Yeah, I’m going to beat on that “What’s the harm in religious belief?” meme again. This time the harm befell a 15-month-old girl named Ava Worthington who died from a combination of a benign cystic hygroma on her neck that impeded her breathing and pneumonia. Both of her parents are on trial charged with criminal mistreatment and manslaughter for failing to provide their daughter with adequate medical care. When detectives asked the father why he didn’t take his baby girl to a doctor he gave them the following explanation:
“I don’t believe in them,” Carl Worthington said of doctors. “I believe in faith healing.”
Raylene Worthington said that her religious beliefs do not encompass medical care and that she would not have done anything different for her - daughter, who died at home of pneumonia, a blood infection and other complications.
Here’s what they did instead:
Ava’s father, who goes by Brent, his middle name, described what happened:
Ava came down with what appeared to be a cold or the flu on a Tuesday. By Saturday, her breathing became labored and the family turned to its traditional faith-healing rituals, praying, fasting, anointing the body with oil, administering diluted wine and laying on of hands.
By Sunday, Brent Worthington said he thought there was “a possibility” his daughter was so sick she could die. Then, after a final session of laying on of hands at about 5 p.m., “she perked up,” he said. She grabbed her bottle and “took some food.”
“She was peaceful; she was rested,” Worthington said.
She died two hours later. Suddenly their religious beliefs don’t seem so harmless anymore. Unfortunately the harm didn’t befall the people who held the beliefs, but to their innocent child. When you buy into your delusion so much that you abandon proven techniques for pointless rituals this is the result you end up with. The really sad part is that Worthington doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong:
Brent Worthington said that forgoing medical treatment is probably difficult for outsiders to understand. For him, medical treatment “is not a question. It’s not even thought.”
When the detectives told Worthington that the law requires a parent to provide adequate medical care, he said he had provided care.
“I did everything I could do for her,” Worthington said. “What I was doing was working,” he said. “She was getting relief.”
The fact that she’s dead in no way interferes with this man’s belief that what he was doing was working. Facts don’t tend to influence the delusional.
Believe whatever nonsense you want, pray all you want, but try to keep enough common sense in your head to take your kids to the doctor when they get sick. Otherwise don’t be surprised if you end up in jail for your idiocy.
A New Jersey blogger who urged readers to “take up arms” against Connecticut lawmakers and who suggested government officials should “obey the Constitution or die” surrendered Thursday on a charge of inciting violence.
He was
angry over legislation that would have given lay members of Roman Catholic churches in Connecticut more control over their parish’s finances.
Seems he was under earlier scrutiny for:
Two years ago, police in New Jersey beefed up security for four state Supreme Court justices whose addresses Turner revealed in his Webcast “to show they can be gotten to.” Turner released the information after the court ruled that gay couples were entitled to the same rights as married couples.
You don’t think he may be a little bigoted? Maybe this belongs under the earlier thread about a Christian asking, “I’m the bad guy? How did that happen?”
You can read the whole article here.
Update: Looks like this is actually a PR stunt by Electronic Art’s PR company. Never let it be said that I’m not willing to own up when I’ve been had. It looked real enough to me considering some of the stupid game protests in the past.
It was a small group of about 13 people marching about outside the LA Convention Center where E3 is taking place this week. What were they protesting? A new video game based on Dante’s Inferno:
The protesters, who came from a church in Ventura County, held signs with slogans such as “trade in your playstation for a praystation” and “EA = anti-Christ” as they marched and handed out a homemade brochure that warns, “a video game hero does not have the authority to save and damn… ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE. and he will not judge the sinners who play this game kindly.”
Yeah, because God gives more of a shit about what video games you play over, say, trivial issues like the systematic abuse of real children for decades by religious authorities trusted with their care and well being.
Matthew Francis, one of the protesters, said he and his fellow church members were particularly upset that Dante’s Inferno features a character who fights his way out of Hell and uses a cross as a weapon against demons.
“We think this game should never come out,” he said, before asking a reporter to convey his message to executives at Electronic Arts inside the show, where non-industry professionals are not allowed.
Wait a minute. Wouldn’t using a cross as a weapon against evil be an image these guys would want to project? Seriously, check out the official trailer for yourself and the game’s official website. Yes, it’s a traditional beat ‘em up/platformer in the tradition of God of War, but with a seriously pro-Christian tone to it. Admittedly the game’s designers have taken some liberties with the original poem’s story, but it’s still very pro-Christian in its concepts. Here’s the official synopsis from the game’s website:
Inspired by the real Dante Alighieri, but adapted for a new generation and a new medium, the hero of the game is a soldier who defies death and fights for love against impossible odds. The Italian mercenary Dante returns home from the wars to find that his beloved Beatrice has been murdered, and her soul pulled down into Hell by a dark force. He gives chase, and vows to get her back. For weapons, he wields Death’s soul-reaping scythe, and commands holy powers of the cross, given to him by Beatrice.
“At the midpoint on the journey of life, I found myself in a dark forest, for the clear path was lost” (opening line of The Divine Comedy). In the game, Dante goes on a spectacular journey through the afterlife to save his beloved Beatrice from the clutches of evil. But what starts out as a rescue mission quickly changes into a redemption story, where Dante must confront his own dark past and the sins he carries with him into Hell. He faces the epic inhospitable terrain of the underworld, huge monsters and guardians, sinister demons, the people and sins of his past, and the ultimate traitor: Lucifer himself.
This is a game that looks to actually contain some of the imagery and concepts a lot of Christians promote themselves. Clearly these people haven’t actually bothered to learn much about it. They hear about a game set in Hell and involving redemption and they jump all over it. Where were they when the various DOOM games had people traveling to Hell and fighting demons with nary a Christian reference to be found? Or any of the other games that involve Hell in them? No, they pick the one game that they recognize the name of and which might actually have at least a somewhat positive message about their philosophical viewpoint (the power in that cross isn’t coming from Dante after all) and they freak out.
Personally it looks like it could be a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to seeing the final game. If nothing else the fact that it’s pissing some Christians off makes me even more interested.
Amercia’s Best Christian is back again with yet another instructional video that explains what a Traditional Marriage, according to the Bible, is and why same-sex marriages don’t qualify:
Apparently the Catholic solution to any problem it comes across is to beat the shit out of it. That was the approach taken—in addition to sexual abuse and rape—with Irish children in the Church’s care for decades on end and now it appears to be the preferred solution at a Serbian Catholic drug rehab center:
BELGRADE, Serbia — The Serbian priest running a church-backed drug rehab center was removed by his bishop Wednesday following the publication of videos showing him and members of his staff beating patients with a shovel.
Bishop Artemije ordered the removal of Branislav Peranovic but stopped short of closing the Crna Reka center in southern Serbia even though Serbian Orthodox Church elders had demanded it.
Artemije said in a statement that the center will be shut down if the beatings recur. He appointed Father Dejan Jakovljevic to run the facility “in line with Christian principles.”
Clearly this was just one bad apple, right? Surely the priest put in charge now will get things back on track, right? Right??
Jakovljevic — previously Peranovic’s assistant — has publicly approved of the beatings.
[...] Crna Reka priests have said beatings are a necessary part of the therapy and are carried out with the consent of patients’ parents.
Remember that kids! It’s not really physical abuse so long as your parents give their consent. Now hold still. Those priests aren’t as young as they used to be and they have a hard time hitting you what with all that squirming and screaming you’re doing.
It’s taken nine years and the final 2,600 page report goes into detail on the systematic abuse and rape of children living in reform schools run by the Catholic church in Ireland:
Wednesday’s five-volume report on the probe — which was resisted by Catholic religious orders — concluded that church officials shielded their orders’ pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.
“A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from,” Ireland’s Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded.
Victims of the abuse, who are now in their 50s to 80s, lobbied long and hard for an official investigation. They say that for all its incredible detail, the report doesn’t nail down what really matters — the names of their abusers.
“I do genuinely believe that it would have been a further step towards our healing if our abusers had been named and shamed,” said Christine Buckley, 62, who spent the first 18 years of her life in a Dublin orphanage where children were forced to manufacture rosaries — and were humiliated, beaten and raped whether they achieved their quota or not.
The Catholic religious orders that ran more than 50 workhouse-style reform schools from the late 19th century until the mid-1990s offered public words of apology, shame and regret Wednesday. But when questioned, their leaders indicated they would continue to protect the identities of clergy accused of abuse — men and women who were never reported to police, and were instead permitted to change jobs and keep harming children.
The Christian Brothers, which ran several boys’ institutions deemed to have harbored serial child molesters and sadists on their staff, insisted it had cooperated fully with the probe. The order successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report. No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document.
It’s outrageous enough that the abuse took place for multiple decades in an institution that likes to claim itself as a moral authority, that the Vatican itself knew of the problem, and that the church as a whole covered up the crimes without ever removing the people involved in them from their positions, but to then publicly admit that you’re going to continue to protect the guilty from being revealed?!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: How anyone can continue to be a Catholic after these revelations is just beyond my understanding. At the very least you should be at the Vatican with pitchforks and torches demanding to know how this was allowed to happen for so long and who’s going to be held accountable for their actions. There’s a lot to account for such as:
The report found that molestation and rape were “endemic” in boys’ facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order, and supervisors pursued policies that increased the danger. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.
“In some schools a high level of ritualized beating was routine. ... Girls were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck on all parts of the body,” the report said. “Personal and family denigration was widespread.”
I haven’t even tried to read the report itself because the news summaries are already pretty upsetting. It gets worse, though, there’s a second report due at the end of June:
A second damning report, due to be published by the end of June, will detail the abuse of hundreds of children in the Dublin archdiocese from 1940 onwards. More than 100 priests are facing allegations and 400 people have been identified as victims.
For the moment it doesn’t appear that anyone involved in the abuse over the years will so much as be named, let alone prosecuted, and the Irish government has now called upon the Vatican to continue the investigation further. How likely do you think that is? I’m not holding my breath in anticipation.
I’ve been pondering the above question after reading two different news items about parents who either have refused or are refusing mainstream medical treatments for their kids. The first news item is about a court ruling against Colleen and Anthony Hauser of Minneapolis, Minnesota who had opted not to have their son, Daniel Hauser, receive chemotherapy for cancer in preference for “alternative” medical treatments:
In a 58-page ruling, Brown County District Judge John Rodenberg found Daniel Hauser has been “medically neglected” by his parents, Colleen and Anthony Hauser. The judge allowed Daniel to stay with his parents, noting they love him, but he gave them until Tuesday to get an updated chest X-ray of Daniel’s tumor and select an oncologist.
If the tumor has not grown and if Daniel’s prognosis is still as optimistic as doctors testified last week, then chemotherapy and possible radiation appear to be in Daniel’s best interest, Rodenberg wrote.
“The State has successfully shown by clear and convincing evidence that continued chemotherapy is medically necessary,” he wrote, adding he would not order chemotherapy if doctors find the cancer has advanced to a point where it is “too late.”
If chemotherapy is ordered and the family refuses, the judge said, Daniel will be placed in temporary custody.
The cancer in question is Hodgkin’s lymphoma and Daniel’s doctors say there’s a 90% chance he’ll survive if he receives chemotherapy, but only a 5% chance if he doesn’t. He’s had one round so far after which the parents sought a second opinion only to have the same treatment suggested. They’ve since opted to go with the alternative medicine approach claiming it’s part of their religious beliefs:
Court testimony indicated Daniel’s tumor shrank after the first round of chemo, but has since grown. His mother, Colleen Hauser, testified last week: “My son is not in any medical danger at this point.” She has been treating his cancer with herbal supplements, vitamins, ionized water, and other natural alternatives—despite testimony from five doctors who agreed Daniel needed chemotherapy.
Five doctors have concurred and the woman insists on using bullshit treatments based on her religious beliefs. Just what are those beliefs anyway?
The Hausers, who have eight children, are Roman Catholic and also believe in the “do no harm” philosophy of the Nemenhah Band. The Missouri-based religious group believes in natural healing methods advocated by some American Indians.
Rodenberg wrote that Daniel claims to be an elder in the band, but does not know what that means. Daniel also says he is a medicine man under Nemenhah teachings but can’t say how he became a medicine man or what teachings he has had to become one.
He also noted that at age 13, Daniel can’t read.
“He lacks the ability to give informed consent to medical procedures,” Rodenberg said.
[...] According to Daniel’s court testimony, he believes the chemo will kill him, and said: “I’d fight it. I’d punch them and I’d kick them.”
How’s that for kooky? Roman Catholic mixed with Native American pseudo-shamanism. A kid who is illiterate yet claims to be a medicine man and who has stated he will actively resist any attempts to use mainstream treatments on him. Obviously the parents have gotten this kid pretty damn delusional to the point that he is willing to risk his own life. Should the state have any say in the matter or should they respect the family’s religious beliefs no matter how suicidally stupid they are?
I’m leaning towards the opinion that they should let the family do what they want in this regard and then, if the parent’s inaction results in the death of the boy, charge them with negligent homicide. That’s what is happening in the case of the parents that tried to pray away their daughter’s diabetes. The mother is now facing charges because of her death:
Neumann is charged with second-degree reckless homicide in the Easter 2008 death of her 11-year-old daughter Madeline from undiagnosed diabetes. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.
Neumann has said her family believes in the Bible, which says healing comes from God, and she never expected her daughter to die.
According to the criminal complaint, Madeline’s father considered the girl’s illness “a test of faith” and Neumann never considered taking the girl to the doctor because she thought her daughter was under a “spiritual attack.”
The family does not belong to an organized religion or faith, Neumann has said.
During opening statements, Assistant District Attorney LaMont Jacobson told the jury this case isn’t about religious freedom or religious rights.
“This case is about Madeline Neumann’s needless suffering and death,” he said.
In both cases the families are relying on their beliefs over modern medical practice as a means of treating their kid’s illnesses. One family has already been shown how poor an approach that is and the other is about to learn the same lesson, but perhaps that’s a lesson that some folks just have to learn the hard way. Madeline’s diabetes was easily treatable and she could have had a long and happy life. Daniel’s cancer is also treatable with a high survivability rate when handled properly. It’s a shame their parents are so wrapped up in their religious bullshit that they’re willing to let their kids die rather than have them treated for their conditions, but I suppose it does cut back on the possibility of those memes being spread to yet another generation in that family tree.
A small bit of irony during the first day of Neumann’s trial. She suffered a medical emergency and they called 911:
Prosecutors had begun laying out their case against Leilani Neumann, 41, on Saturday morning. About 20 minutes in to their opening statement, as they described the girl’s condition the day before she died, Neumann put her head in her arms on the table.
Moments later her attorneys expressed concern, asking for a recess so they could get her some air. She appeared visibly weak as her husband and others escorted her from the courtroom to a downstairs office.
Judge Vincent Howard ordered court security to call 911 and have Neumann medically evaluated.
While she was being examined by paramedics in the office, her defense attorney, Gene Linehan, told the judge Neumann was suffering a total physical and emotional breakdown.
“She claimed she has no feeling in her arms and legs,” Linehan said, telling the judge Neumann could not participate in her defense in her current state.
The judge agreed to a recess, saying Neumann “needs a medical evaluation, not a judicial one, at least at this stage.”
Why didn’t they just have her husband pray away her breakdown instead of calling in paramedics? If it was good enough for her daughter than surely it would be good enough for Mrs. Neumann.
Her husband’s trial, by the way, is scheduled to start July 23rd.
Pope Benedict XVI has warned against the misuse of religion for political ends, in a speech to Muslim leaders on the second day of his visit to Jordan.
Speaking in the King Hussein Mosque in Amman, he argued that religion was a force for good, but its “manipulation” caused divisions and even violence.
[...] “Some assert that religion is necessarily a cause of division in our world and so they argue that the lesser attention given to religion in the public sphere the better,” he said.
“Certainly, the contradiction of tensions and divisions between the followers of different religious traditions, sadly, cannot be denied.
“However, is it not also the case that often it is the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends, that is the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society?”
Can Beenadick actually look at himself in the mirror? How many Africans will die from his misuse of religion? How many little boys are suffering from his priests’ misuse of religion? etc, etc.
Posted by Les on 05/07/2009 at 04:29 PM. Read 590 times. Tags: god, religion, twitter
Twitter is used by all sorts of people ranging from your standard nobodies like myself to major celebrities and even Almighty God himself. I started following his tweets the other day and I have to admit they’re quite interesting. Here’s a couple of recent samples:
Gay marriage is now recognized in 5 states. Don’t worry, I won’t start the apocalypse until it passes in Texas.
Why has no one thanked my for creating an amazing variety of flu viruses?
@sw17ch Just be happy I’ve moved away from wild-eyed, illiterate nomads in the desert.
She put them in the pan wrong. That was supposed to spell D-O-G. http://is.gd/xsKM
Finish this sentence: Debating with a young earth creationist is . . .
Do you think Jesus came back from the dead? If not, what happened? (@graceisunfair wants to know)
Following Almighty God’s tweets has actually been very intriguing and entertaining. It’s hard to tell if the person working the keyboard is a believer or not, but this incarnation of God certainly has a sense of humor. Turns out he has a Facebook page as well and there’s some names I recognize among his list of friends.
WASHINGTON (CNN) —The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week—54 percent—said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
I’m not happy that 42 percent of “seldom to never” respondents also think it’s often or sometimes justified, but at least it’s not a majority.
Which group do you think most approves of torture? Com’on, it’s easy!
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified—more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.
Consider that for a moment: Evangelicals, a group which often lays claim to being morally superior to all others, are the most likely to support torture whereas people unaffiliated with any religious organization, the so-called Godless heathens, are the least likely.
Doesn’t surprise me at all. These people worship a God that sees nothing wrong with tossing people into a pit of everlasting fire to be tortured for all eternity. Why should they be bothered by a little torture here on Earth? At least here there’s some glimmer of hope it’ll end for the poor bastards experiencing it. If it’s good enough for God then it’s good enough for America!
Using nothing but ice cream and chocolate bars the folks over at The TRUTH™ Group present: Scientific Proof of the Bible #1.
Wow. I’m totally convinced by that bit of reasoning. Pardon me while I rush out and convert back to being a Christian. How can anyone hope to remain an atheist in the face of such astounding logic and evidence of the Bible’s truthiness? Not to mention the high production values of that video. The Reese’s-Jesus t-shirt was a nice touch.
Found over at the Atheist Media Blog which I’ll have to never visit again now that I’ve reached enlightenment.
I don’t get to listen to TAL as often as I’d like so I try to make a point to catch up with it online when I can. I was reminded that it had been awhile while reading an entry on Friendly Atheist about the most recent episode. He was talking about Act II of the show which is described at the TAL site as follows:
This past Christmas a story swept the internet about a football coach at a Christian high school in Texas who inspired his team’s fans to root for the opposition: a team from the local juvenile correctional facility. Among the thousands of emails that the coach received in response to his actions, one stood out to him. Trisha Sebastian mentioned her loss of faith, and coach Hogan got a message from God that he was meant to bring her back. We eavesdrop on their phone calls.
You can listen to it for yourself by clicking here. The story hits home for me because back when I was going through my crisis of faith I had similar conversations. Not exactly the same, mind you, because my crisis came about through thinking too much rather than because I experienced a loss that made me question my faith, but similar in that the believers used pretty much the same arguments. I found it particularly interesting that host Ira Glass gave Trisha a better answer than the Christian football coach did when Ira is a non-believer himself. That’s another thing I’ve experienced first hand.
Anyway, I thought it made for compelling listening and thought I’d share it with you. I think it helps illustrate why their is often a disconnect when believers try to talk to non-believers about God.
We peek in on God and his angels as he’s planning a trip to the planet Earth to save his creation from itself:
You have to admit that video raises a whole bunch of interesting points. There’s a lot Jesus could have done that would have gone a long way towards alleviating suffering and misery as well as irrefutably establishing him as God incarnate and yet he decides instead to do a few tricks for a limited number of people. Because it’s not like people haven’t figured out how to appear to walk on water in the time since he was last here.
Last update: 07/04/2009 06:28 pm Last comment: 07/04/2009 08:14 pm Most visitors: 729 on 09/10/2008 10:56 pm
Stupid Evil Comments
Last_Hussar wrote: One one their perennial favourites is “Are we the baddies”
[go]
decrepitoldfool wrote: Terry, I was writing a detailed response, but then my Gmail indicated an update to this thread. And after reading it, let me say this: “What Les said.” You…[go]
Les wrote: Terry writes… To beat the dead pro-life horse one more time - atheism - the conclusion that there is no God - predictably changes the way our two camps view…[go]
Terry wrote: DOF, I’ll take a page from your own book and suggest that you read things into my comment that I did not say. No, I did not refuse painkillers and…[go]
swordsbane wrote: Who said anything about excusing willful stupidity? Justice suggested these people may have let their child die out of convenience and that is what I was responding to. I don’t…[go]
Les wrote: Coaltrain writes… Look, I am mearly trying to point out that we are based off of some of the beliefs that this nation was founded on. So is the…[go]
Les wrote: Who said anything about excusing willful stupidity? Justice suggested these people may have let their child die out of convenience and that is what I was responding to. I don’t…[go]
Coaltrain wrote: Look, I am mearly trying to point out that we are based off of some of the beliefs that this nation was founded on. To adress that the BSA does…[go]
swordsbane wrote: I’ve not seen anything that suggests that these people didn’t love their child. As for the sentence, it varies depending on the trial in question. Doesn’t excuse willful stupidity. I’m…[go]
leguru wrote: I like Last Hussar’s take on this (07/02/09). Remember what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah when the residents treated two strangers badly, not knowing that they represented God. Then, there’s…[go]
