I read an article titled, “How ‘Inherit the Wind’ and the Scopes Monkey Trial predicted our coronavirus summer.” Of course, “Inherit the Wind” was the film adaptation of the now famous “Scopes Monkey Trial.”
The trial itself was touted as a clash between faith and science because biology school teacher Thomas Scopes was tried for teaching evolution in a Tennessee classroom contrary to Tennessee’s Butler Act that forbade it.
The author of the article, Ethan Alter, would have us believe that churches who wish to reopen despite the warnings that personal contact is the primary cause of the transmission of COVID-19, are once again pitting faith against science as was the case in the Scopes Monkey Trial. It is a shameless effort to paint Christians as backward and anti-science.
The trial itself was not a clash between faith and science. Elevating the theory of evolution to settled science is a failure of scientific logic itself. Mathematician and intellectual David Berlinski has said, “There are gaps in the fossil graveyard, places where there should be intermediate forms, but where there is nothing whatsoever instead. No paleontologist…denies that this is so. It is simply a fact, Darwin’s theory and the fossil record are in conflict.”
Creation and evolution are both matters of faith. This is why Berlinski also said, “Darwin’s theory of evolution is the last of the great nineteenth-century mystery religions.” There are a number of scientists who question the validity of the theory of evolution. So, questioning the supposed science behind evolutionary theory isn’t disregarding the scientific method.
When Christians desire to congregate for services again we are not denying that the primary means of transmitting COVID-19 is personal contact. My church has started having services again practicing social distancing with many attendees wearing masks. My church is my extended family in a manner of speaking, and I am willing to accept a certain amount of risk to be with my family as others are willing.
Church services for Christians are more than a religious practice it is a weekly family reunion. Unbelievers do not share that perspective because it is foreign to their way of thinking.
Reports of people testing positive after attending church services is at best correlative without causal certitude. Were those who tested positive after a service tested before the service? Is it possible they left a church service infected because they came to the service infected? Of course, I am thinking scientifically here and we know people of faith don’t do that according to Ethan Alter.
Christians are enjoined by the writer of Hebrews not to forsake “our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near,” Hebrews 10:25.
The reasons we are told to assemble are many but would be lost on those who choose to disbelieve the Scriptures.
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