Quote:You really do have a talent for choosing the worst examples. How often do you go to see a doctor professionally, about the leaking fuel valve in your car ? (We are going through with this little thought experiment with the caveat that your Doctor does not maintain a thriving garage on the side.) You would be an idiot to do so. Your doctor makes no claims to be a healer of automobiles. If your doctor suddenly claimed that he could fix your car through the power of his mind Mentok wills it! Oooo-eeee-Ooooo you would be seeking a new physician.
The same people that might have called the 'doctors office' if
this new 'chiropractic treatment' the 'nurse' was performing
was netting the same results though I wonder if the doctor
would have called the police or their laywers first. The point
I am trying to make is you are 'emphesizing' the tool when
you should be placing the blame on the people that misus
Then you have your church; which is not populated with medical professionals , but which makes great claims to miraculous healing powers; up to and including resurrection. It also talks at length of disease being caused by demons and the power of those of the faith being able to cast those demons out. They also claim that their imaginary friends who is also your imaginary friend, is the highest authority on all things, and their book is inspired directly by this imaginary friend. The church that Laughing Boy and the parents belonged to actually offers courses on how to exorcise demons; and its miracles sections claims to have cured scoliosis, blindness and other conditions. See the disconnect?
If prayer worked in healing it would be used. As it is the Templeton Foundations latest attempt to prove such has failed to bring the goods. (Intercessory prayer study). Quackery all quackery - resists testing; for just this reason. They have no game, but continue to insist that they are players.
Would the parents have gone to another source of treatment if religion was not available? I dont think the characterization of desperate and stupid is as accurate as fundamentalist and stupid. Their child was fourteen and was in a group home; his autism was not a new thing. Even a desperate idiot would clue in that the 'treatment' was hogwash after the first punch. To allow the beating to go on for as long (11 fucking hours!) as it did requires something more. Perhaps there was a secondary stressor possibly financial that is unknown at this time. What we do know is that the perp and parents were members of a fundamentalist church; that openly preached that they were capable of miraculous healings. That is the reinforcement mechanism that allows their idiocy to reach full flower. There are two distinct problems. The first that they are idiots. They second that they are fundamentalist. These problems are symbiotic in nature. Fundamentalism urges faith over reason, stifles genuine inquiry and urges primacy of authority in temporal as well as spiritual things. It is the reinforcement mechanism that allows idiocy to both thrive and flourish.
One of the funny things about exorcism related deaths and beatings in the last century (there an incredible number of them); almost every one has been inflicted on religious people by religious people. Non religious quackery is much more evenly distributed.
To site you poor example again; when your doctor, or someone in their practice lies to you about the services that they offer it is called malpractice. When religion does it, it is called a sermon.
Quote:No. They dont have to think like me. They just have to think. Thinking should always be the first step.
hat I did so go for it doc!
Quote:
The rules for worship should be the same as the ones for sex. Two consenting adults (or a whole bunch of consenting adults, a tarp, and a bottle of lube). No kids. No coercion physical or mental - unless that is your kink and you all agree on a safe word. Everyone is free to leave at any time. Your fetishes are your fetishes, feel free to discuss them with like minded individuals, but dont try and make them public policy. Your imaginary friend might have a thing for no-prophylaxis, enforced heterosexuality, golden showers, virgins and cuckoldry, but that does not mean the rest of us need to hear about it.
Well.. I did ask for it... wow.. you realize this would only work
if everyone thought as you did right?