A couple who belong to a church whose members avoid medical care were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide for praying over their ill son instead of seeking medical help. Jeff and Marci Beagley’s 16-year-old son, Neil, died in 2008 of complications from a urinary tract blockage. The state authorities have found that an unusual number of children whose families belonged to the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon City had died at an early age, leading to a law that limits faith healing as a defense in such deaths.And no, this is not an isolated case. Here is a post from 2008, Reliance of faith and death of children, that provides statistics and more background on faith healers. This kind of idiocy should have no place in the 21st century!
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Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Faith healers convicted
Hey - the Taliban are not the only crazies out there. Here we have the Followers of Christ Church who exclusively believe in the power of prayer - let their children die as a result. Well, here is justice served:
As far as I can tell, religion does tend to tug on logic, in the rare case.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of religion, I came across this article today: http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/showlink.aspx?bookmarkid=TIHCHM5EP1Y7&preview=article&linkid=7db60d64-fc68-4888-8e9e-a95dc2d7eb24&pdaffid=ZVFwBG5jk4Kvl9OaBJc5%2bg%3d%3d
Interesting read.
Sincerely,
MediaMentions
Many institutions limit access to their online information. Making this information available will be an asset to all.
ReplyDeleteIt always amazes me to hear about people who still conform and cling to these outdated practices. Religion and logic should never be dealt with as being mutually exclusive. While we would hope that this is due to a lack of better educational training, this link to an article describes the position Christian Scientists take against medical treatment: http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=LrrH2ybJgFvknpp8p9tPQ4cGJN4Ts01hJYH6yLt4KQTpthLLmvTG!1491586387!2064974013?docId=5002219881 (you may need a subscription to Questia to view the entire article, but you can get an idea of how ridiculous the situation is from the excerpt)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the articles, MediaMentions and Noreen. The relation between religion and medicine, apart from being an emotional issue, is a complicated one because of historical reasons as well. For much of history, practitioners of medicine used to be religious scholars as well, and many hospitals to this day are run by religious institutions. So then how do we draw the line between one religion from another (e.g. these faith healers)? Perhaps, even more importantly, who gets to draw that line? I would go with secular governmental authority (NIH, for example), but of course different countries will also have different authorities making these decisions. Also, check out the recent post on the same topic.
ReplyDelete