Thank you for your response, as I found it the most relevant to a rational discourse topic I was involved in with my class at my graduate program. Before I proceed to explain what happened, please know that by no means am I trying to ridicule or attack anyone for their spiritual beliefs or actions, I am simply trying to have a rational conversation with fellow colleagues that are involved in the field of medicine & science.

The question was asked if techniques of a spiritual nature (Spirituality) should be prescribed by Doctors that claim to use evidence based medicine? Like any rational argument, I believe that terms must be defined first, so I proceeded to ask what is spirituality? The following statements were made "It is a connection" or "It's a belief in something greater than yourself" or "its ethereal."

Now, I stated that it's really hard to go on with this discussion without an agreement on the definition of spirituality, so for time's sake and to reach some form of objectivity, I believe we should go with a dictionary definition of spirituality. The Oxford dictionary was handy so we went with "Spirituality is defined as relating to the human spirit or soul."

Now, how is it that a doctor, that claims to use evidenced based medicine, proceed to use spirituality to heal people, when the very existence of the human spirit has yet to be substantiated by science? Of course, this is based on the assumption that for something to be substantiated by science, it must be testable and it must be falsifiable, which to my knowledge, such a study regarding the existence of the human spirit has yet to be conducted. In my opinion, my colleagues didn't purposely avoid using the dictionary definition of spirituality (which states that the human spirit exists), and proceeded to use a more personal definition of spirituality, which, as you stated, "they believe it to be what most people mean then they might just be wrong."

At the end of day, I simply have a hard time respecting a medical professional's argument, which claims to use evidence based medicine provided by science, yet turn around and use spiritual techniques (which must admit the existence of the human spirit) to heal people, when the existence of the human spirit has yet to make into a scientific research article.

Thank you all very much for your time!