actually faith in a fairy tale hurts millions of people every day. How many cures might we have found if zealots who believe in bizarre ancient mythology weren’t able to obstruct scientific research? How many lives would be saved if we would just distribute simple condoms in places like Africa? So yes your religion does kill people every day …
For the record, the Catholic Church has done more to foster medicine and science than any other faith. More people are treated at Catholic Hospitals around the world than any other kind. Can you show me one example of Catholic teaching preventing someone from being treated or cured? Say within the last 100 years, when claims can be verified
Jesus Christ commissioned all Christians to spread the word. Your ultimate salvation is in his hands regardless of weather or not you convert/join/come to his church/The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church… Why not avail yourself of your best chance of that salvation as it were. As for your statement of your faith hurting no one, you might want to check with those whose faith or lack there of that you have influenced… I wish you pardon and peace whatever your choice, because it is truly your choice. At least you won’t have to say no one attemped to inform…
Your statement can hardly be supported by the facts. Catholic hospitals are revenue generating institutions (if they weren’t there private hospitals would fill in the void). As far as fostering medicine and science … that’s ridiculous.
Do you have any sources for your claims? Most of the Catholic hospitals that I know of are not “revenue generating institutions”. Bon Secours in Baltimore is a perfect example. It is constantly in the red. It is in a community where no other hospital wants to be. Most of the people it serves can not pay for its services. Many actual Catholic hospitals (not those that are Catholic in name only) serve the poorest of the poor that are refused treatment at other hospitals.
The Catholic church has no problem with stem cell research. Adult stem cell research has proven very helpful and actually leading to cures. It only has a problem with embryonic stem cell research. Embryonic stem cell research has provided nothing.
this is not categorically true. All of the Catholic hospitals I know about make plenty of money and serve affluent populations (particularly in NY, where it’s the protestant hospitals who generally serve the poor blacks in Harlem, while the Catholic hospitals are in Queens, Long Island, and upstate serving middle and upper class populations).
of course it hasn’t produced anything … it’s been banned for the last eight years?
Absolutism (aka faith) based in ignorance has always brought forth the dangerous conflicts in the world. It matters to me because I share this planet with you as well as with everyone else and it is ALL of our responsibility to not settle FOR any kind of ignorance, mislabeling it as THE Truth; MYSELF INCLUDED.
I don’t pretend to know the facts, but those data aren’t really germane. A non-profit hospital doesn’t have magical healing abilities that a revenue-generating hospital lacks, or do more good by dint of being non-profit.
I’m pretty sure you’ll find that it’s never been banned. True, it hasn’t been FEDERALLY FUNDED for the last eight years. The government has never sent me a check to drink beer, but it doesn’t mean that it’s banned me from doing so. (Still, I think I know what my next letter to my congressman will be about.)
Of course you have not provided any proof as to whether they are money makers or not. Just because they may be in what you can an affluent area doesn’t mean anything. Bon Secours in Baltimore is in an extremly poor area and is always in the red, but there are other Bon Secours hospitals that aren’t, money that is made in the wealthier areas is use to fund the hospitals in the poor areas. Unless you have facts about the hospitals you cannot claim anything.
Common misconception fueled by the media. Stem cell research both embryonic and adult stem cell research hasn’t been banned. It has only been the FEDERAL FUNDING of embryonic stem cell research. Private institutions and institutions funded by state funding have been doing it all along. Also there have been countries throughout the world doing research and the only thing they have produced so far is cancer, not cancer treatments, cancer.
If you present as an Emergency admission, American hospitals must treat patients as specified under EMTALA (Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act) regardless of whether one can or can not pay upon admission. For those who do not funds and/or insurance, MOST AMERICAN hospitals will do everything in their power not only to lower the costs, but also to work out a VERY reasonable payment arrangement. I have even heard that the hospitals will not hand over the names of patients to credit agencies so long as the former patient is making SOME kind of an attempt to settle the balance; $5/month is considered such an attempt. So, your biased opinion is obscuring you from seeing the Truth, as you have just shown with the false connotation that hospitals refuse treatment to the poorest of the poor.
Are you in the health care field at all? Because what you are saying doesn’t happen in reality. Yes every hospital is required to deal with the emergency cases where someone is dying or in very bad health, but what about non-emergency care. When a person that can’t pay anything comes in and the current funds for those that can’t pay are dried up many non-religious hospitals will do the minimum possible and put the people back on the street. Catholic hospitals will serve anyone that walks in off the street, regardless of the ability to pay. I know this in reality because my wife has worked both in the Catholic hospital system and non-Catholic hospital systems. She has seen it in person.
Typical method used by people that follow the “liberal” mentality, dodge the questions and redirect to another point, then come back and say why didn’t you address this point.
In Alabama, this is called a certain kind of act. The first word for it is chicken
Ralph,
NOTHING?
First I’m well aware of the distinction between government research dollars and private investment dollars (and that the latter group has not been banned from embryonic stem cell research). The problem is that government research dollars, spear heads investment in this area (since government cooperates with private research institutions such as universities). Be that as it may you’re wrong to assume no progress has been made with embryonic stem cell research … moreover, comparing this research to Nazi atrocities is so logically fallacious and over the top it really dilutes your credibility (it’s an unproductive, emotive, and irrational tactic).
Well, you already do distribute simple condoms in many African countries, and HIV infection rate isn’t going down in those countries. But in Uganda, with their ABC approach, it IS going down.
I’m gonna be real honest … I am not obligated to love every creature on earth (as Christians obligate themselves to do). I’m pragmatic & therefore I think we should leave Africa to its own devices. If they can rise and become productive they live, if not they die. Either that or we keep flushing resources down the toilet in the never ending wish that we can deliver these people from their desperate (mostly self-created) circumstances.
Please elaborate this statement - I find it confusing
