How will coronavirus affect religion?

Millions of deaths will destroy faith in God

Question: How will coronavirus affect religion?
Position‹2 of 3›: It will weaken religious beliefs
Argument‹3 of 3: Millions of deaths will destroy faith in God

The impact of the virus will devastate religious belief.

The argument

This argument holds that the pandemic weakens religious belief not through argument but through observation of who the virus reaches. The evidence it draws on is the pattern of transmission. Spreading patterns show that some of the most affected groups have been the orthodox — the communities whose religious observance is most thoroughgoing. As David Halbfinger reported in the New York Times, "Ultra-Orthodox Jews failing to comply with government instructions to contain the coronavirus are causing it to spread so quickly that Israeli officials are considering blockading entire communities to protect the wider population." The report describes a concentration of cases within a devout population severe enough that authorities contemplated sealing those communities off. The inference drawn from such clustering concerns what religious belief does and does not do. If faith conferred any protection, the devout would be expected to fare better than others, or at least no worse. Instead viral clustering of this kind is taken to prove that religious belief has no bearing on whether people contract the virus. Infection follows proximity, density and contact — the ordinary physical determinants — and tracks them irrespective of how observant the people involved are. The consequence for belief is a matter of accumulation rather than of logic. A doctrine can accommodate individual suffering, but the pandemic presents the point at scale and to everyone at once: millions of deaths, distributed without regard to devotion, and visibly so within the most observant communities. Confronted with that, believers are held to find the expectation of divine protection contradicted by what they can see. Because mass death reveals that faith offers no shelter from it, the coronavirus will destroy faith in God and so weaken religious beliefs.

Context

Much religious belief hinges on the idea that praying will result in protection and salvation. However, with the virus indiscriminately tearing through communities - whatever their spiritual views - this beliefs are being called into question.

Premises

[P1]Some of the groups hardest hit by the coronavirus are the devoutly religious, such as ultra-Orthodox communities whose clustering spread the virus rapidly. [P2] That the faithful contract and die from the virus like anyone else shows religious belief has no bearing on who is infected. [C] Because mass deaths reveal that faith offers no protection, the pandemic will destroy faith in God and weaken religious belief.

Counter-arguments

Most religions believe that life is a test, and that the rewards for pious behaviour on Earth will be made clear in the afterlife. Therefore, the death rates in their communities are irrelevant. As the influential Christian charity the Barnabas Fund writes, "Pastor Tan Songhua, of Wuhan Fangjiaoshi Church, wrote a prayer letter to Chinese Christians, calling the coronavirus outbreak a “test of faith” for the Church in Wuhan. Now, as the pandemic spreads across Europe, Christians here are facing a similar test."

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Religions believe that life is a test