Lux Lucet

Those who have been trained in the socialist, collectivist way of thinking that dominates in the schools, universities, churches, businesses and mainstream media organizations, those who think that the main purpose of government is to ensure our safety, see the Covid lockdowns as a necessary and appropriate response to save lives.  Those who believe that the Bible has a systematic monopoly on truth, including truth in the realms of politics and economics, those who think that the chief end of civil government is, not to make us safe, but to protect our liberties, see the Covid lockdowns as not only a great evil in themselves, but one that is, if left unchecked, the harbinger of greater evils to come.

This is not to say that those who support the lockdowns are, merely by virtue of their support of said lockdowns, not Christians.  To some degree, all of us are inconsistent in our beliefs.  It is through the process of sanctification, which is our growth in the understanding of God’s Word, that we learn to think in a more and more consistently Christian way.     

Neither is it my intention to say that all Christians, even those with a consistent Biblical view of politics and economics, must respond to the coronavirus in exactly the same way.  All our circumstances are unique.  We live in different locations, we’re different ages, have different health conditions and vary in the way we assess health risks.  Some people may choose to wear a mask everywhere they go.  Others may eschew masks entirely. 

The big difference between those who bring a statist political view to the Covid situation and those who bring a Biblical view is that the former are collectivists who believe in taking orders from on high, whereas the latter believe in individualism – the Bible is individualistic, not collectivist; only individuals are saved or lost – and liberty of conscience.

How one assesses the Covid lockdowns, therefore, is not a matter of self-evident truths gleaned from dispassionate observation of the facts, but rather the result of the philosophical framework he brings to the facts circumstances surrounding the virus outbreak. 

A second difficulty involved with understanding the events that take place all around us, whether it’s the Covid lockdowns or other current events, is that of determining just what the facts are.  This isn’t as easy as it sounds.  There is a remarkable amount of information available to us today.  With the rise of the internet over the past 25 years, it’s fair to say that people today have access to more information than at any time in human history.  But if having massive amounts of information at our fingertips were a guarantor of wisdom and knowledge, why then do people today seem more confused than ever?  

Continuing with the Covid example, we see stories in the news about such and such a number of Covid deaths have been reported.  This is good hard data.  Surely, we can all rely on the numbers reported in the press and take them at face value, right?  Well, not so fast. 

For one thing, some philosophers have argued, John Robbins among them, that there is no such thing as data.  Data is Latin for “that which is given.”  But in truth, the information used in epidemiology or in science of any sort is never given, it is selected.  This is the case even if a scientist is competent and honest.  And while this may describe some scientists, perhaps even most scientists, this does not mean that his “data” is going to be correct.  Gordon Clark explained the issues with “data” in his book The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God.

No matter how intricate an experiment may be, its basic process is the measurement of a line….When this length has been measured once, the scientist in any new and important experiment repeats the experiment and measures the length a second, a third, a fourth time, until he has a long list of readings….After the scientist has obtained his list of readings, he notices that they are all different…With this list of readings, the scientist does what seems to be only sound common sense.  He adds them and divides by the number of readings; that is, he computes the arithmetic mean….But statisticians know two other averages:  the mode-or the most frequently occurring number – and the median – or the middle number in the list when arranged in order of magnitude (58-59).

Clearly, the final measurement number the scientist comes up with is not something given to him as if it were a number that fell out of heaven and landed on his desk.  The final number depends upon the accuracy of his initial measurements and his decision how to process the initial measurements to come up with a final number.  This final number is not “data”, that is to say, it is not given.  It is product of certain decisions made by the scientist. 

This same rule applies when doctors go to determine the cause of death.  Sometimes this can be done with a good deal of certainty.  But in other cases, it is more of an art than a science.  If you have followed the work or Dr. Ron Paul on his Liberty Report YouTube channel, you may have heard him talk about the difficulty in determining an individual’s cause of death.  A person may have more than one potentially deadly illness at a time.  When that person dies, how do we know what it was that killed him?  Was it Covid, or was it the heart disease or cancer he had been battling for the past five years?  As Ron Paul has put it, there’s an important distinction to be made between someone dying with Covid and someone dying of Covid. 

By way of example, the autopsy performed on George Floyd indicated that he had coronavirus.  Does that mean that he died of coronavirus?  Black Lives Matter, Antifa and the entire Democratic party would never accept that explanation.  Indeed, they would be outraged were anyone to suggest it.  Yet it’s no more a stretch to say that George Floyd died of coronavirus than it is to report that a man killed in a motorcycle accident was a victim of Covid.  According to the article, when Orange County Health Officer Dr. Raul Pino was asked whether the motorcyclist’s death was removed from the Covid death toll, he responded, “I don’t think so.”  This apparently blatant distortion of the cause of death leads one to ask how many other cases there are like this, where the cause of death is misattributed to the virus.   

Ron Paul has written about delayed reporting of Covid deaths as well.  In July, we heard a constant drumbeat about a second wave, but as Dr. Paul has noted, that stats showing a spike in July Covid deaths in Houston was made up largely of deaths that had occurred in April-June but were not reported until July. 

John Robbins remarked that people lie and people make mistakes.  Both issues, lying and mistakes, are reason to take any statistics we read about in the press, whether we’re talking about Covid deaths or any other subject, with a degree of skepticism.  In fact, as Gordon Clark and John Robbins have both pointed out, any attempt to obtain truth from observation is doomed to failure, but the observers ever so honest and skillful. 

Does this render all statistics of any sort useless?  The short answer is, no, it does not.  A little longer answer is that despite the failure of observation to furnish us with knowledge, information collected honestly can be useful.  But in the case of coronavirus statistics there is good reason to doubt that the reporting is done honestly.  In some cases, financial interests can distort the reporting.  Hospitals are paid Medicare bonuses for diagnosing Covid and receive additional money if those patients are put on ventilators. Does that prove that hospitals are altering diagnoses for money?  No, it does not.  But as Dr. Scott Jensen, the man who first reported this noted, such payments provide and “avenue” for fraud.

Politics seems to be another reason for exaggerating cases and death counts for Covid.  The Democrats, in particular, seem to see an advantage in locking down the country.  In the first place, lockdowns create economic problems such as layoffs as well as general misery.  This then can be blamed on the President and used by the Democrats as campaign fodder against him.  Further, lockdowns and social distancing make it all but impossible for Donald Trump to use what is perhaps his greatest strength as a politician, his rallies, to energize his base.    

The Roman Catholic Church in general, and the Jesuits in particular, seem to be beneficiaries of exaggerating the dangers of Covid, as it furthers government interference in the economy and limits personal freedom, two major goals of Roman Catholic political and economic theory. The Bible’s system of politics and economics was described by John Robbins in his book Ecclesiastical Megalomania as constitutional capitalism.  That is, the Bible requires limited, constitutional government and free market economics.  This was the political-economic system in place from the founding of America, but one which began to be overturned, first during the Progressive Era and later during the 1930’s New Deal and later in the 1960’s with the Great Society.  The move toward socialism has continued apace since then.  What few people realize today is that the Roman Catholic Church-State has been at the forefront of brining about this growth of government and loss of personal freedom.  For example, in a 2013 interview on Meet the Press Cardinal Timothy Dolan boasted about the Catholic Church’s role in brining about the Affordable Care Act, better known was Obamacare.  Said Dolan, “We, the bishops of the United States – – can you believe it – in 1919 came out for more affordable, more comprehensive, more universal health care.  That’s how far back we go in this battle, okay?”  Dolan was not making an idle boast.  Contrary to the teaching of the Bible on the proper role of government and the requirements of the United States Constitution, Rome really has been fighting to socialize American medicine, and the rest of the economy, for over 100 years. 

Worth noting is that two of the most influential physicians involved in formulating America’s coronavirus response, Drs. Anthony Fauci and Robert Redfield, were trained by the Jesuits.

Closing Thoughts

One of the important conclusions we can take from the coronavirus pandemic – perhaps we should say plan/scam demic – is that one’s worldview, one’s philosophical system, is critical in how one interprets the information he comes across in the media.  Events do not explain themselves but must themselves be explained.  If one believes that the primary purpose of government is to keep people safe, then it follows that any measure, no matter how draconian, is acceptable so long as it can be justified by claims that it makes people safe.  On the other hand, if one believe that the job of government is to punish evildoers and praise the good to the end that justice is done an liberty preserved, then one is likely to take a very different view of the government mandated coronavirus lockdowns and mask and social distancing requirements. 

The other issue to keep in mind is that the information we receive on Covid-19 ought not to be taken at face value.  At best, a competent and honest scientist can come up with a “data” set that that is a reasonable approximation of what is going on in the world.  On the other hand, there are those driving the Covid debate who seem not to be wholly disinterested and honest and in truth appear to be using the coronavirus emergency to advance their own ends, which are not good for personal liberty, economic prosperity or the future of our nation.   

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