God Is In The Viruses

     My theory of evolution and creation involves viruses. The Prophet Baha'u'llah of the Baha'i Faith wrote that God created the world and animals, but that it took place over a long period of time, and of course he wrote that there was something different about mankind which did not evolve over a long period of time like the rest of the world. The word evolution wasn't used, but what he was saying is that the world evolved and all the plants and animals evolved in the way that Charles Darwin described, but God still created the world. How could this happen?

     From a modern scientific perspective, viruses have been involved with an enormous amount of the evolution of all species on the planet, the best example of which is the mutation that created the ability for the placenta to evolve so that mammals could exist, that mutation was caused by a virus, meaning humans and all mammals would have never have come into existence without this mutation. One kind of viruses called retroviruses have the ability to edit genes, taking bits and pieces of genes and rearranging them and putting them back, they do this rapidly, and almost as if they are attempting to create functioning genes. Science has shown that over a third of all mutations in the history of evolution were caused specifically by viruses editing genes, meaning viruses guide evolution, which is possibly how God continues to have a hand in the world.

     Antibiotics have only been around for about 70 to 80 years and at least a few kinds of bacteria have developed resistance to all known antibiotics, so interest is emerging in phage therapy to deal with multiply resistant forms of bacteria. Phages or more properly bacteriophages are viruses that target bacteria, lytic phages destroy target bacteria by splitting them open and releasing more viruses, and cocktails of multiple kinds of phages that are known to infect a particular kind of bacteria can be given to someone with a bacterial infection that is threatening their life. So far one man was saved in the United States when his liver was infected with a multiply resistant kind of a bacterial infection and all kinds of antibiotics had been given to him, and he was continuing to trend down. They pulled a phage from a local pond, turned it into a cocktail by adding additional phages that were known to be effective against the particular kind of bacteria from phage libraries, gave it to him, and he improved and recovered.

     Phages make up the majority of viruses that live inside your body, with what is estimated at over 100,000 species living in your gut alone. Unfortunately phages were discovered before antibiotics and so drug companies are unwilling to invest any time or money into phages because they are theoretically all out of patent, so no one can make any profits or money off of them, but one angle that is being explored by scientists is to use the bacteriophages to edit the genes of certain kinds of bacteria to make them less harmful to humans.

     The human biome is made up of bacteria, viruses, and fungi, and it is estimated that there are over 10 times as many of them as there are human cells in your body, with viruses making up the majority. The viruses that exist in the human biome are not pathogenic, they are symbiotic, unlike the over 200 known infectious forms of virus like the human flu. The vast majority of all viruses on the planet have not been categorized, identified, or in any way understood, and virons are the most abundant form of DNA in the oceans of our planet, virons are the infectious bits of DNA released from viruses.

     It was only recently discovered that viruses are capable of interspecies gene editing as well, grabbing bits of genes out of bacteria in your system and swapping them with bits of your genes. They can swap genes between different kinds of bacteria as well, and can edit and change bacteria, and they can even swap bits of their own genes with human genes, with over 8% of the human genome being made up of viral DNA. Some viruses or virons are even generated by bacteria as weapons, if the bacteria E. coli makes it into a person's bloodstream it will release viruses of its own to hunt down and kill any other bacteria living in the bloodstream of the infected person, eliminating competition. The human bloodstream is already full of viruses and virons, so is your skin, lungs, intestinal tract, and the entire human body, they are all full of viruses, mostly phages waiting for their target kind of bacteria to arrive. 

     In computers there are software updates to keep the system running properly, and I believe that some viruses are the same thing for humans, animals, plants and bacteria, they are software updates from God that update your system, and again, are responsible for over a third of all mutations in the history of evolution. Viruses are not just a disease, they're a genetic update constantly evolving the world around us, and constantly evolving mankind. And just like in computers sometimes the software update requires more resources than are available and the system crashes, which unfortunately means in the case of the flu that before 2018 an average flu season in the United States meant that up to 50,000 people would die of the flu during the fall and winter of every year, mostly infants, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems, and we all know another virus that killed millions of people around the world in the last few years, so by all means viruses deserve their reputation as dangerous killers, but they also may be how God influences evolution on Earth. At least that explains what Bahu'u'llah meant when he wrote that God created the world and all of the plants and animals, but it took place over a long period of time, this makes sense if God is in the viruses.