OK, first, this is not another post about Iraq or Palestine. What it is is a post about yet another crazy religious doctor like James Dobson.
Dobson is a pediatrician, and this madman Maurice Rawlings is a cardiologist. And I know that he would certainly give me a heart attack if I were to have him as my heart doctor. But I don’t. Instead I just take a baby aspirin a day, and Thank God.
Is Hell for Real? Be sure to check out the experiences folk have had in Hell that are listed here.
Want yet more info about Doctor Maurice Rawlings? Then check out what Pastor Eugene Pee Harder (real name, I swear I didn’t make it up. He did!) has to say about this man of medical science. Doctors are scary, and when they get into theology, too? Well, they are twice as scary!
Remember Dr. Frankenstein. Imagine if he had also gotten a theology degree at a Southern Baptist seminary! Scary, isn’t it? Before you get medical treatment, ask your doctor is he believes in God. If he does, then get off the stretcher and run like Hell!
Tony, James Dobson is not a pediatrician. His is not an M.D. He is a Ph.D and is a child psychologist. Wouldn’t want to give him too much credit.
Marie, I am so ashamed. You are absolutely right about James Dobson, and I have been hoodwinked along with many others, it seems.
In my defense, I never gave an ounce of thought to James Dobson and Focus on the Family until I moved here late summer from a heavily Hispanic part of Texas. He’s not really as big a national gun as many in Colorado might think. Also, for example, how many folk here in Colorado Springs really follow Pat Robertson’s nonsense? Or Benny Hinn’s? In Texas, we don’t think even a tiny shit about Dobson. At least that appears to be so, unless perhaps one is a member of the gay community there?
But upon arriving here, every other yard had dogs going Moo. So I went to the Focus on Family website to find out more about the good, Not-a-Real Doctor Dobs. Skimming over his posted resume, it leads many to think that he is a pediatrician, so I googled up more info to see if his claims were true?
I did find that he was professor of pediatrics 14 years at USC, and that he was on the attending staff of Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles for 14 years also. He taught medical genetics in Southern California. All as he claims on the Focus on Family website. And so many other sites also took straight the suggestion that he was some sort of a pediatrician, too. After all, what is a ‘professor of pediatrics’, if not a pediatrician? Apparently at USC, it is a position for a well connected psychologist to catch in his political net, never mind the lack of any real medical background.
Still, what we have in reality is that Dobson is nothing much more than just a bad family counselor with big connections, and is not a medical doctor at all. He is merely an academic doctor, and the Focus on Family website and all the church fan clubs that he has accumulated, do little to clear up the confusion. Neither do all his individual, homophobic Right Wing fans.
To add to my errors about Dobson, I now don’t believe that Maurice Rawlings is a real doctor either, despite the claims by religious nuts that he is a cardiologist in Chattanooga, Tenn. that has revived people heading toward Hell in his role as a medicine man. There is a Doctor in Chattanooga named Maurice Rawlings Jr., but he is a surgical oncologist and treats breast cancer patients, not heart patients.
One might think that maybe his dad SENIOR was the cardiolgist there, but I can find no sign that he even exists as a figure in the medical world. Plus, there are no interviews on video or film of this author of a book, Maurice Rawlings, who claims to have known many come-back-to-life people seen while all the while practicing as a cardiologist. In short, it looks like this claim of being in the medical field close to dying people is all a deliberate fake by some con, claiming to be a doctor that does not even exist.
Actually, when one gets down to it, this use of the title “Doctor to misguide people’ is a very old tradition in the American religious community. At least Dobson appears to have a doctorate in psychology, and not a theological doctorate. But that’s about all. Many of the other pastor ‘doctors’ can’t even claim that.
Oh well, moo uh culpa, Marie. As the church lady once said. “Never mind.”
Tony,
I was married to a real M.D. for many a year and I think I have a heightened sensitivity to snake oil salesmen claiming “doctor” status in order to gain the respect of the general public. Dobson is full of shit, wrapping himself in some sort of reputable cloak under which he hides and spouts his bull. You know, having been involved in the medical field, that very few M.D.s ever call themselves “doctor” outside of the office. That is the domain of chiropracters, podiatrists, optomotrists, pyschologists and other Ph.Ds.
And, I’m sorry to be such a hammer, but it was not the church lady who said “nevermind,” it was Roseanne Roseannadanna (aka Gilda Radner)!
Dobson, along with all of the other evangelicals, is really quite frightening. Although he may not be known in Texas, he’s got quite the networking strings throughout the republican party, just as Haggart does. The worst part about all these mega-church leaders is that they are just like Jim Jones…they brainwash all of these poor saps into thinking that they need to give money to the “needy” when in fact, they are supporting million dollar mansions, fat bank accounts in Bermuda, and funding the true terrorism–the subjugation of native peoples around the world who are viewed as “savages” and “heathens” who just need to be turned onto to Christ. It kills me that these people think they are doing something good, (and then make fun of Islam or Mormonism or whatever for doing the exact same thing) when they really are all about destroying other cultures and forcing their beliefs upon others.
I haven’t personally known any MDs to use doctor outside of the office or hospital, but I know plenty of professors who use it…I would too if I had gone to university for a zillion years and were a professor and had to publish articles and books all of the time in scholarly journals. I woudn’t, however, use it to trick people into thinking I were a Medical Doctor though!!!
Oh yeah, hell is real: it’s life on Earth. It’s just that somebody forgot to give us the manual. Why else would we have so many homeless, indigent, starving, war-ravaged, greedy, and suffering people on the planet if it weren’t? LOL! Well, what if it were? Something to ponder…
Tony, apart from the point you are trying to make, you may want to put a little effort into your researching skills. Here’s a link to an hour and a half tv special featuring Dr. Maurice Rawlings, Sr., who is a retired cardiologist in Chattanooga. Pops up on google very easily:
media.tbn.org/wmedia/tbn/gallery/To_Hell_And_Back.wvx
Here’s a link to his profile on file with the Tennessee Department of Health. He’s been practicing in Chattanooga since 1954, after a stint in Washington and Germany in the army:
http://www2.state.tn.us/health/licensure/Practitioner.ASP?prof=1606&licnum=2084
Whether you believe the things Dr. Rawlings says in his book or not is one thing. But to claim he simply does not exist is foolish. He IS an actual doctor and he does claims to have witnessed these things. Maybe you should actually read his book and argue about what he says in it rather than pretending he never existed.
Well, I am glad you wrote, DT. I did not ‘pretend’ anything at all about Rawlings Sr. When I googled, I missed the links you provided, and did only come up with info on his son’s medical practice. So you are right about maybe that I should better my google techniques, but entirely wrong in insinuating that I deliberately might have misled people. I am glad that you corrected me as you did as you did, just as I was also glad to be corrected about me incorrectly thinking that ‘Dr.’ Dobson was a real medical doctor. My track record on theological-medical matters seems quite bad at this point.
As to reading Doc Rawling Sr’s book, I do love tourist oriented literature? And what better place to write about than tourism in Hell? Next time I am in my neighborhood religous bookstore, I will study up on Hell, and especially willl concentrate on those that have had heart attacks and only got so far on their vacation there, until God kindly yanked them back from Satan’s desert, back into purgatory here on Earth.
No doubt, the Senior Doctor Rawlings certainly seems the specialist whose writings I should concentrate on on this topic. After all, it might save me from taking my vacation in the wrong place if I can just see what he has to say direct from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. No need to travel to Hell, when there are better tourist destinations possible.