Faith Healing challenges in courts

MSNBC reports that courts are having trouble ruling in cases in which parents denied their sick children medical care in lieu of faith-based healing, particularly when the parents are members of smaller fringe denominations.

Existing laws have gradually accounted for more well-known and established faiths, such as Pentecostalism, Christian Science and Jehovah's Witnesses.But recent cases in the news have judges and child care advocates dealing with parents who claim adherence to lesser-known faiths...

The article reasonably asks how judges and courts are supposed to evaluate these claims: What's an organized religion? Who is an ordained minister? Who decides that praying for healing is insufficient compared to modern medical care? When does the child's rights to health trump the parent's religious freedom?

Many of the exemption laws were enacted in the 1970s. Rita Swan, director of the Sioux City, Iowa-based advocacy group Children's Healthcare is a Legal Duty, which lobbies states to repeal such laws, said that since 1975, there have been at least 274 known cases of U.S. children who have died after medical care was withheld on religious grounds.

Most religious people want the best of both worlds. When they or their children get sick, they insist on rigorous medical treatment while at the same time praying earnestly that God will perform a healing--granting God the credit if the medical ailment is alleviated, naturally. But when modern medicine fails to cure, or if the believer is distrustful of science-based medicine, then faith alone is called for.

Faith healing is a natural byproduct of a culture that places such a high value on faith in general. If a religious tradition or a holy scripture teaches that praying to heal an illness will work or has worked in the past, believers will be less likely to seek more effective means of treatment. What complicates the issue is when it's a parent's decision to forgo medical treatment on behalf of the child. Apparently at least 274 children have paid the ultimate price for this faith.

No death in the Garden of Eden?

I have often heard Christians assert that the Garden of Eden was a paradise in which no death ever occurred. 

God's original creation was "very good". without blemish, death and suffering. Even the animals did not eat each other, they were all vegetatians (sic). Something happened to change all that and it was sin. After that the Lord cursed the universe but gave a way for man to be restored to him.

They cite sources such as Genesis 1:29-30, in which God gives the newly-created Adam and Eve and all animals "every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed" for food.  Lions, wolves, bats, sharks, alligators, eagles--all of them were strictly herbivorous.

While this might appear at first glance to an idealistic paradise, more investigation reveals this scenario is rife with problems.

The first problem with this scenario is that predators certainly look as if they were designed to catch and eat prey. What with the claws, the fangs, the forward-facing vision to track movement, the variation of hide coloring to conceal themselves, the digestive tracts suitable for consumption of flesh, hair and bone--all of those features are absolutely unnecessary for animals hunting plants. No cheetah needed to sprint up to 70 miles per hour to catch a bush.

So perhaps God created these creatures with useless features that not only would not help them consume plants but in fact would hinder them from doing so. It's hard to survive if your teeth can't properly chew cellulose and it passes right through you. This would be a colossal example of bad design. Or, perhaps God repurposed a large swath of the animal kingdom (and plants--think of venus flytraps and other plants that feed on insects) to be carnivorous after Adam and Eve's fall. Essentially this would mean that God took a lion with flat, plant-grinding teeth and performed divine dentistry to give it sharp incisors, along with a meat-preferring digestive system as well as the natural desire to consume meat to begin with. If that's the case, then I'd have to say that a plant-eating lion could hardly be called a lion in the first place.

What's more, the introduction of death would also require the creation of an entire group of creatures we call scavengers. Vultures, hyenas, even many bacteria feed off dead flesh. But according to the Creaion myth, they were not a part of the original six-day creation. They would have had to be created after the Fall, even though Genesis is clear that after six days God rested from creation. According to Hugh Ross, who sees Genesis as an uncannily accurate scientific treatise, we are still in this seventh day, which is why Ross asserts no new species are evolving today. (He's wrong about that, of course, but he needs it to be true for his premise to hold up.)

But we know what happens in situations today when predators are removed from an ecosystem--the herbivores overpopulate, consume all the food supply, then begin a massive starve-off.

And yet, according to the story, death hadn't entered the world, meaning no rabbits were starving to death for lack of greenery. So the only way that I can imagine this scenario panning out is for plant-eaters to not reproduce. At all. Despite God's command to increase and multiply, no animals or plants could reproduce. They certainly don't need to, since they aren't dying, and if they did, they would multiply unchecked. So again we have the same problem as the predators, in that every single species is equipped with organs and hormones and sexual characteristics with absolutely no purpose. The male peacock's beautiful plumage is completely pointless, because no female peacock will ever select a male for mating. No plant ever blooms, no tree ever launches seed pods. Even worse, no tree ever bears fruit either, since within each fruit is the seeds of future generations. And yet every single living creature is dependent on the plants bearing fruit for food--an unsolvable conundrum.

So either God created reproduction ahead of time for no reason, or he re-created all of creation after the Fall. Neither scenario is satisfying.

In a world without death, there can be no birth, either. Just unending, unchanging, static existence--as stagnant as a dank pool of brackish water. Certainly not the paradise we've imagined Eden to be.

All of these problems are what to be expected in a world with no death. I'm just an ordinary guy--I'm sure a trained biologist could come up with even more problems. These are the logical conclusions of holding to a primitive myth. Now there is no doubt that the idea of no pain, sorrow, and death is a compelling one. I completely understand the desire to believe that "Once upon a time nothing ever died." But like all fairy tales, they reveal our innermost desires and dreams and fears, but we must be very careful not to take them literally.

Pastor indicted for raping out a lesbian demon

In September 2006, 65-year-old Leonard Ray Owens was indicted by a Tarrant County, Texas grand jury for raping a church member in an exorcism.

Owens, a self-anointed prophet, told investigators that the 22-year-old woman had a sex spirit and a lesbian demon that needed to cast out but that he denied any sexual contact.  According to the woman, on two separate occasions Owens raped her in his home while trying to exorcise the demon, pinning the woman down and shouting, "Loose her in the name of Jesus!"  Afterwards Owens told her to wash her face and read Psalm 105:15: "Do my prophets no harm."

Other church members reported saying the the pastor's indictment "would not disrupt the church."

The case was later thrown out by prosecutors due to inconsistencies in witnesses.

Pastor encourages guns in church

Louisville, Kentucky pastor Ken Pagano invited Bethel Church members to bring their guns to church in celebration of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that guarantees the right to bear arms.

Link

More than 200 people responded, bringing their firearms to church to view gun safety videos, listen to patriotic music, and participate in a handgun raffle.  Church attendant Liz Boyer said, "I just believe in the right to protect ourselves."

There was just one problem: the church members were not allowed to bring any bullets . . . which makes the issue fairly moot.  An unloaded gun provides as much protection as an unplugged adding machine.

Lawrence Krauss: God and Science Don't Mix

Excellent article by the cosmologist Lawrence Krauss in the Wall St. Journal, discussing the incompatibilities of religion and science:

the most important contribution an honest assessment of the incompatibility between science and religious doctrine can provide is to make it starkly clear that in human affairs -- as well as in the rest of the physical world -- reason is the better guide.

P.Z. Myers summarizes it very well:

[R]eligion is wrong. It's a set of answers, and worse, a set of procedures, that don't work. That's the root of our argument that religion is incompatible with science.

Faith is a method of obtaining information, and its track record is notoriously poor.  It's possible for two people of faith to yield entirely different answers to a problem, and too much blood has been spilled determining which answer was correct.  Only reason can settle the issue without anyone having to die for it.

The Brick Testament wraps up Revelations

The Book of Revelations comes to a close in the Brick Testament. I'll let the Reverend Brandon Powell Smith summarize:

Ever performed a magic trick for your friends? Committed adultery? Worshipped an idol? Are you cowardly? How about filthy? Have you ever told a lie? If so, bad news. You are going to be ceaselessly tortured for all eternity.

Good news, though, if you are a male Jewish virgin. A lucky 144,000 of you are going to get to live on the New Improved Earth with Yahweh. Sound fun? Did I mention the whole place is made out of gold? And has good water and 12 kinds of fruit all year round? Pretty sweet, huh? Plus, there will be no crying, no pain, and no death. And everybody gets a cool tattoo of Yahweh's name on their forehead and worships Yahweh to his face!

But guess what? No chicks. And no being sad about your loved ones being eternally roasted in flames while you bask in Yahweh's glow.

Yes, folks, our final four illustrated stories from Revelation, reveal God's ultimate plan for humanity in full. And what a plan it is. Sure you may have been wondering what all that crazy build-up was leading to, what with all God's elaborate killings and tortures of the vast majority of humankind. But when you finally see that all those people who were tortured and killed on Earth are also going to be tortured in burning hot flames for ever and ever after they died horrible deaths, it all just suddenly comes together. So go now, read the final stories of Revelation and have your own A-ha! moment. Happy epiphany!

Vatican investigating deceased chaplain miracle

Due to a pole-vaulting accident last year, 20-year-old Chase Kear received a severe skull fracture, causing swelling of his brain and infection.  The Wichita, Kansas young man required brain surgery, but neurosurgeon Raymond Grundmeyer reportedly told family members that Kear would likely not survive the procedure.

Within hours, the family members began requesting friends and loved ones to pray for Kear's recovery.  Prayers were offered specifically to Father Emil Kapaun, a U.S. Army chaplain from the Wichita area who died in the Korean War.  Kapaun distinguished himself in a Chinese prison camp back in 1951 by rescuing wounded soldiers, ministering to the sick, and other acts of kindness toward fellow prisoners, until he succumbed to illness himself.

Despite the long odds, Kear survived the procedure to remove a portion of his skull and has now achieved a semblance of normalcy.  While Kear and family are grateful to Dr. Gunderson and his team for their medical expertise, they are also giving Kapaun equal credit for performing a miracle.  Even Dr. Gunderson considered Kear's recovery to be miraculous.

That claim of miraculous healing has prompted the Vatican to further investigate whether Kapaun is eligible for sainthood.  Andrea Ambrosi, the Vatican lawyer assigned to the case, promised to thoroughly "and skeptically" examine the evidence that it was Kapaun that performed the miracle.

This is a case of "I had a headache, so I took an aspirin and said a prayer. The headache went away, so prayer cures headaches."   I'm curious how exactly a lawyer can investigate the details "skeptically?"  How will he know that it was Kapaun and not some other saint that performed the miracle?  Despite the doctor's claims, could Kear have survived without the prayers?  Has any person ever survived a procedure of this type that didn't have thousands of prayers offered to a chaplain that's been dead for over fifty years?  Would Dr. Gunderson agree to refund the money he was paid to perform the procedure, since apparently even he believes that he didn't have an effect on Kear's recovery?