Herbert and Catherine Schaible, faith-healing death of baby
On the one hand, fuck these people. They know what they should have done, they knew what they were legally obligated to do, and they failed to do it, and have now lost another child.
On the other hand, fuck these people. Let them continue “healing” themselves with prayer and sooner or later they’ll extinguish themselves. We can only hope.
Shoot them. Let them heal that.
Hypothetical…let’s say the parents belonged to some kind of New-Agey health club, and the owner of the club convinced them that chanting and laying-on-of-iguanas would heal their kid. If the kid subsequently died from lack of medical attention, would the owner of the club have broken the law?
No… but the parents would have. Random health club owners (or priests) don’t have a legal responsibility to provide health care for other people’s children. The parents of said children do.
Now if you’re trying to equate New-Agey health club owners with doctors - well that doesn’t work either because doctor is a pretty well-defined term in the US.
Nope, I’m trying to equate New-Agey health club owner with the leaders of churches that convince their parishoners to let their children die.
I doubt they’d be criminally culpable for anything. Civilly they are going be open for a hefty lawsuit.
I’d say charge them with murder this time.
That’s what I thought - but clearly the answer is still no. If not for free speech reasons, then definitely for freedom of religion ones. You can’t prosecute religious leaders for teaching things that aren’t true (like, for example, that praying cures childhood sickness better than medicine).
Now if the religious leader took some sort of concrete steps towards denying care (maybe they had the child in their custody for Bible Camp or something) then they are likely in some shit.
Jesus (Ha!) this makes me incredibly sad.
This is 2013, for crying out loud. Can we please stop relying on a book written by priests and shepherds to get us through the day?
Fuck. That poor kid.
Have they run out of kids yet?
No. They have seven more.
They’ve been taken away.
Thank goodness. They should never again have custody of children.
Serious question for Christians: why are these people characterized as fringe fundamentalists, when all they are doing is believing that Jesus was not a pathological liar, or insane?
Those are just three of many examples of promises Jesus made. If you believe in the Bible, they are his own words, not some obscure verse in Leviticus about executing homosexuals that Christians like to say is no longer part of God’s eternal, absolute morality.
If you can’t believe Jesus when he says that believers will be able to heal the sick (or, as in the first cite, get ANYTHING they ask for, even something as stupid and pointless as casting a mountain into the sea, or killing a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season), then how can you believe anything else he says?
They clearly didn’t pray hard enough.
Or they wore the wrong underwear, or ate shellfish that week, or something.
I thought Christians were also taught that not all prayers are answered? Doesn’t that contradict verse 24?
That is the true miracle of The Bible-For every verse, there is an equal and opposite verse.
because I believe that God answers prayers by showing us how to heal, fix, solve, etc. and we either choose to follow those promptings or stick our fingers in our ears. God will give us the means by which to heal, move mountains, solve problems, but it is through our own effort and relying on the strength God gave us.* If this is by going to a doctor, than that is my answer. Sometimes he gives the answer of NO, when I ask for something because He knows it isn’t what I really need. God does not grant wishes, he isn’t a genie, and he gave us the ability to make choices. These parents made to choice not to seek medical care and their child died. They suck.
Keep in mind though I am Mormon (LDS) so my ideas of personal responsibility and free-will may be different than other Christians.
sorry for the misspellings, I didn’t edit out the notations before posting the quote.
It should read:
The verse I quoted says, “they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover,” not, “they shall summon a physician.” They did have physicians back then.
The verse I quoted says you get whatever you ask for. The only condition is belief. It doesn’t say it only works sometimes, and it doesn’t say it has to be something you need. Jesus goes out of his way to show it can be petty or spiteful, by killing the fig tree just because it didn’t have figs out of season. And he goes out of his way to show it can be stupid, by giving the example of casting a mountain into the sea.
I know, but that’s not what Jesus said.