God, Science, and Covid-19: A Threesome at Work from a Nietzschean Perspective

Abstract

It is seemingly very easy to claim that God is dead given the view that many people nowadays have recourse to science when faced with pandemics and other calamities rather than to God. This is exactly what Nietzsche has prophesied when he claimed that God is dead. i However, Nietzsche is often misunderstood by some people who do not read him so closely. What he exactly said is that during his time science was more flourishing and providing more solutions to the problems of humanity than religion was. He did not say that God is dead to mean death in the strict sense of the word ‘death’ but death in the sense that people were no longer having recourse to God for the solutions of their problems. During this time of the novel Covid-19 pandemic, the so-called churches were closed and almost everybody including the Holy Father was forced to remain at home.ii Indeed, the Covid-19 pandemic has proven that the
real church is not all about the buildings. It is instead a convocation or an assembly. In this respect, it «designates the assemblies of the people, usually for a religious purpose…. In the Church, God is calling together his people from all the ends of the earth”.1
With Covid-19 Pandemic, there is a spirited dispute about where the solution to the Covid-19 scourge should come from. Many are those who are waiting for the solution to come from science. Many again are those who despise science and cling to their God as the ultimate respondent to their queries including the eradication of Covid-19 and other calamities. There also exist others whose views are mixt. For them, they believe that God can provide an answer to those problems through his people especially the scientists. As
a result, their prevailing demand to God, via their prayers, is the discovery of a vaccine, indeed an efficient and effective vaccine, or simply a cure for this pandemic. I cannot forget to mention that there are even other people who are neither waiting for the answer to come from God nor Science. Hence, the existence of the divisions brought about by the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, given that very many people have despised religion and God for not being able to eradicate both the covid-19 pandemic and its adversities, should we conclude that God is dead? This paper aims to provide an answer to this problem. It argues that
the advancement of science does neither prove death nor the silence of God during the calamities such as the Covid-19 pandemic because science is arguably a language of God. For God is a scientist par excellence. The paper posits that Covid-19 is a test to humanity to revisit the mirror in which they view one another