The "Ray says to never see a doctor" issue

For months atheists have been accusing me of saying that those who are sick should never see a doctor. Today, I was very encouraged to see that one of my regular opponents (Raoul Rheits) kindly conceded that that isn’t the case. He said:

"Now I can actually read the context it is apparent (albeit clumsily written if you don't mind me saying so) that you are *not suggesting* that people refrain from seeking medical assistance. Quite the opposite."

He also said, "But please at least have the honesty to acknowledge that I ASKED you for the context before you implied that I somehow ignored the missing context in the quote I gave (the one you censored along with my request for context)."

My apologies for deleting your post Raoul. I didn’t want to have to deal with it because I thought it would just open a can of worms (also, I didn't have a copy of the book, and couldn't give you the word-for-word context).

For those who are interested (I hope this doesn’t open a worm-can), I clumsily wrote a book over 30 years ago called More The Just Comfort. It was written to try and comfort those who found themselves battling terminal cancer. It’s common for those in such a case to think that somehow God is punishing them for their sins. I had said that if a person truly believed that it was God’s will for them to have cancer (confusing His permissive will with His perfect will), then they should never see a doctor (because they would be going against what they believed was His will). Here is the actual out-of-context wording:

"Therefore you should never take medicine to relieve pain. You should never consult a doctor or go to a hospital for treatment, because you would be interfering with the work of God in your life."

This whole thing was started on:

http://canterburyatheists.blogspot.com/2009/03/ray-comfort-claims-to-find-cure-for.html

It understandably fueled anger towards me with "What a sick b-st--d Comfort is—-sicker than I ever could have imagined," and similar comments...and they haven't stopped since.

The anonymous writer of the article did temper his words a little, with:

"I am not into character assassination, he did some splendid work in the field of drug rehabilitation. It is however important to record 'where he was at' during his time in New Zealand. Remember, people change. We’ve all done things in past we’d rather forget, but generally we don’t make our living telling other people how to live. Ray feels a zeal to run-down atheists that knows no peer, so this alone makes him 'fair-game'."

Thank you again Raoul, I have a new-found respect for you.