Why does God get the credit?

[AFTT47]

When I was a mere student I was working in an A&E in Melbourne when a teenager was brought in from a car wreck with serious head injuries.

He was in surgery for hours and a neurosurgeon returned from holiday to help out (luckily he was still in the city).

They saved his life and I saw an interview being done for the local news by his parents, “We give thanks to god for this miracle!”

No mention of the highly trained medical professionals.

Just “thank god.”

That's exactly the thing that drove me to be active in forums like this one.

You've probably heard of "Magic" Johnson, a famous basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers. He became one of the highest-profile Americans to contract the HIV virus in the early 1990s - when that was still a death sentence. He was one of the early users of the protease inhibitors which came out in the mid 1990s which effectively neutralized HIV. As was typical of early users, the drug dropped his blood level of HIV to undetectable levels. His response: "I give all the glory to God."

It pissed me off to no end that he didn't reserve even a little of the "glory" for the real-life men and women who did the R & D to develop the drugs that saved his sorry ass. He is alive and kicking today because of the application of science. But the stupid fuck credits, "God."

I think that kind of thing is a big deal. It's important that people recognize where their benefits are coming from so that they may support it. It's very detrimental if people fail to recognize they are benefiting from science and instead believe they are benefiting from a non-existent god.