Save my baby . . . kill theirs?

The BBQ Pit
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Save my baby. . .kill theirs?

On last night’s local news there was a story about a baby who has a disease that is destroying its heart. The baby has one or two months to live unless it gets a heart transplant. The baby’s father said in an interview that he prays to God that a heart will become available before his baby dies.

This leads me to three questions:

  1. Does the father not see that in asking God to provide a heart for his baby he is asking God to take the life of someone else’s baby?

  2. If the father believes God can save his baby, why doesn’t he pray for healing, instead of the death of another family’s baby?

  3. If there really is a god, why do babies get life-threatening diseases in the first place?

Here are my own answers to those questions, which will no doubt differ from many of yours.

  1. Of course he does, but any parent who loves his child, offered the choice between the death of an unknown parent’s child and his own, will opt for the death of the unknown. A neighbor’s or a sibling’s baby might complicate the issue, but I think the choice would likely be the same. Simple human nature, and I couldn’t blame him for it.

  1. No matter what the core belief is about healing, relatively few people, seeing their own child wasting, away would choose prayer only. They would also try every possible medical treatment. My own, admittedly cynical viewpoint is that, deep down, most people don’t believe in miraculous healing, at least not without exhausting every medical possibility first. Then, if a cure is effected, no matter what the doctors did, God gets the credit. The claim that the recovery was a “miracle” apparently mitigates the lack of faith. God loves being praised whether he deserves it or not.

  2. This one is the primary reason that I ceased accepting God long ago. If there really is a god who is omnipotent, then nothing happens without his direction or at least his consent. That children have diseases like diabetes, spina bifida, cystic fibrosis and cancer, to me puts the lie to the idea that “God is Love.”

I anticipate some especially heated arguments on that point, but I’ll wait until they are advanced before dealing with them. This is the reason this thread is begun in the Pit.

I’m not trolling here. I am expressing an opinion in the form of a rant, because, even though I know where it comes from, it pisses me off to hear people say “I pray to God that my baby will survive” (at the obvious cost of someone else’s, which loss I will bear stoically). I don’t blame them for it, mind you. But it rankles me because of the idea that a loving god could allow this horror in the first place and then, at his caprice, either allow the first baby to die or murder another because the first baby’s parents prayed harder.

I wish people would just admit that what happens is random and unaffected by any supernatural power. The only way disasters like that poor baby’s heart disease are acceptable to my mind is if there is NO god. Randomness is acceptable. Some kind of “plan” that includes children’s suffering is not. If there is a god he’s certainly not love itself. If he’s omnipotent, he’s also at least as much evil as good. That’s my opinion, and I’m stuck with it.

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I can’t remember who said it but there was a story about some catastrophe where thousands were killed. One lucky survivor credited her survivial to the fact that God must have saved her. The writer commented that if that was the case, then by the same logic, God must have been really angry at every one of the thousands of people who died.

3

Well, presumably there ARE some hearts available… they just don’t have a tissue type close enough to that of his baby. I would think that this guy’s prayers are more along the lines of, “Hey God, please let one of the hearts you’re making available for whatever reason be suitable for transplant into my kid,” than “Hey God, please kill some kid who can donate to mine.”

4

Not necessarily. Perhaps he’s praying that more of the parents of dead babies will consent to organ donation.

Maybe he feels God will grant a non-miraculous solution to a prayer (donated heart becoming available) in preference to a miraculous one (a cure for the condition that the doctors don’t expect)

I don’t believe there are any gods but if there was, he would work in mysterious ways and would send trials like the death of an infant to test the faith of its parents.

5

I didn’t mean to imply that the man was asking for the death of another child. Rather that people pray that way without reference to the fact that an available heart has to come from some other victim. I wasn’t blaming the father for another kid’s death. I was blaming the god he prays to.

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But if an omnipotent god protects little children, as so many little children are told, why are there all those dead babies?

Refer to my reply above.

This is what gets me about the belief I so often hear expressed. Do people not see the horrific injustice of harming a child to teach the parent a lesson? What about the child’s life? We belong to God, so he can do with us whatever he will? I don’t buy it. There is nothing mysterious about this god’s ways. He couldn’t be more obvious. He says that he loves people, but shows that he holds humans in about the same esteem as some children hold a fly, whose wings they are tearing off just to see how it reacts.

7

You don’t believe in a benevolent God but now you’re blaming him for being malevolent?

Conceivably, the guy could also be asking God to take even fewer other little babies but that the parents of the ones he does take consent to tissue donation. God could go on a killing rampage for the guy but it won’t matter if parents don’t consent to doctors transplanting their organs.

8

Something to think about…

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If you read my OP carefully, you will see that I stopped accepting that god long ago. I have to confess to some kind of belief, but it lies in the realm of superstition, which I completely reject. It’s kind of like the vestigial tail we all possess. Or the appendix. It’s there, and we know it’s there, but some of us think it’s entirely useless. I regard this vestage as rather worse than useless. I see it as pernicious.

10

In the Book of Job, Job is beset by trials and finally asks God essentially the same question as the OP’s #3.

God replies, “Where were you when I made the world?”

The implication, at least as I see it, is the unsatisfying answer that God is not simply an ultra-powerful person. He is a different sort of presence, one that is simply beyond the understanding of humans.

I enjoyed shows like the recently-cancelled Wonderfalls because they (obliquely) made this point – not that God was necessarily the driving force behind the talking animals, but we’re talking concept here. Jaye, the protagonist, is ordered by a mysterious force that manifests as talking animals to break the tailights on a priest’s car. She does so.

Now, if that’s all you see, you may conclude that whatever force is giving Jaye her orders is malevolent. Ultimately, much later in the show, we see that the broken tailight causes the police to pull over the car, and a warrant check reveals the priest had an outstanding warrant for unpaid child support – for a child he didn’t know he had, conceived before he entered the priesthood, I hasten to add. Father father is reunited with his former girlfriend, who hasn’t known where he was, and his heretofore unknown child, and everything is happy.

Of course, that’s a simple scenario, and through the magic of television, we get to see all the parts, and all the cause and effect. That’s because a show that had random bad events without any evidence that they were part of a higher purpose would be unwatchable.

Actually, it is watchable. We call it Life.

  • Rick
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Evangelical athiests with a chip on their shoulder… they’re so rare.
:rolleyes:

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The father is doing what a lot of us would do if we were in that situation. His child is dying and he’s praying. He’s not praying for God to kill another child even thought that’s what it’ll take for his child to live. He’s praying for the life of his child.

My nephew was killed in a car accident last month and my sister donated his organs. Even though we’re Christians, we don’t blame God for his death. Sometimes bad things happen. My sister’s SUV had a blowout and the pieces of tire got caught in the wheel and flipped her car. My nephew was thrown from the car even though he was in a car seat. It was an accident and I’m not going to blame God. I don’t think God was thinking “I’m going to kill Eliazar so Person-x can live”. And, I don’t believe he’s just making up stuff to hurt and punish us.

We’re grateful for the three years we had with my nephew and hopefully, parents like the one in the OP can have many more years with their child.

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Oops! I didn’t check to see who was logged in before I posted. The previous post was written by me, not Legolamb.

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Rick, we may have our differences on constitutional theory and moral theology, but I just want to say that I absolutely love your metaphysics!

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Hi, DesertGeezer. I noticed in another thread that we are about the same age – Class of '61. I was born 7/14/43. How about you?

I’ve always thought that my first question to God, if allowed, would be why such torments as the Holocaust have been allowed to happen. I would add to that questions about the suffering and death of children.

I don’t think that people who pray for an organ to become available are actually praying for the death of someone. Death is a reality. They are asking that good for them or there loved one might come. They aren’t really thinking beyond that.

And I see no reason why someone can’t pray for both healing in any form – a miracle, the genius of a gifted doctor, the generosity of an organ donor.

I have no answers for your third question. I have a faith that all things really do work together for the good in the great scheme of things. Maybe I have that faith because it was what was spoon fed to me. But my faith is not an answer for anyone else.

I’ve also seen my belief in things working together for the good work out for me several times on a much smaller scale than anything you’ve described.

A recent example: I went to the doctor recently because of a terrible pain in my right chest. He said that he thought it was arthritis in some joints of my ribs. He had an x-ray done to double check. Medicare regulations required that both sides of my chest be x-rayed. Because of that, he found a spot on my left lung. A CAT-scan indicated the early stages of pneumonia. At the time, I had no symptoms. But I am very susceptible to respiratory problems and a bad case of pneumonia could have put my lights out.

The 18 year old me who had fallen in the shower and fractured my ribs (eventually leading to the arthritis) my Freshman year in college would never have been able to see any potential for anything good coming from that 43 years later.

I know that doesn’t begin to answer your questions and I’m still left with plenty myself. But I just don’t feel that I have to have the answers now.

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Ah, the guy’s in a really hard place – he’s got a dying kid. So long as he isn’t actively harming other babies, I’ll cut him plenty of slack on whatever he wants to say, to whatever gods or people he wants to say it to.

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What I don’t understand is why we need to pray to God to save the baby. Will this prayer somehow get him to change his mind? Is he indifferent to our fate until someone brings it to his attrention? Why not just have all the babies who are going to die do it where they can do the most good from an organ donor standpoint?

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I’ve often said the same thing. G-d isn’t saying “I’m the Alpha and Omega, I don’t have to explain myself to you.”. He’s saying “I can’t explain myself to you. Oh, I’m all powerful and I could change you so that you would be capable of understanding. But, I’d have to change you so much that you wouldn’t be human anymore. Just accept that I have My reasons, even if you can’t understand them.”

#1 I also agree with what other posters have said about praying for a donor organ to become available. The majority of suitable organs simply are not donated. If half as many people died, but everybody who was a suitable donor signed up as an organ donor, the amount of donor organs would increase dramatically.

#2 Do you know the short glurge about three boats? There’s a flood. A man refuses to leave his house. He says that G-d will save him. The water rises to the front door. A boat comes by, and offers the man a ride. “I don’t need one. G-d will save me.” The water rises to the second floor. Another boat offers the man a ride. “I don’t need one. G-d will save me.” The water rises to the roof. Another boat comes by, and offers the man a ride. “I don’t need one. G-d will save me.” The man drowns. He stands before G-d and asks “Why didn’t you save me?” G-d answers “I tried to save you three times! You just wouldn’t get in the boat.”
For theists, the line between our own efforts, the efforts of others, and G-d’s help can be blurry.

#3 See number one. This is a point neither side can win. The atheists argue ‘How could a loving god allow the Holocaust, AIDS, or Celine Dion?’. The theists argue ’ He moves in strange and wondrous ways, and it all makes sense if we could see the whole picture.’. The atheists counter ‘What about this event in history? It’s been centuries and I still don’t see anything good coming from it.’. The theists resond ‘You can’t see all the details and effects of that event and/or it hasn’t been long enough for the whole pattern to emerge.’ This repeats ad infinitum.

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Another class of 61 here… 9-8-43

We are fast approaching the time when we get to find out.

I kinda courious. Just not in a hurry… :cool:

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The answer is not merely unsatisfying. To me it is unacceptable. I don’t think the actions of this “presence” are beyond understanding at all. “Where were you when I made the world?” says very clearly, “I am everything, you are nothing. How dare you question me?” The story of Job, perhaps more than any other biblical reference, is what finally pushed me to the realization that God, if he exists at all, is not worthy of worship. My take on Job is entirely different from the apologetic one I see from most people on this subject.

Here we have Satan chatting with the Boss, who asks him what he’s been up to (as if The Omniscient wouldn’t know unless informed), then brags to this underling about the righteousness of one of his earthly playthings:

And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?

But Satan, unimpressed, and knowing he can goad the Old Man decides to have some fun with him:
Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.

Now, God, instead of behaving like, you know, GOD, and saying “I don’t have to prove anything to you. Get thee gone!” decides to play along:
And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.

Let’s not forget here that God is supposed to be both omniscient and omnipotent. He knows in advance what Satan is going to do, including murdering Job’s entire family (but, what the hey…when the game is over Job can have another family, right? Just as good, right?). He has the power to stop it, but instead allows the infliction of every physical and emotional pain on one who has followed all the rules and done everything right.

We are supposed to accept that Job was treated this way because he was proud. For his pride his family were murdered. Never mind the material things. His children and even their families were destroyed to make a lesson, so we are told, that Job was too proud of himself.

The odious theme of vicarious punishment runs throughout the Bible. I can’t accept it just because the Cosmic Bully is bigger and meaner than I am. Might may win in the end, but might does NOT make right.