Few things trouble humanity more than disease. It knows no age, no gender, no skin colour. Once you begin life, even if you are still in your mother’s womb, you become a candidate.
For religious people, disease and suffering are all part of God’s plan. They pray to God to help patients get well. But there is nothing to gain from disease. Apart from causing pain and suffering, disease drives poverty since people who are in poor health cannot work productively to make a living.
Religious people, like irreligious ones, rely on science to manage disease. We turned to science to rein in Covid-19, which killed over seven million people (roughly the entire population of Libya), according to the World Health Organisation.
We rely on science to make vaccines that have prevented diseases that, decades ago, were killing millions of children.
The story does not end here; it goes on and gets better. Last week, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, which runs Biohub, a biomedical research organisation, announced it had launched a large-scale scientific initiative combining AI with biology to help scientists cure, prevent or manage all disease.
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Biohub’s mission is to cure or prevent all disease. If the organisation lives up to its mission, people who will be around 10–15 years from now will see disease as a thing of the past.
We will not have cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, name it. Life will be infinitely better than it is. Religious people who have always looked at disease as part of God’s plan (for people) will have to eat their words. A pertinent question they will have to answer is: If God exists and created disease, why are scientists undoing what he created?
Pastors and evangelists who capitalise on the suffering caused by disease to make money from gullible churchgoers will have to find alternative sources of income. Everything they said they knew about how God works will cease to make sense. Entire chapters and verses in holy books will become irrelevant.
What the CZI is doing is very commendable and is testament to the fact that people have to find solutions to the problems they are facing. For centuries, people have prayed—but no amount of prayer has ever eliminated disease. Prayer does absolutely nothing to bring disease under control. Only science does—and it will have the last laugh.
🔴 Sunday Thought cuts through the noise of prayer, piety and superstition to ask the questions most people avoid. It discusses God, faith and religion—not to preach, but to probe, challenge and sometimes unsettle. Whether you believe, doubt or have stopped looking altogether, Sunday Thought will make you think, question and maybe even rethink everything you thought you knew about the divine—and about life itself.