.
>
>Since I am a reductionist, let's cut right to the
>chase :) Are you in the camp that believes germs,
>viruses, and bacteria can and do cause disease (or a
>disease response)? Or are you in the camp that
>believes viruses and germs are merely a by-product of
>a diseased condition? (Please note that I did not say
>ALWAYS cause disease, but CAN cause disease).

presented that way it is not a question but a statement that there is two
camps that are imcompatible but i see them as perfectly complementary.

To give an image the virus will be the piece of information that you have 3
heads, the bacteria the opportunistic journalists that live off the impact
that news have on you ( if you were famous).
either this news is shaking your own information that you have one head and
you will have the right conditions for getting uneasy and  even could
devastate you
 or this information is completely irrelevant to you being confident in your
own feature and will simply not get affected by it .

Note that there is no need for you to have a "strong immune system " to
"fight" off the disease you just knows better and smile at this silly
statement.
Also it makes sense that if  this statement has succeded in you perceiving
yourself differently  it will be usefull to be passed around so all the
species can benefit .

In my daily life of raw food eater i can say  there is many viruses,
parasites and bacterias that i enconter or even carry and transmit but i am
not affected by it while my surrounding  , eating differently , are
periodically or even chronically "dis ease " by those encounters,. simly
because the function performed by those entities don't bring anything new to
the functionnning of their ecosystem ( me ,  who are just a cooperative of
differents entities  like cells ,mitochondrias ,  bacterias foods parasites
and viruses )

about the word CAUSE  can you say that the sun cause life on earth  when the
same sun reaching the moon don't have this effect at all .?
you need more than one cause to get even only one effect . So the more
complex muddling up of causes and effects of reality is beyond the
comprehension of the most successfull analytical mind.

>By the way (in my opinion) human intellect is
>reductionist by default. As we think, we "decompose"
>that which we are thinking about until we understand
>it. We may then "recompose" it into the original or
>into something else.


this way of thinking ( analytical)  favorised by the whole education system,
getting its apatheose in scientists is far from being the only way of
thinking .
I understand that when you have been trained to think that way it is hard to
see differently.
jean-claude