Go get yourself some cancer!

I was recently reminded of an old argument I once came across in a discussion with a Young Earth Creationist.  It came up in the course of a discussion on the League of Reason forums regarding stupid things we've heard from creationists.  All the way from the public humiliation of Michele Bachmann arguing that global warming is fake because CO2 is natural or Bill O'Reilly "proving" that God is real by asserting that sunrise and sunset are things scientists have yet to explain...  to the neighborhood creotard who admonishes that Darwinian evolution can't explain rainbows.

What came up in the thread was someone who mentioned a New-Age Deepak Chopra type arguing with him that cancer is beneficial.  Before you think that I or the person who posted that entry into the thread happen to be straw-manning said quantum-consciousness-woo-woo-nutbar, the actual quote began with the statement in bold that cancer is beneficial.  Here's the original quote from the email from one ZelatorUK --

Cancer is beneficial, if we did not have cancer we would not live as long. When telomeres run out cells have 2 choices, suicide or bypass the procees and get immortality (Cancer). If all the cells chose suicide there would be a massive hole and chain reaction because other nearby cells would have to reproduce faster and end up losing a lot of lifespan. Do some research, cancer is a natural process designed to prolong the survival of the system, sometimes it looks like its bad.

The person who received that was apparently attempting to actually teach the zealot a thing or two about genetics, mutations, etc. and got this little gem in the middle of a longer response.  The nature of our New Age-y woo-woo believer, though, was to connect that Deepak Chopra idea of consciousness being intrinsic in every cell in our bodies, and somehow that includes cancerous tissue which is apparently conscious and makes the "intelligent" decision to become cancer.  That's a completely different tack to it than what I had come across, but in response, I mentioned my experience with a Young Earth Creationist who argued about cancer being a good thing.

Well, in all fairness, there's a tiny semi-nugget of truth here -- part of the basic definition of 'cancer' is that there are tissues which exhibit uncontrolled, unregulated growth and cell reproduction.  In essence, with an unlimited supply of resources and an ability to maintain up-regulation of telomerases, a tumor can divide indefinitely and basically become "immortal", so to speak.  Of course, that's a pretty specific condition...  and really, if you could up-regulate telomerases indefinitely so that telomeres could always be lengthened, and also maintain available resources indefinitely, then even non-cancerous tissue would be immortal.

In any case, it's not that unusual a misunderstanding that people believe cancer is immortal.  Unfortunately, when notions of immortal cancer and Young Earth Creationism meet, the end result is a cavalcade of hilariously awful buffoonery that will send a palms to faces at speeds approaching Mach 10.

So the first angle is that death didn't enter the world until Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  So until then Adam and Eve and all the animals of the world must have been made entirely out of immortal cancerous tissue.  I'll give a short pause here for the readers to wrestle their palms from their faces before continuing...

Okay, now?  Well, it gets better.

Death entered the world after the fall.  That is when Adam and Eve became mortal and could die.  That means their cellular makeup changed from immortal cancer cells to mortal cells.  Still, they lived a lot longer than we [do].  So God showed his mercy by not letting Adam and Eve be all mortal.  They were still mostly made up of cancer, so they could live for about 1000 years or so without much difficulty.  Food was not a problem because nobody else was around.  But their only sin was the one so great that everybody else had to suffer for it.

See that, folks?  God showed mercy by not killing them in a measly 50 years or so, but letting them live for another 1000.  But yeah, everybody else had to die for it because they committed the ultimate sin -- attaining knowledge (specifically of good and evil)!  It's almost funny how you have an entire family of religions which are followed by more people on this planet than every other belief system combined where the VERY FIRST lesson it teaches you is that acquiring knowledge is the greatest of all possible crimes.

But wait...  we know so much more today than people knew back 6,000 years ago when the universe began!  That must mean we've committed far greater sins than can even be imagined.  Indeed, my old YEC friend confirmed that suspicion.

Today, we've all fallen so far away from God and His Holy Word that we are almost completely mortal.  Do you know that there are people out there today who don't have a single cancer cell in their bodies?  They are so wicked that they are without a shred of their immortal selves in their earthly vessels.  These people may well be beyond saving.  But then, there are those people who gain small bits of their immortal bodies back, and yet they put themselves through procedures to get rid of it.  Why do you think chemotherapy is so distressing for people?  It's because they're rejecting their Adamic [sic] bodies and forcing themselves into their fallen bodies.

Unfortunately, most people are actually so wicked and so separated from the divine that they have little to no cancer.  That's something that we should really re-evaluate as children of God. Why is it that now we are only able to live about 80 years and not 800?

That's a good question!  We should be aiming to live to be at least 800!  The first human beings lived that long!  Why can't people break Methuseleh's record?  That's the problem.  We need more cancer!  Maybe we should go sit in a room and expose ourselves to X-rays all day.  That's sure to raise our lifespan.

The reson why radiation brings out the cancer is because God made light. And radiation is really the light of God shone upon us, so brilliant that we are blind to it.  That holy light doesn't cause cancer.  It exposes the inner goodness within us and shows that we still have the potential to reach the same kind of immortality that our ancestors had.  It brings out the Adam within us all.  The only reason why we so foolishly see cancer as this terrible thing is because we've fallen so far that the wicked mortal cells are dominant in our bodies.  So the only way for the good immortal cancer cells to thrive is to overtake the wicked ones.  That is understandably a difficult transformation to take, but that is exactly why the Lord Jesus is here for us all.

Wow.  That was groundbreaking.  So really, we shouldn't be fearing cancer.  We should aim to become living tumors, instead!  That's all kinds of brilliant.

On the other hand, it also has the implication that if you really do want to get rid of cancer, you can ensure that the "morally pure" cancerous tissue doesn't dominate by overpowering it with wickedness.  That means if we want to cure cancer entirely, we need liquor, pornography, drugs, abortion, atheism, and homosexuality!  Let's party!