Medicine or Religion

Is a connection between religion and medicine important, helpful and possible?

To examine this topic we need to first find out why the divide in religion and medicine has become so wide, mainly in western religions rather than eastern. There is a vast range of views on this, but all need to be considered to totally understand the problem.

One stance is that eastern religions are far more grounded and they developed with a holistic view towards life, mostly started from Confucianism. Western religions originally had a holistic approach to health with many herbalist and alchemist around, but soon surgeons began to gain control over healing methods. The surgeons had understanding of why problems occurred and how they could heal them. Herbalist also had understanding, but it was a spiritual understanding, and this was not accepted. With understanding came power, and since most herbalist and alchemist were women, while the surgeons were men, the surgeons eventually dominated the heali...