Scientology defended .. are you kidding me?

[zebo-the-fat]

Or how about telling people to ignore advice given by medical doctors? There are three GP's in my congregation and I'm sure if someone from the congregation asked them about a medical matter they'd probably offer to say a quick prayer in addition to providing proper medical advice (in fact I know of this happening at least once when one parishioner collapsed and had to be taken to the hospital while at a church service - one of the physicians from our parish gave them immediate medical assistance before the ambulance arrived and went with him to the hospital - I think the priest is the one who said the prayer, but it could well have been the physician and it wouldn't have changed the level of medical expertise), but no Christian would tell someone to ignore the advice of their doctor because it "conflicts with beliefs".

Actually, I hate to say it, but the above is not true. I had a long argument on a christian forum with someone who swore up and down that smoking was safe and that sunSCREEN, not sun, caused skin cancer. The reason given was that God would not cause the sun, or a natural product, to cause cancer when he put all those things there for us to use. Scary but true.

I can remember a patient with a diabetic ulcer who who routinely take off her dressings as an act of faith, on the basis that when you pray for healing you have to have faith and trust that God will do it for you and you can't do that by "spreading your bets".

They walk among us. Although in the above example, not for very long .

---

And of course, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8483622

Strychnine is a natural product (comes from plants) but I don't recommend consuming it!