JCC Arena The Theist/Atheist Thunderdome™

That's a Clean Burning Hell, I Tell Ya What!

 

Potentially relevant:

http://jezebel.com/couple-sentenced-to-prison-after-second-child-dies-from-1527276499

 

Already posted last night.

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/derp-derp-derpitus-maximus-derpity-deeeeeeeerp.50003389/page-136

 

Wow... I don't even know how to respond. The lack of parenting skills, common sense, and responsibility are ****ing astounding.

Moviefan2k4 Skywalker8921 anybody else.... thoughts? Agree? Disagree?

Edit... oh, there you are? What are your thoughts? Is this acceptable? Personally, I think these people are insane and shouldn't be allowed to raise children.

 

Repost from the derp thread:

Look, just because God has (and still is) performing miracles today, it does not absolve you of responsibilty to seek medical care when necessary, especially for pneumonia. Pneumonia is no joke; neither is walking pneumonia, for that matter. I know because I came down with WP when I was 11 and it was serious enough that we went to the doctor.

GO to the doctor, folks. Faith and prayer alone won't always work. This double tragedy could have been avoided if the parents had sought medical help for their boys.

Further thoughts:

The articles do not mention if the children were vaccinated, but I'm willing to bet they were not. However, even if they had recieved a pneumonia vaccine, the two boys still could have come down with it. Pneumonia is very dangerous, especially when it attacks the lungs. The parents should have sought medical help immediately, regardless of their beliefs. Given the fact that it had already happened once and cost the life of one son, they definitely should have exercised common sense this time around.

 

Last night she posted a pretty extensive condemnation of this couple, and more broadly of the idea that believing in faith healing mandates that someone should specifically refuse normal/"earthly" treatments that are known to work.

EDIT: And there it is. One can only basically agree.

 

I don't advocate "faith-only" teaching with regard to health, because God gave us our brains to use, not let atrophy. By the same token, I don't support the "KJV-only" movement, because no English translation equals the original languages 100%. You look at the KJV, NIV, NLT, etc...and find the common threads. I do think the New World Translation's heretical though, since the JWs teach that Jesus and the angel Michael are the same being.

 

Usually the cause of pneumonia is bacteria, though it can have an array of causes. Not really a vaccine issue.

 

Yeah, I know. I don't even think there's a pneumonia vaccine (is there?) but you see the point I was trying to make, yes?

 

Tangentially, but the Catholic manual from the 1500s on exorcisms has some relevance on this: "Most people who claim to be possessed by the Devil are more in need of a doctor than a priest."

 

Yes, there is. I received one before a surgical procedure.
http://www.vaccines.gov/diseases/pneumonia/index.html

 

Bah ha ha... blackmail material!!

(And now it's too late to take it back! )

 

I thought prayer was shown to be nothing more than a placebo effect when it came to medicine?

 

Interestingly, supposedly not. I'd have to dig up the study -- and it was referenced in The West Wing -- but there was a study done where there was an actual control group and everything and the people receiving prayers had a statistically significant recovery rate or something.

 

How does that disprove anything?

 

It would imply potentially more than placebo, no?

 

Why?

People receiving best intentions from people who share a belief in an electro bearded super wizard heal better... lack of empirical evidence and all taht... do the sick people who they've been prayed for?

 

lol... what?

 

Nothing particularly strong. This study showed that those who KNEW they were being prayed for, and were, did worse than those who were told they might be prayed for, and were, or those who were told they might be prayed for and weren't.
http://www.templeton.org/pdfs/press_releases/060407STEP.pdf

 

Ah ok, I had assumed the other way around. But yes. Sorry dp, misread you.

So it's actually useless to the point of being detrimental then..?

 

Tell that to folks who have regrown amputated limbs when folks prayed for them.

 

These morons should have their children taken away. Instead they get a slap on the wrist because of their religion. Faith Healing. What a crock of $h!t!!!!!

 

Why would you even attempt to test it that way in the first place? The premise put forward by religious people is not and has never been that this is mechanistic intervention that should yield any consistent results. It's that there is a being/consciousness somewhere not otherwise accounted for the natural world, which can be appealed to for help but will respond based on a whole array of factors, several of which are explicitly beyond the grasp of the petitioner. What you'd actually want to test is change in intervention rate relative to the basal one after prayer.

I understand perfectly well that this impossible, since there is in the first place no such evidence any beings exist, let alone that they intervene in anything or can be petitioned to. But people ought to accept that some ideas cannot be empirically tested. Proving or disproving something that no one asserted in the first place is a useless exercise.

 

lol.... I was waiting for your response to that post. I expected better, to be honest.