So…Do you believe God has intervened to revive patients that doctors ruled were hopeless cases? 63% of the respondents in Eastern Iowa say “yes”. Maybe we can disillusion them.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Would you believe it, if you clear cookies, you can vote again. What’s even more surprising, God doesn’t intervene to stop you!
Well of course he did. If he never did, then what would we write inspirational articles about?
No’s are up to over 46%, only 601 votes.
How disappointing. I thought this was going to be an update on your mucus and ooze situation, or however you so poetically put it a few posts back.
Hm. Same poll different website. Yesterday I was sent a poll to a MM website with “should we keep ‘in god we trust’ on US currency”. I thought about forwarding it to you. Our side was loosing sorely .. but you probably had enough mail to go through already.
Of course, of that percentage, how many would be willing to put their money where their faith is and refuse medical treatment? Only a few religious people are that crazy. Which is too bad; if faith were more complete, it would wipe itself out.
Heck, maybe we should be encouraging people towards GREATER fundamentalism. I would probably be easier than getting them to act rationally, and eventually they’d kill themselves off. Then again, I’m sure they’d get us too.
The Noes are ahead by 55% – 45%: sanity is restored!
— No’s are at 64% as of 9:43 CDT.
The ‘No’ vote is up to 60% now.
I don’t have to clear cookies, I have five browsers.
I wonder what the answer would be for:
Do you believe God has intervened to regrow an amputee’s limb?
Ouch, the logic! It burns!
Let’s combine this with the HHS thread, and give doctors the right to withhold treatment from the religious. We’re very worried about rising health care costs in this country, and it appears that 63% of us are using those valuable resources for no good reason, seeing as how their sky-daddy can provide free-of-charge health care. Then we’ll have more resources available for those poor women that the religious doctors won’t treat.
The discussion on this on the MSNBC website is full of Jesus-Pollyanna trolls. I tried to ask questions about why someone would “expect a miracle” while also demanding the most advanced technological treatment (i.e., respirator for a brain-dead patient, etc.), and tried to raise the issue of HIV denialism and superTB. I tried, but all I got was some commenter flipping out and others blissfully telling me to accept Jesus.
There’s just no talking to these fanatics!
In fact, why on earth do the religious want to recover when they are considered by the medical professionals to be “hopeless cases”? Isn’t the WHOLE POINT to die and go to heaven? I’ve never really understood why death is so traumatic for those who think that death and rebirth is the ultimate goal…
Being from, excuse me, Iowa, this is really embarrassing. My sincere apologies to all intelligent life in the cosmos.
*sigh*
That is so satisfying! Now 67% say no. Iowa is coming around after all.
Funny this. I was flipping through the channels this morning and came upon this program that was showing this woman’s testimonial. Apparently she, or her doctor, had found a lump in her breast, she called it a tumor, but I never saw that that was confirmed. So of course the first thing she does is to go home and pray, which is all fine and well as I’m sure that was devastating news. The problem (in my mind) was that she wasn’t just asking for comfort during this difficult time, she was asking god to cure her. What happened? Why low and behold, she goes to see her doctor a few days after all this praying, and the lump is gone!! “No tumor, doctor” she says with a smug smile. She then describes the doctor taking her hands in his, grazing into her eyes, and saying “If all of my patience had faith like yours, my job would be much easier.”
Bleh. I couldn’t watch anymore. I could care less that people are stupid or crazy enough to think that this type of story has any basis in reality. What bothers me is that this is on the TV where people like me might stumble upon it and choke on their cheerios.
(In all honesty, I was eating a waffle, which stopped tasting good)
Perhaps we should accept these “miracles” and take them as proof that God can’t stand fundies either.
I remember when I was hit by a car and left for dead…
The doctors and nurses all said that it was a miracle I wasn’t dead. It was a miracle that the hemorrhaging in brain stopped without surgery. It was a miracle that I could walk again. And lots of other things attributed to god.
Yet the hospital had no problem charging me a large sum of money for the work their “god” did.
Well, that leaves me wondering why the Great Skyfairy let my friend and neighbour die from a brain tumour just last month.
Oh, wait, Skyfairy decided to TEST the rest of us by making one family and one man suffer through a horribly debilitating disease. Great job, Skyfairy. I believe in you EVEN less.
68% no.
But isn’t the point of life to be miserable and die, and then go to heaven?
These polls by the mainstream media on what people believe God did or didn’t do are getting more and more stupid. Now this one is “sponsored” by Anne Kapler’s food and recipies.
Do people who work at the Gazette realise how ridiculous this is ? They probably don’t care, afterall they probably think their readers are really dumb.
There are good newspapers here in Iowa. This is not one of them.
Maybe if god wasn’t such a douche bag in the first place to put you in such a position. What a dick! Gets all the praise none of the scorn.
Christians are a special breed of death-cultist: They will do everything they can to stay alive – but are more than happy to hasten the death of non-believers.
Better poll question:
Are doctors always right when proclaiming someone’s case “hopeless”?
You have to love the religious mentality.
When someone survives who was expected to die, it was all down to god and not the medics. If a patient dies then blame the medics and absolve god.
No – 78%
Now we’re talking!
Matt Penfold @#26
Growing up I was around fundies. The BEST example I have of their hypocritical logic is this.
They all pretty much think that when something bad happens to their neighbor – GOD must be punishing them.
When something bad happens to THEM – then GOD must be TESTING them.
This kind of selective perception is one of the hallmarks of the religiously deluded.They will pick anything they cant explain or understand,preferably something that had a positive outcome,and bang,must have been god who did it.
And if bad things happen they cant explain,then its either not gods fault,or its a test of faith.
This is all so silly,words fail…..
im an eastern iowan, so im glad that this poll has been thoroughly crashed
@ #11
As an atheist doc, I was thinking the same thing. I can’t see how I can get away with it tho.
Seconding bonefish, being from Eastern Iowa myself, I apologize.
Ha! God is working another effin miracle – It’s up to 81%!
Under “national” news :
– Signs of pullback by Russian forces in Georgia
– Bhutto widower proposed for Pakistan president
That’s why, in Iowa City, we call the Gazette, “The shitty paper”. Unfortunately, the Press-Citizen is the “really shitty paper”. “The Little Hawk” (Iowa City High’s formerly nationally renown paper” has even sloughed off the past few years.
What I am saying is, the educated Eastern Iowans get their news ONLINE.
Luckily I was not drinking any hot beverages when I read this or I may have been typing with scorched nasal passages right now.
I worry less that “people” believe this kind of thing than that a medically trained doctor seems to. I can only hope that he was only doing his best to comfort and to avoid disillusioning his patient.
Time and time and time again I have had people in my ER who thought they were going to die so they had their equally idiotic relatives from the shallow end of their overly chlorinated gene pool praying and chanting and drooling and generally fucking with the medical process and when we utilized science (it works, bitches) to save their utterly worthless, overbreeding asses, they all sit around like a bunch of Mortimer Snerds going, “Praise Jesus, it’s a miracle!”
And people wonder why I’m so disgusted with the fact that these people are allowed to breed…
Just once, just once, I’d love to see these chickenshit idiots stay home for themselves and not seek treatment like they force their children to do…then we’ll see what miracles will be wrought…
A doctor says to his patient “I’m sorry, I cannot save you. You are going to die.”
God intervenes and the patient doesn’t die.
A doctor says to his patient, “You are going to live” but the patient dies anyway.
Is this also god’s intervention?
Actually 82% say NO and 17% say yes. So there are more sensible people than first thought.
As a healthcare provider I have this issue before me all the time. My issue is knowing when to step back and let god or whatever force take the patient away. The problem with most of my ilk is that they don’t know how to let people die. The Hipocratic Oath says “first do no harm”. That applies to the end of life as well. When we “play god” we forget that the natural end to life is death. Face it, the minute we are born we start to die. What’s all the fuss. If the patient or the family have strong beliefs, they should be excited for the loved one to pass. We (healthcare folk) try to forstall the process as long as possible. Ironically, those with a strong religious faith freak out and don’t want to let their loved one go to their “great reward’. So they impose upon us a “keep em alive as long as possible” demand, quality of life be damned. Some system of faith, eh? You can have it.
Bugger. I’m in east Iowa. Who knew there was so much credulity here?
Oh, wait, we nominated Huckabee.
*curls into a little ball, sobs softly.*
This seems relevant:
http://cectic.com/014.html
Thank you for voting. It made my day. :)
“Everyone wants to go to heaven, nobody’s in a hurry to get there.” -Old Irish saying
I am a medical sonographer (ultrasound technologist) and have, unfortunately, scanned hundreds of mortally abnormal fetuses. I have had to witness the grief of parents when they are faced with the mortality of their unborn baby. I know the vast majority of them have prayed for a miracle, have prayed with their pastors for a miracle and have often formed prayer networks to pray for a miracle that will cure their baby. It is always such a painful process to see that hope continuously distroyed after the abnormality is confirmed during the next ultrasound exam. This clinging to a god-given “miracle”, that, of course, can never come, is such a painful process for me and for them. I just hope they never ask me if I have ever witnessed a prayer miracle, if I have ever seen a fetus’s abnormalites become healed, because I would have to tell them the truth. After 20 years of practice I have never witnessed a miracle, that god has never chosen to heal an abnormal unborn baby and give it a chance at a life. What kind of a god would never answer a mother’s prayers?
It’s odd that this sentiment seems more common around my folks’ family farm in Eastern Iowa than it does here around the Iowa State campus half way across the state. Could there be a coincidence?
how about the ones he doesn’t interfere with… he just doesn’t like them..
Now that would be a miracle!
Why don’t we rephrase the question and see if we get a different answer?