Something a little different from me…
I wont post a summary here…its all in the news article.
I am a bit frustrated in reading this,
Why cant we beat this bloody disease?
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It’s difficult to treat because it consists of our own cells – it’s made out of us. That means it’s hard to kill the cancer without killing the patient, too. It’s also hard to treat and hard to prevent because of, well, because of evolution. Cancer arises from mutations that are selectively advantageous for the cell they occur in even though they’re costly for the whole organism. Mutation and selection are a very powerful combination and will routinely find a way to work around any therapy that doesn’t kill them entirely.
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A slight offtopic comment that is a bit of a curveball (i didnt plan this response btw it just came to me now after reading your post)…do you think mutation will still occur in heaven? Do Christs living cells mutate right now? How will we beat cancer in heaven given TEism claims its a natural process? I find the insertion of naturalism into Christian theology produces some really big issues on this topic.
For example, a research assistant at the University of Newcastle Australia i did a job for years ago told me, when i asked him why my wifes mother was dying of cancer,
“eventually if we live long enough and didnt die from something else first, everyone will die of cancer” …that was what the research the professor he was working for was showing.
If God created natural order of things, and evolution isnt the result of sin but is an act of creation, how the heck do we get around the cancer issue in the eternal life claims of the bible? It seems to me sin is the cause of this and in the case of cancer…it very definately results in a relatively rapid death if we cant beat it (usually 5 ish years)
I’m not exactly sure what your question is .
Is your question if God used evolution to make us, and evolution is based off of mutations, and mutations cause cancer, then how could God have used it?
I just can’t tell exactly what you are asking.
And God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good….
The problem of evil in a nutshell.
I sat with an oncologist at a wedding once and we had a really interesting conversation about how the toxicity of our environment continues to increase and our bodies just don’t have much margin anymore. They are expending so much effort dealing with toxins in our air, water, and food.
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It is a terrible thing, perhaps even a worse insult as it is your own body rebelling against you.
One thing that makes it difficult is that it is not just one disease, but is hundreds of different diseases. Some are slow growing, some are rapid, some spread quickly, some seldom metastasize. Ironically, some of the slow growing one are the hardest to treat, as most treatments target cells that are reproducing, and the long latent periods mean lots of cells in slow growing tumors are missed by treatments. Ultimately, genetic sequencing and individualized treatments seem to have the most promise, thanks to the pioneering work done by Dr. Collins in part.
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We don’t have much specific on what heavenly life will be like. Jesus’ resurrection body had continuity but difference as well. There is an end to sorrow, so the suffering from cancer that we see here would not be there. I would enjoy it if heaven included ongoing evolution of living thigs to be able to learn more about God’s creativity, but if that isn’t in heaven then something better is.
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Our local news here has been spending some time covering firefighters and their high cancer rates as of late. Apparently, it’s not just in the stuff that’s burning but the chemicals in their protective gear itself seems to be a leading contributor. I suspect we will learn in the future a lot of our modern indulgences increased the risk of cancer and were much more dangerous than we ever considered.
Vinnie
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Interesting that the article in the opening post sites obesity, smoking and alcohol as being the leading causes of the uptick in cases, and from a Christian standpoint of standing up for the poor and oppressed, disproportionately falls on the those segments of society.
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I’m surprised they didn’t include plastics on the list of culprits; I’ve been seeing a steady stream of articles talking about how researchers are finding that even “safe” plastics release chemicals into food and drink, and that many or most of these are carcinigenic. I also saw one recently indicating that plastic nanoparticles in the oceans are contaminating the entire food chain; it actually recommended not eating salmon for that reason.
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No – the transformation to what Paul calls a spiritual body almost certainly involves a phase change beyond which many rules will no longer apply.
I’ve heard that as well from a doctor. His point was that we have been curing so many other maladies that cancer is becoming the “big one” by process of elimination if nothing else. Of course the incidence is also increasing because we take in so many more chemicals without bothering to test ahead of time, and even when there is testing to find if something is safe there is hardly ever any testing to see what happens when other chemicals are also present. On that line, my doctor told me recently not to drink things with a certain artificial sweetener because the combination of it and one of my meds has been implicated in dementia!
Change “eternal” to the more accurate “agewise” and there’s a clue: the things that pertain to this age are not the same as will pertain in the age to come. In that new age, instead of life having to struggle to survive, life will triumph, so what is “natural” now won’t be. Paul even indicates this when he talks about our natural body being raised a spiritual body – not that the new body won’t be physical, but it will no longer have what can be called the liabilities of mortality, i.e. we won’t have to worry about disease or any such thing. Also in the hew age I seriously doubt that there will be any pollution, nor for that matter any obesity, and those are two of the big drivers of cancer.
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I have looked around after reading many of these articles, and it the research is extremely thin on the actual effects. Human research is difficult. Here is one article I came up with: Health Effects of Microplastic Exposures: Current Issues and Perspectives in South Korea - PMC
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A great point St Roymond…and it got me thinking a little narrower, in heaven we wont age right?
I recognize this line – it must have been quoted in one of the pieces I read–
Therefore, more research is needed to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms of microplastic toxicity and related pathologies.
The summary of nanoparticles on animal cells is scary.
I’d say we’ll age, just differently. Differently how? I have not even a wild daydream because I think we’ll be operating in more dimensions than we do now, and I’m not even going to try to imagine what that could mean for biological organisms.
My personal conjecture is that our cells will somehow operate without any degradation, including that chromosomes will remain fully intact, that all genetic flaws will be corrected, and that somehow we will have a direct draw on energy so while we will be able to eat for pleasure we won’t need it to live.
But that’s science fiction, not theology.
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I feel like the Bible is so unclear about heaven in every way that I just essentially chose to not worry about it. Luckily I don’t care if I die and just cease to exist forevermore or if I’m resurrected physically or spiritually.
We see stories of being being taken by God before they die like Noah or Elijah. We see some going to God after death and resurrection like Jesus. In the OT the new heaven and earth still has birth and death and in the New Testament there is no sex so presumably no birth and no death. Jesus seemed to have resurrected quite physically, but could do supernatural ghostly things so maybe it was just a spiritual death and his body was moved by god somehow. Michael and Satan argued over the corpse of Moses. Paul speaks at times that the body, specifically the corpse being buried is like a seed from which the spirit rises up and is resurrected. I know longer have a reason to draw a line that limits accommodation at any one point.
As for cancer I also feel that part of the reason is not just these things outside of our control like polluted water and air but also a whole lot of people really love a low movement life. I know people who get off work and go home and just munch and snack, overeat and watch tv for literally 6+ hours a day. I know some who death scroll TikTok every Saturday from 4am to 12pm. They have gained 50lbs in the last year and they talk about it as an addiction and how bad they won’t to stop to the point just yesterday he smashed his smartphone and said he’s buying a flip phone. Turns out the store had literally like 2 non smart phones and he bought one. See how long it lasts. Some people don’t drink plain water at all a day. Even where I work where it’s quite hot some will drink like 12 ounces of water a day and drink 2 monster/rockstar or whatever they all are energy drinks.
More and more carts I see if full of frozen microwaveable food instead of fresh fruits, vegetables and so on and that’s in places where there is no food desert issues happening.
My thesis advisor commented to a class once that if you want to know what heaven is like, just look at Jesus since He will in effect be its defining ‘essence’. He had a knack for looking at things in novel ways and answering questions with questions, so an assertive declaration like that in response to a question made it memorable.
[He was the one who more than once used up all four chalkboards in a lecture room and just switched to a dark color of chalk and went on writing on the classroom walls for diagramming one or another of Paul’s very long sentences.]
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In one of my “speculative theology” – also known as “B.S.” – groups we all agreed that the Resurrection involved a phase change, that Christ’s body wasn’t operating in our limited version of the universe, so He could use an added dimension to walk “around” what in three dimensions was a solid barrier. I mentioned this to my older brother the mathematician once and he said it fit with his n-dimensional model of God that explained omniscience and omnipresence; God just has more dimensions available and thus more degrees of freedom.
It’s kind of sci-fi theology, but a good way to strain our brains.
Our city water is pretty atrocious from time to time. After one bad stretch I’d gotten out of the habit of drinking water. Now I have a Britta filter and am working back to consuming more water by adding water to nearly everything I drink: pineapple-mango juice goes 1 part juice to three water; cherry Coke is 1 to 2; Barq’s rootbeer is an oddball; I mix it 2 parts root beer, 1 part milk, and 1 part water. For doing my conservation work I’m switching to straight water.
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A lot of people are just so worn out after work that quick-and-easy is attractive.
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