Just found this board, looks like a great group of gals. I want to know how many atheists there are? I see that many credit God for their calling to medicine and I am not one of those. Ii don't want to start a flame war (I respect others religious beliefs) but I want to know am I in the minority? Does religion come up in interview? How do atheist physicians tackle issues of religion when they arise?

Just curious.... please don't flame me

thanks for your honest post. I want to piggy back on your question a little. I read somewhere that when med students work with their cadavers for some it verifies for them their religious beliefs. Some decide that there is a God after not believing and others decide that there musn't be... Not sure where I read this but I often here that dissecting a cadaver can be a 'spiritual' enlightenment for some. Is this true?

Thanks,
Sethina

I happen to be Christian, BUT in answer to your question " i love" :
They ahd better NOT ask you such a question in an interview; and if they ever did and you felt prejudiced against then I highly recommend that you turn them into the authorities!
that being said I had friends who were asked things like "when were they getting married and pregnant" bc they were Asian or Indian and looked very...conservative...
Cannot say I had any spiritual experiences anyplace in the Gross Anatomy lab...it was freezing most of the time. I was respectful of the man, but not from a religous standpoint...

Likewise, I RESPECT my patient's religious views but honestly it does not come up that much. Maybe you'll think it comes up more bc you aren't familiar or used to comments about their relationship with the curch, etc.
I am Catholic and recently worked for 18 months in a 99% Cathloic town and guess what? It helped VERY VERY little. Only a few acted like they gave a crap that I was the same religion...

If you go on over to sdn, you will see that there are many people who are defintiely atheists and believe that Christians espeically have no place in medicine. yes, they said that! so you are definitley not in the minority, probably the majority.
while I didn't get asked about my spiritual beliefs in my interview, it was very obvious in the work that i have done for the Crisis pregnancy Center (christian organization). also i got asked a questions about giving a 14 year old an abortion without her parent's permission and while i went through all of the laws regarding this, in the end they told me to wipe out the laws and what would i do and i said that i still wouldn't do it. i already knew though that really want to see if you stick to your gusn when under pressure. they really should have asked me something else though becuase with all of my work with the CPC, I obviously have a strong opinion about it. but maybe that's why they asked me that!

You are definitely not in the minority. DH and I are agnostics as are most of his partners. I don't believe in a god, but I call myself agnostic because I feel it would be hypocritical of me to state definitively that there is no god. (I used to get a lot of ladies in my former workplace trying to *convert* me. :rolleyes: )

Edited to say that the question of religion should not come up in the interview.

I'm basically agnostic as well. I hesitate to believe in a "God of the gaps" (not my term), that is, the argument that because we don't understand something we must attribute it to a deity. However, the more I learn about how the world works, it does seem difficult that what we are presented with all occurred via random chance. I think it's possible to believe in some sort of intrinsic spirituality or meaning without neccessarily believing in a Judeo-Christian God.

If I get asked in an interview, I will state that I believe it has no relevance to my abilities as a physician, but that I am not ashamed of what I believe (or don't believe as the case may be). Also, the lack of a belief in God does not imply a lack of morality or personal conscience based on common human experience.

GOOD ANSWER Drey- they'll like that....

TO ILOVE and DREY:
I just recalled one more thing:
I was shocked and apalled when I went to residency and I was sitting at some sort of dinner or awards banquet thing- and someone got up and gave the BENEDICTION and I think they went as far as to use the name JESUS! OUCH!

It was culture shock for me ( and for you too) as I was used to separation of church and business...
and what if there were Jews in the room? OR Buddhists? Or atheists? Well no one else ehtought it was as weird as I did, so I was outvoted...oh well.

I don't know Maggie- was it an event run by a christian organization or hosptial? was the person giving the prayer a memebr of the clergy? woudl you ask him to pray outside of his faith? even if the person wasn't a clergy? If I get up to pray I'm going to pray to MY God, the God I know and He isn't Budda or Allah. I would expect people of other religions to do the same- pray to their Gods. Not to mention that the word benediction has roman catholic or anglo-catholic beginings or ratehr the practice does so the fact that they had a benediction measn that someone, either the organization or the person planning it was a Chrsitian.

This is an excellent topic.

The only thing I know for a fact is that I have come to no conclusions regarding any particular faith. I strongly suspect the existence of a deity. And the more I study science, the stronger that suspicion becomes.

Everyone has his or her own interpretation of the infiniteness of our world. Most people feel the need to fill in the blanks with ritual and icons of "worship." I have come to believe that it is a human need just like food and shelter to do this. I even find some sort of warm comfort in participating in it.

This is my bottom line: Whatever you believe and whatever your patient believes can certainly mesh seamlessly in an environment where there is true respect for another.

I've learned a great deal from my own family. My mother is Christian, my father is Muslim (and a physician). He always respected my mother's religion, respected the religion of his patients, and allowed his children to choose for themselves.