The Great Physician(s)

The dis-oriented author is a born-again Christian (readers will find my testimony of salvation on my personal homepage). I recall an incident in college, a friend of mine said:

You're a Christian? You're too smart to believe all that stuff.

In the media today there is an arrogance and condescension to religion and people of faith. This same arrogance spills over into academia. So imagine the surprise of researchers at the University of Chicago’s MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics when they discovered that a majority of physicians be-live in God..

One of the study researchers, Dr. Farr Curlin said:

We were surprised to find that physicians were as religious as they apparently are... There’s certainly a deep-seated cultural idea that science and religion are at odds...

Apparently the study authors expected to find that doctors, given their scientific background will have a naturalistic rather than religious point of view.

The study authors point out that 83% of Americans believe in God, in the meantime 76% of physicians believe in God. In fact 55% state that their faith affects their practice of medicine. I tend to think that their practice affects their faith.

Curlin goes on to note that:

... while medicine is science-based, doctors differ from scientists who work primarily in a laboratory setting, and their direct contact with patients in life-and-death situations may explain the differing views ...

I am not sure why anyone found these results surprising. Physicians deal with real life in all its gory details. They experience or at least observe the full range of human emotions. From birth to death physicians are there. Physicians may announce the most joyful news or bring news of a loved one's death.

Given the issues that many physicians face, it is no surprise that most physicians realize that neither they nor science are God. If one's religious convictions are deep-seated they will have an effect on the way one lives. Personally I am comforted rather than concerned about going to a physician who realizes that he is not the final authority.