During the month of April 2021, the month that recorded the second wave of COVID-19 in Kenya, I got a call from a strange number. The caller introduced herself as Waithera, a Jehovah’s Witness field officer. I did not ask her how she got my cell-phone number, but I only gave her time to tell me what she was calling me for. She told me that she only wanted to share a word of God with me for a some five minute. The main word she shared with was that ‘COVID-19 is a sign that Jesus is coming’ and hence she was forewarning me to convert to Jehovah Witness faith for I to qualify for resurrecting for eternal life on the earth that will be a paradise or I qualify to go to heaven in God’s Kingdom. I asked Waithera where she got the evidence that if I converted to her church I will resurrect to eternal life in paradise, and then she told me that it was revealed by the Holy Spirit to the bible writers.
Living in Paradise for ever after my death was not a big deal for me, given that Waithera had already informed me that there will be no Smartphone, Wi-Fi, and internet in paradise and heaven. For my case, I am not ready to have eternal life without Wi-Fi; this would amount to more acute punishment than the one I have been going through in my life on earth before death. But, what I was concerned with most is Waithera’s argument that COVID-19 is a harbinger of Jesus. I don’t think the philosophical and the revolutionary Jesus I have been reading in the bible and in other revolutionary literatures can be preceded by having the most infectious disease ravaging innocent and defenseless mankind. If though Waithera argued that it was written in the book of Luke in the Bible, I was still not able to see the logical link between Jesus’ Second Advent and covid-19. Well researched explanations for the causes of covid-19 were published in a certain edition of the Conversational Global in 2020 as; zoonotic factors, conspiracy, special virus, climatological, intellectual supremacist and racist factors. Thus some chiliastic theories like that of Waithera are farfetched and ridiculous.
Comparatively, Waithera’s arguments look like the arguments in the Gita as translated by Mahatma Gandhi to English which argues that the Sun shines for the entire universe. When the modern technical cosmological researches have mathematically proved that the Sun known to human beings belongs to the solar system in which belongs the earth, the sun is only able to shine on the eight planets. The Sun only shines on one side of the moon due the fact that moon is fixed and moves without rotating, the Sun also shines on some part of Pluto, it cannot shine on the entire Pluto because Pluto is a dwarf planted, and it does not fully belong to the solar system. Other dwarf planets are Makemake and Esiris.
Another cosmological goofing by the spiritualists was displayed by Bakhitvedanta Swami Prabuphubada, another Gita scholar, he wrote in his book, Krsna; Supreme Personality of Godhead that there are other planets that have oceans of cow-milk, oceans of alcohol, oceans of oil, and another planet with ocean of honey. However, it is not mentioned in the book if the planet with ocean of alcohol has different brands like tusker, Chang’aa, Vodka or Cognac or Champagne, but the chief argument in the book is that the spirit of God revealed to Krsna that there are planets with the above mentioned valuables. No research has ever been to show with clarity the existence of ocean of alcohol. And it though it can be true, what the hell does God want to do with alcohol? When it is clearly argued in the Quran that, ‘Alcohol is a snare of Satan to put mankind to shame.’ I believe it is not spiritually and intellectually impolite to encourage the Gita followers and Gita scholars not only to believe in these planets with oceans of milk, honey alcohol and oil, but also to support their scriptural hermeneutics by some systematic heuristics into the validity or credibility of the matter.
Religions are not above goofing, neither are they infallible, but they can only establish their intellectual or spiritual authenticity in the modern times by employing modern methods of science and rsearch.This approach will help religion to overcome the mistakes like the one in the Bible claiming that the Sun moves around the earth, that Joshua prayed by carrying up his hands to stop the sun from moving around the earth. The Bible is wrong these, the Sun is fixed galaxy of millions of very huge stars, stars that are bigger that the earth encircled by a huge blanked of moving rare gases like helium in a continuous nuclear reactions that release particles in form of waves known as light; they are the planets like earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Mercury, Mars and Uranus that are held by the accumulative magnetic and centripetal forces enabling them to move around the Sun. In fact, one can read Dava Sobel’s Galileo’s Daughter to get further explanation on how planets move around the Sun.
Another Chiliastic mistake perpetrated by the Christianity and some other very many religions is the idea of the end of the earth. No, the earth is going nowhere; it is here to stay indefinitely. When you read the Universe in a Nutshell by Steve William Hawkins, you will see mathematical and cosmological evidence that there are more than a million solar systems in addition to the one we belong to. There are billions of Suns, Moons and stars and planets in the ever expanding universe that have no boundary. In fact Hawkins uses the word Multiverse but not universe to show that there are millions of Universes in addition to what we belong to. Thus, there is no any logical truth argument that the earth is the only planet coming to the end.
Yes, there are possibilities of planet collapsing to become a black holes, collapsing of a planet can be caused by changes in the gravitational energy, electrical energy, magnetism, natural nuclear energy, Mechanical energy and wave-particle of light energy exchange between the earth and the sun as well as changes in size of the planet in relation to the size of the sun. But, under this context, Hawkins in the Brief History of Time points out that there are mathematical evidences of structural positions of the Earth with correct quantity of mass and nuclear-electro-magnetic energies in relation to the Sun, in this case therefore, the earth cannot collapse to become a black hole or condensed planet.
Chiliastic Environmentalists also argue often that human or anthropomorphic activities can destroy the earth or the universe, the truth is that no amount of human action can destroy the universe, human activities are very insignificant. They can only pollute air within the lower atmosphere of the earth. This will only hurt animals and plants but the earth and the universe remains intact. So far, there is no cosmological statistics that gives evidence of human actions changing the cosmological structure. This point has also been observed by Bjorn Lomborg in Environmental Skeptekealism. Another point of concern is chiliastic misuse of climate change, in fact when you read Steve Hawkin’s Grand Design, you will come face to face with mathematical and Astrophysical facts in support of the cosmological conditions that currently observed quantities in climate change is not caused by human actions, but it is caused by the expanding elliptical size of the universe, thus there are times that the earth is too near to the Sun and other long days of the earth being too far from the Sun causing abnormal cooling and warming of the earth’s atmosphere . This is so given the nature of elliptical expansion of the universe resulting into the elliptical expansion of the axis on which the earth travels when rotating around the sun. These cosmological facts have not yet been appreciated for preaching by Islam, Christianity and Krsna Consciousness. This is so due to irrational neglect of cosmological research by the spiritualists, but it is more logical for religious leaders to come out of their dogmatic cocoon to appreciate the new reality that it is time to for them to move beyond the six days of creation myth recorded in the Bible to embrace the new awareness that we now have some baby Universes from the new Bing Bang of Nuclear reactions in the distant parts of the other Multiverse.
By-Alexander Opicho
From-Lodwar, Kenya
Mail-opichoalexander@gmail.com
