'Godman' Aslam who 'cured' by kissing hands, dies of coronavirusIn another reminder of the danger of religion and the stupidity it can encourage, an Indian Muslim 'Godman' or Aslam, who claimed to be able to cure Covid-19 with a kiss, has died in Madhya Pradesh’s Nayapura district or Ratlam. Amongst the people who visited him for his magical 'cure' 19 have now tested positive for the virus. The district of Ratlam has now become an Covid-19 hotspot.
29 Other faith healers offering similar magical cures, which includes drinking water the 'faith healer' has blown into, have now been put into government quarantine facilities while tests are carried out on them and their clients.
The problem is that the magical thinking necessary to believe in gods and which is encouraged in children during a religious upbringing, makes people liable to believe magic is better than real science, or is the same thing as real science, so is as likely to cure illness as is science. In the absences so far of a scientific cure, gullible people can then turn to these dangerous charlatans for help in times of uncertainty.
And of course, there is never any shortage of charlatans willing to exploit them, as we have seen in the USA, where Christians have been fooled into believing that prayer or piety alone can keep them safe or even cure them, so they have gone on to spread the virus more widely within their community.
We have now seen these acts of gross stupidity and irresponsibility by religious leaders in USA, UK, Israel, Cameroon, Russia, South Korea, Kazakstan and India, and no doubt in most countries where religions remain a strong influence amongst the ignorance, uneducated and superstitious people.
In the time of Covid-19, as with earlier pandemics, religions are proving to be a huge source of danger to society and to human health and welfare. No doubt they will be so again in any future pandemic. Tweet
It's almost as though Covid-19 was intelligently designed by a designer who wanted to do as much damage to religion as it could. Tweet
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