Devastating, Dangerous, and Deadly Bacteria?

what about bacteria where did they come from evolutionarily speaking the evolutionists simply have no idea they're they're clueless as to how inanimate compounds can through time and chance become something that is alive and replicating and metabolizing and we find that bacteria are far from being simple [Music] hello everyone welcome to the creation podcasts the show where we discuss the science that confirms scripture I am of course your host Trey and I have with me today Dr Frank Sherwin icr's zoologist and a parasitologist correct all right well thank you so much for being with us today it's always good to be here good good and I I see that you wore your most yellow shirts Today podcast which is wonderful uh so I want to talk to you about um bad things okay are you ready to talk about bad things uh there's a lot of things here on this planet that can kill us and other living creatures we're talking bacteria pathogens poison viruses Etc um but I want to kind of focus in on on bacteria and I think that this is kind of an important thing to to discuss because really in the evolutionary worldview deadly things aren't an issue at all I mean it's a very death-driven world view it's just kind of a part of things but uh in the creationist world view you know we we serve a loving God um and we know that death is not originally part of his plan and so that was introduced you know in the fall Etc so I would like to talk about where these deadly bacteria came from what they do Etc so what do we know deadly bacteria exist go for it well that's true Trey we have lots and lots of bacteria in the environment some estimate anywhere from 10 million to a billion types of bacteria that's a lot and of course there's a lot there and we don't really don't know because bacteria are so small and they inhabit a a an ecosystem that can can be very very small as well so how many types of bacteria out there species well there's there is really Untold millions and some too many to count and so when you think about that you think about how important bacteria are in our entire environment and bacteria are the basis of what we call like for example the food web are the basis of breaking down plants and animals for example and so bacteria are critical part of the ecosystem now when we look at bacteria and the pathogenic bacteria that is the disease-causing bacteria there's less than 100 species of bacteria that are pathogenic an incredibly small number this fits so well with the biblical creation model we would expect that there wouldn't be an enormous number of bacteria that would be deleterious or pathogenic and so it fits very well with the creation model that some of these bacteria do to mutations or something else would be disease causing but it would be a very small number okay so we have a small number of deadly bacteria let's let's talk about some of them uh it's kind of weird to say what's your favorite uh but like let's let's list one or two what they do how how damaging they are Etc well for example there's a clostridium bunch of linum and we've all heard of botulinum type of outbreaks that occur and the botulinum toxin that is produced by the clostridium botulinum bacteria is extremely toxic very very tiny amounts can kill statistically millions of people and so what was this clostridium botulinum bacteria before the fall well it's hard to say of course the Bible doesn't say it doesn't even mention bacteria so we can only suggest as to what its original function was but according to scripture it was either beneficial or at least neutral but the clostridium botulinum bacteria is quite unique and for example men scientists have begun to do some research and find out you know if we were to dilute this toxin this clostridium toxin significantly it could be injected into a person's skin and get rid of for example crow's feet and so that is of course is very very important important that the the dilution effect is where it should be but people were finding that you would get rid of crow's feet for months at a time sometimes even longer and not have any bad effect and have no bad effect as a matter of fact there was a traditional beneficial effect that nobody guessed and that is some of these people that would get these micro injections of this clostridium back uh toxin they found out that they didn't have their migraine headaches anymore and so now this diluted clostridium toxin bacterium exudate as it will was now you is now being used to treat some forms of migraine headache headaches so that's kind of neat that's why it's one of my favorites okay uh do you have a second favorite well a second favorite would be for example micro bacterium lepre which of course causes leprosy and leprosy is not as devastating as it once was because of the uh medical technology technology that has increased but in biblical times of course we find that people are separated out due to leprosy or today in the 21st century we call it Hansen's Disease and so this particular type of bacterial infection as I say is not as devastating as it once was however however there is a type of mycobacterium that is and that's mycobacterium tuberculosis okay and tuberculosis is very devastating unfortunately particularly in third world equatorial regions in 2019 for example 1.4 million people most of them children died due to the tuberculosis and so that is a a very sad statistic from one of these 100 or less than 100 type of pathogenic bacteria okay before we get into what like the evolutionists say about bacteria I just kind of want to think about I think about things like oh the black death or something like that where uh a lot of people died for a particular time period and then all of a sudden maybe not even all of a sudden but like now it's not a problem you mentioned that with Leprosy I know that there's like medical reasons why we can uh like as Medical Technology increases we don't have to worry about certain things as much but like are there any other reasons why something can be so deadly for such a short period of time and then all of a sudden it's not anymore well you know that's one of the the mysteries of of medicine and and Technology as we were able to go back in time as it were to investigate how many people died of the Black Death the plague at that time and it was millions of course and the entire populations in Europe were devastated by this and it was relatively quick not as quick as some people think and it kind of waxed and waned after the initial breakout and then finally is just as as suddenly as it appeared we don't find it very much anymore now the plague bacillus is uh present in for example some species of bats I believe I I'm not sure I'd have to review that and very very rarely will somebody come down with this uh plague uh symptoms and all that but it's nothing obviously the way it was centuries ago and so it's still a mystery I think there's a lot of research and investigation historical uh research it is being done on this and we really can't tell too much except that it looks like rats and the fleas and infect rats were spreading this particular devastating disease and fortunately thank the lord it's it's not as bad as it once was at all yeah I wonder if like maybe the rats died out I don't know yeah who knows it's hard to say because the fleas and the rats are what we call vectors of the bacterium and then you know the the course it wasn't very clean in those days and and so there was wasn't a lot of Sanitation at all and so there's a variety of reasons why and I don't suppose they'll ever get down to the to the nuts and bolts as to what exactly happened okay well thank you for entertaining my question at the very least uh so evolutionists when they look at these bacteria um where do they say they come where do they say they came from uh what is their purpose is there a purpose I mean what's going on there well certainly we would say from a creation science perspective that bacteria have always been bacteria just as people have always been people and dinosaurs have always been dinosaurs and bacteria from a creation science perspective as I've mentioned earlier is a very very critical part of the the entire ecosystem of the planet bacteria right down there at the bottom they are breaking down uh organic compounds and returning these organic compounds to the soil and then you get this nutrients that are in the soil particularly the element nitrogen and that's very very important and so bacteria play have critical critical part in the ecosystem and the soils strengths as it were right and now what about bacteria where did they come from evolutionarily speaking the evolutionists simply have no idea they're they're clueless as to how inanimate compounds can through time and chance become something that is alive and replicating and metabolizing and we find that bacteria are far from being simple years ago I wrote an article about how complex bacteria are now today in the 21st century we understand that bacteria are insanely complex and they're finding more and more discoveries regarding bacteria of physiology and all and so we are we would look at bacteria and say this is a Wonder of God's creation but of course evolutionist with their worldview cannot say that because they are like one of the smallest organisms right and so from an evolutionary perspective they would be considered simple right right exactly and it's a mind set of simple to complex and you know a bacterium is simple and a blue whale is complex I used to teach us when I taught in Florida I would teach my students that there is no difference between the physiology and the complexity of a bacterium including the famous Road rotary flagellum and a blue whale with all the physiological processes that are occurring the blue whale the blue whale is simply a whole lot bigger obviously than the bacterium but when it comes to life processes they are equally sophisticated and detailed especially for example bacteria that are able to reproduce they reproduce by a process called binary fission bacteria in our gut multiply some would say about every 20 minutes which is unbelievably fast and therefore all of the DNA of the bacteria has to replicate that is duplicate within a 20-minute time span that means that the entire circular chromosome and we don't have circular chromosomes in our cells our eukaryotic cells but bacteria have what's called a circular chromosome and it is a supercoil so if you think about these phone chords back in the 1950s and 60s and 70s I've seen some of those yes phone cords they are twisted and all that well it's the same thing with the the the chromosome of a bacterium it is highly highly Twisted we call it supercoiling in order to uncoil to duplicate an exact copy of itself you need a whole host of enzymes to do that and it gets very very complex very fast I love to teach about that because it shows the student that God's creation even from the minuscule is amazingly sophisticated okay wow so we have these incredibly complex bacteria we see that again from from the creationist perspective we see that they are necessary so God put them here for a purpose originally and they're still for the most part serving that person oh absolutely yeah they're they're the basis the foundation of the ecosystems and so yes they are doing a very critical work okay so let's think about some of these deadly bacteria we already talked about botulism a little bit uh so some of these bacteria uh you could have possibly at one point maybe had a more beneficial purpose have there been studies uh that have been done that can show that well we would certainly agree to that that prior to God cursing Earth with weeds and thorns and thistles and my field of parasites and and probably mutations is when they showed up when God cursed the Earth we would look at a bacteria is either having a neutral or perhaps even a beneficial effect thinking about our our microbiome and our our for example in our gut the accumulation of bacteria in the gut we find that about one percent of the bacteria in our large intestine is something called ishirikia coli maybe a lot of people have heard of E coli sometimes you have these devastating E coli breakouts that occur in meats that is not processed correctly but E coli in our large intestine actually works to our benefit it produces some of the B vitamins and vitamin K2 I believe and that's part of the ability of our body to clot blood now Vitamin K is not at what we call a clotting Factor there are 12 clotting factors but Vitamin K is very important for that and so we have E coli about one percent in our large intestine that are doing a very important work in for example the synthesis or the making of B vitamins and also vitamin K in return they have they bacteria have a place where there's plenty of food and where there's a an ability for it to live and to proliferate and so we believe a lot of that was probably going on prior to to God cursing the Earth remember there's only less than 100 bacteria that are truly pathogenic and so when God cursed the Earth maybe cursing the Earth like that cause some of these mutations to occur causing these bacteria to have a devastating effect where they didn't have prior to the curse right and so it's interesting to me when we you were mentioning E coli it's there is a place for it yes but it's when it's out of its place or when it's in in two there's too much of it then it can be problematic right that's correct okay so um are there any other uh bacteria that you can think of off the top of your head well for example we have bacteria in our skin right now special kinds of bacteria that uh inhabit these niches it's ecological niches within our skin and it's very very important that we have it there because if people for one reason or another have to take a lot of antibiotics which kill bacteria the good news is those antibiotics that are prescribed to that person would kill the pathogenic bacteria the disease-causing bacterial infection that they have the bad news is if they're taking a mega dose we call a lot of it then it also kills the bacteria in the skin as well this large as well as in the large intestine that can cause problems and so if Vision if they give Mega doses of vitamins to their patient will sometimes give them or have them take vitamin K shots because all that bacteria is killed that would otherwise synthesize vitamin K so that's that's a good idea but the problem is for example the bacteria in the skin would be killed that opens up an ecological niche for fungus okay and so the fungal spores move in there they proliferate because there's no bacteria that we would usually prevent them or prohibit them from uh getting a niche a a toe hold in the skin there and people with fungal infections unfortunately by and large have a friend for life because first of all it's very difficult to to determine if a person has a true fungal infection then number two getting rid of it now we have cells that are called eukaryotic cells fungal cells also are eukaryotic so the traditional uh the drugs that would be used to kill bacteria don't work on the fungus because their structure are different than the than the um the bacteria they're more similar to ours yeah so in other words any drug that is used to kill the fungus unfortunately unfortunately is does not do well for the person as well and you just have to the balance what are the benefits versus the shortcomings and so um that's it's something that we just never think of but having the bacteria in our skin is a way of preventing fungal infections as it were thank you uh for now we're going to take a quick aside this is a related question but it is time for our random Science question of the day okay are you ready you're all set all right so there's a lot of description of of life in the Bible and you know it says life is in the blood uh all that sort of stuff um you know and it mentioned you know creatures with cloven Hooves and creeping things etc etc uh bacteria uh would it would bacteria be considered life biblically uh no it would not what we find is that when God on day three uh created the plants from the inanimate Earth plants were created uh the words that God uses to describe those plants are not ascribed to for example people or animals and so plants uh uh grow and they flourish and that is used for the plants but not for people not for animals and so we would say that plants are not alive and that includes bacteria I would say uh bacteria in the biblical sense and so for example people like you know the critics of creation would say oh what about Adam and Eve they're eating all these plants they're killing that's death before sin no it's not because the Bible is I think is very clear in describing what's alive biblically animals and plants excuse me animals and and people versus plants which are not alive biblically and so it's true there was no no true death prior to the fall there's a difference between something that is living I guess biologically versus what is considered life or the breath of life so in other words plants have mechanisms and I'm writing an article about some mechanisms that have just recently been discovered regarding plants it's fascinating but again it's not that life process that God has reserved just for animals and people okay well that was a less complex answer than I expected I appreciate it thank you for uh humoring me on that uh so for now we'll get back to the topic at hand so do evolutionists have a reason for bacteria to exist from their point of view think think evolutionarily like why would bacteria evolve to do all the things that they do why would some evolve to cause horrible things to happen especially if the goal of life from an evolutionary perspective is just to reproduce why would there be a you know something like that that would just cause massive amounts of death uh go yeah so basically evolutionists would look at bacteria as part of the ecosystem just like creationists would but evolutionists say well it just worked out that way that bacteria evolved and they don't know from what it evolved bacteria have always been bacteria and then they took up residence in for example soils and and things such as that and and organic substrates and and so we have bacteria today and plants and people and animals depend on bacteria from what I just mentioned so they would look at bacteria as just simply part of the ecosystem that evolved Untold millions of years ago at least 500 million or a half billion years ago but we of course would have a very different explanation in that we would say God created bacteria as bacteria just thousands of years ago okay that makes sense um so we want our viewers to be well educated and uh this is something that I think that is important um for our viewers as they go out and they defend uh creationism uh against those from an evolutionary mindset are there any uh what you would consider bad creationist arguments that would be centered around this topic I use for an example like you hear sometimes like oh dinosaurs weren't real the bones were just planted by Satan and the Earth so something so far out but are there any bad creationist arguments when it comes to deadly bacteria I can't think of any bad creationist arguments when it comes to to pathogenic bacteria except that they have to keep in mind that is part of the fall and a lot of Christians are not quite well versed on the results of the fall and what God did after the fall which is to curse the Earth right with uh the various pathogenic bacteria that we we find and so in terms of bad creationist arguments I I really haven't heard of anything like that it is kind of a a very subset of a topic yeah right it's not like for example the dinosaur bones and all that so um I'd have to think about that okay so uh overall they do exist so we can't deny that the deadly bacteria exists but you're saying you know the fall the curse mutations Etc that's where this came from exactly and again without getting off topic too much sets my field of parasites and that parasites look like they were either beneficial or at least neutral in in my field we call them Free Living parasites like worms and all that and then when God cursed the Earth some of these worms like my favorites called the acanthacephala the thorny-headed worms then began to infect vertebrates uh fish for example and fortunately not people really and so it's the same thing with the uh the bacteria as well okay so so there is whatever their purpose was we know that you know God God designed it for good and yes okay I I do know that like I hear maybe this is a little bit of an aside you know you hear things like well if God was so loving then there wouldn't be these things you hear that mostly from non-non-believers of like you know the proof of you know malaria or the Black Death proves that God doesn't love uh who doesn't isn't loving what would you say to that well certainly when people start saying that they have no real handle on Christian theology biblical theology which if you're talking about the creation you must also address the corruption of the creation that's Genesis chapter 3 and verse 1 where the deceiver said to Eve did God really say that and then we have the fall of Adam and Eve and then God curse the Earth and when he cursed the Earth it doesn't go into detail except talking about weeds and thorns and thistles and we would piggyback that if I can use that word with things like parasites and mutations and deleterious bacteria pathogenic bacteria so in terms of God cursing the Earth yes that I think that makes makes sense and God is a loving God He Loves Us very much but he's a righteous God he's and so we would look at that situation and say yes it's unfortunate what Adam and Eve did we're reaping the Whirlwind as it were and we can thank God that a savior was sent the Lord Jesus Christ the creator of the universe and he is going he will he has forgiven us our sins past present and future if we receive him as our our personal Savior and that's the wonderful news of Christian theology the bad news is creation the fall and the curse but Jesus Christ came to make things right and someday he's coming back again in power and in glory and we look forward to that absolutely and at that point there will be no more deadly bacteria that's right right he will make all things new uh well thank you so much for uh being on the show um before we close do you have any other final thoughts when it comes to bacteria or anything like that uh any interesting tidbits well one interesting tidbit would be in concerning the the cholera bacterium now cholera causes millions of deaths uh in in centuries past but there is a type of Cholera bacterium that is not the devastating kind that causes a disease this particular cholera bacterium is found in all places the Hawaiian bobtail squid and this Hawaiian bobtail squid has a population of vibrio Fisher eye bacteria which are very close to the vibrio cholera bacteria that causes uh cholera so related yeah it's related only and the only difference seems to be one mutation one amino acid is different and yet because of this one amino acid difference this vibrio fischeri which is a beneficial bacterium living in this squid off the coast of Hawaii is able to communicate with a squid in ways that we're just beginning to find out and it is a fascinating fascinating relationship while creation scientists are going I wonder I wonder if that's the same situation went on prior to the fall well I read a quote from an evolutionist who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison here's what she had to say in regard to this vibrio Fisher eye bacterium in the Hawaiian bobtail squid and that it can can communicate with Squid she said and I quote maybe when we've been studying cholera pathogenesis we've been studying an aspect of a normal conversation that's gone wrong end quote well there's a lot that can be said regarding that quote but we think a lot of these pathogenic bacteria is due to a normal conversation that's gone wrong right there's plenty of research to be done we are called The Institute for creation research we're not the institute for creation answers and so we're investigating and researching this very very fascinating feel of what we call bacteriology or the study of bacteria cool that is super interesting I I kind of look forward to see where where that uh that line of research goes so thank you so much for being on the show uh it's always a pleasure to have you so thank you absolutely and thank you to all of our viewers and listeners for joining us uh we hope that this wasn't too weird of an episode talking about deadly bacteria but hey it's it's real it's out there it's something to talk about uh so we just encourage you to like comment share uh and we really just want to get the truth out about our Creator the Lord Jesus Christ and so share this with all of your friends especially if they have an interest in deadly bacteria maybe don't be friends with them but uh we'll see you next time on the creation podcast foreign

Channel: Institute for Creation Research (ICR)

Views: 6,378

Keywords: ICR, Institute for Creation Research, ICR Discovery Center, ICR Dallas

Id: 7az1YsbkJBk

Length: 29min 48sec (1788 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 05 2023