Do Med Students Believe In God

[Kevin Baker]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

Then you should be pissed at our forefathers who used Judeo-Christian principles to enforce the expression of free speech and freedom of religion and liberty and all that religious nonsense that pretty much developed the Constitution.

Your point? This seems like a straw man to me but I'm willing to be enlightened. Any philosophy can contribute some positive aspects to society. Taking the best aspects of different religions and incorporating them into a single doctrine doesn't mean we need to use fear of FSM to pass laws and dictate medical ethics.

As an aside, the founders, in general, were strong deists, not theists. It is true that many, but not all, wanted religion to play a large role in moral life and wanted churches to be a powerful force in local politics, but none wanted a single religion to dictate the law of the land.

 

[Rollo]

Your point? This seems like a straw man to me but I'm willing to be enlightened. Any philosophy can contribute some positive aspects to society. Taking the best aspects of different religions and incorporating them into a single doctrine doesn't mean we need to use fear of FSM to pass laws and dictate medical ethics.

As an aside, the founders, in general, were strong deists, not theists. It is true that many, but not all, wanted religion to play a large role in moral life and wanted churches to be a powerful force in local politics, but none wanted a single religion to dictate the law of the land.

My point is that many social, moral, and yes medical ethics are dictated by individuals who hold strong beliefs to a single philosophical thought, i.e. religion. And for you to be pissed at your classmates who want to dictate their life and their career by those parameters is not only unfair, but borderline discriminatory towards your classmates.

Just like I wouldn't be pissed at you for using social/darwinian philosophies to dictate medical ethics, you shouldn't be pissed at me for using Christian philosophies to dictate medical ethics.

 

[Kevin Baker]

My point is that many social, moral, and yes medical ethics are dictated by individuals who hold strong beliefs to a single philosophical thought, i.e. religion. And for you to be pissed at your classmates who want to dictate their life and their career by those parameters is not only unfair, but borderline discriminatory towards your classmates.

Just like I wouldn't be pissed at you for using social/darwinian philosophies to dictate medical ethics, you shouldn't be pissed at me for using Christian philosophies to dictate medical ethics.

Gotcha. I think we have a simple misunderstanding. I am annoyed that some my classmates want to use their own religious beliefs to restrict me from doing certain medical procedures (e.g. banning medically assisted suicide). I'd never force a physician to do or not do a procedure if it conflicted with their core beliefs. I expect them to have that same respect towards me.

 

[Rollo]

Gotcha. I think we have a simple misunderstanding. I am annoyed that some my classmates want to use their own religious beliefs to restrict me from doing certain medical procedures (e.g. banning medically assisted suicide). I'd never force a physician to do or not do a procedure if it conflicted with their core beliefs. I expect them to have that same respect towards me.

I understand. It's similar to elective abortions. I don't understand, morally and intellectually, why elective abortion is appropriate but I also know that so long as it's legal many patients and physicians won't have a problem with it, and as such, I can't force them to not do it. Sure, I'll go as far as to oppose that law but that's different from me going up to every physician who does the procedure and telling them that they're worthless and sinners or whatever.

"How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your eye?"

 

[Kevin Baker]

I understand. It's similar to elective abortions. I don't understand, morally and intellectually, why elective abortion is appropriate but I also know that so long as it's legal many patients and physicians won't have a problem with it, and as such, I can't force them to not do it. Sure, I'll go as far as to oppose that law but that's different from me going up to every physician who does the procedure and telling them that they're worthless and sinners or whatever.

"How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your eye?"

I think we're at an impasse then. If I understand correctly, you want to use a law (anti-abortion laws in this example) to dictate your own set of morals.

I can't support that and strongly believe we should defer to individual freedom and letting both physicians and patients choose their own set of morals.

Not only does legislating morality not work, as illustrated by the failure of the drug war/prohibition, continued systemic racism in this country decades after the civil rights movement, back alley abortions before legalized abortion, the existence of homosexual relationships even when sodomy was illegal, etc., but it drives these "amoral" people into the fray and prevents them from getting expert medical care where applicable.

It is one thing to legislate morality when an act is clearly against society's standards. Murder is wrong as it takes away a life and we accept that we have a right to life. Theft is wrong as we all accept a right to property. But with something as gray as abortion and medically assisted suicide, where there are rational arguments to be made on either side, I think your position is a dangerous one to take.

 

[Rollo]

I think we're at an impasse then. If I understand correctly, you want to use a law (anti-abortion laws in this example) to dictate your own set of morals.

I can't support that and strongly believe we should defer to individual freedom and letting both physicians and patients choose their own set of morals.

Not only does legislating morality not work, as illustrated by the failure of the drug war/prohibition, continued systemic racism in this country decades after the civil rights movement, back alley abortions before legalized abortion, the existence of homosexual relationships even when sodomy was illegal, etc., but it drives these "amoral" people into the fray and prevents them from getting expert medical care where applicable.

It is one thing to legislate morality when an act is clearly against society's standards. Murder is wrong as it takes away a life and we accept that we have a right to life. Theft is wrong as we all accept a right to property. But with something as gray as abortion and medically assisted suicide, where there are rational arguments to be made on either side, I think your position is a dangerous one to take.

There it is. Without taking this thread off-topic, conception is when life begins. Hence, abortion is murder.

 

[Kevin Baker]

There it is. Without taking this thread off-topic, conception is when life begins. Hence, abortion is murder.

Come on! You're not that closed minded, are you? Maybe life does begin at conception. Maybe not. We as society have not determined that yet. It's a gray area.

 

[Rollo]

Come on! You're not that closed minded, are you? Maybe life does begin at conception. Maybe not. We as society have not determined that yet. It's a gray area.

Medically, it does. You're right, societally, we can't make up our minds.

 

[Sesom]

Society (those religious or not) tend to think that people who hear god are crazy or schizophrenic...

Yet a lot of people supposedly are talking to god through prayer.

Maybe we should medicate them?

 

[munchymanRX]

It's impossible to settle a lot of the debate going on in this thread, because an argument from faith cannot be rebutted against with reason. Faith by its very nature requires a suspension of reason, so you're really barking up the wrong tree if you're planning on convincing a staunch believer that god doesn't exist.

Personally, I see god as an abstraction created by a scared and lonely human species searching for meaning within a universe that seems largely indifferent to its existence. "God" has meant many different things throughout history, and across cultures the notion of a divine entity or entities takes countless forms-the vast majority of which predate the now-popular Abrahamic faiths by thousands of years.

If you want to know why the Trinity, Allah, and Yaweh are so popular today, you can thank the horrible living conditions for most people living on feudal fiefdoms during the middle ages as well as the schizoid nature of world politics at the time. Like someone said earlier, the Abrahamic religions were simply in the right place at the right time to be used as a tool by the papacy and others to establish a modicum of law and order throughout their domains. If you have a bunch of peasants thinking that the way into paradise is to not to revolt against your lord and be a productive citizen, you won't have to deal with huge uprisings all the time (note that I said all the time-uprisings were common during the middle ages, although few reached the level of being able to destabilize an entire country). Eventually, these societies grew out of the monarchy as well as the political control of the church, but the influence of the church's philosophies and morals endured in a variety of forms. The Reformation produced Protestantism, politics produced the Anglican church, and the Great Awakenings in the 19th and 20th centuries were responsible for the breed of American christian fundamentalism we still see today.

My questions to those who defend the existence of a divine creator would therefore be the following:

1) What is so threatening about not believing in a divine creator? If we're here by accident, isn't it more useful to accept that and use the time to study the beautiful universe that we happen to exist in? Dogmatic belief can blind us to some of the intricacies of our natural world-is it so difficult to suspend such faith?

2) What makes your religion or your god the 'one true god' or whatever phrase du jour you prefer? What about the billions of people currently who do not share these beliefs in the slightest and the billions more who existed before modern day religions were even thought of? How is your belief system any more valid than theirs?

3) What is god? I'm not asking what he/she/it means to you, I'm asking you to tell me what it is, for if something is known to exist, you should be able to describe it in concrete terms.

Let me make it clear that I'm not looking to prove anybody wrong or right here. In keeping with my statements earlier, I simply want to discuss how the faithful among us mentally organize their beliefs. Throughout history, religion and spirituality have been pretty important parts of being human, and it's something worth exploring.

 

[Palam]

After 2 years of medical school my belief in God has been strengthened.

When you see how complex the human body is and how even a minute variation in a biochemical pathway can alter the outcome, chance evolution becomes (for me) unlikely.

Call me overly critical and even mean but this thinking seems short-sighted and emotionally based.

 

[Rollo]

It's impossible to settle a lot of the debate going on in this thread, because an argument from faith cannot be rebutted against with reason. Faith by its very nature requires a suspension of reason, so you're really barking up the wrong tree if you're planning on convincing a staunch believer that god doesn't exist.
[...]
1) What is so threatening about not believing in a divine creator? If we're here by accident, isn't it more useful to accept that and use the time to study the beautiful universe that we happen to exist in? Dogmatic belief can blind us to some of the intricacies of our natural world-is it so difficult to suspend such faith?

2) What makes your religion or your god the 'one true god' or whatever phrase du jour you prefer? What about the billions of people currently who do not share these beliefs in the slightest and the billions more who existed before modern day religions were even thought of? How is your belief system any more valid than theirs?

3) What is god? I'm not asking what he/she/it means to you, I'm asking you to tell me what it is, for if something is known to exist, you should be able to describe it in concrete terms.

Let me make it clear that I'm not looking to prove anybody wrong or right here. In keeping with my statements earlier, I simply want to discuss how the faithful among us mentally organize their beliefs. Throughout history, religion and spirituality have been pretty important parts of being human, and it's something worth exploring.

First off, there are several definitions of faith. Faith, in Christian sense at least, is the ability to trust someone i.e. God that He works for the good of those who love Him in all things. So no, faith does not require suspension of reason, in fact it calls to use reason to understand that this beautiful universe and all its intricacies wasn't created by just time + matter + chance. I will argue that those who do believe in the time + matter + chance dogma have the blind faith that require suspension of reason because ultimately, these people ASSUME that the theories and their scientific deductions are accurate.

Second, I believe I answered your first question above. And honestly, there is nothing dangerous about NOT believing if you're so inclined. Because as C S Lewis puts it, "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell."

Third, there is wide variety of historical, architectural, metaphysical and philosophical proof that proves Bible right more often than not. The answer you're looking for to your second question is quite lengthy and frankly, it's something that I'm still discovering and I believe will continue to discover for the rest of my life as part of "God's revelation of His will to me".

Finally, God is good. God is love, joy, hope, and peace. He is trinatarian in that He resides in heaven, He came down in flesh as a human being like you and I, and He is with us in Spirit working in people's lives whether they may or may not know it. God is complex, yet He is also simple. God is intimidating, yet He is also comforting. God disciplines, yet He freely loves. God is within those who love Him, yet He is also very far apart. God is a paradox that as soon as we think we understand Him, we trip up and realize that we are not supposed to have all the answers.

So there hopefully, I was able to answer your questions in such a way that it displayed how I organize my beliefs. I tried my best not to come off as a scared, lonely human being who is schizophrenic and philosophically uneducated and poor.

 

[ksmajmudar]

Third, there is wide variety of historical, architectural, metaphysical and philosophical proof that proves Bible right more often than not.

I would like to hear you elaborate on this.

 

[Rollo]

I would like to hear you elaborate on this.

The intellectual exercise in exploring this topic is beyond the scope of this thread. I suggest you do some research on your own because this topic is too extensive for me to sit here and type up couple paragraphs on it. It wouldn't do justice to the comprehensive and complex nature of the issue.

 

[tehdude]

The intellectual exercise in exploring this topic is beyond the scope of this thread. I suggest you do some research on your own because this topic is too extensive for me to sit here and type up couple paragraphs on it. It wouldn't do justice to the comprehensive and complex nature of the issue.

In other words, you're just talking out of your ass.

 

[Rollo]

In other words, you're just talking out of your ass.

Nice to have a civil conversation, isn't it? 🙂

 

[Arrode]

I voted the option about it being made up by people, though my own views are agnostic atheism. I believe it's highly unlikely there is a higher power, but, to be humble, I can't say without absolute certainty there isn't since I don't know and that would come off pompous. I don't believe there is any proof of higher power, but I also haven't been presented with every bit of evidence and neither has anyone else.

Religion itself IS made up by humans as shown by the hundreds of religions that exist around the world today. All of them cannot be right. That is not to say there isn't a higher power somewhere, but I find the great diversity in societal dieties evidence that there isn't one.

I think South Park said it best in their episode about the agnostic family and their code:

"We cannot know with certainty if god or Christ exists. They COULD. Then again there COULD be a giant reptilian bird in charge of everything. Can we be CERTAIN there isn't? NO, so it's pointless to talk about it."