From a thread: It wasnt religion that figured out how to type blood. It wasnt religion that mapped the human genome. It wasnt religion that developed vaccines. It wasnt religion that developed micro-surgery. It wasnt religion that figured out magnetic imaging. It wasnt religion that figured out where every single blood vessel is in the human body, or how to invade that space and make great mechanical adjustments the patient could heal. It wasnt religion that figured out how to treat cancers while they were still smaller than pinheads. It wasnt religion that developed anesthesia, or anti-psychotics, or pacemakers, or artificial heart valves. It isnt religion that continues to do all these things. It is centuries, centuries, of painstaking accumulation of knowledge at sciences hands, using the methodology that is unique to science. And yet, every time medicine saves somebody, it is described as a miracle, as if it wasnt also the hypothetical Gods doing that the patient got sick in the first place. I am not at all saying that faith doesnt have a place. It does. The patient is helpless in the face of all this insult to the body; the patient needs something to believe in, something to encourage the organisms capacity to fight, and religion fits in just fine, right there. It is also helpful for the family, both before and after, during the recovery period. But take away religion, and the survival rate will still be almost the same. Take away medical science, and we go back to frantic chanting at an unknowable God while the patient expires for lack of a simple outpatient procedure.
Posted on: Sun, 18 May 2014 14:25:03 +0000