Loosely: Those that religious persons themselves would describe as "believing in all kinds of crazy".

If we take Europe as an example, I'd be very surprised if you could substantiate that any significant % of christians would "give most of the credit to god" when we're talking about a successful appendectomy.

You'll very likely find ~100% of christians to thank God if the recovery after an appendectomy is swift and without complications. That has very little to do with "people put[ing] themselves in the hands of health professionials and then when cured of whatever serious illness they have they then thank god" instead of the doctors, however.

Obv. there's a lot more to healing and recovery than just medical skill, so thanking the docs for a skillful surgery and God for "giving the patient strenght" (or w/e) is nothing really that would strike me as "ironic" in any significant sense. Hence, since I think you'd agree on that, the most likely explanation of your initial statement would be that you're talking of some kind of fringe position that seeks out medical help and then says any and all of the help administered is essentially the very work of God. I'm sure youtube has videos of the sort. I'm not so sure it's a position that has any real life significance, though.

There is a way of understanding prayer that would suggest that praying for a win in tomorrow's game is somewhat silly, and that eschewing all medical treatment in favor of prayer is to take an unnecessarily limited view of God's providence or the nature of earthly life at best, and is a fairly serious misunderstanding of what it means to be a Christian at worst.

That said, one can also understand prayer in a way such that praying about tomorrow's game would be misguided (to the extent that you are treating prayer as a magic spell: a way to make something happen) but the misunderstanding is considered benign and even somewhat endearing. This is the kind of attitude that's captured by scriptures that treat the relationship between God and people as between parent and child.

This understanding of prayer is one in which the primary purpose is not to cause things to happen externally in the world, or to fulfill any "earthly" desire, but to be in communion with God.

And with regard to the miraculous (and prayer healing is miraculous), I would make the argument that the new testament attitude towards miracles is not one that fits with the idea that Christians should forbid medical treatment and expect miraculous healings as a routine matter. That would be to treat the miraculous as something mundane and predictable and even controllable. That's why I called it "magical". But the biblical account of miracles is an account of "signs" and "wonders", and there is a distinction drawn between miracles and magic. Miracles are extraordinary occurrences whose primary purpose is not even so much in the physical healing, but in pointing towards the truth of the gospel.

It's true that Jesus speaks of the ability of faith to move mountains, but I think it's getting it wrong to treat that as some prescription that Christians should be super heroes. Instead, I think throughout the entire Bible there is this understanding that a lot of bad things happen and you have to accept and submit to them as part of human life. Prayer is not an escape from that. In that sense, even Jesus, supposedly God in the flesh, did not act in a way that fits with what you are suggesting, but "being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (phil. 2:8).

Christians aren't really supposed to see that as some isolated event that is peculiar to the person of Christ, but it's an example we are meant to follow, and I think that requires an understanding of the nature of prayer and human life which isn't fundamentally compatible with the attitude you are suggesting Christians should have

They can influence the house work or their medical treatment themselves (with the help of doctors). They can't do the same for tomorrow's game. Therefore it makes sense to pray for things things that they feel they do not sufficient influence over. This extends to medical cases when doctors might not be able to help, eg. cancer.

Whether it's fair or not, you do not live in the US where the problems are very real, and what you consider a fringe is in fact a very loud, far reaching and powerful group (even if they are not that large in total numbers). Your own beliefs, being a Catholic and being a non-fundamentalist, would be considered heresy by these groups. Catholics are not Christians is a common position from the evangelicals.

This is also what I was referring to in the other thread that was discussing the merits of ridicule over criticism. I feel a new thread brewing, and I would like to get around to writing up some of the reasons that standing up to religion is not simply important, but absolutely vital, here in the US at least. But if you are not exposed to it or interested in it (the latter applies to many in the US) you have no idea the extent to which theocratic laws have found their way into secular government, and how literal Biblical belief is determining what is taught in classrooms not just in the Bible Belt, but across the entire country.

Put another way: people like your and the beliefs you hold are not the problem, and have never been the problem, but where it matters, you are just as much of a minority*


*actually I have no idea what the demographics actually look like, and I would love to find out

The problem with extremists is that you don't need many of them to make a difference, and the even bigger problem is that the exact opposite applies to moderates.

Discarding people like these as a "fringe group" is dangerous, because it can cause us to ignore these groups... and just like the cancer which are perfect analogy for them, they don't need huge numbers to disrupt the system they reside in, just enough to tip the scales. So if we ignore them or write them off, we might actually be dooming the structures we believe in.

People also tend to greatly overestimate the stability of the status quo, which I suspect is another contributing reason we tend to let groups such as these go on unchallenged. We falsely believe that "what is now" is a natural state that the world will revert to regardless of what happens.

This was definitely true 20 years ago, but with the word-of-faith movement came some change concerning views on catholics and others, and now you have the present grace-movement, and I'm not so sure this is true any more.

I mean, I know it isn't true of the evangelical "word of faith" crowd, but maybe the baptists still hold this line.

This is hysterical nonsense.

Just the other day a student was told to take off her cross...in a catholic university.

1. Why can't you include links to all these snippets you keep posting? Whether or not anyone might (dis)agree with it, you should let them see the context without having to go on a hunt.

2. What does the dress-code policy of a private religious institution have to do with the secular state? Are you suggesting the government should intervene or override in this religious school's policy making?!



Ok, I found a link, should I be surprised or not that you got the story wrong! It happened at a state university, and if this is true (and there's no reason not to believe it, its happened before...) then the university was almost definitely in the wrong and should issue an apology / make sure it's faculty understands the rules.

Next?

(I'm not trivialising the mistake, but put it in context: there are thousands of schools with millions of students wearing crosses somewhere on their body that do not get mistreated like this student did)

Funny how that is, isn't it.

More problematically, though, what happens is just argumentative sloppiness taking place:

Husker: "I've gotta admit, I do find it pretty ironic when you see people put themselves in the hands of health professionials and then when cured of whatever serious illness they have they then thank god." <--"When you see people" implies it happens with some regularity.

Me: "You sure you represent them correctly?"

Husker: "Well, I hope I'm not, I wouldn't be surprised if I am and in any case, I'm pretty sure I can find youtoobs."

Me: "Oh, so you are talking about the crazies. Well, w/e, I guess."

You: "Well, the crazies are loud enough to make up for their lack of numbers."

It started out as a statement about a certain position regarding prayer and medical treatment. But once that view was challenged and turned into a discussion on whether this position is actually one that is being held, I'm handwaved with statements about the religious right as an influential political group and how it just takes a few bad apples in the bucket.

That way you never actually have to check whether the position you ascribe to the religious fringe is even held by it. It's also an easy way out to whenever one is faced with criticism about ones way of criticising on religion.

Let's just focus on a single issue: teaching creationism in the science class of public schools:

Creationism can be taught explicitly or via loopholes (under the guise of allowing students to "critique all sides of the evidence" of evolutionary theory, and conveniently, ONLY evolutionary theory!) in these states

- Alabama
- Louisiana
- Minnesota
- Missouri
- New Mexico
- Pennsylvania
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Texas

You are surely aware of the Texas Board of Education's influence on the content of text books used by the entire country?

Some recent success stories:
In Georgia, parents threatened to sue the school board to have stickers removed from biology books that read "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."

In several states (e.g. Kansas, Ohio) creationism was allowed to be taught and only recently has it been reversed and eliminated from the curriculum.

Pennsylvania is of course the state famous for the Dover trials.


Creationism is just one example of religious bias being legislated. A more through list might look like this:

Military
Women's Health
Professional Responsibilities
Employment, Land Use, Environmental Law
Definition of Marriage
End of life decision making
Education
Secular candidates for political office
Health and Safety standards for child care
Scientific and medical innovation

(this list courtesy of Sean Fairclough of the Richard Dawkins Foundation)


You can consider this "hysterical nonsense" if you want. I beg to differ.

We were discussing this:

By diverting the discussion about this particular claim into a discussion of the negative effects of other claims made by (supposedly) the same people, you illustrate my point. Whenever one gets called out on an outrageous statement about some fringe position, rather than actually discuss the merits of the outrageous statement, one diverts by invoking creationism, abortion and global warming.

I got the impression you're one not liking verbal hyperbole to get in the way of structuring sound arguments?

Ok, now its making a little more sense. You and Husker were discussing that, but you and I weren't. At least I wasn't! I was only talking about your description of a fringe group and the way you had of referring to the religious fringe as if they were some insignificant group of crazies that could be ignored. That it came from your reply to Husker about "Thank Doctors or God" wasn't of any significance, I thought it was clear from my post, but apparently not - my apologies if it was >50% my fault

As for the fringe group, it's not how loud, it's how influential. "Crazies" the likes of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell's 'legacy', etc are part of a billion dollar propaganda machine. For this reason I choose something other than a "w/e" position.

This is an aside to my other thought, but I've often thought it very strange that religious people will pray for deliverance to the same god that allowed them to end up in their predicament in the first place. How does their thought process work there?

lol, love it. Unfortunately for you, being an isolated incident, it doesn't actually prove your point since I'm aware (even in the UK) of the battles being fought to keep ID out of American schools and Evolution in. It's a genuine concern, not hysterical nonsense at all.

I also regularly get to see American presidents referring to the christian god (5 mentions in Obama's 2nd inauguration speech), leading in prayer and basically doing a lot of stuff that would have the mostly atheist founding fathers, who wrote a constitution intended to protect religious freedoms but keep them well separate from government, spinning in their graves.

It just feels like hypocrisy to me. Christians, and believers of other religions use the concept of faith to defend their belief, faith is a crucial part of religious belief, but when the choice is faith or a type of medical treatment, most take the treatment rather than relying on god to sort out the problem for them. If you really believe, then aren't the options: 1) God will heal me 2) God won't heal me but that's part of his plan for me? In which case you aren't you second guessing god to go and get your problem treated?

This is not about biblical interpretation, I'm trying to figure out where faith ends and medical treatment begins.

I know that feeling.

The guy who runs Samaritan's Purse, Franklin Graham, (guilty of some extremely unethical behaviour in contravention of UN laws on religious freedoms and the rights of children and of being anti-islamic), was George Bush Jr's main 'spiritual advisor'.

It beggars belief, it sounds like some crazy storyline from a medieval play, kings with priests at their right hand but it's actually still happening. In fact, in some countries, the priests are actually the kings too.

This is going to be quite the derail, but I just don't buy the "religious nuts turn US domestic policies into ****" line. Until like 50 years ago, the South voted democrat. Roosevelt got 98% of the vote of SC. And it's perfectly possible to be a democrat evangelical, while being pro-choice, pro gay etc.

So, while this will sound prejudiced (and to an extent it probably is), to the rest of the world it sure looks like you guys don't need the religious crazies to install policies that are outlandish and somewhat absurd. Whether it's the entire national security BS, these absurd fights over HC, or gun rights - none of these are issues that are "owned" by the religious. Yet you manage to get into recurrent freak-outs over each of them. So, to the extent that the US has crazy laws, it's because it's crazy, not because it's the country of Palin and Pat.

That you have evangelicals pushing for creationism in school - sure, not ideal. But at it's core this is not an issue of religion; christianity is perfectly capable to exist within an evolutionary world view. It's an issue of a disenfranchised demographic (white, rural, southern, relatively poor, relatively uneducated) digging it's heels in and trying to cling to "the old ways." Them being equally uneducated about religious matters as they are about anything else, this may materialize in being harshly anti-abortion and pro-creationism, but if they were atheist, they'd substitute the IRS, gun control and whatever else the libertarians talking point du jour happens to be and be just as ******ed about it.

You fool yourself if you think it's a religious issue that can be changed by pushing back against their religious beliefs. If you take away their religion, they'll find another issue to be backwards and stubborn about. Which is why I find the reflex, to interpret a specific (probably incorrect) representation of a religious idea in the larger context of the "fight against the religious crazies" in the US public, to be misguided.

/derail

As a German, you of all people should be aware of what can happen when 'crazy' ideologies are not sufficiently challenged. I know you're not going to reply but the point stands, this 'ah but if they weren't causing trouble because of religion they'd be causing trouble because of something else' is an argument that's been made a lot to me recently. The fact is that religion is what they're causing the trouble with, or because of, right now, so religion is the 'ground' on which this battle will be fought.

I can't answer for your impressions. Other than that, what exactly is the supposed "hyperbole"?

Well, we're speaking of a hitherto unidentified group whose beliefs are characterized as "if asked that they would give most of the credit to god" when it comes to medical treatment. It seems rather hyperbolic to describe this view as "cancerous".

But even if we take the broader view and accept some generally-understood concept of 'religious fringe', such as ""Crazies" the likes of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell's 'legacy'", claiming cancer is a "perfect analogy" for them is quite absurd.

- Cancer is cells starting to multiply uncontrolled in a malign way; to treat cancer it is not enough to simply keep the rest of the body healthy
- Cancer is a disease, a highly dangerous and potentially fatal anomaly. While small it size, it can have disastrous effects on the entire body
- we often speak of of cancer in association with bellicose terms such as fighting, battle, winning etc.
- the most publicly known (and often most effective) treatments of cancer are highly radical: surgery, chemo, radiation
- untreated cancers often lead directlyto death or at the very least premature death

Religious fringes

- need to attract new members (they don't grow them). Hence, they don't spread automatically if left alone and can be contained fairly easily without actually engaging with them
- religious fringes aren't in themselves "diseases" of society, they are not automatically dangerous. In society, limited size often means limited influence
- if untreated, they do not lead to societal death (non-islamic religious fringes in western society are are generations old and yet largely left alone because their fringyness does not result in open violence***),
- RF can be treated by persuasion and argument, rather than the real-life equivalent of surgery, chemo or radiation



***@muslims, sorry for the broadstroking

But it doesn't seem as though there ever was a time when Christians only prayed to be healed. Medicine in the broad sense predates Christianity, as does the profession 'physician'.
It really really sounds like that's your point, given that you keep asking why Christians don't always rely solely on prayer.

Yeah, I think it's reasonable to say that prayer and non-existent treatments are probably equally effective. Don't think it really has any implications at all.

Maybe? Unless they positively think prayer won't heal them.

You'd probably get some quibble over the precise meaning of 'heal'.

One assumes because 'might' implies 'might not' is a possibility.

I think cancer is an extremely good for religious fringes, especially when they are wellfunded and well organized. The creationism movement in the US is a perfect example, and so is the JW's (and similar groups) resistance to aspects of modern healthcare. What do you think had happened if nobody had raised a finger against creationists? It would just go "poof"?

You also seem to think "religious fringes" have been left alone. This points to the a version of the same fallacy I mentioned earlier. A belief that the "as is" is a natural state that society defaults to. You look at the past history and assume that "nothing was done" and society therefore just regressed to an imaginary "balance" that governs the world.

It's a little more complicated than just looking at the history of the Democratic party. Nixon's Southern Strategy flipped the South from D to R. In the mid-to-late seventies, the evangelicals, who had previously largely eschewed politics, entered in the form of the Moral Majority etc. While that group is itself defunct, it had a powerful influence on Republican policies.

This clip is from the 1979(?) RNC. At the same convention, a more traditionally conservative speaker was booed for saying that he "wanted the government out of your wallet and out of your bedroom".



I'm no expert on the subject and am no doubt oversimplifying to some extent, of course.

Well, then - the treatments with best success for cancer is surgery, chemo and radiation. I guess we should exile, gas or nuke the creationist movement, then? In what sense does them being left alone leads to immediate or collateral societal collapse? If what you're saying is that a small group with a lot of influence and a way-too-easy message can do some real damage, well that's fine. And I'd probably agree. But that has little to nothing to do with cancer being a good analogy to what that group is, how it behaves, spreads, functions and how it should be dealt with (other than it being "bad"/possibly dangerous in some way).

Trying to get approval on my history credentials over the interwebz is sort of silly. So I'll just leave it at assuring you that I'm fairly well educated not only on European history in general but also on the history of christianity in particular.