How The Common Cold Was Intelligently Designed

Intelligently designed coronaviruses

As I'm just getting over a nasty little cold I thought I would write a blog about the common cold for creationists, so they can appreciate the wonder of science too. (Hope the 's' word hasn't put them off already, because creationism is all about science really... isn't it?).

So what is a common cold?

The common cold (also known as nasopharyngitis, rhinopharyngitis, acute coryza, or a cold) is a viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory tract which primarily affects the nose. Symptoms include coughing, sore throat, runny nose, sneezing, and fever which usually resolve in seven to ten days, with some symptoms lasting up to three weeks. Well over 200 viruses are implicated in the cause of the common cold; the rhinoviruses are the most common.

Wikipedia - Common cold

All creationists understand that God er... sorry... The Intelligent Designer never makes any mistakes and knows exactly what His Its creations will do and designs them perfectly to do exactly what they do, nothing more and nothing less.

Why the Intelligent Designer wants us to feel miserable for a few days with a headache and high temperature, and to be susceptible to secondary infections causing things like pneumonia and sinus infections is not a matter for us to concern ourselves with. It knows best and is doing it for an ineffable reason. It also wants to cost industry billions in lost production every year for reasons us mere humans can't expect to understand. We just need to be grateful that it's all to the good in the long run.

We conclude that the economic cost of lost productivity due to the common cold approaches $25 billion, of which $16.6 billion is attributed to on-the-job productivity loss, $8 billion is attributed to absenteeism, and $230 million is attributed to caregiver absenteeism.

Bramley TJ, Lerner D, Sames M. J;
Productivity losses related to the common cold.
Occup Environ Med. 2002 Sep;44(9):822-9.

So how did the Intelligent Designer go about this?

He used a virus - basically some RNA wrapped up in proteins which gets into the cells in the lining of our noses and other parts of our respiratory system and converts our cells into machines for making more viruses. Our bodies react to this in ways which cause the typical symptoms of the common cold - high temperature, runny nose, coughs and sneezes (which help spread the virus to other people) headache, tiredness, etc.

But the Intelligent designer forgot that he had also designed humans to react to things like viruses by making antibodies which kill the viruses, so he had to think of a way to get round this intelligently designed problem.

So he came up with the brilliant idea of making over 200 different viruses which cause the common cold, all of which change a little bit over time so our bodies don't recognise them as the same one we got infected by some years ago. [Important note: this change over time should not be called 'evolution' because that's impossible. The Intelligent Designer does it!] With that many different viruses the Intelligent Designer made it so the average human in developed countries gets 2-4 colds a year on average and children can get 6-12 colds a year. At that rate it takes a whole lifetime to get through them all and by then they've all changed anyway. For some reason, the Intelligent designer decided it wouldn't make any difference whether people believe in him or not, everyone would have the same chance of catching a cold several times a year.

No! We don't need to know why He designed our bodies to fight the viruses he created. He must have had an intelligent reason because He's an intelligent designer! You see how easy Creation Science is? It always provides you with exactly the answer you wanted - which proves it's right.

So that's it, really. Everything a creationist needs to know about how the Intelligent Designer designed the common cold - which is obviously a much more sensible explanation than anything science can offer, and what we don't know we know really because God did it! No! Wait... The Intelligent Designer did it, because this has nothing to do with religion or the Bible and is all about science! Okay! It's not more sensible than science because it is science and anyway it's better science because it's written in a book, and should be taught in schools! Got that!

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