Re the swine flu

[HydrogenBond]

Moderation note: the first two posts of this thread were moved from 18983, because, as the second post notes, the subject of the first post appears to have nothing to do with that thread.

 

Here is a different angle to compare science and religious behavior. It has to do with the swine flu. At the scientific level, the swine flu is caused by a virus and can cause fatalities. One of the side effects of this scientific awareness, is a meme or mind virus, that have unconsciously effected people with irrational fear. This mind virus spread quickly, like an epidemic, affecting tens of millions of people world wide. it moved faster than the physical virus.

 

A good analogy to the dual effect, is a wolf (swine flu) enters a herd of 10,000 sheep (proportional to the relative affects of the physical virus to the mental virus). The entire herd starts to run, due to one wolf, who logically can't get them all. Whether they run or not, the wolf will still get one sheep for dinner. But the fear virus spreads quicker than the wolf virus, as though the wolf can eat them all.

 

One ancient religious practice, figured out how to deal with contagious fear virus, caused by their own version of one wolf among a giant herd of sheep. They may not have been defined the physical virus correctly but a strain of fear virus resulted. They used a human sacrifice. They figured out the wolf would get one sheep for dinner, whether they all run or stay calm. So, if they offered the wolf a special victim, all the rest could avoid infection by the fear virus. That technique was discontinued, with the sacrifice of Jesus a meal for all the wolves. That was the theory anyway.

 

This particular observation represents one hidden difference between religion and science. Science is the best at defining physical reality, but it can and does frequently create mind virus side effects out of proportion to physical reality. The swine flu will get you, the meteor may hit us, the poles are melting, the mega hurricane, earthquake, tornato, blizzard is near, etc. That is just the various strains of fear virus. There are others strains not connected to fear. Evolution appears to create a mind virus as does some religions due to uncertainty.

 

The reason the fear virus occurs in science might be due to risk type math. When the threat of the swine flu ends, we should do a physical number count of who got it, who resisted it and and who did not get it. All those who fought it off or did not get it, never had any problem with the wolf, in reality, even if the fear virus side effect said all the herd needs to run.

 

This gap between the fear math and what turns out to be reality, is where religion can help, since they have been dealing with virus meme, for centuries. These can originate ans spread into the herd, until the herd acts like a single irrational organism, all seeing the same alternate reality, which in the end will not add up to reality. Science generates fear virus due to unsanity mind math conditions that other can exploit.

[InfiniteNow]

How does that have anything whatsoever to do with what creationists should learn here?

[CraigD]

The gist of what HBond’s saying, if I understand correctly, is an application of the general idea of magisteria – “domains of teaching authority” in which broadly different disciplines, such as religion and science, are better suited one than the others. This use of the word, a pluralized reuse of the archaic ecclesiastical term ,magisterium, which refers specifically to “the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church”, was an invention of Stephen Jay Gould, who saw the concept of “non-overlapping magisterial” (NOMA) as an elegant and useful principle that could resolve “the supposed conflict between science and religion”. According to the NOMA principle, there are many magisterial with good claims to authority in different subjects, for example, “the magisterium of art” as the best authority about “beauty”.

 

In NOMA terms, HBond’s claim is then specifically that the magisterium of science is best for detecting, studying, and treating threats such as H1N1 “swine” influenza virus infections, while the magisterium of religion is better for preventing public panic over it.

 

Although I’m sure that many good and scientifically literate clergy have in recent days been using their positions to reassure and prevent panic among their congregations, I don’t think their contribution in this area is notably better than that of scientific organizations, such as the various world government health agencies like the US NIH/CDC, or various major news companies, who have presented both spokespeople of these government health agencies and independent scientists and medical experts to give the public a realistic and reassuring view of the threat of the recent H1N1 outbreak. Although IMHO some inaccurate statements, primarily by publicly prominant individuals, have caused some excessive worry or panic, in general, I think most people and organizations involved in these efforts have done a good job, and that public panic over H1N1 is minimal, and reaction to it, even arguably excessive ones such as the segregation of 21 students’ from their main college graduation ceremony, have been mostly calm and appropriate.

 

Historically, I don’t think religion can claim a record of calming panic and preventing damaging reactions over disease outbreaks. A dramatic and well-known example of religious authorities reacting poorly to a major epidemic occurred during the 14th and 15th centuries “Black Death” outbreaks of bubonic plague, in which many religious authorities actively participated in ineffective and terrible extermination of religious and ethnic minority based on incorrect and even purposefully fabricated determinations that these groups caused the plague (see: the wikipedia section “Consequences_of_the_Black_Death:Persecutions”, an excellent historical treatment of these event in Barbara Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century”).

 

More significantly, I think HBonds analogy between a wolf preying on a large flock of sheep and a disease pan or epidemic, is bad. A typical predatory is only immediately dangerous to one or a few members of a large group of prey, but diseases can be dangerous to large fractions of large populations. Although H1N1 is unlikely to result in the untimely death of more than 0.01% of the world population, a sever disease outbreak could be much worse. Although scientific medicine was much less well-developed in the 14th century, its mortality during for a few decades is estimated to have been about 100 million of the then world population of about 450 million, or about 25%, one of the few periods in history when the human world population declined. Had it been more widely spread, worldwide mortality would have likely been about 50%.