They are useful tools, but they are also damning ones. Perhaps Marquez is suggesting that faith and religion are characterized by the beholder. But he also seems to understand that many of his patients require faith of some kind, too. For his part, that’s treating them with science and medicine. The retort might come across as flippant, except that Abernuncio soon explains that he cannot articulate his own beliefs and that his primary concern is for his patients, and whatever it is that they need in order to heal and be well. Late in the novel, when Delaura asks Abernuncio why the doctor is so kind to him, particularly given how critical the church is of atheists and of learned men (Abernuncio having a library of “forbidden” texts), the doctor responds, “because we atheists cannot live without clerics” (121). It is interesting that the most faithful (or faith-filled?) character in the novel is the atheist doctor.
In Of Love and Other Demons, Marquez, or the narrator at least, seems generally critical of faith and religion.
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