This commentary is by Jeffrey Reel, a writer, author and lecturer who lives in Hartland.
There is a tired refrain running through the veins of American discourse on the use of vaccinations. A considerable number of people are refusing to take any of the three vaccines offered to protect ourselves, and each other, from Covid-19 and the Delta variant.
Among them are a considerable number of people who say, in effect, to trust God instead of science. Trust God, not Anthony Fauci. And they quote from Scripture, citing chapter and verse.
They don’t trust science, so I imagine them prancing around the house without a stitch of clothing on. After all, it requires science to manufacture the polyester, not to mention the extraction methods required to pull that oil from the ground and refine it into petroleum, then to transport it to manufacturing plants and the machinery used to assemble articles of clothing (most likely overseas, which requires the science behind shipping and importation).
They don’t have anything in their refrigerators, because most of the products in their local food stores require science to grow, transport, box/bottle/package and store what they would have purchased. No matter: they don’t even own a fridge because it requires science to both invent and manufacture it, not to mention the science behind our electrical grid to power it and what would have been the lights in their homes. Judging by their logic, it’s clear they live in the dark.
And bless them all! They have, during their lifetimes, never required medication, not so much as an aspirin or lozenge, let alone childhood immunizations. They’ve never even been to a doctor.
One cannot so much as open a window without the benefit of science. And when the next pandemic rears its ugly head — and it will — it will make Covid-19 look like the sniffles. And it will likely kill millions of people. And the science deniers of this world will be crawling over, and trampling under, their fellow humans to access the limited supply of vaccine, should it even exist.
Does it ever occur to fundamentalists — of all religious persuasions — that the “laws” of nature and the will of God are one and the same? Natural laws (science) are timeless, weightless, invisible principles and patterns of behavior that govern all aspects of life and all aspects of change and transformation in our boundless universe. They are discovered to have always existed. And when discovered, understood and applied correctly, they give testament to God’s boundless glory.
“Science” is not some cosmic mistake on the part of your Creator. Stop demonizing it.
If I was speaking with a fundamentalist about our dietary preferences and pointed out that God had given us molars for chewing grain; and pointed out the ability of our jaws to move from side to side — unlike carnivores — to masticate grain and vegetables; and that we are provided with salivary glands to begin digestion in the mouth by chewing, unlike carnivores where digestion begins in the stomach; and that we are endowed with 32 feet of intestines to allow for the slow and gradual breakdown of vegetable-quality matter, unlike carnivores whose intestines are only a few feet in length so that meat doesn’t remain in the intestinal tract long enough to grow rank and putrefy… the fundamentalist might very well agree that the way God chose to fashion us indicates the diet our Creator intended for us.
But if I choose, instead, to substitute the word “Evolution” for the word “Creator,” God forbid! If I said that our bodies “evolved” in this way, I suspect the fundamentalist would make the sign of the cross with his fingers and say “Get ye back, Satan!” And he would dismiss the physical evidence, and facts, as nonsense.
It’s all so silly, but it’s also tragic, to reduce one’s life to a few random passages among the thousands from a book written thousands of years ago — passages that have been used over time to justify every evil human intention and act. And now you use it to discourage the use of vaccinations — that is, until you yourself contract the virus. Then that belief system conveniently folds in on itself and is discarded along with the used facemasks.
In short, these science deniers are being highly selective when it comes to their dependence upon, and rejection of, science. And when it comes to their God, they are declaring that their all-knowing entity is either stupid or forgetful for having endowed humans with the ability to discern scientific principles and then to build upon them, generation upon generation, and applying them in ways to benefit mankind.
