The Cost Of Ignorance

Although we have all heard of people dying of co-vid, or more recently, measles, while uttering in disbelief that “it’s a hoax”, that kind of thinking is nothing new. In addition to witch trials and other horrific injustices of history, here is how religious dogma killed people before more rational, scientific ideas appeared during the enlightenment... “Most religious people of the early and mid-eighteenth century feared lightning as a terrifying demonstration of God’s wrath or the devil's punishment…The faithful rang church bells during storms to invoke the almighty's protection and ward off discharges. One study found that lightning in the mid-eighteenth century struck more than 386 churches in Germany and electrocuted 102 sextons. (...while ringing the bells). Other adherents stored gunpowder within churches, believing holy structures offered a divine shield. In a village in northern Italy in 1769, lightning struck a religious building holding hundreds of tons of explosives, killing more than three thousand people and destroying much of that city”-from the book “Ingenious’, about Benjamin Franklin, by Rischard Munson. ...So while I admire the altruistic work of some religions through food banks and other efforts, and understand that adults could be allowed to choose vaccination and make other personal decisions, their claims of being the “only path” and their subsequent imposition of their beliefs onto others-or their own innocent children-is abhorrent to me. Now that anti-science men are in power, and research into fundamental science is being curtailed by funding cuts, Americans risk believing in conspiracies and superstition even more than they currently do. When critical, fact based thinking is replaced by the former, civilizations decline. Unfortunately, the ignorant drag others down with them.