/creationsits have...logical fallacies.

ok perhaps a not so quick rant.