There have been – and will continue to be – countless
astounding men and women helping the victims and putting their own health and
life at risk. One of those who came to
public notice was Nina Pham, a twenty-six year old Texan nurse. She was the first person to contract Ebola on
U S soil. She was part of a team that
had cared for Thomas Duncan, a Liberian man who had arrived in the United
States already infected. There was quite
a bit of alarm and hysteria when the disease was diagnosed. Nina Pham nursed him until he died and she
was then certified as being infected.
She recently resurfaced to a relieved nation cured of the disease and
received a big hug from President Obama.
At a Press Conference she thanked her health care
team in two hospitals for all they had done to restore her to health. She singled out a fellow survivor, Dt. Keith
Brantly, for donating plasma containing Ebola antibodies as part of her
treatment. She went on to say something
that made her interview hugely controversial.
She said: ‘I believe in the power of prayer.’ It was this reference to the power of prayer
that grabbed the headlines and infuriated many readers. They shrieked: ‘How about some credit for
science which saved your life?’ ‘How
about the power of medicine?’ ‘Guess her
imbecile brain wasn’t cured.’ ‘Yes, Nina
Pham, I’m sure it was ‘prayer’ that ridded your body of Ebola. But if that’s the case then why didn’t you
just stay home?’ But there came a
supportive voice: ‘Why not accept that her faith at the very least helped her
emotional/mental state, rather than making it an issue?’
Here was a young nurse who knew more about the
terrifying reality of Ebola than most of her critics combined being pilloried
for giving expression to her belief in prayer.
It was as if she had denied the efficacy of science and medicine when
she had so poignantly affirmed it. But
she was caricatured as an idiot and as useful proof of the superior intellect
of her militant atheistic critics. They
and all humanity would benefit from the kind of courage and compassion that
Nina Pham showed.
Many people, drawing inspiration from Richard
Dawkins, delight in demonstrating how cool they are and how free from that
fatal gullibility gene that believers suffer from. They seem to think that all scientists must
despise religion. Dr Sylvia McLain, who
runs a biophysics research group in Oxford, says: ‘It’s a big, fat myth that
all scientists are religion-hating atheists.’
She says that Peter Higgs (of Higgs Boson fame) has ‘very sanguinely
criticised Dawkins for his anti-religious stance and goes on to say that he
doesn’t think science and religion are incompatible.’ The physicist Prof. Brian Cox echoes that
view. Prominent openly religious
scientists include Frances Collins, the Head of the US National Institution of
Health, Gerhard Etrl who won the Nobel prize in Chemistry (2007) and William D
Phillips who won the Nobel prize in Physics in 1997 (McLain blogs at
occamstypewriter.org)
Great scientific advances have been made in the
treatment and control of so many diseases and will, thank God, continue to be
made. How did life come to be on an
overheated young planet 3.8 billion years ago in what would have been (for us)
a poisonous atmosphere and toxic oceans?
And how the mind emerges from the brain are some of the questions that
scientists would dearly like to answer.
Scientists observe planets millions of light years away and study
galaxies born soon after the Big Bang, yet most of the universe is invisible to
us. What we can see – planets, stars and
galaxies – only account for about 5% of the total. The rest is described as ‘dark’, either ‘dark
matter’ or ‘dark energy’. Scientists
would dearly love to know more about the dark stuff. And they will, and we will, because an
eternity with God who is Life and Light will be most revealing.
