Dying of (your parents') ignorance

This is a heartbreaking story:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/dead-babys-parents-ignored-advice-qc-20090504-asmt.html?page=1.

A nine month old girl died of septicemia when her eczema became so bad that her skin constantly broke, resulting in a fatal infection. I suffer from (comparatively mild) eczema myself and it's very safe to say that the condition is extremely apparent. You just can't fail to notice if your baby's skin is breaking open. Add to that the fact that severe eczema is a very unpleasant condition, especially for a young child. This one would certainly have been in constant discomfort, with unbearably itchy and painful skin (and unable to scratch effectively). You can be damn sure she would have let her parents know about this in the only way she could: constant crying. In fact, the he Crown prosecutor, Mark Tedeschi, QC, says exactly this:

"Gloria spent a lot of the last five months of her life crying, irritable, scratching"

How can this story possibly be made worse? Gloria's postgraduate-educated parents were advised first by a nurse and later by their GP that they should consult a skin specialist, but they refused in favour of homeopathic 'medicine'. The father is a homeopath and presumably believes in his particular brand of snake oil, but Tedeschi says that on the few occasions they tried conventional treatments, Gloria's condition improved and they immediately reverted to homeopathy. Sadly, this is a common pattern. It's a desperate and probably unconscious attempt to rationalise beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary and we see it in all kinds of quackery and superstition. The man's sister allegedly pleaded with the father to send Gloria to a proper doctor and he said "I'm not able to do that."

The parents are currently being tried for manslaughter by gross criminal negligence, which sounds about right to me. There can be no justification for such abuse and neglect, regardless of superstitious belief and no justification for others respecting superstitions of this kind. Proper treatments for eczema demonstrably work. Homeopathic ones demonstrably do not.

As heartbreaking as this story is and as angry I am at Gloria's parents for her needless suffering and death, I still find myself feeling sorry for them. These are people who are handicapped by a self-reinforcing belief system that has many of the hallmarks of a religion. It encourages believers to be selective of evidence: rejecting proper medical trials and accepting without question anecdotes and circumstantial evidence. For example, believers in homeopathy often (as this couple did) give their 'patients' conventional medicine at the same time as homeopathic jollup, yet attribute any recovery to the latter. Sadly, I suspect this is what happened in Gloria's case. For this reason, I consider the parents victims. They are victims of their own hubris as much as victims of a cynical industry that trades on and delights in ignorance.

However, they are not so much victims as their poor daughter, who died needlessly, helplessly and in torment. If they are found guilty, I hope the judge throws away the key.

Darth Ratzinger shows us what is wrong with the catholic church with admirable economy of words:

"We are shocked to see to what levels of brutality human beings can sink. Jesus is humiliated in new ways even today."

Brutality is all around us. There are parts of the world where nobody can feel safe. There are people who lock up and rape their daughters for decades. There are regimes that oppress the majority of the population with extreme, unthinking violence. There are people who seem not to value human life at all and who use suffering as a cold-blooded tool for personal gain. Others rape the planet in various ways, apparently not caring about the implications or the suffering and poverty of future generations. Brutal too is the condemnation to death of an estimated 80 million people from AIDS over the next 15 years on the basis of dubious interpretation of a bronze age work of fiction.

But Ratzinger isn't concerned with human suffering. He's concerned that the lord of all creation, the omnipotent, omniscient master of the universe, might feel a bit sad because people laugh at him. And well they might, with Ratzinger as one of his chief advocates.

Edit: The article also has a typical quote from the Archbishop of York, the equally insane John Sematu:

"[Christians now] have the daily challenge of living by a set of values that the world thinks are mad".

This is very much in the same vein as Ratty. For the most part, nobody thinks that Christian values are mad. The vast majority of people - Christian or otherwise - tend to share them for the most part and even many who don't still seem to regard them as desirable. What we regard as mad is the set of core beliefs Christianity requires, with its magical sky god, pathogenic priestesses, wizards, spells, unicorns, resurrections and so on. The world is starting to recognise that you don't have to believe in these childish fictions to be a moral person. Sematu - as he seems to do every time he opens his mouth in public - is being deliberately disingenuous. He's petulantly creating a strawman, sitting in his palace and pretending to be under attack. You aren't under attack John. You just aren't relevant any more. Don't blame us - isn't it your job to spread the word?

Theists in foxholes

Reuters reports that one "Father Raniero Cantalamessa, who is officially Preacher of the Papal Household" has decided - apparently through a marathon of wishful thinking - that the Atheist Bus Campaign has backfired.

He says that it has reminded people that faith is important, especially when times are hard. This is typical of the religious mindset. Apparently Cantalamessa can't understand that the purpose of the campaign is not to convert the religious, but to make the fence-sitters think and to counteract the unavoidable deluge of theist adverts that has become part of the furniture of our lives. The campaign is saying "Hey, look, it's OK to talk about atheism as well. It's not a taboo subject. There's nothing wrong with it." And of course it is also promoting atheism as a desirable way of life. From this point of view, it's unclear to me how the campaign could have 'backfired'. If it made atheists become theists or convinced fence-sitters or secret agnostics/atheists to convert en masse, then I guess we might call the campaign a failure, although I'm not sure I'd say it had backfired as such. But of course, there is no evidence whatsoever that any such thing has happened. We don't know how successful the campaign has been in terms of its actual, stated goals and we don't know how successful it has been in terms of Cantalamessa's fictional made up goals. The only difference is that atheists aren't lying about it.

Cantalamessa continues in this blithering vein, making some truly bewildering statements:

"We should almost thank the people who promoted that advertising campaign. It has served God's cause more than so many of our apologetic arguments,"

This seems to highlight massive and widespread incompetence among the ranks of the religious. Is this really what he means to say? And what does he mean by 'almost'?

"It has demonstrated the poverty of their reasons and has helped stir so many sleeping consciences,"

Cantalamessa has no evidence for this. He probably doesn't realise that he needs it. He's in a position where he gets to act as though he's for all practical purposes infallible: perhaps he's forgotten that his own wishful thinking doesn't make things automatically true.

"Suffering is certainly a mystery for everyone, especially the suffering of innocent people, but without faith in God it becomes immensely more absurd,"

This is exactly the wrong way round. Sufferening is not at all mysterious in a world without god. Earthquakes and tsunamis happen because of plate tectonics, sometimes leading to great suffering. People suffer from oppressive regimes, which are a result of human greed and the need of individuals to force their (usually religious or quasi-religious) beliefs on everybody else. People often suffer from more personal and immediate greed, when they are burgled or mugged. They suffer when attacked by animals or disease.

None of this is mysterious in the slightest. It is only when you try to reconcile this with a god who loves all his people that you start to scratch your head. Without a god, there really is no mystery.

"Even the last hope of rescue is taken away. Atheism is a luxury that only those with privileged lives can afford."

Personally, I feel that atheism is the privilege because it frees me from nonsensical closed-reasoning like this. Even so, there is something very strange about Cantalamessa's statement.

In the context of his remarks about suffering, he seems to suggest that humans need god to turn to....whether he exists or not. It doesn't seem to matter, as long as you believe in him anyway.

It is depressingly characteristic of religious thinking: we humans are unworthy; we're incapable of getting ourselves out of difficulties; we are neither master of fate nor captain of soul. We can't possibly hope to understand the world or control our place within it, so we shouldn't try. We should throw our hands in the air, say god did it and pretend we are better off as a result.

published on secular thought for the day

http://www.secularthought.org/node/59

We humans tend to agree on what tastes sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. Nobody suggests that our taste is religiously inspired.

Although famously we have no way to confirm it, we seem to have a more or less common frame of reference for perceiving (or at least talking about) colour. I haven't yet known anyone to say we get our sense of colour directly from the bible or from any other holy book.

We each see, hear, smell, touch and taste the universe in a sufficiently similar way to have an almost infallible common frame of reference. Does anyone suggest that we get this from the bible?

We more or less agree when it is hot or cold, when we are amused or creeped out, even in what angers or sates us. There is never the slightest suggestion that these more-or-less common responses are based on the bible or on any other holy book.

And yet the religious delight in telling us that our equally common sense of morality is biblically inspired. Can anyone explain why this sense is singled out?p

NHS funding religious discrimination

The National Health Service spends around £40m a year on hospital chaplains. I have no doubt that many religious people take great comfort from their presence at a difficult time. I have no doubt that the job is emotionally demanding and requires special training. But their being funded by the already financially troubled NHS should astonish everyone. It's a testimony to the grip religion has on the population that more people - including the religious - are not outraged.

First, there is no equivalent service for the non-religious. If, as NHS trusts are claiming, chaplains are an essential part of hospital care, then are hospitals not failing in their duty of care of non-religious patients? If they are not essential, then why is the NHS paying for them in the first place? Needless to say, churches are tripping over themselves to point out that the chaplains are there to care for the non-religious as well. The phrase I've seen crop up most often is "we provide religious and spiritual care." Unfortunately, I do not possess a spirit as there are no such things as spirits. I'm therefore at a loss as to how somebody might care for it.

Second, I'm at a loss to explain why the cash-strapped NHS should pay for this service, when by their own admission, this is what churches are for. All the hospitals I know are surrounded by churches, synagogues, mosques etc. that are packed with priests of various kinds with a mandate to minister to the sick. They are registered charities and so their staff are indirectly paid for by the people who wish to use their services. Why on Earth should the NHS - and ultimately the taxpayer - foot this bill?

It's another example of almost unconscious privileging of religion. There's no reason to expect that priests have any more expertise than a random person off the street and yet they defend their tenuous position by claiming they are there for patients of all faiths or (literally) god forbid, none.

posted on secular thought of the day

http://www.secularthought.org/node/59

We humans tend to agree on what tastes sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. Nobody suggests that our taste is religiously inspired.

Although famously we have no way to confirm it, we seem to have a more or less common frame of reference for perceiving (or at least talking about) colour. I haven't yet known anyone to say we get our sense of colour directly from the bible or from any other holy book.

We each see, hear, smell, touch and taste the universe in a sufficiently similar way to have an almost infallible common frame of reference. Does anyone suggest that we get this from the bible?

We more or less agree when it is hot or cold, when we are amused or creeped out, even in what angers or sates us. There is never the slightest suggestion that these more-or-less common responses are based on the bible or on any other holy book.

And yet the religious delight in telling us that our equally common sense of morality is biblically inspired. Can anyone explain why this sense is singled out?

Richard Dawkins on the Tony Blair Foundation

http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2009/04/tony-blair-faith-children

Very good, very good.

I find the Tony Blair Foundation hilarious in its insane ambition in principle (to unite all the world's religions in peace and love, presumably with a Catholic look & feel) and yet its total lack of ambition in practise (representatives from various religions endlessly talking to each other with no view to actually achieving anything and absolutely no clue about how this is to contribute to the uniting part).

I find it horribly disturbing for almost the same reasons. I can't imagine what good would come of uniting all religions (whatever that might even mean). I can't imagine what religions have to tell us at all, other than to warn us against convincing ourselves that preserving dogma is more important than alleviating suffering.

Organisations like this are concerned with helping supposedly moderate people feel better about supporting harmful policies (such as the Catholic Church's policy on condoms). They can't achieve any good in even the long term, because they don't even have a coherent idea about what 'good' is.