Science on its own cannot solve all problems we face

Recent scientific advances and their technological spin-offs are astonishing.
A man wears an FFP2 face mask as he talks on a mobile phoneA man wears an FFP2 face mask as he talks on a mobile phone
A man wears an FFP2 face mask as he talks on a mobile phone

I can hold in the palm of my hand a mini-computer that can play music, give me directions and provide information on anything I am interested in. It is a movie camera, library, games console, video link with anyone I care to talk to, miniature cinema, shopping centre and meeting room. It can monitor my health and set my heating.

To call it a mere ‘phone’ is really an insult. Our phones have changed the way we live and work.

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However, there are, of course, things they cannot do. Give us a hug, for example, or make the bed.

The Reverend Dr Peter ShepherdThe Reverend Dr Peter Shepherd
The Reverend Dr Peter Shepherd

But their powers are remarkable, and who knows? Perhaps in time they will be able to give us a ‘hug experience’, or tell the bed to make itself.

On the other hand, we have a tiny virus, one of the most basic forms of life, holding the world to ransom.

Science is urgently seeking answers, and has an important role to play, but relying too much on the remarkable things it can do might hinder us from seeing the importance of simpler, less sophisticated

things.

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Ordinary, everyday actions have proved very important in the battle against Covid-19 - washing hands, avoiding crowds, keeping an eye on our neighbours, encouraging and supporting carers and health workers, doing our work as well as we can. Individual, unnoticed kindness and sensitivity usually make more of a difference than sophisticated, hi-tech projects.

The story of the Garden of Eden in the book of Genesis has something to say about all this.

In some ways it is a strange story, written in a very different age from our own, but at the heart of it is the

desire of Adam and Eve to be like God, and their belief that by eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge

this could be achieved.

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Their pride in thinking they could have access to God-like knowledge was their downfall.

Mobile phones are amazing, but without everyday acts of kindness they won't solve anything significant.

We rely on scientific knowledge and all that it offers, but it can never, on its own, solve the challenges we face, whether it's Covid-19 or anything else.

Written by the Reverend Dr Peter Shepherd, of Cemetery Road Baptist Church, Napier Street, Sharrow.

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