Fwd: [asa] Is you doctor an evolutionist - if so, what then?

this was meant to go to the list and I just replied to Murray.

Iain
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2008 11:39:06 +0100
Subject: Re: [asa] Is you doctor an evolutionist - if so, what then?
To: Murray Hogg <muzhogg@netspace.net.au>

Hi Murray ,

I don't think i can quite buy in to your speculation. Surely there is
a big difference between believing that evolution as a process has
happened, and believing that it is the best principle for intelligent
humans to base their decisions upon.

I believe Richard Dawkins once said "if I were God I wouldn't have
done it by evolution". Atheists often use evolution as a reason for
disbelieving in god because of the staggering amounts of suffering and
waste involved.

Doctors seek to reduce suffering and to preserve human life; something
deemed much more important than survival of the fittest.

Iain
On 5/31/08, Murray Hogg <muzhogg@netspace.net.au> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> This isn't a response to anybody in particular, but just a musing...
>
> It strikes me that a doctor who truly believes in evolution might
> actually process the question of treatment of the sick in a very
> different way than has traditionally occurred.
>
> In essence, I'm thinking that a truly evolutionary approach to medicine
> might be simply to allow all illnesses to take their course and,
> consequently, improve the human species by eliminating the unfit through
> inaction.
>
> Indeed, I can identify at least one instance in which medical
> intervention has had the apparent result of decreased fitness of
> particular human individuals;
>
> A recent US study has suggested that daughters born to women who delayed
> childbearing and who eventually did so with the assistance of fertility
> treatment themselves had difficulties in conceiving;
>
> http://preview.tinyurl.com/4kxbgh
>
> So, it appears, that in this instance medical intervention has actually
> compounded a problem (infertility) which might have been avoided by
> doing nothing and allowing natural selection to do its thing.
>
> I need not point out that there have been doctors in recent history who
> have taken such logic to an extreme - so it's not merely a hypothetical
> issue, I think.
>
> One wonders, in consequence, whether one ought to ask a further question
> of a doctor who espouses evolution, viz: "and what follows from this
> belief?" If the answer is that human persons are mere contingent
> outcomes of evolution (i.e. "accidents") then I would wonder why this
> person is even motivated to practice medicine in the first place.
>
> Blessings,
> Murray Hogg
> Pastor, East Camberwell Baptist Church, Victoria, Australia
> Post-Grad Student (MTh), Australian College of Theology
>
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