Consider two father-and-daughter stories:
There was an atheist couple who had a child. The couple never told their daughter anything about the Lord. One night when the little girl was 5 years old, the parents fought with each other and the dad shot the Mom, right in front of the child. Then, the dad shot himself.
The little girl watched it all. She then was sent to a foster home. The foster mother was a Christian and took the child to church. On the first day of Sunday School, the foster mother told the teacher that the girl had never heard of Jesus, and to have patience with her. The teacher held up a picture of Jesus and said, “Does anyone know who this is?” The little girl said, “I do, that’s the man who was holding me the night my parents died.
Here’s the second:
There was a Christian father who had a daughter. One day she got sick, but her father did not give her any medicine. Instead, he prayed to God for her healing. Days had past, but still the girl did not get better, even when the father prayed more fervently and more frequently.
One morning the daughter could no longer walk, but the father kept on praying. Then she could no longer talk, but the father kept praying still. Soon, she could no longer eat or drink, and the father got really worried. He finally thought of brining his little girl to a hospital. But then he thought, “If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God, I am not believing what he said he would do.”
Then one day the little girl had difficulty breathing. The father was tempted to call the ambulance, but his faith and prayers kept the fear and doubt at bay. And then finally, the girl’s difficulty passed away. And so did she.
The Christian father finally called the ambulance. Later they discovered that the young girl had treatable diabetes, and that her difficulty in breathing could have been treated with insulin and fluids, preventing her death.
What’s the difference between the two stories? The first one is a glurge, a story that uses feeling instead of fact to prove its truthfulness. The miracle is intended to give goosebumps, and I’ve recently confirmed that in this regard it is quite successful (it continues to give some Facebook friends goosebumps).
This giddy feeling makes the reader want to believe that the story is true. Harley Allen, who wrote the song “The Little Girl” based on this tale, tried to find proof of its origins. Apart from the same story posted on different websites (and forwarded as part of different chain mail), he found nothing. “We don’t have a clue,” Allen said. “But if it ain’t true, it ought to be.”
I’m sorry Allen, the first story is not true. But I’m more sorry that the second one is. Dale Neumann, who once studied to become a minister, was recently found guilty of second-degree reckless homicide for neglecting to treat his daughter properly and relying instead on prayer.
At least if there were a heaven, the girl wouldn’t be alone: More children are dying because of prayerful parents.
*
Let’s go back to the first story (the fairytale). Consider why the father had to be an atheist. First, if he weren’t, Jesus apparition would be less of a miracle. This increase in miraculousness is the main reason the author made the father character an atheist.
You could also say that if the father were a Christian, there would be a more logical explanation: hallucinations are common especially when exposed to severe trauma.
But a second motive could have been to justify the murder, suicide, and neglect (of the daughter). It’s as if the author is saying that only a man without faith can perform these acts, that an atheist can be identified not by his capacity for reason, but his capacity for evil.
Now let’s consider the second story (the true one). During the trial, the prosecution called the father’s stupidity a selfish act of faith. However selfish, it was an act of faith. It was an act that only a man of faith could have performed.
A more rational father would have given his daughter proper treatment much sooner. I have yet to learn about an atheist who would have done otherwise, let alone do as the faithful father did.
In the two stories, which of the two fathers do you think acted because of their belief (or lack thereof)?
Now whether an increase in rationality and a decrease in irrationality (faith) leads to evil is the point of a future post. But do remember that in this case, the story about an atheist’s evil is fiction, and the one about a believer’s evil is fact.
Till then I’ll leave you with a quote from Voltaire, one of the greatest authors, revealing one of the saddest truths:
As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Actually, the second story is misguided faith. Today, most Christians would say that he should have gone to the doctor, since God can work through doctors. Neumann would be a case of how not to practice your faith.
“More children are dying because of prayerful parents…” This statement needs a bit more substantiation. In the article you linked, these are Scientologists, man, they’re not really considered Christian or doing things the right way.
Hmmm… I gather you’re an athiest?
Scientologists and Christian Scientists are two entirely different things. And Christian Scientists most definitely consider themselves Christians, not to mention believe they’re “doing things the right way.”
On the contrary, they believe that they are the ones on the right way, and other Christians are the ones who are misguided. They will not hesitate to remind you of God’s words:
My child, pay attention to what I say. Listen carefully to my words. Don’t lose sight of them. Let them penetrate deep into your heart, for they bring life to those who find them, and healing to their whole body. Proverbs 4:20-22
Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up. –James 5:14-15
And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians. — 2 Chronicles 16:12
To them, there is no other way to interpret this. Faith *will* heal, and reliance on doctors over faith will displease god. It is actually very simple. Only those who try to reconcile this with common sense make interpretations that are overly complex.
And yes, I have no belief in gods.
“reliance on doctors over faith will displease god.”
Fortunately, this is not believed by very rational Christians.
A “very rational Christian”? You mean a Christian who holds reason as his main criteria for judging claims about truth? Interesting.
Yep. There is such a thing as rational faith. You gotta learn to accept these outrageous concepts… they often turn the world around don’t you agree? ;)
What I see though in this article is the point that the country’s problems are caused by irrationality. This I agree with. With a lot (not just a bit) more brain, we should see less stupidity… and unethical behavior. Unfortunately even that is laughed at by the masa. The good guys really have to dare to be different.
Faith is different from Religion. Faith is the hope of things
unseen yet. Organized Religion is based on religious dogmas produced by men as a result of religious scriptures. We still dont know the spiritual world. We have a clue. But we dont know anything about it yet. Except from the religious scriptures.
God gave us these Healing and Medicinal Technologies in order to use
them. There are healing miracles that cannot be explained. Some work
on people. Some do not. We dont know the reasons.
We have brains in order to think in the course of our lives. If we follow blindly any religious dogmas and traditions. It can result
to religious fundamentalism, religious extremism, and religious
intollerance. This is where the SUICIDE BOMBERS are born and some
religious zealots like the JIHADISTS.
If religion is a country, faith is its native language. Faith is necessary to believe in dogma, especially the things for which there is no logical consistency or sound reason, let alone evidence.
We cannot know the spiritual world. Knowledge is a natural concept, and you cannot know something by dropping the context of reality.
Medical technology and healing are only miracles when you look at it from the perspective of those from biblical times. Today, even the average layman knows healing is not a miracle, at least in the true sense of the word and not in the feel-good version, and the study and practice of Medicine are possible precisely because it can be explained.
And I agree that neglecting to use our rationality leads to all sorts of atrocities.
why is faith irrationality?
We dont know…
Faith is defined as a “strong belief in something, especially without proof,” that is, a strong confidence in a truth claim even *without* reason. Rationality demands a high correlation with reality, that is, hard evidence and sound reason; irrationality, and in the same way, faith, ignores these criteria.
“Rationality demands a high correlation with reality, that is, hard evidence and sound reason;…”
i guess here, ur talking about prayer not being able to heal eh? that insisting on a course of action that will not help the child heal is irrational?
what can you say about people who refuse to quit smoking?
or people who drive?
or any action at all? all these actions are all risky in terms of health. you can get into a car accident and die. you can cross the road and get maimed.
granted there are different probabilities of risk. you might say, “oh, crossing the road has a very small risk of getting hurt, and the gain is high”
in that case we ask ourselves, who makes the decision of what risk is small enough?
why judge people for these decisions?
I think you are confusing the freedom of a person and the rationality of a person. With the former I have no issue. People are free to pray their children to health or smoke or drive drunk. But I am also free to think their actions are irrational.
You are right. It has to do with probability. What I’m saying is rationality is our best tool for determining which actions will probably succeed in our intentions and which actions will likely fail.
We all tend to weave the truth around our faith, and not our faith around the truth, neh?
This article is good for the intellect; one’s soul ought to strive for personal truth amongst words that come from faith, or lack thereof.
There are gods and there is the Force that binds, the Mystery that shreds, and the Discovery that fulfills. God is elegant; we are animals.
Joe
“We all tend to weave the truth around our faith, and not our faith around the truth, neh?”
Indeed.
“This article is good for the intellect; one’s soul ought to strive for personal truth amongst words that come from faith, or lack thereof.”
Thanks, Joe.
“There are gods and there is the Force that binds, the Mystery that shreds, and the Discovery that fulfills. God is elegant; we are animals.”
This I didn’t understand. Can you shred the mystery for me? :)
Hmm, Ryan,
You think I know what I mean? Some things are like leaves in the tea cup, best left to be read and pondered. Or paint splashed on a canvas.
But I will say that I believe in esp and the interconnection of souls, and that the elegance represents the gift of our capacity to find good and beauty around us when, genetically, we are but advanced apes. Somewhere in there is the devil, or our tendency to do bad.
But I like rational people, too.
Joe
But what can you really say about your two stories, when there are many stories happening.
It would not take much effort to find two other stories where … the story about an atheist’s evil is fact, and the one about a believer’s evil is fiction,
Also just as easy to find three stories … each of the 3 stories will be about atheists who do evil.
Also just as easy to find nine stories … three stories about Muslims who do evil, three stories about Buddhists who do good, and three stories about Catholics who do nothing.
Butterflies fluttering their wings.
But what principles can you discern from your two stories when there are many stories happening?
It would not take much effort to find two other stories where … the story about an atheist’s evil is fact, and the one about a believer’s evil is fiction,
Also just as easy to find three stories … each of the 3 stories will be about atheists who do evil.
Also just as easy to find nine stories … three stories about Muslims who apparently did evil, three stories about Buddhists who apparently did good, and three stories about Catholics who by all indications did nothing.
Butterflies fluttering their wings.
The point of all this is people would rather believe happy fictions than sad facts. In the fairytale, the father’s evil acts had nothing to do with his atheism. In the true story, the evil acts sprung directly from his faith and beliefs.
But if you ever find even one story about an atheist performing evil because of his rationality, then by all means, write your own story about it.
People are happier with happy and sadder with sad, so isn’t it rational that people would rather believe happy to sad? Is there anything surprising about that?
That bad things can happen when people act out their faith or that bad things can happen when atheists act out their lack of belief in a god — you can’t be surprised by either, can you?
Or are you trying to preach a faith of your belief?
One of the sleights-of-hand you are using is the definition of “evil”.
I’ll start with a premise — If when someone dies who shouldn’t have, then “evil” has happened. This matches your “evil” Christian believer factual case, right?
If you accept the definition, then a dime-a-dozen there are cases when evil happens by totally rational atheistic acts of men (acts done without reference to a god). If you can’t name one, your blinders are on.
You also seem to be doing sleight-of-hand with the word “rational”, equating it with the end-outcome. In other words, you are framing your question to get a specific result. But you delude yourself with this game, don’t you think?
*notify me*
my concern is about labeling people of faith as irrational.
we’ve already agreed that all actions entail benefits and costs. We’ve also acknowledged that people don’t SEEM to do the most efficient thing all the time.
note the word “SEEM”. when someone does something, he does it coz its important for him to do it, and it outweighs the negatives.
outsiders cannot always see why its important, cant see all of the benefits.
an example here is prayer. there are reasons why a person may pray for healing, that are different from the need for healing itself.
to be clear, i think that withholding medical treatment for religious purposes is wrong. modern christianity abhors this. But its NOT wrong because its irrational.
the reason its wrong is that society made a decision that life of persons already living is VERY IMPORTANT.
most of modern christianity supports this view, and therefore is against withholding medical treatment.
so much so, that it trumps whatever other considerations an individual might have.
indeed, you can’t kill ur self for any reason — religious or otherwise. you can’t kill people for anyreason save for saving ur own life (excluding war).
these acts will be punished severely.
i agree with this state of things.
note too the phrase “already living”. by this i mean persons outside the womb — for reasons that escape me, society does not protect persons still in the womb. (here, modern catholics support this view)
Hmm, seems the real target of this post is the Catholic Church… though I’m sure many here agree about the effects it had in our country, no?
That is why i commented, “A smell of garlic”. But unfortunately that short comment of mine was deleted. :-)
It is apparent the author of the post uses the stories to set up a anti-church, anti-christian debate. The truthfulness of the 2 stories could just as easily be reversed, with the fist one about the vision of the orphaned child true, and the parent denying medical care false. I take issue with the use of ‘father’ as the presumably negligent superstitious parent that caused the child’s death. (possibly a hint of marxist feminism in this post?). While it is often quoted that ‘patriotism is the refuge of scoundrals’ this is a good example of how religion may also. Say a parent did cause a child’s death due to refusing fairly routine medical care… how would the parent explain this? Say you drive your car off the road and injure someone because of sheer stupidity, is that the likely answer by the negligent driver.. gee, sorry, i was just stupid, drunk, doing something embarassing, etc.. or would they make up a less damning lie, like saying they swerved to avoid hitting a cat or something? Religion is useful that way, as a way to divirt blame or responsibility for our faults. On the flip side it is pretty much a scientific medical fact that patients with strong religous faith have faster and better rates of recovery. We should not view Religion and Medecine as mutually exclusive and competing options, but rather as collaborative cures best when taken together in the proper measure. This was the mistake of the parent in the story above, not that he had faith or religion, and was skeptical of modern medicine and doctors.. but it was the degree of extremism of his beliefs that proved fatal.
Citations please.
Absent such citation, I would attribute the faster recovery to more nurturing – rather religiosity.
Let me supply some scientific proof of the other side of the argument (that prayer can work). Only, it’s a Youtube documentary from Paranormal TV:
The Power of Prayer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjYqHcIVg8M
But very legitimate, in my view.