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God’s Punishment or Karma?
As the Coronavirus disaster strikes the US, various evangelical Christian preachers made claims that the deadly virus is a punishment from God. Various human “sins” are cited — homosexuality, abortion, etc. It is a typical evangelical Christian response to natural disasters. One of President Trump’s favorite pastors, Robert Jeffress, said that “all natural disasters can ultimately be traced to sin.”
That is one explanation. The problem with such kind of explanation is that it has no scientific basis and the claim cannot be objectively verified. Anyone can make a claim. But unless the claim can be substantiated with empirical evidence, there is no scientific or rational content. In addition, even if we were to agree that it is some kind of “sin” that triggers the disaster, there is no consensus on the exact nature of that sin. Conservatives may say that the sin is homosexuality. Liberals may just as well say that the sin is racism, social injustice or corruption in our government at the highest level.
I am not a theist. For me, it makes much more sense to think about the new virus as a way that nature bites back. Scientists have warned us about the emergence of new diseases, primarily due to humans encroaching on where the wild animals used to be and the resulting deforestation and the loss of habitat for these animals. If we have sinned, then the sin is more of an…
