Terry Read
With this interruption to our normal lives COVID-19 has caused, I think we need to ask ourselves: Is it actually a bad thing? How should we respond to this? Should we be taking all the measures that we are taking to prevent the spread of the disease and save lives?
We know that the people who are most threatened by this illness are people with underlying health issues and the elderly.1 From my observation, that is like other illnesses that have gone around. From a biblical perspective, disease, suffering, and death are bad. They are a result of the curse:
When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. (Romans 5:12 NLT)
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The very fact that we have these diseases that are putting some people at more risk is consistent with the Bible and inconsistent with Darwinian evolution. These diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, pulmonary disease, kidney disease, and diabetes are caused by mutations, or copying errors in our DNA.2 But according to Darwinian evolution, mutations combined with natural selection is how new genetic information is created.3
Genetic information, coded in the DNA, is a set of instructions, like a computer code, only “far more advanced than any software ever created.”4 Is this process of making random changes to existing code, without any thought of what you are even trying to do, and then seeing what you get, the way computer code is written?
So according to the Bible; disease, suffering and death are bad things to be overcome: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15: 55 NLT)
But what is the message of Darwinian evolution? In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin states:
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.5
So from a Darwinian perspective, we should just let COVID-19 take its course. The people that die are people that should be eliminated from the population anyway. I find it interesting that Darwinists want to control COVID-19.6 They miss the inconsistency in their thinking. Darwin goes on to talk about misplaced sympathy. Then Darwin states:
… there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.5
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In hoping that “that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound,” Charles Darwin was a hypocrite. He had severe, chronic health issues,7 but still married his cousin and had ten children.8
Additionally, the increased risk passing on genetic disorders by having children with a close relative is again consistent with the Bible and inconsistent with Darwinian evolution. Remember, genetic mutations are overwhelmingly bad. Children are more likely to inherit the same defective gene from each parent when the parents are closely related. Darwin realized from his own work with plants that inbreeding is bad. But that was before the discovery of DNA; and Darwin did not understand the inconsistency between his own theory and his observations.
So is COVID-19 bad? According to the Bible it is. According to Darwinism, COVID-19 should be celebrated. It should be allowed to spread unchecked. And people should not be treated when they do get it. Natural selection should just be left to do its thing.
Footnotes:
1. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-at-higher-risk.html
2. https://www.genome.gov/For-Patients-and-Families/Genetic-Disorders
3. https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/mutations-are-the-raw-materials-of-evolution-17395346/
4. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/336336-dna-is-like-a-computer-program-but-far-far-more
5. https://charles-darwin.classic-literature.co.uk/the-descent-of-man/ebook-page-90.asp
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgBla7RepXU
7. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/darwins-enigmatic-health
8. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100503111420.htm
Listening to the radio talk shows, one man arguing for the reopening of businesses and society stated that COVID19 was no worse than the flu and is “only affecting the elderly and sick in nursing homes anyway.” His evolutionary thinking makes him cold to the suffering of others, and decreases the value of life, especially the elderly. The view of sanctity of ALL life is what makes Christianity different. We hold that all were made by the Creator, and all were purchased equally by the blood of Jesus. If staying home and practicing caution a little longer will help our elderly and infirm, it is our Christian duty. William
William,
Thank you so much for reading my article and commenting. I absolutely agree that all human life has value. I have always taken the position that someone could be over 100 years old. And if a centenarian has a medical condition that can be helped, we have the same obligation to help him or her that we have to help a person in their twenties. Of course the treatment options may be different. If a hundred year old man has prostate cancer that will kill him in twenty years, it may be a better option to not treat it. But if he has COVID-19, he should be given whatever treatment he needs to have a chance to recover.
As an industrial engineer, I am trained to look at things from a risk management perspective. So my question is: Is COVID-19 more of a risk than other things that have gone around? Personally, at this point, I am not sure that it is. Just going about our daily business has its risks. And I do have tremendous empathy for people that are out of work and small business owners trying to survive. This is hurting a lot of people. Bills do not go away. So there are difficult decisions that have to be made.
The one thing that we all agree on is that COVID-19 is a bad thing, and not just because of economic reasons; but because vulnerable people can die from it. I am sure the Darwinists agree with us on this. So the thrust of this article is that in agreeing with us on this point, the Darwinists are inconsistent in their thinking.
Very true, from an evolutionary standpoint, we should let COVID19 run rampant and kill all the “unfit” humans, leaving a much stronger, more evolutionary advanced species! Thank God that God is not a survival-of-the-fittest evolutionist, but actually cares for His creatures!