The forced stay-at-home precipitated by the Covid – 19 pandemic has at once restricted human interaction on the actual plain and further heightened activity on the already hyperactive virtual plain. Social media is awash with information concerning the spread, containment and casualty index of the pandemic. From informed, professional advice on how to best protect oneself to well-meaning, yet misleading, links shared to enable people self-test for the virus, one finds a plethora of content in cyberspace even down to bad-taste, odd jokes on the pandemic as well.

Of all these contents, however, a section that comes off as misguided, vindictive, bitter and naïve is the group of persons online who have constituted themselves into critics of religion and the religious in the very face of the onslaught of this pandemic. The height of this, for me, was a cartoon making the rounds depicting men representing the various world religions standing anxiously behind a scientist who is peering into the lenses of a microscope in apparent search for a cure to the virus. This cartoon has been accompanied with many captions one of which is, Religion is a scam, and I say enough of the nonsense already.

Before I address the inanity of this line of reasoning, let me first of all explore its origins.

Many people consider Nigeria and Nigerians a religious country and people. This of course is due to the intensity of religious activity in the country which, in effect, I like to describe as vacuous religiosity among the populace: that is, the practice of religion that has little or no bearing on the moral / socio-political conduct of its adherents. For those who may imagine that this religiosity is restricted to Christianity and Islam, it is important to point out that it isn’t. Traditionally, before the advent of foreign faiths on our land, Nigerians have been known to seek the counsel of various indigenous deities in the conduct of their mundane activities. They offered sacrifice and indulged in ritual to persuade these deities to yield their preferred outcomes in their daily activities. It is with this same disposition that they embraced Christianity and Islam and substituted, partly or wholly, the deities of old with pastors and alphas of today.

Therefore, it is a normal feature of Nigerian religiosity to have adherents turn to their faiths rather than to civil authority for help in temporal matters. So it is that some of us would rather go to church than to a hospital for our health challenges and go for a special prayer session for a travel visa than seek relevant travel information from concerned consular offices. It is therefore understandable (although inexcusable) if some Nigerians look to religion for reprieve in the current global health situation. However, note that the protagonists in the present discourse are not the religious, but rather, the “woke” irreligious who are loud and proud of their lack of religion. It is to these that we address what follows.

You are correct in stating that religion does not hold the cure to the virus. It is wrong however to seek to deride religion and the religious on this ground because the cure for an ailment is not proper to religion as it is to medical science and there is no conflict here. This is why when science finds a solution we call it a cure and should religion make an intervention in this regard (as it is recorded to have done and continues to do), it is a miracle that brings about healing.

Note that not even you in your irreligion is of any use in the present circumstance. Should we then make a topic of the perceived hopelessness of your irreligion in the face of our prevailing health challenges? I think not.

Furthermore, the cartoon earlier cited is simplistic in assuming that the microscope-peering scientist is without religion. Think about it. Why should anybody put their lives on the line to seek a cure for a deadly disease that they do not themselves suffer from and for which they possess enough professional expertise to avoid? Is it for the money that will accrue to them in the event that they discover a cure or for the fame that will attend them for the rest of their days? Or is it simply for the love of humanity that they do it? Bear in mind that the most logical thing for that scientist to do at this time is to keep himself safe like everyone else and stay far from the laboratory where he himself may contract the disease while seeking a cure.

But he took an oath as a medical practitioner to save lives and therefore cannot abandon the sick, you argue. And again, you are correct. But then, what is the place of oaths in science? Where is the scientific proof that an oath not kept has any consequence or effect on the oath taker? You will discover that with this question we return to the domain of faith. The moral obligation to keep an oath and to abide by a promise even in the face of personal danger is within the purview of religion and not science. It is safe, then, to assume that the scientist has remained at his duty post seeking a cure even at risk of getting infected simply because he believes in the sanctity of the oath he took as a medical practitioner – an oath, mind you, that has no basis in science.

The point is the man needs to appeal to something outside himself as a rational being and outside his field of endeavour to find a reason to do what he is doing which, thank God, is of immense benefit to humanity. How dare you then deride faith in the very presence of a profound act of faith which you yourself possibly lack the capacity to exercise.

I read reports of health workers abandoning the aged sick in Madrid in the course of this present crisis. This incident serves to demonstrate that keeping faith is a deliberate act of the will and not a mechanical response to a professional stimulus. I hope it is clear that without faith not even science can sustain itself or us. Let us therefore desist from seeking to score cheap, empty points against people whose belief system we do not share, even in a crisis. It is as cruel as it is ignorant.

Ur level of mumuness is irredeemable

updatedws:
Ur level of sheepishness (pardon my grammar) is irredeemable

Your grammar is the least of your problems, my friend.