Faith vs medical science
29 December 2006 by Stardust
Vjack at Atheist Revolution has pointed to an excellent post titled Faith Hospital by Alonzo Fyfe at Atheist Ethicist. To look at the potential conflict between religion and science, Mr Fyfe imagines two hospitals: One hospital is the Institute for Scientific Medicine which is scientifically-based, and its cross-town rival is Faith Hospital which relies on scripture and prayer rather than science. Given the choice, how many Christians would select this hospital over the scientifically-based hospital if given the choice? Vjack, and I recommend everyone taking the time to read this very thought-provoking essay.
29 December 2006, on 2:50 am
Excellent. I wonder how true believers would answer this.
29 December 2006, on 6:18 am
Interestingly enough there was a related discussion on ‘The Brights’ fora recently (I’ll try to find the link and post it).
The facts of that discussion, as far as I remember them, were that an atheist was in hospital for an operation. His surgeon appeared at bedside and discussed the procedure to be performed next day, and then said something like, “When you’re in theatre, we can all pray that everything goes successfully.” The patient immediately sacked his surgeon and asked for another. His reasons were that he’d rather have a surgeon who relied on his own skill to perform the op successfully than one who had to pray to an imaginary being to boost his chances.
The poster was attacked for his views by other ‘Brights’!
29 December 2006, on 6:31 am
The link to the thread referred to in my previous post is this and the atheist uses the forum name of “gjgaudia” but you his details are on Google using the search criteria “Gil Guadia” (here’s just a taster, he was a Professor Emeritus of clinical psychology, and has published many books and papers, including, “When Is a Difference Not a Difference: Medicine or Shooting Craps?”.
After reading that thread, I had to agree with Guadia; The Brights are far too lenient on religion, and I don’t care that Richard Dawkins was one of their first members, for I would never join such a movement as a full member.
29 December 2006, on 11:10 am
Time for Faith-Based Medicine…
n reading many atheist blogs, I am used to finding well-written and informative posts that lead me to think about things in new ways. Once in a rare while, I find a post that leaves me in stunned silence as I experience a blend of awe and envy. A few…..
29 December 2006, on 11:15 am
I’m hoping Xians would pick the faith hospital, that way there would be a lot fewer of them (meaning gawd would either fail to heal them, or they would lose their faith when the prayers aren’t answered.)
29 December 2006, on 11:25 am
I had an old Pentecostal “aunt” (actually she was a very close friend of my grandmother for many years and she turned Pentecostal after my grandmother died). She had been a catholic her whole life then found the “true faith” after my grandmother passed away and the catholic church was not enough comfort for her. She had fought cancer while she was a catholic and with the help of medical science she went into remission a couple of times and never praised Jeebus for it. Then when she started going to the Pentecostal church, her cancer came back and she went for “faith healing” sessions and the cancer was spreading and she would always end back in the hospital for scientifically-based healing…and she would say god is working through the doctors and nurses and suddenly medical science became a gift from gawd.
29 December 2006, on 11:52 am
This is one of the (many) problems I’ve always had with faith. People pray for healing and then when they are cured God did but if they are not then it wasn’t in God’s plans. How fucking convenient! It’s just a win-win situation for God, isn’t it?
29 December 2006, on 12:06 pm
Nathalie - Xians want to believe so badly that they make their god’s will any way they want it to be. They will make up any answer to justify their fantasies.
29 December 2006, on 12:20 pm
I was actually raised as a Christian Scientist, and while we didn’t have “faith hospitals” we had practitioners who you call to pray for you. (Let me just mention here that I’ve officially been a non-practicing Christian Scientist for about 5 years, and a full out atheist since reading Sam Harris this summer.) After spending my formative years believing that prayer was the first and best choice for healing, and never having to face a significant medical challenge that required hospitalization, I still have this nagging feeling that faith healing isn’t all bad, especially if you’re not subjecting someone else to it against their will. A significant difference between faith healing and medical healing is that faith healer’s don’t diagnose anything, so you never really know if you had a serious flu, or simply a cold that went away on its own, and therefore you can never get truly accurate statistics to prove how medical healing works better. I still believe there is power in positive thinking, which probably leads to some healings through prayer, but if given the choice today, I’d go with the science.
Many Christian Scientists will point out the inaccuracy and mistakes that can happen in medicine and science, and tell you that they’d rather take their chance with God because at least if they don’t get healed they’re becoming closer to him. Dawkins is so correct in using the word “delusion” which is exactly what happens when you have to blindly justify your reasoning.
29 December 2006, on 12:42 pm
My husband is a psychiatrist, and some of the other docs at the (xtian) hospital are fundies, who consider him to be a pill-pusher doing the devil’s work (because Jeebus should be enough, you know). But whenever they’ve got a relative with a real problem, they send him/her to hubby, because they know he’ll be able to help.
Thanks to Tom Cruise and his silly comments about psychiatry, he now has it a little easier. All he has to do is compare their attitude to scientology, and suddenly they become much more reasonable!
29 December 2006, on 2:45 pm
I’ve read quite a few papers showing that encouraging religious belief can be helpful for psychiatric patients trying to cope with the problem that they are presenting with (a selective document search on PubMed should produce dozens of hits). However, none of the papers I have read show that religious beliefs are much good at enabling patients to resolve the underlying problem(s), per se, which have given rise to the problem they are presenting with. There is a fundamental difference.
29 December 2006, on 2:47 pm
As for “Tom Cruise and his silly comments about psychiatry”, I don’t know the specifics, but I’d be very surprised if he had anything but silly comments to make of any subject.
29 December 2006, on 3:30 pm
OK guys…
Here’s a rather amusing…and rather creative…YouTube video link to one of a series of vids posted by : ‘WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com’…
It’s called:
“Proving that prayer is superstition”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH0rFZIqo8A&mode=related&search=
Also check the page link for others…the “Amputee’s” home site is also quite interesting.
29 December 2006, on 4:16 pm
Forgive me, folks, for I am but a fool, and an old one at that, but recently, on reading through threads here, I thought I saw someone referring to Bertrand Russell’s 1927 lecture “Why I’m Not A Christian” and wondering where they could find another copy of it.
If my recollection is correct, then allow me to present you, whoever you are, with this annotated copy, obtainable here.
If my recollection is wrong, then may I recommend Russell’s lecture to all critical thinkers our there.
Enjoy.
29 December 2006, on 4:17 pm
“out there” Damn!
29 December 2006, on 4:20 pm
Old Git…don’t worry about it…it’s the blogosphere. As long as you don’t argue like a fundie and say that your mistakes are not mistakes, then it’s no biggie.
29 December 2006, on 4:39 pm
Thanks, Star.
29 December 2006, on 5:00 pm
Old Git
Here is Tom Cruise at his best. I’m sorry to do this to you but it is only a few minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQCR02Unqhg&mode=related&search=
29 December 2006, on 6:38 pm
Jimmer,
Thanks for that link.
What an arrogant prat Cruise comes across as (surprise, surprise!).
Whilst it is a good generalisation that “drugs aren’t the answer”, as he kept declaiming as if it was a mantra, the fact is that they are often the only way a patient can be given some relief from extremely distressing symptoms in the short term - especially as addressing the underlying problem(s) can take months if not years of therapy. What’s more, I have seen psychotic patients who posed a severe threat to themselves and others, but who responded rapidly to medication, and were able to continue to live in society safely. No other alternative treatment was possible, other than a padded room and straight-jacket.
Other Cruise mantras:
“You don’t understand the history of psychiatry”, i.e. only he does (megalomania)
“Psychiatry is a psuedo-science,” but Scientology is not (narcissistic personality disorder)
“There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance in the body”,: no, Tom, that claim is pseudo-science!(delusional)
In conclusion, Tom Cruise is an arrant, and highly arrogant, prat. What’s more, he can’t act for toffee. The short-arsed little twat.
29 December 2006, on 8:05 pm
Jimmer,
I’ve now found out where Cruise got his argument from:
This is footnote #11 on the Wiki page on Lafayette Ron’s invented money-making venture called ‘Scientology’ which can be found here.
29 December 2006, on 8:07 pm
Sorry, th link doesn’t work (me again). Try this, failing which copy & paste this into your browser: “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology#_note-8″ (without quotes)
29 December 2006, on 8:12 pm
And here’s Cruise’s, I mean Hubbard’s argument in full: http://freedom.lronhubbard.org/page078.htm
It’s a hoot!
29 December 2006, on 8:15 pm
Love this extract: …even Jesus Christ, when the psychiatrists decided religion barred their way to world control, was called a “born regenerate” with a “fixed delusional system” manifesting a “paranoid clinical picture (so typical) it is hardly conceivable people can even question the accuracy of the diagnosis.”
That’s Loonie Ron for you (and his sci-fi books were crap too!)
29 December 2006, on 10:30 pm
Old Git
Thanks for that. I used to love adventuring onto other quasi religious sites. After a time though it occured to me that what I considered unusual was to the hapless believers some form of their truth that they themselves were privy to. In fact it began to bother me that so many people identify with faith based fabrications. I still do not understand how this can be. And I really do not understand that scientology nutbaggery.
30 December 2006, on 12:22 pm
Thanks, Jimmer, for the YouTube clip. My opinion of Tom Cruise has never been very high, but I do believe he offers some wise admonitions to Matt. Study the subject. Study the science. Don’t rely on anecdotal evidence. These are all very good suggestions by Tom. It seems odd to be coming from the mouth of a Scientologist and I think he may have a little too much confidence in his own ability to discern the scientific literature he has read on the subject of psychiatry. The history of psychiatry, like the history of medicine in general, may have segments that are an embarrassment to modern practitioners, but it doesn’t mean the whole is rotten.
Too many actors are trying to educate the populace with less than thorough submersion in the areas they presume to be knowledgable about.
30 December 2006, on 8:35 pm
I found a very easy test on “faith healing”–and it proves that it works!
Say I have a cold. If I treat it with the various over-the-counter remedies, it’s gone in seven days.
But, if I tough it out and do nothing, except make my nose all red and chapped from blowing it, oh, and pray to gawd for healing–
–it goes away in just a week!
You won’t be seeing me around here anymore–I’m going to church tomorrow. And every Sunday for the rest of my life! Hollojeebus!!!
Naomi (ha!ha! had you fooled!)
30 December 2006, on 11:35 pm
I would like to see a survey like this. How many Christians would go to the faith hospital?
31 December 2006, on 6:47 am
You won’t be seeing me around here anymore–I’m going to church tomorrow. And every Sunday for the rest of my life! Hollojeebus!!!
Naomi, just make sure you put lots of bucks in the collection box, ‘cos if the moronic sheep in the congregation don’t make their ministers rich God says he’ll punish them!
BTW, if you were to pray with real sincerity Jeebus would make you cold go away immediately! - so fast, in fact, it would be like you’d never had any symptoms in the first place!
And, indeed, that’s the proof that Gord exists; if you don’t catch cold you are sincere, but if you do become unwell you have allowed the demon of insincerity into your heart! But don’t worry; prayer will cure you!
If you think the foregoing is a load of shite, wait until you discover the nonsense spouted by so-called ‘Christian Scientists’ (LOL)
One of them has commented on Alan Mackenzie’sRank Atheismblog implying that there’s a difference between them and that charlatan and crook Kenneth Hovind.
31 December 2006, on 7:01 am
TOG: Ah, Kent Hovind…
Over on Martian’s blog, we had a (lovely–assumed; young–assumed) woman who said she hadn’t been commenting lately as she was studying something on evolution. We already knew she was a “rational” xian (but I kind of thought she was maybe on the edge of giving up her faith). So when she shared her YEC studying and later started quoting from “Dr.” Hovind, you probably heard the roars of laughter over here!
Kent Hovind: nutcase, charlatan and tax-cheat. And a respected (by xian kooks only) “creationist/IDiot scientist” extraordinaire. How much more delicious can it get?
Having dosed myself with OTC remedies throughout my life, I had to become a truck driver to find out that what I had been taking was not only “operating heavy machinery” prohibited but also somewhat unnecessary. To protect my Commercial Driver’s License, I was unable (by Federal regulation) to take things that contain ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine, guaifenesin, alcohol,
31 December 2006, on 7:09 am
Ooops!
To continue:
alcohol, dextromethorphan, codeine, etc. Those are listed separately from the Classes of “true” drugs (except codeine, which is derived from opium and is a real drug, but with antitussive action).
If I was randomly drug tested after taking any of those drugs, I would have tested positive and lost my job, and probably my license, if there was an accident involved…
Naomi
31 December 2006, on 7:11 am
To protect my Commercial Driver’s License, I was unable (by Federal regulation) to take things that contain ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine, guaifenesin, alcohol,
That’s tough, Naomi; about the only thing that makes a cold bearable is a stiff hot-toddy (I don’t know if that’s know in US, but it’s a dram of whisky with hot water added), and a couple of aspirins before going to bed.
As for Hovind and the like, what really intrigues me is how they are able to exercise so much power over others when almost everything they state is patent rubbish and totally risible.
But how delicious when these manipulative con-men are found out and brought to book, though I dare say his followers will write this off as some diabolical plot to stop him spreading the ‘truth’.
31 December 2006, on 7:18 am
Naomi, Seems like the regulations surrounding a commercial license are far more prescriptive in US than here, but you are quite wise not to take anything that might jeopardise your career.
31 December 2006, on 4:24 pm
Ah, a hot toddy! It was my father’s “cure of choice” for anything and everything. I drank my share over the years. To the scotch and hot water, he also added a teaspoon of sugar. Must have come down through my Scottish allotment of genes…
Hovind, et.al.? Easy money, betting that he will be celebrated as a martyr/persecuted xian. After all, that’s the most glamorous part of the glorious jesusX urban legend! However, don’t put any money down on “willingness to die for jesusX”; in reality, the charlatans do draw the line somewhere
Funny, isn’t it? Each time this happens, they think that they just invented it. When, in truth, there’s nothing original anywhere in their mythology.
(*yawn*)
31 December 2006, on 5:15 pm
That’s the genuine recipe for toddy all right, Naomi.
And isn’t it interesting how reluctant most of those religious leaders are reluctant to die for their god. If martyrdom is such a wonderful thing for Muslims, why aren’t the imams and mullahs leading the charge? Fucking hypocrites, all of them!
4 January 2007, on 9:03 pm
I wonder if a study of lawsuits by religious belief has ever been done and if so what are it’s findings. HMMMM??? Do believers sue more often? Do non-believers sue less?
16 January 2007, on 6:54 pm
Now try not to think of this as hate mail because that’s not the intention. Rather I would like to say that though Christians get blamed for being the the most intolerant religion on earth it has yet to be seen that the ACLU and other groups like it pass laws that in themselves take away from what the United States is and that is a free nation for all to be able to come and practice religion in their own way. It was meant for people to be able to come and live in peace. The problem is the “squeaky wheel”. I think everyone should have a voice not one dominate over the other. Equality, no matter if your skin is different or you believe in God. Now I believe God is real. Granted their are many religions that would say their’s is too and that would be a good conversation to have. My point is that everyone on this earth needs to come together and work things out. Maybe then if we all stop whining we can help fix this planet for our children to live on.
From one of those oh so hated Christ followers
Benjamin
17 January 2007, on 10:23 am
Explain to me how that’s going to happen when one religion says followers of a different religion must die?
31 January 2007, on 2:27 am
I hope everyone can get together to come together but it’s impossible for that to happen, not even a chance in a billion because humans generally have not learned to let go of the vengeance and practice forgiveness. Religious books have taught people to let go and forgive but how many so called religious leaders abide to that when they should be the ones preaching that.
It’s very hard for humans to forgive that’s why it’s an supreme act of compassion if you do that.
31 January 2007, on 8:46 am
Mere T wrote:
What are YOU smoking?? Religious leaders preach hate because that’s what their books do best.
19 February 2007, on 10:30 pm
The Bible calls to mix faith with wisdom… (read the first few chapters of Proverbs). If a Christian is sick, it is WISE to take care of yourself, granted we are always praying fervently and faithfully, seeking God’s help. HOWEVER, if we don’t care of ourselves enough, as our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit in which God calls for us to take care of ourselves(I Corinthians 6:19-20), then we are going against His directions. If we don’t seek medical help, AS WELL AS prayer, why would God want to help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves…
How convenient for you to be able to make up whatever suits you so you can have your faith and science, too. What about those little tiny babies who starve to death because they can’t do for themselves? How about all the abused and neglected children in the world who cannot defend themselves? What about the millions of people in the world who do not have access to medical care? They pray to a silent god and die. You are living under a shell.
just like II Thessalonians 3:10, God tells us that if any would not work, neither should he eat… God blesses hard work.
Tell that to the poverty stricken people who work from dawn till dusk and are lucky to get one ration of food a day.
God takes pride in our bodies and our health, as He created us, but also calls us to work, and not be lazy, for He is not lazy.
Hurricane Katrina ring a bell? The tsunami disaster? No help came from a god, but help came from HUMAN BEINGS.
If we sit around waiting for a miracle, isn’t that going against God’s wishes, by being lazy?
Your god seems to think it’s ok since he sits silently and does nothing as humans kill each other, and fight over who’s god is real and whose is not. You are making up your religion as you go along to suit yourself.
God is always working,