Faith: Under the Microscope Again

          More and more I become disappointed with some of the things I see on a popular networking site. A good, long-time friend was recently talking about how her young daughter was to have a minor surgery to have some lymphoid tissue, aka, "tonsils", removed from the throat. While I don't know the specifics..e.g..why the tonsils needed to come out, I can make an educated guess that, since said tissue is prone to infection/inflammation, aka, "tonsillitis", surgical removal was recommended.  I had my tonsils successfully removed at age 3 or 4. So much for the "perfect human body" that the "Perfect Creator" created, eh? But that's for another discussion. For now, I want to focus on a paragraph-long written "prayer", but not because this person wrote the prayer, but because of what was not mentioned in the prayer. But first, it is perfectly natural for parents to do whatever it takes to give them comfort when it comes to their kids. If one is raised in a religious household, chances are, one will pray for whichever "God" they believe in to watch over their kids. Fine; no problem. The part that kind of sticks in my craw is when the doctors are not mentioned. There's "God (this)"; "Lord (that)", but the people who go to school for 8 years or more to learn how to treat and many times save these people's children's lives? These people don't even get considered in part of the equation, and if they do, it's "God" working through them. Well, no, actually it's not. If "God" was working through people to save other people, then we could yank a third grader out of class, dress them in scrubs, march them into an open heart surgery in progress, say a "prayer", and the child could save the patient by "God" working through them. But that - a true "miracle", by the way - will never happen and there's a good reason that this will never happen.

While "faith" can be good for providing comfort to people, it has its draw-backs, too, and one of those is that the people who are actually, physically present and doing the work, are overlooked. In extreme cases, people put their "faith" in "faith healers" and other quack-science alternatives. In even more extreme cases, people put their "faith" in "God", exclusively. IOW, they opt out of any other medical treatment, taking the position, "If God doesn't heal my son/daughter, then it wasn't meant to be and I accept God's Will". The latter example of "faith" is appalling and it amounts to homicide in cases where the subject dies. And IMO, the parent(s) should be charged accordingly.

Time and time again when people are healed, the proven(key) common denominator is hands-on, physical treatments often times in conjunction with proven(again, key) modern medicine. There is not one scrap of objective evidence that unseen forces are at work.