Wrong time for evangelism?

[Traitorfish]

Did Neanderthals evangelize?

The average European has something like 3% Neanderthal DNA, so: in a sense?

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

^Goes to show than many atheists are every bit as fundamentalist as their dreaded 'jesus freaks'

To try to say something potentially comforting to a dieing person is not really an unethical idea. It is not really the same to attack a dieing christian with your little speech on how his belief is an illusion.

It's not at all comforting to many dying people. Telling me how awesome it will be after I'm dead is NOT WHAT I WANT TO HEAR WHEN YOU'RE THE ONE WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE TRYING TO SAVE MY LIFE!

Keep your wackadoo beliefs about how incredibly awesome life after death is out of my ears when I am already experiencing the fear, trauma, and stress of potentially dying.

It's not appropriate! NOT EVEN CLOSE!!!

That's far worse than anything else a religious person has ever said or done. I'd rather you tell me I'm a sinner and will go to hell, every single day, as long as you religious people close your mouths and stick to your medical training when I need your medical expertise and not your sickening beliefs forced on me at a time when I need a RATIONAL human mind the most!

How would you like listening to someone describe the wonders of Pepsi cola when you're bleeding out from a gunshot wound?

This is not the time for advertisements!

To all who would consider this appropriate behavior: Your religion has obviously not elevated you to the level of basic human decency.

 

[Kyriakos]

Uh, i am not religious anyway.

Furthermore, nice goal-post moving there, given that the discussion had been about people trying to comfort a person about to die, not people making ill-use of time which should be part of the attempt to save the person from dieing. Obviously no one (at least here) would condone the latter.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Proselytizing is not even in any way remotely comparable to "comforting".

As I stated earlier, he could have very well said that he didn't know if the victim was a Christian or not but that he was. And that he would be praying for the person. While this is also strictly not professional conduct for medical personnel to do, it wouldn't have been nearly as obnoxious as trying to convince someone to become a Christian on the spot so his soul wouldn't be in everlasting hell. At least he apparently didn't try to baptize the victim.

And it certainly must considered to be a distraction from performing his medical duties. It also calls into question if he would have done less if the victim was negative in response, or stated he was a Muslim or a practitioner of some other religion.

 

[BvBPL]

Yet more hyperbolic nonsense merely because I disagree with your provincial religious beliefs and the acts of obnoxious proselytizers? Ironically Terry Jones would be on your side of this issue, not mine.

Not, not because of my religious views, which don't entry into this at all, nor is it about the fact that you find evangelists obnoxious.

The bone I have to pick with you is your idea that the government should pass a law that protects you from speech by others that you find obnoxious.

That something is obnoxious to a private party is not a good reason for a law. It is in fact an especially bad reason for a law that infringes upon constitutional assurances of freedom of expression.

I believe the majority of EMTs and paramedics typically work for the fire department these days.

BLS reports that 48% of EMTs and paramedics are employed by private ambulance services and 29% are employed by local government, which I assume includes fire departments and the like.

 

[Akka]

The bone I have to pick with you is your idea that the government should pass a law that protects you from speech by others that you find obnoxious.

I agree with the general principle, but the example we've here is abolutely not a point of "free speech", but of "unacceptable conduct".

"free speech" isn't a blank check allowing you to do whatever you want wherever you want however you want. There is plenty of situations where your "free speech" doesn't apply, like stating your political preferences when being a cop and fining people, or harassing others by constantly talking to them.

Abusing the weakness of someone to proselytize him is right in the middle of the "absolutely nothing to do with free speech".

 

[Synobun]

Not, not because of my religious views, which don't entry into this at all, nor is it about the fact that you find evangelists obnoxious.

The bone I have to pick with you is your idea that the government should pass a law that protects you from speech by others that you find obnoxious.

That something is obnoxious to a private party is not a good reason for a law. It is in fact an especially bad reason for a law that infringes upon constitutional assurances of freedom of expression.

The constitutional right that specifies freedom of speech doesn't exactly include the right to step outside your boundaries and walk away scott free afterwards. Freedom of speech is not 'exempt from all consequences of your actions'. Freedom of speech is not 'say whatever you want, it's okay, we love you for it'. Freedom of speech is the right to not be censored and to have your opinion heard by your peers without it being immediately discarded (which happens anyways, but hey, constitution!!!!!).

As a medical professional, this man's job is one thing and one thing only: Report to emergencies, get them stable, bring them to a hospital. That's it. There's no "convert" job description, there is no "preach the good news" clause. The paramedic stepped outside of his boundaries as a professional and damn right he should be punished for it, why on Earth wouldn't he? If the victim specifically asked to be told about Jesus, sure, fine, he's still doing his job because that is what the patient is asking for and thus it becomes something that has a good chance of helping out.

Doctors and nurses are held to the exact same standard and so should paramedics. As a doctor, you cannot walk into your patient's room, tell them they're probably dead, and then start preaching the good news. You can't tell them to turn to homeopathy, you can't tell them to change their favourite sports team, you can't tell them to change their entire belief structure. I'm nearly certain doctors take an oath against doing things like that because surprisingly, trying to coerce people into changing themselves in a state of vulnerability is frowned upon by rational human beings. I know, it's pretty crazy, this is some new age stuff going on here.

The problem isn't Jesus. The problem is stepping outside of the boundaries of your job, a job that is held in high regard and which all individuals within that job are put into the volatile situation of saving lives and making sure people live through the science of medicine and not the grace of God. If they wanted to be in a faith healing tent, they should have been hired by a faith healing tent, not as an EMT.

 

[timtofly]

It seems there is still some twisting of the facts. All that was asked was if the guy knew Jesus. The guy said he was willing to. Does not seem to be any coercion at all. Seems to be a lot of judgment against the medics concern and assesment of the situation.

 

[BvBPL]

The problem is stepping outside of the boundaries of your job....

I appreciate that. However, stepping outside the boundaries of your job should be handled by your employer.

Let's look at it another way: let's say it was not an EMT but a cashier who started preaching about God. A customer found this annoying. The solution to this is to complain to the management of the store and for the company to take the action it feels is appropriate. The solution is NOT to go and pass a law forbidding store clerks from talking about God.

It is quite likely that the company wouldn't like the actions of the cashier and will take remedial action. It is also possible it might be a non-issue for the company. Heck, it's possible that the company could praise the cashier. But regardless of what the company decides to do it is not for the government to go passing laws on the matter.

 

[Formaldehyde]

The bone I have to pick with you is your idea that the government should pass a law that protects you from speech by others that you find obnoxious.

The bone i want to pick with you is your incessant attempts to turn this into a free speech issue instead of one about an obnoxious and patently unprofessional medical industry employee.

Abusing the weakness of someone to proselytize him is right in the middle of the "absolutely nothing to do with free speech".

Indeed. This is nothing but a completely absurd red herring, which we have come to expect from many conservatives. The real issue is whether or not supposed medical professionals should ever proselytize while on duty. I think it is just as clear as forbidding soldiers in uniform from doing so. It is simply not proper conduct in any supposedly secular society, as Askthepizza guy pointed out with his Pepsi analogy.

 

[BvBPL]

The bone i want to pick with you is your incessant attempts to turn this into a free speech issue instead of an obnoxious and patently unprofessional civil servant one.

You opened the door to a discussion on free speech issue by suggesting that government intervention is necessary to provide redress to people who are the recipients of behavior they deem to be obnoxious.

 

[El_Machinae]

The disagreement might be one of definitions and our instinctive heuristics, i.e., whether or not you implicitly view an EMT as a civil servant.

 

[Formaldehyde]

it doesn't really matter. Any supposed medical professional should know this is far beyond what is acceptable, regardless of whether or not he works for the government or not. But I think we can agree that if he was a civil servant, which he quite likely was, that it would be even worse.

 

[El_Machinae]

Maybe. But then there's the side question whether there should be a legal remedy to the temptation.

 

[BvBPL]

it doesn't really matter. Any supposed medical professional should know this is far beyond what is acceptable, regardless of whether or not he works for the government or not.

What if he wasn't a medical professional? What if he was part of a volunteer ambulance crew; would that change your analysis of this issue?

--

I agree with the general principle, but the example we've here is abolutely not a point of "free speech", but of "unacceptable conduct".

Okay. Presuming for the moment that the conduct was unacceptable then what is the solution?

Some people have advocated for government to pass laws to prevent such behavior. I think that is such behavior is truly unacceptable than it should be resolved by the employer and/or any professional organizations, rather than passing a law to fix it.

 

[Kyriakos]

it doesn't really matter. Any supposed medical professional should know this is far beyond what is acceptable, regardless of whether or not he works for the government or not. But I think we can agree that if he was a civil servant, which he quite likely was, that it would be even worse.

Uh, remember how you reacted to that note by the nurse which made fun of the parents because they did not immunise their newborn?

I suppose in your world it is acceptable for a medical professional to mock the parents of a patient, who come to the hospital, but not acceptable for a medical proffesional to try to comfort a person about to die by all accounts. It was not even proselytising, given that all involved (including the man the article is about) were sure he would die. Kind of pointless from a kneejerk atheist (sic) perspective to frown when a man about to die changes his view to theism, isn't it.

 

[Gori the Grey]

it doesn't really matter. Any supposed medical professional should know this is far beyond what is acceptable, regardless of whether or not he works for the government or not. But I think we can agree that if he was a civil servant, which he quite likely was, that it would be even worse.

Is this so patently obvious, and if so, how do you account for the fact that the EMT Code of Ethics doesn't forbid it? I'm not trying to antagonize you or catch you out. I'm asking a sincere question. And in fact I'm asking it of forum members, not you specifically. Why hasn't the National Association of EMTs explicitly forbid this (or expressly allowed for it) in their code of ethics? One would think it had come up enough times that they would want to speak to it. I'm genuinely curious.

My own thinking on the puzzle posed in the OP has developed. I had been of the view that, since the patient credited his recovery to the evangelizing, the EMT should be commended for doing his job in this case, essentially for being lucky that this patient was one for whom the proselytizing had proven comforting, but then told not to do it in the future, since he had no way of knowing it might distress some future patient to the point of decreasing his odds of survival. First, do no harm, and since you can't know that this might not cause harm, don't do it.

But something has occurred to me that has made this question boil down to "Do you believe in God?" If you don't believe in God, then the man survived naturally. In that case, the EMT was doing a poor job (of assessing how near death the man was) and should not be commended even despite the man's survival. If you believe what the man believes, then God saved his life in that moment, and the EMT should be commended for offering him a means to that recovery.

So the question boils down to "Do you believe God saved the man's life (as the man himself believes)?" Once a question boils down to "Do you believe in God?" it is no longer, for me, a very interesting question.

Why the EMT Code of Ethics doesn't say anything about this is my new interesting question.

 

[El_Machinae]

I quite like your take. The fact that the patient has praised the intervention, the EMT should not be punished. A patient complaining about the intervention would've been a different scenario. This means that the EMT can be told not to do it again, but without any real sense of 'slapping him on the wrist'.

 

[BvBPL]

Why hasn't the National Association of EMTs explicitly forbid this (or expressly allowed for it) in their code of ethics?

My uneducated guess would be that not having such a requirement allows for religious and semi-religious organizations to provide ambulance services. As Forma mentioned, there are religious associated services that provide ambulance services.

Then again, I know that the American Bar's Association doesn't directly discuss religious evangelism and I suspect that the AMA (doctor) and CPA (accountant) code of ethics have any mention of it as well.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

As the son of a very religious CPA, I don't think his licensing board did much to limit evangelism.