When Religion Becomes Child Abuse

Medicine testing 123

Testing 123 testing 123

Testing 123 Testing 123

The mother is obviously delusional, believing as she was taught that her religion would save her, and presumably her child, from earthly evils. The one question I have not seen asked is what this woman's spiritual leader has to say and where this woman got the idea that she herself, through prayer, could treat her child for cancer. Did she come up with this notion on her own or did someone instruct her? If someone had instructed her to beat the child to chase out demons we would certainly be asking her minister questions. Is anyone asking her spiritual advisor how this woman came to her conclusions? Should the spiritual advisor be prosecuted as would a cult leader who ordered members to commit a crime?

so...do you think society would be better off w/ or w/out religion?

In my spiritual community, we have a lot of people who are users and practitioners of alternative healing, including Reiki, herbal remedies, etc. I've had Reiki and acupuncture myself. While it has short-term benefits, it should be used in conjunction with Western, scientific medicine. Many people feel that Western medicine is a scam, or somehow wrong. They may be right, in some respects. However, no Pagan would withhold any treatment from a child, regardless of how they felt about Western medicine. I don't want to speak for all Pagans, but I can assure you that the ones I know would do anything to save the life of a child.

Last week the National Public Radio program "All Things Considered" mentioned one of the distant intentionality studies that my colleagues and I published last year. The study showed that in emotionally bonded couples where one was healthy and the other was being treated for cancer, that when the healthy partner sent compassionate intention thoughts towards their loved one, then the physiological state of the patient, who was isolated at a distance, responded. This is one of a few dozen similar studies conducted over the past few decades. Cumulatively they show repeatable evidence that we are connected in spooky ways that resemble on a macro scale what quantum entanglement is on the micro scale. [These studies were not designed to test whether that connection affects healing.]

It was predictable that some people would not like the NPR program. One of those comments appeared today in the Huffington Post by someone who was clearly miffed by the very concept that thoughts might influence the world. When I see such strong opinions expressed, it is almost always the case that the person offering those opinions doesn't actually know anything about the underlying empirical data. And the emotional pressure underlying that opinion, especially among scientists, very often can be traced to a deeply held anger against religion, which they imagine which is what motivates these experiments [It doesn't, at least not for me. I don't believe in god...only in a creative force.]

In this case, the author of that op-ed admits his bias: "When I was young, my faith was broken by God's apparent stony silence in the face of such [medical and other] agonies...." That same faith can be broken by discovering that Santa Claus is really your dad, or that the Tooth Fairy is really your mom. Some children never recover from the humiliation at being fooled by supposedly trustworthy adults, so like a steel trap their minds snap shut and forever after disallow certain ideas.

The problem is that in this case there is empirical evidence that has nothing to do with religious faith, or any sort of faith, that supports the idea that our thoughts actually do influence the world around us. A little bit. And not nearly to the extent that a child's imagination thinks they ought to. In addition, the quantum connection is not so easy to dismiss after all, at least for those who are willing to rationally ponder the evidence.

No.

Not for thinking people.

Back on the topic-

The "right to choose" mother and her son are back home and the son is now receiving chemotherapy.

http://www.weau.com/home/headlines/46093977.html

End of discussion?????

When you have a serious illness or injury, you do better if you are cheerful and hopeful. Most medical treatment depends for success upon the cooperation of the patient. For example, you have to show up for doctor's appointments, take your pills as directed, eat the prescribed or otherwise healthy diet, get enough rest, don't drink, do your reuired excercises or physical therapy, and all kinds of other things like that.

To get well, you need to be in a rhythm of life, which you embrace and promote voluntarily. Cheerfulness and hope provide the setting for getting well.

"While I breathe, I hope."

Many sick people do not trhive under medical treatment and die, because they give up hope, when there is still plenty of hope left.

Real prayer, is never for things, not even for "heatlth" or "life." Real prayer is for courage and strength to endure. I would think it is a futile prayer, to ask God to take the cancer away. It is a better prayer, seeking calm, rest, and strength, and the ability to hope, while there is still hope left.

It seems to me that Susan Jacoby, in this piece certainly, is sweepingly prejudiced and narrow-minded herself, presenting support for a form of conventionality that is every bit as biased as that of the religion based biases of those she eschews. The presumption that all parents should be required, demanded or commanded to give orthodox and conventional alopathic medical treatment in all cases of "life threatening" illness is far too close to Big Brother, (OR Big Sister!) than I am comfortable with.

I am not a supporter of withholding treatment for children in the slightest, but I am not interested in institutionalized imposition of medical practice, or the forcing of parents to make choices that are against their conscience. I do not disbelieve in the power of the mind to heal, and that may include the power of prayer as form of consciousness to change and intervene in a disease process. I would not put all my eggs in that one basket, but I would be rue to subject my child to radiation and chemotherapy except, perhaps, as last resort. Introducing death in order to push back death has been conventional medical wisdom even as it goes against the common sense of organic life.

This essay brings to my mind issues in the abortion debate. Ms. Jacoby is for choice but then, in this case when a child has been born, is alive and present, is against non-conventional choice of the parent when there is a "life threatening illness".

Legislating in support of life is obvious for any civilized society. But there are far too many unknowns here, and where does a line get drawn? Toxifying the body with chemicals to kill cancer kills the body too. Sometimes it works to rid the body of the cancer, before it robs the body of it's life. Sometimes it doesn't. Though the intention of the treatment is to prolong life, applying chemotherapy is effectively a threat to life. The therapy itself is a form of child abuse, no?, if the intention is set aside.

Ditto to radiation treatment.

What of remission, particularly in cases where conventional medical treatment cannot easily, (or at all sometimes), be given credit? I personally know dozens of people who have refused, altogether or at some point, orthodox medical treatment for numerous diseases, cancer in particular, and opted for some alternative way that caused their disease to go into remission or resulted in a prolonging of life and credit their refusal of doctors recommendations for the reversals they experienced.

Who is to say what is the truth? There are many that negate alternative therapies and processes as valid. It seems clear that Ms. Jacoby, for instance, thinks little of the effect of prayer. And as yet there is no definitive studies that conclusively validate prayer or many alternative therapies. But then one wonders at the rationality of poisoning the body to heal it. And as yet, though remission happens without medical rationality, no study can justify it's reasons. Disease and the human body, (not to mention mind), are tricky and often still mysterious forces.

Children do and will begin to think for themselves regardless of indoctrination into religion or science or the virtues of being a Republican or a Maoist Communist. We are all conditioned and programmed to believe the ways that we do, but we all have free will and a curious consciousness. Some indoctrination may be harder to overcome, some may be more supportive to independent thought. And independent thought is not always a strength, contrary to the American conditioning....

How many children, I wonder, not to mention adults, have survived life threatening illnesses and other life crisis outside of medical treatment? Do we get plastered over the news these successes? Not much. We hear of some other extremist case of religious fanaticism and then debate how society at large should protect itself against the fringe.

We do not know why a child is born to a set of parents, and why it is dealt that hand in life. There is much not known. I tend to think that there are reasons for these things that we are as yet too ignorant of to understand.

James Randi has been offering $1,000,000 for one single verifiable occurance of faith healing for years. No one has ever taken his money.
Faith healing is like weather majic. The shaman danced and sang and sacrificed and it didn't rain...until it did. A large number of human illnesses go away on their on as the body heals itself while other times the body goes away and the disease wins, often inspite of medical science.

The bottom line is that any parent that can give their child provenly effective medical treatment and refuses to do so on any grounds should be willing to let their faith save them from the needle that will end their life for murder.

On the surface level this seems like a no-brainer. A mother in Minnesota has decided to go against medical advice and we, as a society of marginally-informed voyeurs, do not approve. If it were her own body, we would grumble and talk about her behind her back. Jay Leno would make fun of this backwards ‘crazy lady’ in front of millions of viewers. But our society has decided that God is not reason enough for a mother to refuse an unwanted, painful, debilitating, protracted series of medical treatments for her son.

I know, I know. You’re saying, “But she’s wrong!”

So what reason is good enough to tell the government ‘no thank you’? Is there an approved list of reasons? Because we’re talking about a child, does that mean the poor boy has to endure whatever treatment the voter chooses? Is it a Vegas crap shoot? If the odds-makers gave the boy less than a 50-percent chance of being cured would we be raising this much fuss? An eighteen year old can refuse treatment for no reason at all but a mother and child who refuse treatment for religious reasons are CRAZY and must be stopped!

The problem is that our society sees death as a punishment. It isn’t. God does not love someone who dies at 15 any less than someone who lives to 80. Perhaps he loves them more. And there are certainly many examples of people who reach their senior years but never lived a day of their lives. We have no way to measure the purpose of a life or the satisfaction and peace that having a purpose brings.

There are instances where people inexplicably get better and their doctors don’t know why. Some of these doctors even use the M-word (miracle) when describing what happened. When all your scientific reasoning says that person is going to die and they don’t, how do you know it isn’t God? Dismissing the inexplicable as a ‘statistical fluke’ is not reasoning. The word miracle exists for just these kinds of events. And miracles rarely happen for reasons of self-gratification or personal benefit, but to serve God’s purposes.

Yes, I would be happier if this mother would let the doctors do what they can for her son (I don’t think God would mind either) but that does not make her resistance to this intrusion wrong. It also does not mean that God would not take away the child’s disease if it would cure a couple atheists of their doubt – but too many rationalists see only what they can understand, and some of them aren’t that bright.

First of all, this family IS treating their son, not only with prayers, but with alternative medical treatments.
As a parent who did allow her 13-year-old child to have a say in her treatment when she was ill, I say that the child SHOULD have a say.
Granted, my daughter has never been diagnosed with anything as extreme as cancer, but if she had been, my position would have been the same.

The boy has been through one round of chemo, and knows what the side effects are like. It is perfectly understandable that he would not want to repeat the experience.
When my grandmother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she took ONE chemo treatment, and decided that she would rather die of cancer than have any more chemo.

My other grandmother died DURING a chemo treatment. The doctors had to know that she was past the point of chemo being able to help (she was already comatose and on life support), but continued pumping it into her anyway.

Chemo isn't the only effective treatment for cancer. A good friend of ours was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and decided that he didn't want any part of any of the traditional treatments for it - no surgery, no chemo, no radiation. He researched dietary treatment regimens, put himself on the one that made the most sense to him, and in a year, was declared cancer-free by his doctor.

I can only reiterate.
Interrogation, is a "conviction" of failed leadership!

Anybody can run a Marathon on a flat track!
Where's the incline? The river? The high step? The recovery? The sprint?:)

Class adjourned.

J

from www.answers.com

born-

A past participle of bear.

adj. (Abbr. b.)
1.
a.Brought into life by birth.
b.Brought into existence; created: A new nation was born with the revolution.
2.
a.Having from birth a particular quality or talent: a born artist.
b.Destined, or seemingly destined, from birth: a person born to lead.
3.Resulting or arising: wisdom born of experience.
4.Native to a particular country, region, or place. Often used in combination: Irish-born; Southern born and bred; Boston-born.

The application of medical technology is usually a difficult experience. It usually involves needles, and scaples, and shots, and sutures, and pills and drugs with side effects, all with hoped-for but uncertain outcomes, and all usually in a clinical setting in which your body is regarded as a thing, and your personal and mental suffering or angusih is usually not considered. To go to the doctor and to be diagnosed with a serious medical condition, or to be suddenly broken and battered in an accident, is to be caught in a complicated web of medical technology which is expensive, rude, and, inefficient.

So, maybe that is why people pray, when they are sick or injured, even though they also believe in medicine, and feel that medical science will cure them, or make them whole again, or at least help them, eventually, to mangage their suffering better.

I mean, remember the Scottish Play? Someone being... 'not born of woman' but 'from the womb untimely ripped? :)'

If you want to go to what the English means, anyway. :)

"BORN - Brought into existence; created"

Actually, CCNL, strictly speaking, it means 'birthed,' ie, borne, as in carried, as in 'carried to term.'

Speaking of 'redefinitions.'

Hi Arminius,

Thanks so much for the link! I'm very interested. Still have your Iraq song. Last week, someone posted a chorus on the War, after Country Joe.

IMHO, you ought to copyright your song, get it produced, and put it on the web. Not kidding, I.

Farnaz :)

Farnaz,

In case you still retain some interest in protest songs, you might want to check this out. It is anti-war altogether, not any particular conflict. A simultaneous worldwide singing and playing from Africa, Israel, Ireland (Bono!), and India:
http://www.playingforchange.com/episodes/8/War_No_More_Trouble

A footnote - you are right about Rev Reese, I read it too.

Just thought I'd pop in and see what was happening.

Susan Jacoby:

You write:

"LAST WEEK IN REVIEW

Several people mentioned the Rev. Thomas J. Reese's essay on Obama at Notre Dame as an exercise in erudite, progressive Catholic thought. If you didn't read it last week, I urge you to take a look at in in the archives."
______________________________________
That would be yours truly, primarily, perhaps only, decidedly not Catholic. What does that tell us?

On a more encouraging note, I emailed the essay, along with other writings of Reese to Catholic progressives, who were suitably impressed. A couple of them will start reading Reese's columns as they appear here.

As for me, I remain moved by what I've learned of the man and his thinking. As I mentioned last week, he is an intellectual heavyweight, has an ethics, courage, etc.

Don't plan on becoming Catholic any time soon, or ever, in fact, but I was and am impressed.

BORN - Brought into existence; created

Once again, putting it in terms of the Big Bang, the Gib Gnab (a constant recycling Big Bang now being the new theory of many astrophysicists) and maybe some god:

The Big Bang or the Gib Gnab or some god granted the gifts of Free Will and Future to all the thinking beings in the Universe. This being the case, it is not possible to alter life by requests and prayers. Statistically, your request/prayer might come true but it is simply the result of the variabiliy/randomness of Nature.

So put down your rosaries and prayer beads stop worshiping/revering cows/cults and bowing to Mecca five times a day. Instead work hard at your job, take care of your families and aging parents, volunteer at a soup kitchen, donate to charities and the poor and continue to follow the Commandments of your religion or any good rules of living as gracious and good human beings.

And lets all hope there indeed is a place called Heaven!!!

If not, so what???

Part two

Of course those religious people who allow their children to die (but with prayers) rather than allow them to be cured by medicine are hopeless (although of course they have plenty of hopes in their God). They are hopeless in the faith of modern medicine. But they do provide a useful service. Their rejection of medicine gives the lie to their religious belief and certainly makes absurd all those studies which say people who have religious beliefs (but of course are simultaneously being treated by the best of modern medicine) are more likely to recover than non-believers (who of course are taking medicine). In order to put to rest those absurd studies one should just be ruthless and tell those people who believe they will recover by faith, while in actuality they are simultaneously taking medicine, to just stop taking medicine and only pray. Enough of that and they might make the connection that it is the medicine rather than the prayer which is curing them.

But in the meantime it very well could be that those who believe and take medicine are more likely to recover than those who take medicine but disbelieve. Unfortunately we cannot have both--believe in prayer and medicine. We have to move to a decisive faith in medicine. That this might be slightly detrimental to health (as the studies show contrasting believers who take medicine from non-believers who take medicine) is more than made up for by moving to medicine. The transition from faith to medicine in this sense has a slight dip as the jump is made (picture a monkey swinging from one vine to another).
Eventually medicine will be so effective no one will compare it to praying for health. However one might forever compare meditation to medicine--because meditation is obviously good for health. But then again no future meditator will confuse meditation with medicine. In fact meditators now have a pretty good record of not confusing meditation with medicine. Probably prayer contrasted with medicine will give way to meditation facilitating medicine--and vice versa: medicine facilitating meditation. But this is nothing other than exercise for the mind and medicine for the mind working together for harmony and maximization of body and mind.

Part one

Medicine is probably one of the most important disciplines calling into question, specifically, divine intervention in human affairs. Certainly for all the faith of moderns divine intervention in matters of health is more and more called into question by the success of medicine, the contrast between medicine and prayer.

But divine intervention still hangs on of course in such studies as those which say that religious people (who take medicine) are more likely to recover from, for example, cancer than non-believers (who take medicine). Strange those studies...If medicine did not exist faith would have no chance against cancer. And not having faith but having medicine is much better than no medicine and only faith. But it very well may be that having faith and medicine is better than no faith and medicine. But is it not ridiculous and contradictory to have faith and medicine? I mean someone saying God cured him when in actuality he turned to medicine? Those saying we should have faith and medicine are essentially saying that at the same time our intelligence becomes acute enough to make useful discoveries we should remain blinded by preserving a belief in God at all costs. Something has to give when one is caught between believing prayer is the cure and medicine the cure.

Susan,

I do not think that the right to freedom of religion has been jeopardized in the response to these cases.

Frankly, though I've tried, I simply cannot see the argument.

The US Supreme Court has decided that the "mother" has the right to choose!!!

The Constitution provides that all BORN persons are equal and are entitled to the right to life, liberty, etc. The Constitutional right to life is a civil right. Interfering with someone's civil rights is a federal offense, regardless of who the offending party is, or his/her motives.

If a minor child has this civil right to life, and I presume minor children are included, then I would think that it follows that anyone who denies a minor child medical attention is attempting to interfere with his civil right to life; if the child consequently dies, then that person has definitely denied the child his civil rights (this would be the least of the charges that could be leveled) and has committed voluntary homicide at the least. It is given that the state has a vested interested in keeping its children safe, secure and well.

It is, indeed, a no-brainer: any parent who is interfering with, or endangering, his child's civil right to life should be prosecuted, and the child should be taken from the parent and given the necessary medical treatments until such time as the child achieves his majority and can decide for himself whether he wants to continue the treatments.