Been too long

Hi All, The Freakin' Deacon back with you after an extended unplanned hiatus. Ever since school has started it has become harder and harder to find time to blog it out (not to mention work), but I have some ideas in my head, and will hopefully go three-for-three in the next couple of days.

Back at it...

I'd like to start today's Sermon by pointing out what a Creationist is. According to Answers.com (yeah like I'm going to Merriam Webster's for this one, HA!), it is one with "Belief in the literal interpretation of the account of the creation of the universe and of all living things related in the Bible." I'm sure we could come up with some other definitions, but this is my blog not yours. So with that definition we can separate Creationists from many, many Abrahamic Christian Sects. Even the Catholic Church, who is often the last one to the party, recognizes evolution as the way we humans got here.

Creationism is the belief that God created the world in six days as described in the Bible. The Catholic Church does not read the Genesis account of creation literally, saying it is an allegory for the way God created the world.

So with that we can clearly see that the antithesis of Creationism is not evolution, the antithesis of creationism is abiogenesis. The idea that conditions were right on Earth at one time to harbinger very basic cellular life.

I hate to sound like Bill O'Reilly, but there truly is an attack on reason. And I'm sorry to be the one to say it, but if you don't want your kid being taught about evolution, home school them or send them to private school. Just don't send them to a school that teaches science with the expectation that you will change the curriculum to suit your world view. Science, fact, and empiricism don't work that way. Your world view (as well as your child's)will be accepted and respected, but just as there is a place for religion, faith, and prayer -- the school is the place for fact, reason, and intelligence. Dozen's (or more) of major, established religions have accepted evolution as fact. This is because it is the theory that logic clearly supports. The theory of evolution does not mean there is no God, this is something I have been saying since I started blogging. I understand you have faith, but if your faith means evolution didn't happen, then your faith doesn't stand up to everyone else's logic.

Another Death by Ministry case

As with yesterday's post, "Death by Faith," this is a case where the apparent need for God's ego stroke destroyed a child's life. Full Text Here.

Javon's food was stopped in December 2006 - when he was about 15 months old - partly because he refused to say 'amen' after dinner, investigators were told by two children who had been taken away from the cult by Philadelphia police.

Members viewed Javon as 'a demon', the children said.

No medical care was sought for the toddler when he stopped breathing, and he died in his mother's arms, according to court records of police interviews with the two children and another informant.

You know, I have kids. My kids are not perfect, and have done some stuff that makes me question whether they can properly think things through and make a decision without thinking about the ramifications. But what kind of person would it take to just assume that a toddler is evil? And worse yet, when a five year old does something repeatedly while being told not to do it, you get frustrated, sometimes to the point where you really want to teach them that you mean what you say (in my case it usually involves taking a toy away, or reneging on a promise to do something fun, not starvation). But there's a huge difference between my kids and this kid that died of starvation. This kid was a toddler. A toddler. Knowing the thought process of a toddler rather well, I can only assume that the adults freaked the fuck out every time he wouldn't say 'amen' and thereby were reinforcing his ability to control situations. It was probably little more than a game to him (at least the first couple of times it happened).

But apparently this cult decided that a sacrificed toddler would be a glory unto God. Not only did they sacrifice him, they put his remains in a suitcase.

Now I'm not going to compare this cult to Lutherans (the congregation that I grew up in), I have seen first hand their goal of showing compassion to all walks of life, believers or not. And I'm not going to compare this cult to Catholics, Jews, or any other religion. It is clear that this cult let this situation get way too far out of hand, and a toddler paid the ultimate price.

But really, can someone explain to me the difference between letting a child die by withholding food, and letting a child die by withholding medical attention? Why will someone in this cult pay for this child's death, when the couple from "Death by Faith" will likely get off without any punishment at all? They both believed that what they were doing was right because of their faith. I can see why they are not the same thing, but I see a stronger connection to their relation than I do their differences.

Now I'm not blaming this on G/god, the bible, or established religion in general. I'm not trying to make the case that belief in God is an inherent evil (as many atheists do). I'm saying that complete faith in God without a touch of reason, or intelligence (using that thing that God put in our heads) is the complete opposite of what every major established religion stands for.

At Least I think so...

Death by faith...

There was an article in the 8-8-08 Isthmus about a family that opted to let Jesus handle the healing when their daughter was faced with ketoacidosis (in its simplest terms, it is an abundance of acid in the body as a result of, in this case, untreated diabetes). Full Text Here.

In the days, perhaps weeks, before their daughter died of diabetic ketoacidosis — an illness authorities contend could have been readily treated — Dale and Leilani Neumann refused to seek medical care. They did so despite the girl's worsening condition and despite the urging of family members and friends. Instead, they insisted her body was a battleground in a spiritual war between Jesus Christ and the forces of Hell. Only by resisting worldly medicine, they believed, could she be saved.

Go ahead and read that again. I'll wait. This eleven year old girl, that should have been worried about whether an awkward pre-teen boy liked her, was instead a pawn in a spiritual movement. All the while, relatives and friends alike were begging the family to seek medical attention for the poor child. And the parents will likely avoid prosecution because in Wisconsin (and many other states) there are provisions that say parents are free from charges of neglect and abuse if they are using faith as an alternative to medicine.

Now I realize there is nothing in the article about whether the little girl had asked her parents to seek medical help (we can only assume that she didn't), but what if the tables were reversed? What if her parents had insisted that they immediately go see a doctor, but she instead wanted to test the "holy waters?" The state would then, assuredly step in, or bring charges forth if death had occurred. Don't believe me? There's a case of a child being treated for leukemia in Canada in which a boy who refused medical attention was taken into custody by the state who was going to make sure the boy saw the treatment through to the end. Just in Canada? Not so much. If these children were seeking faith heeling as an alternative, would they still be brought into custody for their forced treatments? It astounds me that people can look at some of these cases and deem that children must undergo these treatments but will look the other way when it comes to faith healing.

These people believe that faith healing is sound, they have to believe it, I have no doubt. The seemingly dark-age ritual is only around in modern times because of the Christian Scientist movement, a movement that goes back to the late 1800s. I'm not saying that this powerful organization with lobbyists and lawyers galore (if your God is so powerful, why would he need lobbyists and lawyers?), doesn't believe in its objectives, I just feel that if these people can convince others to seek healing as an alternative to medicine (which is clearly the case) then these churches should be held responsible for the deaths of the people that seek divine intervention as opposed to medicine. How many deaths by faith would we see then?

Pat Condell is S-M-R-T...

You can use the little arrows underneath the video player to turn off the captions...sorry it's so big (that's what she said).

Two posts in one day, I'm spoiling you.

I've seen some of Pat's videos on the Internets before but this one really spoke to me (I know I sound like a stupid Yankee asshole, but I really want him to say "a nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat"). This video makes a great point on the difference between Spirituality and Religion, a point I think is important and profound (a point I tried to make here).

Pat calls his work "Godless Comedy;" The first few videos I saw I thought to myself 'okay we get it you don't believe in God,' but the more I see of his work, the more I realize that he is an atheist that has great respect for faith (really he calls it spirituality, and I'll stick to my verbiage). What he doesn't like (as is made clear in the video) is Religion (the established pillar that preaches without Dogma there is nothing). Instead of seeing the church as a threat, he sees it as a hurdle that mankind must overcome in order to reach a higher plain.

Good stuff.

Reason and Belief: Thoughts on communication practices

I am notoriously agnostic. Actually I am able to identify better with the atheist movement than anything else, but I do not call myself an atheist. As fellow Deacon and co-music director of the Church of What's Happening Now, Ian has noted: we share a natural disposition to be frustrated by wishy-washy people, but when it comes to the question of God we (at least I) find it almost noble. Now I suppose that raises the point of that making us wishy-washy, but that's another question better left for another post.

But one thing I notice by the fundamentalists of the atheist and the theist camps is that there is a tendency to use reason (or science) as a term that is the opposite of belief (or religion, or God). It's natural to think this way when we are confronted by it at all turns. Pro-choice vs. Pro-Life is my favorite example. Do you think that those that identify themselves as "Pro-Life" are constantly living their lives as though life is paramount to all things? Of course they don't all believe that. I point to the tired example of pro-life proponents that are advocates for the death penalty. This is one example of people using polarizing language and thought patterns but don't think about the consequences of the language they use.

Richard Dawkins, Bill O'Reilly, Ben Stein (stay-the fuck-tuned), Sam Hitchens, all of these men use this same communication habit, and when people attempt to engage in honest dialog about religion, they fall into the same trap. This isn't to say that faith or reason aren't real things with real qualities on both sides, just that they don't seem to be antonyms in my mind.

Do reason and faith intersect? I think it's clear that there are important people in each field that are being ignored to make way for the fundamentalists. There is no reason that these two fields cannot be related, or that one can have utter faith in one over the other. But the habit of saying faith vs. reason, or science vs. God, as though these two things are mutually exclusive is pathetic and unreasonable.

Look, I'm not trying to say that I have a better answer than anyone else, but living as though science doesn't exist is ignorant and wrong. And as Trey Parker (creator of South Park) put it (through Stan Marsh) "Couldn't evolution be the answer to how and not the answer to why?" I'm not convinced, and I've read some of Dawkins' stuff
and haven't found anything that suggests the existence of God is completely out of the question. But again this is probably left for a different post.

Here's my point: these terms are not used to benefit either movement, they are just meant to tear the other one down. That is no way to construct positive communication, but that should surprise no one. Neither side seems to want to convince anyone that they are right, just that another side is wrong.