“I looked, and there before me was a pale horse!
Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.” -Revelation 6:8
virus n.: The smallest organism identified by use of electron microscopy. –Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary
“The single biggest threat to man’s continued dominance on the planet is the virus.” -Joshua Lederberg, PhD (1925-2008)
Curiously, amid the constant chatter in Big Media about the Chinese coronavirus, religious discussion amounts to an insignificant portion. Still, although overall religious attendance is diminishing, the overwhelming of Americans profess a continuing belief in God. So, why so little from His emissaries?
Some say that, among Americans, Science has displaced Religion as if the two are mutually exclusive. They are not. Science addresses The How. Religion addresses The Why.
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
What, then, has displaced religion? Politics.
Politics has become the new religion in the sense that most people no longer devote their concerns to their individual relationships to God but to the latest blathering from some power-hungry politician, half of whom are lawyers. Lawyers! Did you know that, when the State of Georgia was established, it banned from the State all lawyers?
As for the Chinese coronavirus, the recent novel, Retribution Fever, describes microbiologists’ predicting a mass-extinction of humanity in the near future from global plague currently called “Disease X”. The Chinese-born virus appears merely a prelude although a malignant mutation could change its character quickly into “Disease X” itself.
In that case, with friends, neighbors, and family succumbing by the millions to a single strand of ribonucleic acid comprising the attacking virus and without Science to save them, how many Americans would flee their mind-numbing, electronic devices and shun the politicians and self-styled gurus in favor of flocking to churches and praying under the guidance of their local clergyman?
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” –President John Adams (1725-1826)
Religion formed the early foundation for civilization. Evangelic atheists would have you believe the opposite. Let us not forget that the origin of the term is the Latin ‘religare’ . . . to bind. Proper binding among people enforces moderation, promotes prudence, and rewards charity.
Excerpt from Retribution Fever:
By 30,000 years ago, Neanderthals largely had disappeared, unable to adapt to climatic change and competition with Homo sapiens. By 10,000 years ago, Cro-Magnon disappeared.
Precisely, when did AMM (Anatomically Modern Man) actually appear? The answer remains controversial. Perhaps, as remotely as 80,000 years ago; perhaps, as recently as 40,000. Whatever the case, Homo sapiens was to remain until the present. For how much longer?
About the time of the extinction of Cro-Magnon, the earliest human villages appeared. The first structures were religious temples around which villages formed. It was not until approximately 5,000 years ago that complex, human civilizations such as the Egyptian began to appear. Thereafter, spread of civilizations and increase in human population became parabolic.
Are we Americans, as a society, a moral and religious people? Does sinking into deepening debt at the expense of the unborn who have no say in the matter; suffering serial, military defeats promoted by an avaricious military-industrial complex in defiance of the Constitution; and promoting deplorable depravity beyond even Biblical proportions constitute the behavior of a moral and religious people?
Science tells us that, in a given context, behavior has its consequences. Is this virus or the next the messenger for the consequences of our behavior as a species? If so, is there a means of escape? God? Religion? Science? Bernie Sanders and socialism?