There’s no reason why the parents can’t pray AND take their child to a doctor. If God gave us the ability and intelligence to investigate the workings of our bodies and determine what works and what doesn’t (Works: if your child is bleeding heavily, get a doctor to stitch it up. Doesn’t work: hope really hard that your kid doesn’t die), I fail to see why it is disrespectful of us to use this knowledge. If you can show scientific, not anecdotal, evidedence that serious illnesses and injuries like broken limbs, gunshot wounds, appendixitis, pneumonia, diabetes, chicken pox, heart attacks, etc. have higher rates of recovery and less complications when prayer alone is used, rather than medical attention, I am willing to listen. But so far it seems as if the weight of the evidence reinforces that medical treatment is a vastly more effective cure than prayer alone. You can make that choice for yourself, but while I’d allow a grownup to handle poisonous wild snakes without any safeguards if they feel they must, I wouldn’t let them hand one to their three-year-old. I respect religion, but not when it makes people deny the evidence in front of their faces–evidence of the merit of medicine and the deadliness of poisonous snakes, for instance.
Monster,
The idea is not to help the religion, its to help the child. My religion believes that such help comes from God. I don’t pray because it will up some goal board for my religion, I pray because it puts me in line with God. God created me to be perfect, and has no problem maintaining me in perfection.
Are you Christian, Monster? Can you honestly say that you know that God could do nothing to heal your bleeding head? Then you are probably right, and the decision was correct. I know differently. When I get severly cut, I know God knows I am whole. And thus, I am. The Creator isn’t one that I will disagree with.
I am old enough now, but what of when I was an infant? I was born funny colored and the hospital wanted to keep me there, and wanted me on drugs for years. Some blood problem. I am fine, and have been. I am glad I have been raised as I was. No shots, no doctors. I make that choice now, would you take it away from me as a child?
The “would have died if not for medicine” have as much affect on me as my “I have been healed of” stories do on you. I don’t wear shoes a lot. My feet have been torn up by every thing imaginable, big rusty nails, scissors, pins, toothpicks, glass, etc. Not a mark on them, my big feet, not even from the nail that went through one, or the bottle that sliced off my toe. Most were healed in a matter of minutes, clean. This proves to me that healing is much more loving and good than medicine.
This proves nothing to you, I bet.
My religion is the best possible care I choose for myself. Why would I demand any less for anyone I love? How could I? How could I justify it any more than leeching them, or the witch doctor’s potions?
I do not demand that your children, your siblings are brought to my religion for healing, even though I know it works better than what you use. Why do you wish to take that from me? Because you know that I am wrong? Are you that confident in your own unfailing discrimination that you know you never make mistakes? That the way you live your life is the only way that is good?
Is it just a fluke that I have survived my awful, brainwashing childhood? No antibiotics, no cough syrup, no stitches, no doctors, its a wonder I can stand and walk! Is it wrong for me to revel in my free childhood, where I learned that love could heal anything? That God was loving and protective, closer than the breath I breathed? That everyone could truly follow Christ and heal not unnaturally, but supernaturally?
How is that neglect? Man lives by more than bread alone, and the more part I always had in spades.
blessedwolf quoted the AP article as saying:
A hole in ones heart would have been impossible to repair without 20th-century surgery. A hundred years ago, this baby would have died, period, whether he was surrounded by friends and family praying over him or the finest doctors in the world or both.
It’s nice that we now have surgeons capable of saving this infant’s life, but should we really force a family to use expensive newfangled surgery technology just because it exists?
Phil beat me to it. I can only “me too,” and I can’t do it enough. Your refusal to immunize alone is risking not only your child’s health but the health of my child. And that’s just wrong.
Now, you can say all you want that your child will not contract some communicable and life-threatening disease, Praise God, and I won’t have to worry about it. Wrong. The folks in the OP thought their kid wouldn’t die.
Yup. And very sad.
I thought maybe I’d just ad a little bit of fact here.
Only a hundred years ago people in the West had huge families.
More than ten kids were not unheard of. Why? Because, people expected some of their kids to die. After medical scientific advances the risk of your kids dying was reduced and so did the size of the average family.
I know what this tells me. I’m sure you’ll make your own conclusion.
People who refuse medical treatment for their children on the basis that God will save them are no different than the witch hunters of old who lit people on fire with full confidence that if they were innocent, God wouldn’t let them burn. God is not a magician who grants wishes. He expects mortals to take responsibility for their own lives, and by extension, the lives of their children, because children can’t do it for themselves.
When Jesus was tempted by the devil, the devil told him that if he was really the Son of God, he should turn stones into bread. Jesus refused. The devil then said that if Jesus was really the Son of God, he could throw himself off the temple and God would save him. You know what Jesus said to that? “You shall not put the Lord thy God to the test.” Faith healers, that means YOU. If you really believe in faith healing, then why don’t you believe in divine justice, too? By that logic, we should just hook everyone accused of murder up to the electric chair because God wouldn’t let them die if they were innocent. And do I really need to bring up the old joke about the two boats and a helicopter?
God can and does do something. God made it possible for men to gain knowledge, and to use that knowledge to help others. God created the child who would eventually grow to be the doctor. God gave him the strength and brains to get through medical school. God made certain that the doctor would know how to stitch up my head.
You, on the other hand, seem to think that God can do everything directly, when it’s obvious He won’t. I’m sure the parents of that little kid thought that God could do something to heal him, and they prayed their hearts out. And it didn’t work. All they had to do was realize that God likes it when we help one another, and that’s why doctors exist. Doctors help humanity, and anything that helps humanity is blessed by God. Invasive treatment or not, it’s the difference between a dead child and a living one. But I guess God wanted that kid dead, huh? Or did the family not pray hard enough, or the right way? Because God didn’t listen.
Or maybe He did, and the family of that child didn’t listen to Him.
And as for the not vaccinating your kids line…well, I will be praying to your God and my God and any God who will listen that you are sterile. Not vaccinating your own children is one thing, but risking everyone else’s due to your misguided ideas of what God will do for you is the most horrifyingly selfish thing I’ve ever heard of. And since parenting is the ultimate act of selflessness, I don’t think you’d be very good at it.
CNN has the full text of the article online and you don’t even have to sign up for anything. Click here.
There was also a similar thread on this subject started by me a couple months ago, in which David B and Holly went 'round and 'round in circles with a logic-deficient dougie_monty. Read it at your own risk. You may be tempted to yank your hair out at the roots.
Does nobody else see the irony here? Medea, after all, killed her own children.
After going head to head with the ridiculously stupid ideas espoused by dougie-monty in the other thread, I really have no wish to do so again in this one, except to say that I fervently hope that the full weight of the law falls upon not only the parents in this story, but any other parent who allows a child to die in this fashion.
I agree with the rest of your post, but this part seems to betray a mentality of viewing children as some kind of property. “Not vaccinating your own children is one thing, but …” Why should people get to tinker with another human’s being very existence just because they have the right combination of organs that are in working order? Endangering the life of “your” child is just the same as endangering the life of someone else’s child. The only difference is that parents will be quite pissed if their kids are endangered by someone else, but not quite so indignant at themselves for being foolish with their own kids. Children are individuals, and suffer the same no matter who inflicts said suffering upon them.
Yes. You know, if it was up to god and god alone, 8 out of 10 babies would die at birth and the average life expectancy of a human would be 25 years like it was a couple thousand years ago. Over that period of time, medical knowledge has advanced and life expectancy has tripled. Coincidence? Yeah, I guess it must be. :rolleyes:
I’m almost tempted to print out that quote for posterity. So let me get this straight : there’s “not a mark” where your toe was severed? God reattached it? A nail through your foot healed in minutes? Have you been eating jimson weed and walking around barefoot through junkyards?
I’d like to think I was a Christian, and also one of the religous folks here. But, YOUR rights to YOUR free expression of religion are just that- YOURs. Your child does not belong to you. You are not allowed to miseducate her, kill her, abuse her, beat her or neglect her, no matter what your religion is. Now, once YOU turn 18, YOU have every right to do whatever you want: drink poison, abuse yourself, refuse doctors, scar yourself, etc. But, I can tell you, if you die because you have refused treatment, “you’ve got a lot of 'splaining to do”. G-d does not like us to misuse His gift of our bodies.
Now, those parents killed their child- that’s it. Freedom of religion? Suppose they had wanted to sacrifice her with an obsidian knive on a basalt altar, as “that is the only way her soul would be saved”. What would you say then? And, NO, it is not different- in both cases the child surely dies because of the PARENTS “religion”.
Medea: I am sorry, but you are wrong. But, as long as you endanger no-one else, you have every right to be wrong. But you may not endanger your child, or our children. Nor, may you cut out her heart with an obsidian knive on a basalt altar. Again, you are only the custodian of your child, she is not your “property” to do with as you please.
I am an atheist. I believe people have the right to beliefs that differ from mine and that includes raising their children in those beliefs. And as I said before, some religions have serious issues with western medicine.
The article in the OP said the child COULD have been saved with surgery, not WOULD have been saved. I think that is an important distiction. Hey, folks, all of you will admit that sometimes surgery, and vaccinations and other therapies, do not do what they were intended to do. And I am sure that most of you have heard horror stories about malpractice and outright criminal behavior from heathcare proffesionals.
So it is not a forgone conclusion that the child would have survived surgery. If the child had died on the table, I’m sure all of you would have said ‘tragic, but they did all they could’.
But the issue here is the beliefs of the parents, and the beliefs of religions in general. Many of them believe that your soul is infinately more important than your life. That includes Catholics. Maybe these parents believed that if their child died while they prayed around him or her, that child would go to heaven. And if that child died in surgery, he or she would go to hell.
In this country, the law cannot tell people that their religous convictions do not have merit, even with the weight of scientific evidence on it’s side, because a persons right to those convictions is guaranteed by the constitution.
**
And the negigence comes in because WE’LL NEVER KNOW.
If they did all they could to save the child, then obviously there is no negligence. Sometimes, even if you do all you can, people die.
The issue is not “That child would have lived if it wasn’t for your inaction,” it is “you took away the possibility (and in this case, an above average possibility) through your inaction.”
**
Yep. Unfortunately, the way it turned out, all we can say is “They didn’t do all they could. In fact, they did NOTHING.”
Hence, negligence.
Sure! You’re an adult who has religious convictions that say putting your head in the mouth of lions is demanded, fine! Have fun!
But do not do this to your kid who does not have a choice in the matter, please.
The right for you to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. Ever heard that? It means that everyone has rights, but you cannot have your rights infringe on others.
What you are suggesting is that it is perfectly acceptable that you swing your fist and smack your kids in the nose - as long as you are mandated by God to swing your fist.
Sorry, but I find this unacceptable and quite immoral.
Yer pal,
Satan
[sub]I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
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"Satan is not an unattractive person."-Drain Bead
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I think I probably could have been clearer with what I said. When I said that not vaccinating her child was one thing, I by no means meant it was okay that Medea’s Child does not get her kid vaccinated. However, nothing we say or do can stop her from choosing that route. As long as she homeschools the kid, there’s no real legal recourse. However, she keeps talking about how it’s her religion and choice. The thing she doesn’t realize is that her negligence in not vaccinating her children (as well as not being vaccinated herself) can potentially harm OTHERS. And that’s selfish. I don’t look at kids as property–in fact, if I could, I’d make it so that every child was vaccinated. It’s not a religious issue–it’s a public health issue, and it could mean saving a life.
It’s strange, really, the way our government treats children. I did a little research before class earlier today. Turns out that as long as kids are homeschooled, they don’t have to be vaccinated. It’s perfectly legal for adults to not have ANY vaccinations, unless they go into the military. However, in most states, if you’re caught with a dog that hasn’t had its rabies vaccine, you get a fine. So it appears that the government has more of an interest in the health of pets than it does in the health of children.
I think they’re worried that the dog will bite a human and give them rabies, not that they particularly care if a dog gets sick. (Although if a rabid dog gets loose and infects another person’s dog, I bet the owner of the rabid dog is held liable.) As no one apparently has any religious reasons why they can’t vaccinate their dogs, they’re pretty safe making it a law. I imagine if there was a religion that had mandated “no vaccinating animals!”, the govt. would require non-vaccinated animals to be under strict supervision; but, again, more for the safety of humans than for the safety of the pets. As another example, I don’t believe feline leukemia shots are generally required by law. It’s been recommended by my vet, but I never had to to get my cats vaccinated. So I think it’s concern for humans at the heart of the animal-vaccination laws, not concern for pets. The government doesn’t generally go after people who put their pets down rather than pay $1000 for surgery, but I bet they would if you tried to have your child killed rather than pay for it! So, no, I don’t think I agree that it really appears the government cares more for the health of animals than it does for the health of children.
I doubt they believed he would go to hell if he had surgery. The reason I say this is because in the article, the boy’s mother said that they believe in the King James Version of the Bible. I have been raised in the church my entire life (I’m mid-20s), and the KJV was the version we used most when I was growing up. According to the KJV, the only thing that can send you to hell is rejecting Jesus.
I wholeheartedly believe in the power of prayer, and that God can do anything He wants. I also believe, however, that He created us with common sense and the talents to help each other when the need arises. If a child is so sick that he is about to die, and there is a way to help prevent it, then I think you have a moral obligation to try to help him.
If you use the argument that God could heal the child if He wants to and doesn’t need your help, then I would use the same argument in reverse: Do what you can to help heal the child, and if God really wants to take him, He will.
Bah humbug. If children are such individuals, let 'em get their own place to live.
Funny, this whole thread reminds me of a book I read in high school, entitled Miriam’s Well, by Lois Ruby (a young adult book), about a girl who has cancer. Her family belongs to a VERY strict religion, and she has a court appointed guardian to see that she gets treatment, etc etc…it’s very good.
My great aunt was born with a hole in her heart and her mother, my great-grandmother, opted no for surgery, as my aunt would only have a fifty percent chance of survival…this was maybe…oh…sixty five years ago?
Anyhoo, when my aunt turned 21, she had the surgery.
However, when she was born, her life was not in danger, although without the surgery, she could not have children, nor would she live past her forties.
IN this case, however, I think my great-grandmother WOULD have opted for the surgery.
That idea is just sick…
Apologies for the time lag, life and all. (Desperately trying to spread mumps to my lab, its a rough job, but someone has to do it)
Attending to things in the order in which they were brought up:
Immunizations. I don’t believe they work, literally. My religion doesn’t accept the reality of sin, disease, or death. Its the basis of healing, that all mankind was created perfect by God and will remain that way. Created in God’s image and likeness, totally spiritual. No need for immunizations. In fact, immunizations give more power to the idea that disease is a reality, which I do not accept.
Secondly, are immunizations like those ‘speak to the dead’ psychics? Do they only work if there are no un-belivers in the crowd? If they are infailable for those who have them, why are you worried? The only people I am endangering are other crackpots like me, who you have already requested not breed. We would just ‘naturally’ die off, right? 8 out of 10, wow, my sisters and I really do beat the odds.
Jesus being tempted by the devil, bread from stone, ‘all this will be yours is you worship me’, that deal. So Jesus healing was wrong? Or he should heal, but no one else? Or, what? Just following and accepting Christ here, as closely as I can. Did he ever pause to heal someone, to allow them to know God made them perfect, because man had found a way to accomplish something close? No, he simply healed, loved the world and saw it as perfect and his sight was so real that things could not help but fall into line. Like a door opening into a dark closet, where does the darkness go? It flees before the light and finds no recourse. Instantly, no pain, no slow recovery, just light. I’m obviously looney by thinking this is wonderful and better than medical science.
(apologies, I didn’t take notes on who first brought up the previous points)
Drain Bead, you say that you don’t accept that God can do everything directly. Huh? Do you see God as some guy with a long beard and a full planner, unable to love each individual of his creation? I’m sorry.
IMHO, God can do everything “directly”. Mostly because He/She (my religion uses the term Father/Mother God) has done everything that needs to be done already. “What is once well done is done forever.” God Created. It is done and no human hand can undo that perfection, no material disbelief can take that away from God.
As for doctors, some people do need them, just as some poeple need pills, a crutch to lean on. The placebo effect is well known. Yes doctors do help, just like sugar pills, not addressing the actual problem but soothing the image, the symptoms. By all means, use doctors! I have myself, my body and hands are scarred from it, medical healing takes time and leaves marks. But I’m not dead, which medically I would have been. (And I do thank those doctors for putting up with a very scared child. They were very understanding, handing over as much information as they could find on anything that they were going to do to me. Down to the molecular structure of the pain killers. Which I admire them for, a crazed kid who by rights should be dead going into emergency surgery demanding to know everything probably wasn’t all that much fun to deal with. And they taped my Tigger to my hand. I have met some fine doctors. I have met ones that suck, but I won’t dwell on that.) I have experianced both alternatives and I prefer true healing to the, however careful, buchery of medical science.
Ptahlis, I didn’t even think of applying that referance! Thank you! I have used this handle for so long that I don’t think of it anymore. More because I admire her passion and share the feeling of being a bit too wild for the world I am caught in than I feel any need to murder children. I do love literary sybolism and irony.
Tzel, children as individuals. So, as a child, I shoudl be able to refuse medical attention if I so wish? Trust me, I wished. Every time the choice came up I had no problem turning to God. My littlest sister, still well part of the ‘child’ definition is a wonderful healer. She loves our religion, should she be allowed to practice it to her little heart’s content, even though she is a minor?
neutron star, my toe was cut across the bottom, filleting the ‘pad’ part off. Pretty bloody for a bit. I shoved it in the lake before I noticed it hurt and put it back when I noticed why. And prayed to know that I was made perfect in God’s image, and thus I was fine. In about that long. No marks, no scars, though I have a doozy a bit higher on my ankle from shaving, and we won’t go into my hands.
(I was just hallucinating, right? <grin>)
Thanks spoogie, thought counts. My goal here isn’t to convert anyone, just present the other side. With the allowance that you people don’t try to convert me. I share, I don’t fight.
Satan, the parents did do everything they could, this is the mindset I am trying to show you. Do you try leeches and herbs for a fever? Do you consider not trying them a failure to try everything within your power? Healing is an alternative they have found and prefer, so they use it. The educated ones think hard about such cases as this, it is not neglect or abuse. I can understand you accepting it as stupidity. It does not fit your idea of reality, and thus is wrong to you. As the majority, I guess that can be decided the old fashioned way, mobs and lynchings.
Sorry, back to my point. You can call it stupid, I can understand that. (I personally think going to doctors is pretty useless, but if it makes you happy…) But I ask you to consider your ideas of neglect and abuse. These children are loved and cherished, not hated and ignored. There is a big difference. Even if their parents are mad as hatters and have the brains of a gerbil (felched or unfelched).