The way you describe it in the bolded part, it seems that prayer is a selfish activity. Even if it weren't it seems little redundant to me to be trying to communicate with a god that already knows everything that you think. It seems positively arrogant, futile or misguided to be attempting to intervene in an affair and influence god's actions.

I am not accusing you MB, just my perception.... Your view of religious people seems like discrimination. There are good and bad theist doctors. Likewise there are good and bad atheist doctors. If I was seriously ill and I had to choose a doctor I would choose one that was exceptional in their field and would not care about their personal religious beliefs.

Yes, this does provide insight into your perspective. This is the problem with lumping together all religious beliefs. It is easy to disparage all religious beliefs without actually looking closely at any of them.

Given that health outcomes often depend on the patient's outlook, in situations where the act of praying with someone creates a change in that person's outlook, then it has an effect (either positive or negative). You may argue that this can be achieved in other ways and I won't disagree with you.

At this point, it then becomes a matter of trying to assign agency to the change, which is a difficult thing to do. Did God change that person's mental picture or did the individual? These are not questions that can be answered with our current level of knowledge of the human brain, and in some sense may be completely unanswerable.

You're welcome to your irrational fears.

So you are open to the idea that prayer might actually do something?

Count me as one non-believer who agrees with you 100%. No reason to be a nasty **** to somebody who's trying to be nice to me.

This may be reasonable but it wasn't the claim being made.

This was.

In a relationship, do you always think it's selfish for one person to want to be present with another person? If so, then you're internally consistent and have a weird conception of human relationships. If not, then this accusation is just silly.

It can seem this way to you, but you've demonstrated in multiple places that you don't really understand religion in the first place (just how you *think* religion should be practiced: "I simply don't find it credible that any religious texts are written by people who didn't intend them to taken at face value and followed literally.").

MB: You are thinking purely in terms of conveying or receiving information, but that's not what I have in mind. "Communication" isn't even quite right, unless you broaden your understanding of it a little.

The actual experience of prayer -- according to me but also according to a vast assortment of writers from numerous traditions going back many centuries -- is one in which the "self" (in the way you referring to it) shrinks. To actually be in the presence of God is not possible in pride or selfishness, but only awe and humility.

Here is one of my favorite authors on prayer, Isaac the Syrian, a 7th century monk and Bishop of Ninevah:

I had kind of hoped that MB would reflect upon the response to that post and consider whether or not his approach to religion was helpful. It seems not.

If one receives medical treatment in an Islamic country chances are the doctor will be Muslim. I don't see any reason to think a Muslim will provide inferior treatment compared to a secular person.

All good doctors, atheist or religious, will do everything in their power to provide the best medical care. This is what distinguishes good doctors from bad doctors. I fail to see the connection between poor medical care and religious beliefs.

Probably the most famous Christian prayer is the Lord's Prayer, which begins like this:

"Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth, as it is in heaven."

Kind of sounds exactly like what you say Christians surely aren't doing when they pray. Notice that this prayer was given by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (probably the most well-known Christian sermon) as a prototype of how to pray.

The one distinction I was able to find was that theist doctors would be less likely to hasten death.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-11083891

Though an alternative take presented by the Guardian in a UK a generally creditable paper as

"Religious doctors less likely to ask your opinion on treatment option when you're terminally ill".

In either case this would be a concern to me as I would hope that I would have my life ended more quickly in certain conditions but otherwise there is no reported difference in the medical care patients in the UK receive based on the religious views of the doctor.

There was a case where a doctor was reprimanded for pressing his beliefs and I would have concerns about doctors with strong religious convictions occupying referential positions regarding abortion but I'd expect these to be reported and acted on

The report also suggests that doctors identifying as very or extremely religious far higher than the general population 12% as opposed to 6%, this may be influenced by the number of south east asian doctors practicing in the UK.

Unsurprisingly I can find no evidence that theist surgeons are less successful than atheist surgeons.

A few people have already commented on prayer and I agree with a lot of it. One thing I will add is - The bible says that God does not will that anyone perish. With that in mind, why did Jesus send the twelve out to make disciples of their own? Why did Paul go to great lengths to spread the message of Christ? It is Gods will, after all, so by your logic, they don't need to do anything.

The thing I would emphasize the most is that prayer is more than just petitioning God for things (petition-prayer). Well named described this in one of his first posts itt.

Of course that would worry me, it should worry anyone. If I ask the doctor a medical question and he answers me by ignoring my question and replacing it with religious terminology, I would be worried because it is extremely unprofessional. If the same doctor would treat me professionally, and at the end add "Insha'Allah'" then it would not phase me.

It's your right to view religion as harmful, a lot of it is. It is also your right to refuse prayer and find it an irksome request. I can even concede that is your right to refuse a Christian doctor.

I disagree with your general view on religion. I believe you've constructed a strawman of sorts, to yourself, which you're constantly knocking down. It's easy to knock down this caricature, and you're sometimes right in doing so, but there are other times when you're not. You think religion is bad across the board, even just in principle, but you should be aware that this is just your opinion, and having such an opinion can be just as dangerous in it's own right.

I'll name one viewpoint as to give you a point of reference. There are some conservatives who don't believe in God, per se, but still support religion because they admire the values of the system. The principles of doing good to your neighbour, not stealing and being honest and so forth. This is not to say that the only way to have these values is to be a Christian, that's not the idea, but conversely, to knock the system that does support these values, can be seen as counter-productive. Some people even believe that religion was setup in the first place, to try to promote a more civilized society. That the point of it was for well-being. Anyway, just food for thought for you, I think you know by now where I stand, and I hope you know that I respect you.

Well, if I knew nothing else regarding two doctors except that one was a theist and one was an atheist, then I choose the one which is an atheist. I'd see it as giving slightly higher odds of favoring rational inquiry and empirical evidence.

Profiling like that carries risk of course, so the key element is "when we know nothing else". I don't think it necessarily a very good criteria.

I'll admit that the Christian fundie crowd typically present in Norwegian med schools have likely skewed my bias. I don't like them. So I might be overly hung up on anecdotal evidence.

I would worry if I was subject to health care where the only thing I knew of the doctors was their theism or lack of ut granted our previous discussion of hypotheticals I'll assume. I would worry if I was prepared to infer from the doctors theism or lack of some favouring of rational enquiry and empirical evidence.

In fact if I valued empirical inquiry so much I'd check to see whether there was any evidence of theist surgeons being less successful than atheist ones.

I think this is pretty reasonable, even without defending it with the claim about empirical evidence. If you are vehemently against God, it stands to reason that you want to associate with like-minded people, and this would apply to a hospital scenario. Not everyone thinks this way, but it's certainly not a fault if you do.

Reminds me of Dawkins making the statement about Hitchens when he was nearing the end of his life, that he was proof for atheists in foxholes. Surely Hitchens would have taken offence to Christians undermining his beliefs with prayer, I don't think it's an unreasonable request to have a doctor who shares your values.

This is very different from filing a complaint if someone does ask you if you want prayer, though, night and day.

Tame doesn't seem to be concerned with who he associates with but about the competence of the doctor. Making assumptions of a doctor/surgeons competence based upon their religious beliefs is possibly a fault and one that could be affirmed or denied by some of that empirical evidence he seems to value.

Yeah, I took some liberties with his answer, but the two aren't exactly unrelated. If you believe someone is out to lunch with their world-view, you likely would prefer those who see it your way in many scenarios.

I'd have to think if someone has their medical license at the hospital I entrust myself at, that makes them competent enough.

If I thought that I would be better served in some hypothetical situation by an atheist doctor than I would by a theist doctor it seems that I should seek to discover a doctors beliefs when making my choice of doctor now. I could then evaluate it along with other relevant criteria when choosing my doc.

As neither MB or tame has suggested they have done this I wonder just how pertinent they actually consider it.

It also seems that I could investigate whether my assumptions are correct and whether there are any difference between the success rates of theist and atheist doctors.

How can he be vehemently against god, if he doesnt believe he exists?

Surgeons are not representative of doctors, as their medical credibility have already been selected for on basis of merit and results.

Your first paragraphs do not really merit a reply. I have never said anything about a health system where only theism and atheism are known variables about a person, and paraphrasing that I want this is relatively daft when I have already stated I think it is a poor criteria for deciding a person's competency.

But when nothing else is known, then yes... I think odds are the atheist is the better doctor. She could still be the worst one.

Little girls can love unicorns even if they know they don't exist. They're not loving the creatures themselves, but the idea of the creature.

That's true, if one really values a doctor's beliefs as highly as his competence, or believes the two are related, they should do their due diligence. Although T_D did concede that he doesn't like the particular Christians in the field where he is, which is reasonable enough for him to want to avoid them. I wouldn't blame him for avoiding Christians, so long as he doesn't cry abuse when one of them slips through the cracks and says "God bless you".

In theory they shouldn't, but that's not what I see, including here. Plus it's also a way of saying that they are against religion, which is what the idea of God stands for. Not to pick on MB, but he has said in the past that he would prefer that God not exist. That is someone who is pretty adamantly against God, imo. Not sure if he still believes that or not, maybe he's evolved his view.

Witch doctor?

Fwiw if i was a women the which doctor would you choose might be more relevant, birth control, abortion.. Some doctors have refused to do certain things because of their religious beliefs.

You are going to need to distinguish between a doctors and surgeons credibility for me here. I would also suggest that serious illness often requires surgery. If not it would require some specialisation equivalent to the training a surgeon receives in addition to their general medical training.

The first sentence was poking fun at the hypothetical.

Your claim that the atheist doctor is likelier to be the better doctor though is something that could be resolved by empirical evidence, given that you seem keen to stress the importance of empirical evidence it is remiss of you not to check whether atheist doctors are indeed more successful than theist doctors and so use that to inform your choice of doctor.

Imagine that you know of two doctors they are similarly qualified and experienced, you would still choose the atheist on the basis they are likelier to be favour rational inquiry and empirical evidence? If so then you are favouring the atheist doctor in the presence of other information, if not then why not?

If atheists are likely to be better doctors why is it a poor criteria to judge a doctor on?

If something is going to be relevant in the absence of other information it should also be relevant in the presence of it. It will just be weighted differently. Your assumption that the odds are the atheist is likely to be a better doctor should actually manifest in atheists being better doctors.

I should ask you to show me something that indicates this is true.