Christian theology teaches that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin. According to most theologians, it is the act of attributing the works of the Holy Spirit to the devil/Satan. Why then, are the religious so quick to blaspheme against humanity?
Demar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bill football team was recently in the news again for the jacket he wore at the Super Bowl. The specifics aren't really important here. The reaction is what I want to dive into. When Mr. Hamlin collapsed on the field in Cincinnati, Ohio. First responders were able to artificially keep him alive until they reached the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
Once at UCMC, a dozen different doctors worked tirelessly and diligently to save the young man's life. They were able to find the issue, it's cause, and treat it... to save his life and allow him to make a full recover being released from the hospital about two weeks later.
Yet, the response from people was to pray. That is fine, pray. No one will fault you for it, especially if you're not a medical professional or are not in a position to be of any assistance. The issue is when Mr. Hamlin did recover, and the credit for the recovery went to God. That is where my contention is. The credit did not go to the doctors, the first responders, not the NFL staff that immediately went into action, or the teams... but to God.
There could be some bias from me here (being born and raised in Cincinnati myself), but the doctors at the University of Cincinnati are some of the top medical practitioners in the US, and the medical center has one of the top rated cardiology units in the country, and Mr. Hamlin's issue was cardiactic. These doctors did the hard work, with some of them working twenty hour shifts for Mr. Hamlin's treatment. This is after spending around a decade and a half in med-school, pre-med, residency, and passing exams to become licensed medical doctors. The doctors are the ones who did the studying, the school work, the research, and then the actual practice of medicine to save Mr. Hamlin's life. Yet, it is God that gets the credit. We unduly attribute the work of actual people to that of the Holy Spirit... we have blasphemed against mankind and medical science!Moreover, we discredit the work and dedication of those doctors every time they do not get the credit for what they do. This needs to stop.
This needs to stop because it devalues humans and these fields of work that not just anyone can do. A person off the street can pray, can flip burgers at McDonald's, and can stock shelves at a target. They cannot however walk into a hospital and practice medicine because that takes hard work, education, practice, passion, and dedication. The same can be said of even other professionals. A philosopher couldn't do it, a theoretical physicist couldn't do it, and Walmart's CEO couldn't do it. I have an MBA and could even hope of doing it. If prayer is all it took, or prayer is what made able the doctors to do their work, then medical science wouldn't need doctors (medical science practitioners), all we would need is faith healers like televangelist preachers. It's not a coincidence that no one, and I mean no one, relies on prayer alone when it comes to medical care. Be it cancer or broken bones... no one leaves it up to God and prayers. This is entirely because if you had cancer, and all you did was pray, the cancer would kill you. When Mr. Hamlin collapsed on the football field in Cincinnati, if everyone only prayed, no NFL medical staff reacted and no first responders showed up, and no one got the man to a hospital, we would have seen a man die live on national television. So why then would we ever give credit to a god (whom I don't even believe in), instead of the doctors that actually saved his life? If you are in a bad car crash and are bleeding, profane amounts of blood prayer is only going to be noise in the wind to your ears as you die. If you get shot in the lung, and the someone prays for you instead of calling emergency services... you are going to die. So what in the hell would compel us to give credit to God when it's the actual doctors, practicing actual medicine, and doing the actual work. It's embarrassing, as well as deeply and dangerously belittling to medical science and to the work of the doctors themselves.
We as a global society are largely removed from the days when prayer was damn near universal and extremely common place, like it was some twenty-five hundred years ago. In this time, average life expectancy was almost doubled, quality of life now for the average person is far better than even royalty was back then. Those were times when the common cold was deadly. When a serious laceration was a death sentence. We have eliminated a multitude of deadly diseases....all largely due in part to the advancement of medical sciences and its practitioners, doctors. All while prayer over sickness, faith healers, shamans, and spiritual healers became less common. Topically, correlation doesn't equal causation... but in this case, the drop in reliance on faith and prayer and the rise of medical doctors is the causation of those afore mentioned improvements, and the direct reason Damar Hamlin is still alive today.
If you want to devalue yourself like Patrick Mahomes and say your skill, talent, and hard work is because of god and not the time you put in, not the work you put in, fine. Devalue yourself all you want. However, it's odd to think god is crafting your football skills while letting countless children get raped. This is so strange to me, as even today I seen someone thanking god for the sunshine. I wonder if we will be thanking god when the sun swallows us all close to the end of it's life. We know that no matter how hard I pray, unless I put in the work, I'll never be any good at playing football. I think It is safe to say that that despite his prayer and how devout and dedicated to god he is, Tim Tebow never was close to being as good as Mahomes. So why would god favor Mahomes over Tebow, when by all accounts Tebow is the more devout of the two. If god was involved instead of skill and hard-work, Tebow would be considered the greatest QB of all time, yet Mahomes either is, or will be in the G.O.A.T. conversation while Tebow will never be considered.
Yes, I did use that example. If god has the time and will to make someone like Patrick Mahomes one of the best quarter backs ever, he certainly has the time and will to prevent child rape and starvation, yet he supposedly acts when it comes to Patrick (his own words) while he ignores the children.
He supposedly saved Damar Hamlin (who then goes to mock him, with zombie Jesus) but can't save others from natural disasters. Y'all are weird. I wonder how long until god sends two she-bears to maul Mr. Hamlin, since he (god) likes to send bears to maul children who mock a bald head, you'd think mocking Jesus would be worse than mocking Elisha's bald head.
The entire point of this is as follows. If you care about your religion, you deeply believe it, amazing. I'm happy for you, if it makes you happy. However, we collectively need to stop blaspheming against humanity and human accomplishments. We are amazing creatures, capable of so much. It truly devalues our species and our accomplishments and the individual hard work and accomplishments of doctors when we attribute their acts and actions to god.
So please, stop thanking God, when we should be thanking the people who did the work, who actually took action and accomplished something
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