By EChamberlainMD ~ "Virtually every major social pathology -- violent crime, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, and suicide -- is strongly associated with fatherlessness. A majority of prisoners, juvenile detention inmates, high school dropouts, pregnant teenagers, adolescent murderers, and rapists all come from fatherless homes. The likelihood that a young male will engage in criminal activity doubles if he is raised without a father and triples if he lives in a neighborhood with a high concentration of single-parent families. An estimated 70% of the juveniles in state reform institutions grew up without fathers. After taking into account race, socioeconomic status, sex, age, and ability, teenagers from single-parent households are 1.7 times more likely to drop out of high school than teenagers living with both biological parents." (Reference: ncpa.org/pub/st267) S o, apparently good fatherhood is important. Now, the very last verse of the Old Testament pro...

By Eddie Chamberlain, MD, San Diego ~ T his is Jesus' prayer just before he's about to give his ultimate sacrifice-- "...Neither do I pray for these alone but for those also who shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be ONE, as you, father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be ONE in us... that they may be ONE even as we are ONE: I in them and you in me, that they may be made perfect in ONE..." (John 17) If this prayer-- jesus' deathbed request of sorts-- wasn't answered, then why should we believe that jesus had any special relationship with god? And if not Jesus, then neither does any christian. And if jesus' own deathbed prayer hasn't been answered, then why should anyone believe jesus' promises about prayers, saying-- "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, ...

E Chamberlain, MD, San Diego ~ I live in a world of "This-Actually-Happened," docked far from the swamp, the stagnant, the still route mapped out for you in your Noah's Ark Coloring Book... Far from the sound of your soup kitchen sermons, I have no need of your catholic catharsis, your catholic catatonia, your pleas and your pleadings, your cathedrals of your own private hell, your almighty alcatraz... Two thousand years of trials and still you would cheat me of my duly-deserved hung jury?... I am not guilty and I walk out free... Open your book and I'll put your silent god to more silence and shame... Are there a thousand verses in your holy book? Then I have a thousand arguments against it... I listened long and hard and I hear no reason in your voice that I should move my lips to the words of your song... I won't live in the hell of tortured theology... I won't stand convicted because your god can't convince me... I wouldn't think to torture ...

By E Chamberlain MD, San Diego ~ C hristians love to say, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of god." But, verily, verily and really and seriously, could man ever have been anything but short of the glory of god, sin or no sin? Was Adam, before the apple rotted him to the core, ever equal to the glory of god? Nope, Adam was already built short of the glory of god. Otherwise-- and this part makes more sense to me-- the christian god must not be much of a god. But, besides that, how could any christian ever even say that I've ever sinned? What if I just say, "Nope. Not me. I haven't." Does the christian know me? What sin exactly does he know that I've committed? Or does he simply think that I must've sinned because it's impossible not to? But if it's impossible not to, then is it also my fault because I breathe, because it's impossible not to? I won't hold my breath for the answer, because, yeah, yeah, I'...

By EChamberlainMD, San Diego ~ M an, it must suck to be Jesus at Christmas Time, what with having your birthday on the same day as Christmas. I knew of someone who did and only got about half as much stuff as the rest of us. Image by giopuo via Flickr Seems to me, if I was god and perfect-- or at least if I was god and not perfect-- I'd have made my birthday in the Spring or Summertime, not at the busiest time of the year when all my friends and family are so distracted with stuff like parking space and wrapping paper. I woulda, at least for the American version, come down to earth in March, April, June, or August (hell, I got here in the middle of May and I'm not even god), 'cause over here we got nothing going on then in the way of competing federal holidays, except Easter and Father's Day, but they're always on a Sunday anyway. Really, if god so verily, verily cared about us, wouldn't he have thought ahead and given us another 3-day weekend during tho...

By EChamberlainMD, San Diego ~ Modern Medicine Versus Modern Christianity Image by Foxtongue via Flickr W e see it on TV. From the comfort of the couch. The desperate poverty. The hopelessness. People we've seen on those infomercials, they're dead now. Starvation. Cholera. HIV . The Human Condition. I saw a patient today. Or, rather, a person. She's been in the U.S. now for about a year and a half. Illegally. She was picked up at our border-- homeless, begging. She's been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and faces deportation one day unless somehow she gets asylum here. Looking back at the description of how she was found back then when she was picked up-- "homeless, begging at the border" of the U.S.-- I imagine her along the side of the road, hovering like Jethro Tull's Aqualung in the shadows of Tiajuana. Starving. Cross Eyed Mary . But just a few miles from the sanctity of San Diego where I'm privileged to ...