Is “God” responsible for virus as well?

Geoff Brooking (Letters 9/12/20) alleges that the coronavirus vaccine “is also an answer to prayer” and states that “People have been praying long and hard for God to show His grace yet again and the roll-out of the vaccine is a perfect example of that”. If this is the case, then surely this “God” must also be responsible for the development of the virus together with the resulting 1.5m deaths and 70m+ infections plus all the associated misery.

I also note that Geoff suggests that “there is a way out at the rapture of the church”.

The rapture is a concept held by some branches of American Evangelicalism, consisting of an endtime event when all Christian believers who are alive, along with resurrected believers, will rise “in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.” The idea of a rapture is not found in historic Christianity, but is a relatively recent doctrine of Evangelical Protestantism in the USA.

Believers maintain that at the second coming, which many consider to be imminent, true Christians will be beamed up to heaven, leaving non-believers to face the consequences. If this belief is to be taken seriously, we need to ban Christians from taking responsible jobs such as airline pilots, since they are likely to desert their posts involuntarily at any time.

There are about 100m Evangelicals in the USA, and it is estimated that around half of these believe in the rapture or the second coming within the next 50 years. Unfortunately these beliefs mean that a large proportion of the population of the USA sees no sense in worrying about conservation or global warming, resulting in the Trump administration’s policies of opposing any restrictions on the exploitation of natural resources. This belief poses a threat to the sustainability of human life on planet Earth.

John Catt, Member of www.

humanism.org.uk