A child who is killed by an abusive parent is, in a sense, avenged by the law which seeks to identify, charge, try, convict, sentence and punish such a parent. Abuse might include something obvious like striking a child with a weapon, but it can also include starving the child to death or other forms of neglect, or failing to provide life-saving medical treatment. In other words, if your child is deathly ill and you don't take him or her to a medical facility or otherwise seek treatment, and the child dies, you are at fault.
Unless, of course, you are all religious and shit.
If your religion says that you should not seek medical treatment to save the life of your child, and for this reason your sick child dies, that's OK. Or, at least, that's OK in Oregon, where a series of children, mainly of the Followers of Christ religion, have died for this exact reason.
But that is likely to change. State Rep. Carolyn Tomei, D-Milwaukie OR and others are pushing a bill that would eliminate the religious exemption that currently protect this form of child abuser. The legislation is very likely to pass and there appears to be no organized opposition. Upcoming hearings on the topic are expected to see no one speaking against it.
Apparently the members of this especially creepy religion not only withhold life saving medicine for their morbidly ill children, they also withhold any effort to speak to the press or other outsiders. It is said that while many "Followers" follow their own rules and don't take their sick children to doctors or clinics, others do, secretly. Those who use modern medicine are said to fear ostracism. It turns out, of course, that the entire bunch of them are effectively ostracized from the rest of society because they are so creepy.
Followers typically "treat" their sick children with prayer, oils, and laying on of hands. Then, some of the children get better, some die, and some, such as the infant child of church mebers Timothy and Rebecca Wyland, simply go blind in one eye from an untreated growth.
Have a look at the article covering this. The approach taken by authorities is rather unsatisfying, and the claim is being made that the religious practices of these wackos should be protected because, well, they are christians and all that. The law only protects children and does so because, as one attorney involved in supporting the bill says, "God also gave us doctors and the capability to heal physically, and we should use those gifts." Dumbass.
Well, at least the bill will make it easier for authorities to protect the infants who are otherwise being tossed on the trash heap by these crazy christians.
Hat tip to Gwen Smith Olson for sending me the link to this article.
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Hell. It begins with forced birth, followed by circumcision. The abuse by neglect is just an afterthought.
I am all in favor of taking kids to the doctor when they get sick especially if they have a serious illness.
I have difficulty with "faith healers". As a Christian I know it is entirely possible to heal someone this way. Even Paul cast out demons. I guess what i am saying is this. It takes someone of incredible spiritual strengthto perfom a true faith healing. Most christians may study the Word and pray and even go to church, but they are not spiritually strong enough to heal. Even though the Holy Spirit resides inside of the saved, it is through that Holy Spirit that the healing takes place. Channeling that energy is extraordinarily difficult even for the strongest followes.
Someone I know who is a severe diabetic almost went into a coma after a "faith healer" told her she was healed and she stopped taking her medication. I tried to explain to her that faith healing is real but the person who did the healing may not be strong enough to harness that kind of power just yet.Even the most devoted and strongest Christians cannot successfully perform a faith healing at any given time. It is not impossible and it has happened, but be careful when attempting this.
"As a Christian I know it is entirely possible to heal someone this way."
yeah, well, you might heal in cases were diseases are amenable to the action of placebos. The same way homeopathy works. The rest your post is utter bullshit.
Doctor Smart, I'm not sure if that was meant to be your little joke, but the worry is that you are being serious.
You should really ask yourself, as an adult, if the time has come for you to grow up and stop believing in the fairies at the bottom of the garden.
I know it is entirely possible to heal someone this way.
[Citation Needed]
And by citation, something peer reviewed.
@ Vince and peter
I do not believe in fairy tales. Evolution being one of them. I meant every word I said. I do not really care if you do not believe it. You are entitled to your opinion, I am entitled to mine. At least that's how free speech is supposed to work.
"I am entitled to mine"
You are entitled to an opinion when it comes to preferences.
You are stating something to be factual, which goes way beyond an opinion. Please supply evidence or shut the fuck up.
The same goes for Evolution. Evolution is a fact, as evidenced by almost two centuries of accumulated research. To have an "Opinion" about it is simply idiotic, the same way it is idiocy to have an opinion about the validity of e = mc^2 or an opinion about g = 9.81 m/s2.
"I do not believe in fairy tales."
"As a Christian I know it is entirely possible to heal someone this way."
'nough said.
@#6 and we're entitkted to call out bad reasoning and explain why exactly the claim you've made does not stand up to the evidence presented. But don't take our words, or 'opinions' about it, stop just believing like it has to be true and actually test it! Seek the evidence. Test your supposed belief and see just how useless it really is for yourself.
And while the dig about evolution should be left to pass, it's a clear symptom that you've chosen to ignore what's in front of your very eyes.
To paraphrase a quote from Carl "no no, my god must be small, our uderstanding cannot grow because this book must have all the answers."
...Channeling that energy is extraordinarily difficult even for the strongest followes...
Do you even understand the meaning of 'energy'?
Opinion is not fact. Wishing it is so, doesn't make it so.
Funny that people opposing evolution don't also challenge the 'theory' of gravity, by stepping off the nearest skyscraper. We all know, that it is also 'only' a theory.
Dr. "Smart": you are entitled to your own opinions; you are not entitled to your own facts. (Totally stole this from numerous sources!)
Jehovahs Witnesses are also guilty of this - they let children die rather than lef them take blood. Drives me mad - how dare they impose their beliefs on children to the point of death then call themselves peaceful!
Doctor (?) Smart (?) @10:
If, as you say, evolution is not a fact, please explain how it is that bacteria are developing resistance to antibiotics, and how the seasonal flu changes from year to year.
Please provide arguments rooted in testable, verifiable processes. ("Satan is making it happen" or "God is changing the bugs to test us" do not constitute such an argument.)
While we're at it, please define your concept of "opinion" and show how that definition is different from your concept of "fact".
Ben Agag:Jehovahs Witnesses are also guilty of this - they let children die rather than lef them take blood.
Ben, actually, although they would LIKE to do that, they can't. If they truly need a transfusion, we get a court order that allows us to transfuse. There are judges assigned to be called in the middle of the night just for that reason. I have never heard of a judge refusing.
Once they turn 18, it is a different issue. I have seen an 18 year old who had just given birth, and told she would die without a transfusion, refuse until she died in our ICU. There was nothing we could do about it.
Doctor Smart, your "arguments" are a joke and I bet you know it. I say you're a poe.
@16
Like I said before, your posts have been so horrifically bad and full of scientific misunderstanding (to put it mildly), I'd suspect that you were a Poe.
Doctor (?) Smart (?) @16:
Re evolving microorganisms:
It occurs to me that you're not applying the biological understanding of these words. Adaptation essentially means getting used to something â say you have a neighbor who wakes up at 4 AM every day. After a while you don't notice his movements any more, because you've adapted.
Adaptation can be seen as a response of consciousness to a specific set of environmental conditions, but it is the bourn of consciousness. Rocks don't adapt to the ocean by turning into sand, after all.
Similarly, genes do not adapt. They mutate, change, drift, but they don't "get used to" anything. This minor variation in gene code is what drives the biological side of change in organisms. It's the environment that drives the selection side. The interaction of genetic change and environmental selection is the system known as evolution.
Bacteria and viruses are not adapting. They are evolving.
Actually there's some pretty compelling evidence that dinosaurs were warm-blooded. They certainly were not reptiles.
http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/dinosaurcontroversies/i/warmblooded_2.htm
There have been fossils found showing feathers associated with saurian forms, and the genetic link to dinosaurs and birds has actually been established:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/12/AR20070…
Do understand, too, that the time scales we're talking about are vast. Tens of millions of years is at least one million times the duration of all recorded human history. That's a lot of time in which small changes can add up to much larger ones.
For starters, no, monkeys did not turn into humans. Monkeys have tails. We're actually apes; apes don't have tails.
As for primate evolution, it's not a linear progression from less- to more-advanced. That is, there isn't a ladder being climbed by life, in some sort of "progression", toward some kind of goal. So the primate evolutionary line does not look like this:
Gorilla > chimpanzee > human
...it looks more like this:
Common ancestor -> Gorilla
|-> Chimpanzee
|-> Human
That is, at some point in the past - about 8 million years ago, as I recall - the apes that exist today split off from a common ancestor. Gorillas evolved along one line, chimps along a second, and humans along a third. This was a series of branches, as from a tree limb; you don't look at an apple blossom and ask why the tree still has leaves, do you? Similarly, the existence of other primates along with humans is not particularly surprising. It would be more surprising if things weren't the way they are, actually.
This is quite well-known and well-understood, so to say that "no one has explained" it is simply false.
It's also worth noting that chimp and human DNA is virtually identical.
I've just offered several pieces of evidence. What I suspect you cannot do is refute them.
Do you mean that you don't think there are any such fossils, or that the transitional fossils which exist are somehow nonsense?