Did God create viruses, bacteria, cancer and all kinds of weird diseases as part of Intelligent Design?

Yes, everyone is a disease of somebody else. The point is that we come to our senses, and realize that this is not a nice place to live.

Now, the old primer rhyme tells us, "In Adam's Fall/We sinned all." I accept that. But the idea of original sin depicts us as guilty for something we didn't do. It is our remote forebear's crime—not ours—but still we suffer for it, inheriting his fault like a genetic defect. That would be simply unjust, and I don't buy the idea.

I say that when the Bible talks about what Adam did, it's talking about what we ourselves did. We were there "in the beginning" ourselves, because, being God's offspring and made in His image, we are not material beings but spiritual beings. So we're eternal. That's the very nature of spirit: it never comes into being; it never goes out of being. That's why in the Bhagavad-gétä the soul is described not only as ajaù, "unborn," and nityaù, "eternal," but also as puräëaù, the oldest.

This means that all of us are primordial persons. When the Bible talks about Adam, then, it's actually talking about us. As a matter of fact, "adam" is simple Hebrew for "man." We can all step forward and introduce ourselves with that old palindrome: "Madam, I'm Adam."

So we're to blame. And what did we do? What's our sin at the root of it all?

We decided that we didn't want to serve God but wanted to become God ourselves. In other words, we became envious of God and wanted to take His place. That is our fall. And we are still fallen to this day because we still have that attitude.

All sickness and disease is a by product of sin in the earth. When sin entered the earth through Adam & Eve, the life span of man began to shorten, after the flood, you will find a huge decrease in mans life span on the earth. Mankind was in the beginning, created to live for ever, provided they ate from the tree of life. That is why God assigned an angel with a flaming sword to protect the entrance to the garden after the fall, because God all ready knows the end from the beginning, and had a plan to redeem His chosen people. Had they eaten from the tree of Life in their fallen state, they would have been locked into death for eternity. Gods Word states that the last enemy to be destroyed was death. 1Cor.15:20-28., Rom.5:12. Sickness and disease are the beginning stages of death. There will come a day when God will return and cleanse the earth with fire, and renovate it, everything will be as it should have been in the beginning, and all death will have been put down and swallowed up in victory!!

Come on theists. God is responsible for everything good and bad (says so in a book I read). So after you thank God for life, flowers and winning sports events, you have to thank him for cancer, botulism and serial rapists.

For those of you that think diseases are man made, what was Jesus curing people of back before we had any understanding of how to manipulate genes?

It was partly us I suppose. But, in another sense, I think God may have made life hard for us, because facing those hardships is a test of our character everyday. It's really about how we deal with the bad, that portrays our true selves.

I would like to add, why did God "intelligently design" the genetic code to be so subject to mutation?

No they were created by man to control the worlds population.

I believe man created these things himself.

They were made to punish us for having homosexuals.

Its all part of Natural selection ;o)

sin is what caused it....the same reason weeds started growing and the same as death..all because of sin...praise God He loved us and sent His Son...<><