The Common Goal of Medicine and Religion

There are different ways in which the relation between medicine and religion can be looked upon.

According to one approach, religion and medicine are thought of as two entirely different branches of human endeavor, having no relation with each other. Religion is based on faith, its goal is supernatural, and the means it employs to its ends are mostly psychological.

Medicine on the other hand is a practical science like any other empirical science on observable signs and symptoms, and laboratory data. Its goal is physical healing and the means employed are drugs, therapeutic procedures and nursing care. Thus the goal, the domain, and the means used are entirely different.

Often, religion in its crude, primitive and ritualistic forms is considered a hindrance to the practice of rational and scientific medicine. Religion often breeds superstitions which prove detrimental to health. Diseases like smallpox and measles are thought by ignorant people to be cause by semi-divine beings who must be appeased and propitiated. Medical help is not sought and deaths and more often than not, complications are the result. Such superstitious people are more often found in villages, though they are not altogether absent among the city dwellers.

Another view is that religion and medicine may have different methodologies, but they have a common aim between them. Both are laboring to make humanity happier by eliminating suffering. True, religion emphasizes the other-worldly aspect of existence and lays stress on happiness after death, but it also helps man to attain happiness in his present life. It must be remembered that most people do not resort to religion for salvation, nor even for enjoying heavenly pleasures after death, but for the alleviation of worldly suffering and for the fulfillment of mundane desires.

The story of Lord Buddha is a proof of the fact that both religion and medicine have a common aim in view. The young prince, Siddhartha saw a sick man, an old person and a dead body. These scenes of physical suffering and death triggered a process of discrimination and enquiry into the ultimate cause of suffering and its solution. Siddhartha finally became the Buddha and propagated a new religion. The triad: disease, old age, and death, led to Buddha's enlightenment. The basic aims of medicine are: Preservation of life or prevention or postponement of death; alleviation of suffering and prevention and cure of diseases. Can religion disapprove of these noble aims? Lord Buddha preached the Eight fold Noble Path to extinguish all sufferings.

The Buddha, though the propounder of the path of righteous living, was never opposed to treatment of physical diseases. On the contrary, he personally set an example by nursing the sick.