Priest at the hospital

[MTL]

So I was very sick this month and I had surgery last monday. On the first night a priest came into the room to try to bless me and I stopped him and said: "No thanks, good night". I was awake from pain all night so I had time to think about this mechanisms religion institutions use to spread themselves by using the pain and suffering of people.

Several questions came to mind:

Why do we ought respect to people who do such an immoral thing?
How can they look in the eye to someone and tell him: "God is with you" even when God let you get sick in the first place?
Isn't it spiteful that these people wonder around hospitals, stealing the credit from people who actually contribute to well being of humanity when their institution is responsable for the greatest retardation of science?

I posted this on Facebook and got such a negative response from friends and family... I mean, I am the only one that sees the sadism in those acts? Or am I wrong?
Do I lose my time trying to expose the fraud?

Sorry to hear you are unwell.  I hope you are already feeling a little better, by now.

I agree with all your points.

This is yet another instance of the entitlement and privilege of a religion
that has become too accustomed to having free rein in society.

Religion is so duplicitous for so many reasons,
and one stellar example of this
is how Theists are led to believe
that ostensibly selfless acts done in the name of religious values
are not in fact serving the Religion, itself, more than anyone else,
by simply drugging the Theist with a dopamine rush of self-satisfaction.

Plus, they are so lost in their haze of self-congratulation on their acts done with good intentions,
that it is always a bucket of cold water to the face when someone illustrates to them
that what they think was a harmless, charitable act on their part,
could actually be taken
not only as NOT charitable,
but even as presumptuous, encroaching, and actively self-serving.

They get downright angry.

As if you are being gratuitously disrespectful.

It is not your problem that they need a wake up call,
or that they find the wake up call rather jarring.

You made your points extremely succinctly.

I personally feel that the wake up call is badly needed
and that we as Agnostics or Atheists are not obliged to soften it too much;
all we need do, is deliver it firmly and politely...which it sounds like you did.

If subsequently challenged,

I personally always acknowledge that they THINK they are doing good,
or that they think their actions are, at worst, harmless.

Then I cannot be accused of being obtuse to their point of view:

Yes, I see it, I get it.

but then I am equally inexorable about pointing out that the road to hell was paved with good intentions.

and then...

(purely in the hopes that lubricating my harsh pill of reality, with some diplomacy,
will help it to go down, easier)

...I ALSO acknowledge that my wake-up call, itself, is jarring:  Yes, I do realize that.

It's a bucket of cold water, I know.

But, having acknowledged their good intentions,
and having empathized with the fact that my wake up call is unpleasant for them,

the time has then come for them to open their eyes to just how much it is NOT OKAY it is for them to presume.

Period.

Regardless of how much balm they thought they were pouring.