{"id":95,"date":"2020-03-15T23:33:28","date_gmt":"2020-03-15T23:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/?p=95"},"modified":"2020-03-15T23:33:28","modified_gmt":"2020-03-15T23:33:28","slug":"the-coronavirus-and-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/2020\/03\/15\/the-coronavirus-and-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"The Coronavirus and Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Many people around the world, rightfully, are focused on the\ncoronavirus (also referred to as COVID-19), its spread and impact.  This past week, the World Health Organization\n(WHO) declared the coronavirus a pandemic. \nWHO defines a pandemic as a disease for which people do not have an\nimmunity and has spread across the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pandemics don\u2019t occur often, but when they do, the results\ncan be truly catastrophic.  One of the\nmost devastating pandemics occurred during the 14th<\/sup> century and was\nknown at the Black Death.  That pandemic\nkilled an estimated 75-200 million people, which at the time represented 20\npercent or more of the world\u2019s population. \nAnother major pandemic, occurring during World War I, came to be known\nas the Spanish flu, because it was first reported in Spain.  That pandemic was estimated to have killed at\nleast 50 million people, more than were killed as a direct result of the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the reasons why those two pandemics were so\ndestructive was that the science of medicine was still in its infancy compared\nto today.  Even in 1918, at the height of\nthe Spanish flu, there were no laboratory tests to identify the disease and\nthere were no antiviral or antibiotic drugs available to fight it.  Today, because of major advances in science\nand medicine, we are much better prepared to deal with a pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what about religion and its role?  With the world facing a new major health\ncrisis, with the coronavirus continuing to spread at an accelerated rate as of\nthis writing, what does religion have to offer to counter its devastating\neffects?  Apparently, very little.  In fact, most major religious figures around\nthe world are pointing to science, not faith, to combat the disease.  More and more, leaders of the major religious\nfaiths are telling their members to stay away from their churches, mosques,\ntemples and synagogues and practice social distancing, as medical experts\nadvise.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same dependency on science can be said about the crisis\nwe\u2019re facing with climate change.  Again,\nany solutions to the problem will have to be based on science and reason, not\nreligious superstition and dogma.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the world needs to come\ntogether and unite to solve these major problems, religion stands more as a\ndivision between people than as a unifying force needed to bring them together.\n So, with religion having so little to\noffer during a time of major crisis, why have religion?  Good question!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many people around the world, rightfully, are focused on the coronavirus (also referred to as COVID-19), its spread and impact.  This past week, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a pandemic.  WHO defines a pandemic as a disease for which people do not have an immunity and has spread across the globe. Pandemics … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Coronavirus and Religion”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97,"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions\/97"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}