In the US state of Oregon there exists a fundamentalist Christian denomination knows as ‘Followers of Christ’. One of their core doctrines includes a reliance on prayer for healing of illnesses. So strict are they in enforcing this doctrine that they shun members who seek professional medical care. Apparently many children have died from otherwise treatable diseases because their parents refused to take them to hospital, opting instead to pray to ‘God’ for healing.
On February 2nd 2010 (yesterday), Jeff and Marci Beagley, who are both members of the Followers of Christ Church, were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide. According to the New York Times:
A couple who belong to a church whose members avoid medical care were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide for praying over their ill son instead of seeking medical help. Jeff and Marci Beagley’s 16-year-old son, Neil, died in 2008 of complications from a urinary tract blockage.
One of the things that led me towards atheism was that miracle healing claims – that are usually touted by believers as strong evidence of there being a ‘God’ – just don’t bear out upon scrutiny.
Many people have claimed that ‘God’ has healed them of various ailments. In Part 2, I will discuss in detail why I and most sensible people do not find such claims convincing.
In the meantime, regardless of whether you’re a believer or not, let’s encourage our sick to visit hospitals, and stick to their medication. It’s in cases like these where religious superstitions can be deadly.
James Onen
Ritah Nakuya
Phillip
Hassan Higenyi
Guest Writer
18 comments
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February 4, 2010 at 3:17 pm
The 27th Comrade
1. Can superstitious belief be itself superstitious belief in doctors and hospitals?
2. Are most believers in God like that sect, “Followers of Christ”?
3. Is it true that, until recently, the majority of medical practitioners were also people of religious vows (such as priests, nuns, even shamans)?
4. Is it true that the symbol for health provision is a cross because modern health provision is the child of Christianity?
February 4, 2010 at 4:02 pm
James Onen
1. No
2. Don’t think so.
3. I don’t know, but I used to be a Christian myself, until not so recently
4. Is it true the cross was a pagan symbol that was co-opted into Christianity?
February 5, 2010 at 12:07 pm
The 27th Comrade
Hello, James.
I’m here intermittently, and this is the only comment I can answer to in the time available.
1. I have a superstitious belief in hospitals and medicine. Like I said, I will enter the hospital even as people come out dead in droves, having gone in alive. Or does this my superstitious belief not exist?
2. I agree with you. Indeed, we note these people with such beliefs precisely because they stick out from among the otherwise uniform and un-noteworthy majority who aren’t like them.
3. The point of that question was to show that medicine being as prevalent among human societies as faith in the divine, so much so that the majority of doctors, nurses, and herbalists were also priests, monks, nuns, and shamans, is a sign that belief in God isn’t disbelief in medicine: quite the exact opposite.
4. Yes, the cross has a many-valued origin. It was as much a torture style (still is, actually) as it was a pagan symbol. But of course you didn’t answer my question. (I guess answering questions is my field.)
February 5, 2010 at 12:30 pm
James Onen
@ Comrade
Don’t be silly. This subject has no room for the sort of epistemological wank-fests you seem to relish. This is a matter of life and death.
February 4, 2010 at 4:09 pm
James Onen
By the way TASO, the pioneer AIDS care organisation in Uganda (which provides antiretroviral therapy to 23,000 people) announced in September 2008 that unverified faith healing was posing a threat to adherence to antiretroviral therapy by persons living with HIV/Aids.
There are pastors in this country who encourage HIV positive people to stop taking their ARVs because ‘God’ has purportedly ‘healed’ them.
February 6, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Phillip
1. Can superstitious belief be itself superstitious belief in doctors and hospitals?
Whenever I or one of siblings get an asthma attack that gets out of hand (refractory to inhalers and DIY adrenalin shots), we normally rush to a hospital (not a church) simply because ‘common sense’ tells us that’s where we can get the medicine we need and appropriate care facilities to deal with the condition. (I suppose if the local witch doctor had a life support machine I’d also rush there).
With hospitals comes death (just as with hospitals comes life…), everyday we learn something new, everyday we find a new way to save a life, to prolong a life, to give a better standard of living, it’s what we do, that’s why there are over a million researches going on as we speak on new/novel medical therapies. (Medicine and superstition? Or medicine based on scientific fact from years of research?)
Something new; hydrogen sulfide can induce a suspended animation-like state in a non-hibernating species like mice, potentially this could give doctors time to carry out necessary tests and treatments in human species.
2. Are most believers in God like that sect, ‘followers of Christ’?
I don’t know… what do you think?
i) Snake totting evangelists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_handling#Snake_handling_churches)
ii) Famous faith healers like Benny Hinn and their hordes of followers including vast majority of Uganda Christian believers…
iii) Pastor Robert Kayanja (who even botched up a prophecy…) and his huge Pentecostal following.
“And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (Mark 16:17-18)”
Or are we picking what we want to believe from the bible again. Like I said… I don’t know, what do you think?
3. Is it true that until recently, the majority of medical practioners were also of religious views (such as priests, nuns, even shamans)?
Prior to missionaries, primary health care was provided by the family through innate knowledge by mothers, grandmother’s etc. secondary health care was provided for by traditional healers, shamans, herbalists and witchdoctors. (Needless to say scores died and some lived to give you who we have today… natural selection at its best).
The first hospitals in Uganda Mengo hospital and Rubaga hospital were set up by the missionaries. (Your nuns and priests). They did very good work (Mengo hospital saved millions of Ugandans through their tsetse fly eradication programmes), they also did a lot of advertising and propagating Christianity (I won’t go as far as saying bartering faith for medicine but after a visit someone gives you a bible sermon complete with literature one is left to wonder… were they treating people out of duty to preserving life or out of the compassion of Jesus Christ… doesn’t really matter, they did great work and I cannot demean that in any way.)
Mildmay Centre in Uganda is among the few AIDS/HIV centers of excellence promoting Holistic healing i.e. on top of giving you life saving medication you also get a healthy dose of faith (they are catering for Christians and Muslims at the moment, with a resident catholic priest, Anglican priest, and a Sheikh. They realized that without marrying the two (faith and medicine) patient anti-retroviral therapy adherence was in jeopardy. So the faith representatives cater to that very need, they teach the patients why God wants them to take their medication and why God wants them to eat healthy and think positive. (Effective strategy if you ask me).
It does make you think, why does a patient need someone to tell them that God wants them to keep taking their medication in the first place? (Could it be that their natural sense of self preservation is switched off, or is someone feeding them lies…?)
Which is unfortunately true the likes of ‘pastor masanyalaze’ (a quack exposed with an electric shock device) have been deceiving the sick convincing them to fast and pray instead of taking their anti-retroviral therapy (I won’t even go into the importance of a healthy diet when one is immune-compromised…). This is a sad truth affecting Uganda today.
4. Is it true that the symbol of health provision is a cross because modern health provision is the child of Christianity?
Today, two serpent motifs are commonly used to symbolize the practice and profession of medicine. Internationally, the most popular symbol of medicine is the single serpent–entwined staff of Asklepios (Latin, Aesculapius), the ancient Greco-Roman god of medicine. (http://www.annals.org/content/138/8/673.abstract)
The symbol that Moses held according to biblical beliefs is known as the Tau cross and is not to de mistaken with this. (http://www.annals.org/content/140/4/311.4.full http://www.drblayney.com/Asclepius.html)
Medical practitioners recite the Hippocratic Oath… they don’t recite the Grace or The Lord’s prayer.
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is an international humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers worldwide which started to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for the human being, and to prevent and alleviate human suffering, without any discrimination based on nationality, race, sex, religious beliefs, class or political opinions.
The Red Cross flag is often confused with the Flag of Switzerland which is the opposite of it. The red cross emblem has more to do with the fact that the movement was started in Geneva, Switzerland than to do with any Christian beliefs….
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Red_Cross_and_Red_Crescent_Movement)
(http://www.redcross.int/)
Healing using medicines, vaccines and equipment has always been based in science. Don’t fool yourself, no miracles here, just good old science.
On another note, I feel compelled to ask myself a question and answer it. How come when people enter the hospital some live while others die? Why is it that when I eat pawpaw’s I get the runs and when others eat them they’re fine?
Simple; God doesn’t want me eating pawpaw’s, some sort of generational curse am sure. Or could it be something less devious and obvious say… GENETIC VARIATION?
We may look similar anatomically, but our physiology and genetics do vary quite markedly. That’s why some people respond to certain medical therapies while others do not. (e.g. some people are known to be allergic to general anesthesia).
In short, medicine is not a perfect science tailored to everyone’s specific need. Once in a while you land on an outlier on whom the therapies don’t work with disastrous consequences. Other times, there is nothing medically possible that can be done e.g. late stage rabies infection… (We can’t cure each and every disease condition… but we can sure as hell try as hard as we can).
For medical therapies to be effective then it is better to report to your health care provider as soon as you can, the earlier a problem is diagnosed the faster it can be dealt with. When you have a faith problem go to your faith leader, when you have a medical/ health problem go to a licensed health care provider. (I suppose if you have a legal problem it makes more sense to go to a lawyer than to an architect…)
nice weekend….
February 4, 2010 at 3:17 pm
char
Interesting.
I believe that God exists. I believe that God can heal. I also believe that God made us sentient beings, some of us with enough talent to become medical doctors, for a reason.
I dont understand why some religions cannot see the beautiful link between faith and science. God chooses who He will heal. The rest of us should trust Him enough to go see a doctor when we’re sick!
February 4, 2010 at 3:50 pm
James Onen
Hi Char,
Hmm..I used to make these types of rationalisations myself while I was still a believer.
If you can, you should watch a 1999 HBO documentary on faith-healing called “A Question of Miracles”. An independent camera crew was for the first time allowed to film a Benny Hinn crusade in the US, and a Reinhard Bonke revival in Nigeria. Some of the people who claimed to have been healed were followed up to see how much better they were doing after their ‘healing’. One particular case, of an Indian boy with a brain tumour, is particularly sad.
A Question of Miracles – Part 1 & Part 2
February 4, 2010 at 3:26 pm
char
27th Comrade: i always thought the symbol for health provision was a staff with a snake coiled around it, from the greek god Asclepius?
I suppose, as with many other things, Christiany seeped in, probably through the Red Cross, etc. and thats how we have the cross… ?
February 5, 2010 at 12:10 pm
The 27th Comrade
Yeah, I didn’t mean the symbol for medicine (which varies geographically: it is Da Vinci’s symmetrical man, for example, in the Arab World).
I phrased that poorly. I should have said “emergency health provision”. It is as much on the First Aid Box as it is on the National Ambulance. And, of course, the Red Cross.
February 4, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Mudamuli
Hmmm! Very tricky question, I must say
February 5, 2010 at 8:06 pm
The 27th Comrade
Categorising the question (and the asker thereof) as one thing or the other generally doesn’t pass for an answer. (Then again, I’m learning what to expect.)
I know it is a life-or-death matter. It is why my superstitious belief in doctors and hospitals worries me. Most of the cutting-edge medical science of yesterday has turned out to be dangerous. Think of scientists recommending killing cats to fight the plague (spread by rats and their parasites), recommending blood-letting (the prestigious journal Lancet is named after the tool for the job), doctors never washing their hands in hospital until germ theory showed why we died more in hospital than at home, the use of x-rays to check even for things like if the shoe fit (until, of course, we found that it was dangerous, and many women were rendered barren like this), and the list goes on and on.
So, when I worry about superstitious belief in hospitals and doctors and medicine and the like, it is because it is a matter of life and death. Or does it matter how wrong theories are only if they are held by people who believe in God?
February 5, 2010 at 9:46 pm
James Onen
@ Comrade
Doctors and medical scientists learn from their errors and improve their methods everyday. That is the beauty of it all. Every day they are learning something new. For example today we rely on randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled clinical trials to test the efficacy of drugs. This is a recent development, and has been proven to be extremely effective – helping to save BILLIONS of lives by laying the framework for medical research into new medicines.
So to point to poor methods of the past and use that to categorise medical science as a superstition, I think is a cheap stunt, and is an insult to scientists who are working hard everyday to find cures to diseases that afflict us.
Besides, instead of attacking medical science, what you need to be doing is providing verifiable evidence of FAITH HEALING, Comrade. I can easily do that for medical interventions.
February 6, 2010 at 12:04 am
The 27th Comrade
Calm down, dear friend. I do not attack doctors. I merely point out that I have superstitious faith in them. They are fallible humans, and I already know that from Genesis.
You could do with more-careful reading. I do not call medicine superstition; I just note that I have superstitious faith in doctors and hospitals. I was forced to do that because of your single-word “No.” answer to my first question, which I thought was ignorant and therefore implying the need for education even if from a (my) personal case.
These methods for achieving empirical veracity are all well and good; the problem is fallible man. After all, blood-letting, though dangerous according to our current knowledge, was strongly supported by scientific evidence for thousands of years of records, experiments, and practice. (This is why trusting in ourselves – “reason” and “science” – is inherently dangerous.)
Let’s assume that you answered my question, and therefore that I owe you a reply on your turn:
Have you stopped to wonder why I provided, as number three in my second comment, a parallel between faith and medicine? Medicine is a child of faith (even the faith of shamans). Do you understand this, James?
Faith healing is all the healing that we have in, say, the Red Cross and its contributions to medicine. You assume that it’s got to be a miracle to be faith healing? This is the caricaturing of faith that I don’t tolerate (even among the personal atheist friends with whom I’m otherwise at peace sipping drinks in the nooks). St. Luke, who wrote two historical books in the New Testament, was a medical doctor par excellence (even though some think of him first as a historian par excellence).
Count the hospitals that have been founded by our oh-so-rational faith-despising atheists all over the World, and juxtapose that number against only those hospitals in Uganda that carry a Catholic (exclusively-Catholic) saint’s name in them. And then you’ll see the shame in your question and your assumptions. Faith in God, therefore, is faith that heals, usually by medicine (and, importantly, affecting the practitioners thereof just as much as the recipients).
February 6, 2010 at 7:34 am
James Onen
@ Comrade
Look, I know that Christians build hospitals. Hamas does the same too in Gaza, and has been providing social services to poor Palestinians for years. Big deal.
Ha ha..and I don’t see what’s particularly impressive when people do good things because they are motivated to do so out of a desire to please their various deities.
I’m far more impressed when people do good things for goodness’ sake, without the anticipation of a heavenly reward, or hopes of scoring points with a ‘God’. When an atheist helps people (and many do, including myself), he or she does so for its own sake. Indeed many non-believers have, in their own personal capacity, contributed alot towards healthcare in the world.
Take for example Bill Gates, who as of 2007 had given a total of $28 billion to charity. Three out of the top five philanthropists in the world are known to be atheists who, between them, have in total so far donated over $74 billion to charity. Just last week, Bill Gates announced that he will donate a further $10 billion over the next decade to develop and deliver new vaccines to children in the developing world.
All this – with no belief in a ‘God’, or the promise of heavenly rewards.
Then there are secular emergency medical relief organisations, such as Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) who in 1999 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of its members’ continuous effort to provide medical care in acute crises, as well as raising international awareness of potential humanitarian disasters. They have been active in a large number of African countries for decades, sometimes serving as the sole provider of health care, food, and water. In 2007 over 26,000, mostly local, doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals, logistical experts, water and sanitation engineers and administrators provided medical aid in over 60 countries.
Make no mistake Comrade – secularists are RIGHT THERE with believers in helping to assist people that are suffering around the world.
This post was written as a critique of faith/miracle healing, and I highlighted a particular sect in the states that come under the spotlight because of it. Faith healing crusades are increasing in popularity in Uganda, as I showed you earlier, many AIDS patients are doing away with their ARVs because of the belief that ‘God ‘ has healed them at these crusades.
It goes like this:
An AIDS sufferer goes to church and is told by his pastor that ‘God’ will cure him of his AIDS if he prays for it. The believer prays. The pastor lays hands on him, casts ‘demons’ out of him, etc.. and tells him that ‘God’ has healed him completely. But wait…’it’s all about your faith’, the pastor reminds the believer. Now, if the believer carries on with his ARV treatments he’s scared he will be displaying a lack of faith in the ‘miracle’ he received from ‘God’. So what does he do? He stops taking his medication altogether. He then goes to church and hears ‘testimonies’ from people who claim ‘God’ cured their AIDS – because they had faith. Thus, the believer’s mindset is reinforced. No need to take ARVs – ‘God’ has healed me. It’s unfortunate that this poor believer doesn’t know that those offering such testimonies are hired staff pretending to have been former AIDS sufferers.
Now, in this post, I am not talking about whether or not Christians provide, or advocate for, medical healthcare – I’m aware they do. That’s why in my last sentence of this post I said believers as well as unbelievers should be encouraging their brethren to go to hospital when they are sick, and to keep taking their medication.
My contention in this post is that faith/miracle healing specifically is a fraud and a hoax. Do you agree or disagree? That is the thrust of this article, which I intend to expand upon in Part 2 of this series.
February 6, 2010 at 8:09 am
James Onen
@ Comrade
You said:
Wait..are you a creationist?
February 8, 2010 at 12:47 pm
The 27th Comrade
Hi, James and Phillip.
James, I’m working on setting up my blog, so that I don’t have to go on at length on your turf, and in so doing upset your hospitality which I confess to have knowingly stretched. Grant pardon, dear sir.
As it is, I’ll take the questions that require me to write lots and answer them there (such as anything pending from your first two posts). As God allows. In Arabia, they say insha’llah.
Yes, Hamas has done the same. It is the point: faith is not the other word for not believing in medicine. Indeed, as I said (perhaps, if memory serves, in the first comment, which you deleted) I believe in God, yet I also superstitiously believe in hospitals and doctors. But I’ve said enough on this.
What else. Ah, the care-giving atheists. It is a good thing, of course. If we don’t hang together, we hang separately. Of course, reductive materialism and methodological naturalism, taken to their logical end, exclude such wishy-washy, irrational, un-enlightened, superstitious categories as “merciful care-giving”.
What motivates believers to give healthcare (the huge majority of them, historically, having no belief in “scoring points” due to being good, and myself being such a one) is merely belief in intangible things such as that “pain” and “discomfort” is “bad” and that we should “ease the pain” and “sadness”, and all of these things, to the shaman and the nun alike, are on the same metaphysical level as, say, the after-life. They acted on these things – prevention of “sorrow” and “heartache” in prolonging life and making it “more worthwhile” – because they didn’t believe in axioms that denied the existence of the immaterial things such as those and, as just one of those things, deity.
So, in the interim, I’ll be glad that our atheists are hypocritical (or that they haven’t worked out the implications of their axioms’ limitations; certainly not as well as the Old Atheists we all know and love). Or, as I like to say, God bless les MSF!
(Oh, and Phillip, the name is Hippocrates, and the oath the Hippocratic Oath, and you can see that they want to change the guy’s oath to suit their current reductive materialist beliefs; failing to meet the moral standard of that great, enlightened pagan, they seek to dumb down the standard.)
James, you ask if I am a creationist. If this is the (typically-) atheist way to ask if I’m a Bible literalist, then no. If it is to ask if I know that creation implies a creator, regardless of the laws by which the creation is made, then yes, I’m a creationist. In particular, an old-earth creationist. In any case, I don’t believe that neo-Darwinian evolution is alone responsible for life and all its aspects. I’m increasingly coming to doubt that it is the primary explanation for evolution at all (say, outside of the genera bounds). I’ll be trying to get a recent book by some cool atheists, Jerry Fodor and the other Italian guy, on this very subject. I think the title is What Darwin Got Wrong, and then we can read it. On my blog, with time, I’ll outline why I find the standard recount wanting (even though I have no problem with it per se). Consider my stand to be this: neo-Darwinian evolution is a sufficient explanation just as much as young-earth creationism is. Correct explanation, now that’s another matter, and both are likely wrong. I give both room that allows for investigation, but also for falsification, and neither seems to survive.
(But this topic has the capacity to stretch, and I’ll try to deal with it on me blog, where it can stretch safely. Besides, I’m typing on an empty stomach.)
While I’ve hinted at the problem with Bible literalism (“the sun has risen” means “the sun has jumped up from below the blankets” when I type it here – the sun has risen – doesn’t it?), I’ll note that the people who exclusively rely on unexplainable events to be the way God works with them (such as a former neighbour of mine who died of AIDS, progressing through the stages at early ’90s speeds, because she was going to some pastor’s place and praying for a miracle (read: unexplainable event to rid her of HIV) and then she suddenly left behind dependants on one loud, sad, and tearful night) are the people who (1) make up a small percentage of believers, so you shouldn’t say “hence believers are like this”, and I gave all the counter-examples to silence you, but you don’t seem to get it, and (2) are like you (plural, as in atheists) in terms of being Bible literalists; see for example the narrow understanding that Phillip has selected for his quote, and also (3) like you (plural, as in atheists) in terms of mis-understanding God by, say, expecting that God’s action, for it to be God’s action at all, should be a random and disorderly usurpation of the laws God Himself set to work in, and – importantly – for, His creation.
More on this on my blog, which should be up and running soon enough.(I’m thinking today! Woo-hoo! Thanks for getting me of my ass, James. Been a long time since anything made me comment at length.)
Phillip, yes, the cross is, in such instances, from the Swiss flag. The Helvetian banner, though, is Christian in origin. Most people, today, wouldn’t believe just how influential Christianity was in old Christendom. Every hospital (until what century? I don’t remember) was staffed exclusively by priests and nuns.
February 8, 2010 at 2:56 pm
James Onen
@ Comrade
Ha ha..you read my mind. I was about to ask you to take a short holiday from this blog. You are kind of ‘overdoing’ it.
This post was a critique of faith/miracle healing. To be honest, I HAVE NO IDEA WHY you introduced the idea of Christians and modern medical healthcare – a matter which I do not dispute. For this reason I’m really wondering what the point of your – I’m sorry to say this – long and off-topic comments have been. We are essentially quibbling over non-issues – and unfortunately I allowed you to drag me into it.
My post is not an indictment of Christianity as a whole – as you can see I was careful to point to one specific denomination, and in a later comment the increasing incidences of faith/miracle healing in Uganda, particularly regarding AIDS treatment. (My view is that such beliefs are more widespread in Uganda than you imagine – and that they are actually growing)
The issue here is that YOU (the believer) and I (the non-believer) need to be working together to tell believers not to be duped by promises of purported miracle cures by quack pastors, and instead stick to their medication (ARVs or otherwise). I do not think you would disagree with this. Would you?
Having said that – you have really kept my blog active and interesting and I appreciate that very much. But I think let’s try and stay focused.