(1) Specialization of the Pathogen
By this means, some disease-causing organisms may have been much less particular about their chosen host, and could thus have come through the Flood in some of the tens of thousands of animal species carried on board the Ark (just as today, tuberculosis carried in cattle can infect human beings), only later ‘devolving’ (specializing) into their present ‘human-only’ status. (See also the Appendix.) Alternatively, some which now only survive inside a human body may have been robust enough to survive outside of any host.
There are many disease-causing organisms today (for example, those causing tetanus and anthrax) which can form very hardy, durable spores, enabling them to survive a range of conditions outside the body. Many parasites of man such as tapeworms have intermediate host stages in various animals such as pigs and cattle, which could have carried the disease through the Flood. Those which do not now may have simply become too specialized, and may formerly have been capable of infecting an intermediate host. Also, the apparent dependence of some tapeworms on humans for the adult, egg-producing stage could be another case of specialization, as similar tapeworm species can use other hosts to complete their life-cycle.
(2) Mutational ‘Horizontal Evolution’
This is likely to be relevant for viruses in particular. Random changes (for example, mutations) have never been shown to generate significant amounts of new teleonomic (functional, project-oriented) information. Thus they do not create a new organism, or cause any true (uphill) ‘evolution’. However, it only takes an informationally insignificant accidental change in the protein coat of a virus to vary the way it is recognized by an immune system and cause a major shift in infectivity.3 Thus, a harmless green monkey virus may begin causing serious illness in humans.
A virus is nothing much more than a protein coat and a single packet of information (RNA or DNA). It has no complex cellular machinery, and should not really be called ‘alive’. It hijacks the machinery of an existing cell. In computer language, it is really analogous to a piece of ‘software’ which modifies the software of a living cell so that the ‘hardware’ of that cell can make copies of the virus ‘software’. It is a program for making copies of itself using machinery it does not possess. Since in evolutionary theory, fully fledged cells had to exist before viruses, the latter are not some evolutionary intermediate between life and non-life. Mutational shifts in viruses are not on the way up to a ‘higher’ form of life—a virus has never been observed to give rise to anything other than a virus. No informed evolutionist should use mutational change in viruses as a defence of molecules-to-man evolution.
Common viral diseases of today may well have ‘evolved’ from animal diseases. Thus, far from Noah’s family having measles, this affliction probably did not exist at the time. A recent New Scientist report states that:
‘Just as historians such as William McNeill, of the University of Chicago, and other researchers trace smallpox back to cowpox, so measles probably evolved from rinderpest or canine distemper, and influenza from hog diseases.’4
(3) Carriage by a Symptomless Host
Natural immunity in a particular host organism can mean that a disease organism can be carried without the host suffering any ill effects. Of course, this could only apply to a few diseases at most in such a small human population, but certainly adds one more option for survival of diseases. Virologists have speculated that the HIV-AIDS virus may have existed in a small, naturally resistant population for many years before clinical AIDS ever occurred.5 It also seems that monkeys can be born carrying four viruses in their brain without ill effect.6
A number of viruses are known to set up symptomless carrier states. For example, the chicken pox/shingles virus (herpes zoster) is generally carried to the grave after infection.
Furthermore, the declining lifespans of humans after the Flood may indicate an overall degeneration, such that Noah’s family may have had a lot more host immunity to diseases which now cannot be asymptomatically carried.
Some disease organisms today can be carried in one part of the body, but cause disease if in another (for example, the yeast which causes vaginal ‘thrush’ is usually carried harmlessly in the intestine.) Also, some organisms only cause disease when there is a reduction in the population of beneficial germs, for instance in the intestine. The effectiveness of this way of a person being protected from an organism they were carrying by means of a flourishing population of healthy ‘good’ germs may well have decreased after the Flood. The disharmony between man and his environment may have worsened as extinction of some plant species led to dietary restrictions.
(4)Survival Outside a Living Infected Organism
(i)Survival in insect vectors
Today, we know that some disease organisms (for example, the malarial parasite) are carried in, for example, mosquitoes. This raises other questions. Were flying insects part of the ‘creeping things’ which were all sent on board the Ark, or did they have their own ‘arks’ outside, such as huge rafts of matted, floating vegetation? Could the viruses survive within biting insect populations for long enough considering these insects’ life-spans? It should be remembered that not all humans would have perished in the first few weeks of the Flood. Many may have survived for some time, at first on high ground, then on makeshift rafts.
(ii)Survival in human corpses
This could apply especially to those dying in the late stages of the Flood, becoming bloated and floating to shore later. This seems conceivable for some moulds and bacteria—even some viruses have been known to last for decades.7 Of course, organisms then have to have an opportunity to again infect a living person.
(iii)Survival in the dried state
Though some viruses die readily when dry, others survive long periods in the dried state. For example, rabies virus in bat droppings can dry out to become airborne dust, which has infected cave explorers. How does anything stay dry in a worldwide Flood? Some of the floating clumps mentioned earlier may have had dry interior portions—also, some parts of the Ark itself would have provided a dry enough environment.
(iv)Survival through freezing in polar regions
The whole matter of apparent catastrophic snap-freezing of some mammoths in the Arctic circle is controversial as regards whether it was associated with the Flood or a post-Flood event, but it brings to mind the fact that many disease organisms survive well when frozen. In general, the Flood event was probably a warm one, but insufficient modelling has been done to establish what conditions could have been possible at the poles.
Summary
None of the possibilities discussed above is presented as an answer adequate by itself for all the different types of disease organisms. Taken together, however, they demonstrate that the common anti-creationist ‘betcha-can’t-answer’ jeer about a sickly family staggering off the Ark laden with every disease known to man is a caricature which does not do justice to the known facts. Further research and thought on the subject is encouraged.