A question about prayer, malaria and evolution. Interested?

Question

Sometimes when people put up prayer requests on R&S (which they shouldn't, it's solicitation not a question) for something like a driving test or a sick pet, I ask them if instead they would care to pray to God to eradicate malaria. That's because any god should consider someone's driving test of little importance compared to a vile disease that kills an African child every 30 seconds. I wonder what kind of god puts such a disease on Earth in the first place, and I wonder what kind of people think their driving test is more important, but we'll let that go.

Scientists are on the brink of a scheme to eradicate malaria. They aim to release genetically modified mosquitos into the wild which are immune to the malaria parasite and which are better adapted to survive than malarial ones. This technology is grounded on evolutionary principles first established by Darwin and Mendel. Evolutionary theory in practice is about to defeat malaria where prayer has always failed.

Your thoughts?

This is a repost as I asked it this morning (GMT). The Americans and Canadians are up and about now so I'm interested in what they think. The news stories can be found here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6468381.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,,2038169,00.html

It's a very fair point about releasing organisms into the wild like this. The Cane Toad was a disaster. I hope it's from lessons like that, and refinements in GM techniques, that mean this will not go bad. It is too important not to take a chance on.

Not too many answers from anti-evolution, pro-prayerists, I notice. Do you think it's because they just aren't clicking on the link at all...?
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Answer 1

Prayer requests always annoy me like hell, because they are so selfish.

I've never seen a prayer request on this website to save the 30,000 kids that died today because of hunger, starvation and Aids.

Let's please focus on what we humans actually _can_ do. Like, indeed, try to eradicate malaria. It would be an amazing thing. The only thing that comes with it is that somewhere, somebody will start to thank God for that again. Which is the true insult to those amazing scientists that actually managed to find a cure.

Answer 2

On one hand I see your point. No matter how bad we think things are there is always someone who has a situation that is much worse.

But on the other hand which is better? The child in Africa lives a brief life and dies of malaria or lives a long life being orphaned by HIV, raped by arab soldiers (Darfur), contributes to the increase of global warming, becomes a murder, etc.? There a numerous possibilities for how a life would turn out for good or for evil. So who's to say a child dying of malaria is an absolute "bad thing"

When you exterminate portion of an ecosystem it throws the entire system out of balance. If you ask me if Evolutionary Theory exterminates malaria it will start the push towards the end of the world as we know it.

Prayer hasn't been able to get rid of Malaria because it too is one of God's creations. Malaria like everything else in creation has a purpose. Without sickness, war, and death life would be much more difficult than it already is.

Answer 3

I think they should be very careful about injecting genetically modified things into our environment. Take, for instance, the Roundup Ready gene that has been implanted into soybeans, corn, cotton, etc. They are finding out that the weeds, which this was designed to control, are developing a resistance to the roundup and it is creating a group of super weeds that are even more difficult to control. The same thing could happen with the mosquitoes. Imagine a group of mosquitoes that no longer behave as mosquitoes are supposed to. The European Starling was introduced into America to control a certain insect. Now the starlings are the problem. The multiflora rose was introduced into America to make a cheap everlasting fencing shrub. Now it is rampant and very difficult to control. There is the same problem with Kudzu in the south. God put things in place as they should be, we seem to mess things up every time we think we are smarter than He is. As for prayer, I pray for small things and big things. God can handle both. As for Malaria, I don't know what purpose it serves or why people must die of it so readily, but I am trusting that God is still in control, and He knows what He is doing.

Answer 4

Modern science has shown that it can cure dreadful diseases like malaria and small pox. I think the scheme to eradicate malaria by releasing genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild is a particularly welcome development. This is so because I am African and have come down with malaria twice before. Trust me, it's not funny.

Malaria is such a preventible disease that one does not need to pray to eradicate it. The problem is that its victims are usually poor and have no state support system to speak of.

My thoughts on science and religion: Even if modern science has improved the quality of human life it (science) cannot answer some of our fundamental questions-why are we here, what is our purpose in life etc? This is where religion comes in. It gives meaning to countless lives because we (humans) want to believe that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.

At the dawn of the industrial revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Europeans thinkers posited that God (in the Western tradition) was dead. There was so much "progress" that there was no need for God. Yet 150 years later God is alive and well-even in the developed West. Somehow (materialistic) science cannot seem to bridge that spiritual gap that many humans feel.

Similarly, religion cannot serve the same purpose as science. Therefore, we cannot rely on religion to give us a blueprint for Nature's Laws or to give an account of the age of the earth. Using religion in this manner, as Fundamentalist Christians do, is unfortunate. Science and religion belong to separate spheres of reality and I think we should keep it that way.

Answer 5

I think this opens a big can of worms. Genetic modification may seem to be beneficial, but I believe we will find many years down the road that we have created new problems for ourselves, perhaps ones that may eclipse malaria. But, of course, one must take risks in any venture. I just hope the new generation of scientists is up to the task of shifting their focus to handle the new generation of problems that will inevitably arise as a result of GM technology.

Incidentally, did you know that late stage syphilis has been treated with a strain of malaria with efficacious results (therapeutic, not curative, but this is an illustration of the use of nature against nature in a different and less manipulative way--this was before the advent of penicillin). I am not necessarily against GM research, but I think that studies should be made in the theoretical realm to anticipate the inevitable problems that will be caused by it and weigh them against the benefits.

I guess I forgot to mention prayer in this answer! The only benefit I can see from prayer is a sort of biofeedback that may act as an adjunct to healing. The mind is powerful and not very well understood. I would not throw out the idea that prayer may help, but my opinion is that it will only help if the one prayed for is a believer and knows that he or she is being prayed for--thus the beneficial effects accrue of a positive mindset.

Answer 6

Malaria is simply a disease of evolution, and unfortunately the nature of earth is survival of the fittest. As terrible as it is that malaria kills that many africans, it will continue to do so until a way to stop it is found. And I'm not sure that any insect engineered to be immune to a disease will stay that way. I think it's fantastic though. You've got a point about people being selfish when asking for prayers, if I'm being selfish, I don't ask anyone else to pray for me. I do enough of that myself.

Answer 7

That is an interesting approach, however, I'm not sure a more powerful mosquito is necessarily a good idea (nature will find a way, hehe, jurassic park). However, this example does serve well to demonstrate fallacies in religious doctrine and belief. Essentially, there should not be any educated person whom denies evolution as fact, however, I understand that there still are so this yet again points to proof. (and it does it in our lifetime). I also believe that the macro/micro evolution arguement is mute, because over a long enough period of time, all of those micro changes will produce another, non-breedable species of creature... where do you draw the line between macro and micro? It is a needless specification that serves only to illogically support illogical beliefs.

Answer 8

Because African children contribute little in the way of financial support to large international church organizations I doubt that too many Christians would be concerned. However atheist charities such as the Gates foundation have done a lot in this area.

The difficulty with methods based on releasing transgenic mosquitoes is that the Plasmodium parasite evolves very quickly and given time quite likely will evolve a way to adapt to the new mosquitoes.

Answer 9

Prayer requests are lame, and do not belong here.

Malaria is a dread disease and causes much suffering and loss of life, but i am nervous about releasing bio-engeneered organisms into the environment

Answer 10

Did you know that sickle cell anemia is caused by evolution- yep the cells sickled to help combat malaria.... Gotta love evolution!! very interesting! I think if there was a caring god there wouldn't be malaria or aids or ebola but they'll all just tell me that it's god's plan or that he works in mysterious ways or that he wont give you more than your spirit can handle- I think it's just that he ain't there- and no not just because of horrible illnesses- there's lots of reasons