Background follows.<\/p>\n
Back in college, two of my professors, a husband and wife team that taught Math and English, respectively, went through a flash of tragic fame<\/a>. The Swans had been Christian Scientists, and as their son fell ill with meningitis.<\/p>\n They followed their faith – and the boy died. The Swans left the church (although they apparently kept their faith in a broader sense), and have spent a few decades lobbying to change state laws that protect parents whose religious practices lead to their childrens’ deaths. It’s an issue fraught with emotion on both sides…<\/p>\n …and one I stay happily out of. I’m a Christian who sees no rational reason to find conflict between an allegorical reading of the Old Testament and science. There is no battle between “creationism”\/intelligent design and evolution. It’s pretty simple.<\/p>\n And I regard zealots on both sides – the snake-handlers along with the fevered, bigoted caricatures that Big Atheism sends forth to do battle in the media – with suspicion and a little bit of sorrow.<\/p>\n Fast forward to today, and the dumbest post that’s ever appeared on Anti-Strib<\/em> that wasn’t written by Ed Salden<\/a>. It’s written by a fellow named Jeff, who must have gotten video of Tracy Eberly doing something really <\/em>awful to get included in the Anti-Strib<\/em> stable of writers in the first place.<\/p>\n Of course, part of the problem becomes clear at the conclusion:<\/p>\n (via Pharyngula<\/a>.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n P.Z. Meiers is to religion as David Duke is to black people.<\/p>\n Onward to be beginning:<\/p>\n Just when you think that prayer can’t do any harm<\/a>:<\/p>\n “Even as her 11-year-old daughter lay dying on a mattress on the floor of the family dining room on Easter Sunday, Leilani Neumann never wavered in her belief in the power of prayer. Prayer didn’t save Madeline Kara Neumann, who died of untreated diabetes March 23.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n No, it didn’t.<\/p>\n Neither, “John’s” claims notwithstanding, did it “do harm”. A couple of parents with a view of God and faith that is, to say the least, on the far fringe of orthodoxy, did.<\/p>\n So what’s my point? I’ve often accused faith of having no accountability, and this is exactly what I mean.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, good for you!<\/p>\n Except that for people of faith, accountability is a constant thing. Yes, accountability to God is a pretty powerful force, and if people see that accountability differently than you do (see also: female circumcision, suttee<\/em>, substituting prayer for medicine, faith-healing, whatever) it can seem anything from “weird” to “barbaric” to “just plain wrong”.<\/p>\n And that accountability is why Christians devote 25% more<\/a> – of their own free will, rather than via government coercion – to charity than do secularists, and are more likely to vote and volunteer for civic causes<\/a> than atheists.<\/p>\n
\n“We just thought it was a spiritual attack and we prayed for her,” Neumann said, according to a police report. “My husband, Dale, was crying and mentioned taking Kara to the doctor, and I said the Lord’s going to heal her and we continued to pray.”<\/p>\n