Bet51987 wrote:(Bolded by me) Snoopy, logically you're correct but morally (at least my interpretation of morals), you're wrong. If your religion believes that the parents did nothing wrong, then it's a sick religion. It's obvious that you blew off Jeff's post which said it all. Go back and read it.
I did read it, and did blow it off. I'll address it, since you have asked for it:
The analogy of feeding the child liquid mercury doesn't follow, because the action of feeding the child mercury would almost assuredly make the situation worse.
In this case, the action the parents took was 100% medically neutral... it was, I suppose, a form of a placebo. Let me say that again: The parent's actions didn't do anything to make the situation worse.
If you can debunk that, by all means, demonstrate how the parents further damaged the child's health by praying for her. Note the distinction I'm drawing between lack of improvement and making things worse. I think it's an important one.
I also have a problem with Jeff's example of "reasonable ignorance" and "unreasonable ignorance," because it's a specifically tailored example. How would to define a differentiation between the two? Maybe you can say that an arbitrary action is unreasonable, but the parent's actions weren't arbitrary. What they did has at least some sort of a track record of being successful. Are you saying that it's unreasonable to use any method of treatment other than the most common, accepted one? Are you saying that it's unreasonable to use a treatment that isn't considered "traditional medical," such as herbal and spiritual ones? Or, are you specifically saying that specifically any spiritual treatment is unreasonable? I think you're saying the last, but now you're back to what I said in my post- legally you're not going to be able to debunk spiritual healing as completely invalid & mythical, because there will be plenty of people who will come forward and will attest to having witness spiritual healing. So, if you force it through, and legally state that all spiritual healing attempts are completely invalid, thus deciding that you're going to ignore all of those witnesses, (on what basis?) how is that anything short of a drastic breach of privacy and personal freedom? How does that not legislate over a person's right to religion?
I also have a problem with the specificity that Jeff uses in summarizing. In order for this to avoid being blatantly a violation of people religious rights, his summary would have to be rewritten as such:
"What this boils down to to me is whether or not withholding traditional medical treatment under the belief that
an untraditional one will cure your child is unreasonably ignorant and thus criminal."
The answer, as I see it, is no. If your actions make the matter worse, well then it's on you. If you try something non-traditional, and it doesn't work, then it begs the question of the arbitrary-ness of what you tried. If you tried something that has some sort of a track record, how can you be held responsible if, in this case, it didn't work?
"We could say this: Believing that God will heal your child if you withhold medicine is not criminal, but believing that God will heal your child if you withhold medicine and then being wrong about it is criminal. So perhaps the message then is this: "There is nothing wrong with faith in God, but, if your faith potentially puts others at risk, you had better damned well be right.""
This has problems because it's specifically singling out religion. Would such legislature give people the right to fail if they call their failed solution "science," while those who call theirs "religion" are prosecuted? I think that would be blatantly biased, and thus a violation of people's freedom of religion. So, do you frame it as "traditional" vs. "untraditional" - I suppose maybe you could, and only give licensed medical practitioners the out of not being liable for failing to produce improvement. (Note, this isn't about failed procedures killing a person, it's about failed procedure failing to save a person who is already dying.) At this point, I'm uneasy with it because it moves the country into a socialistic direction, moving more responsibility to the government for them to screw up, instead of the parents, for what I perceive as minimal results. As it is right now, people (doctors included) can be held fiscally responsible for failing to properly treat/etc. a person, but they can't be held criminally responsibly if they didn't royally screw up and do something very damaging. I'd tend to want to leave it that way. Like I said previously, in cases like these, going after the parents will make 3 victims, instead of 1. You can speculate that the parents are these hard-hearted people who feel no remorse whatsoever about what happened, and I'll speculate the opposite. In terms of our knowledge of human psychology, I think I have the strong speculative position.
I have no comments to the rest of your post because it smacks of freedom fighting more than child protection fighting... and you still seem to be trying to protect those parents rather than just proofing a thought experiment.
You are right, in a sense. I am interested in personal freedoms. I stated at the beginning that I had pretty well convinced myself.
I said this in the first post, and I'll restate it. While I see it as a tragedy that a child should die, I'm of the opinion that trying to go after these people won't do too much to change the statistics, because people doing things because of their beliefs are relatively likely to ignore laws that tell them they shouldn't be doing them.
Lets look at some statistics:
Here they state that some study found 120 religion-based child deaths in a 10 year span. They state that it's "the tip of the iceberg"- so we'll treat that as a minimum number... 12 child deaths per year.
Here is a statistic of 1490 abuse and neglect fatalities. This article also state that this statistic is also underreported. So, with some margin, 1% of child fatalities are due to religion-based causes. While it's valid to think about that 1%, if we view things in perspective, much more good can be done, and many more lives can be saved, if we generally make an effort to educate and otherwise take preventative measures to keep the other 99% of those deaths from happening.
I think a good summary of what this is all about for me is this:
I hate the way I see this being a "religious nuts" thing. There are nuts of all sorts out there, and far worse than nuts, of all sorts of world views- from highly conservative to highly liberal. Child abuse of all sorts comes from all demographics and religious persuasions. So, lets go after child abusers.
On the other end of it, crazy cults show up around charismatic people who have crazy ideas. A significant portion of the followers of these end up manipulated, trapped, and conned. I don't see the problem in cults as the followers, I see the problem as the leaders. Break up the leadership, and most of the followers will end up going back to being normal people. So, go after the leaders, not the followers.
This case seems to be in the gray area on both of these. Their church seems to have some kinda crazy ideas, but it's not quite a polygamist compound. The parents failed to save their child, but they weren't being blatantly abusive or negligent. So, you can see it two ways. You can see them as two different things: you can see them nuts who're completely bought in to some crazy cultist ideas that they know are false, but follow them to convince others and/or save face. They knew better but refused to do what they knew was right in their insistence to stick to the company line, thus negligently standing by while their child died. Or, you can see them as innocent people who where victimized by the leaders of their church, and who were manipulated & conned into sincerely believing that they where doing the best they possibly could to save their child by praying. In case A, they're clearly negligent. In case B, I'd argue that they're innocent of anything criminal. How do you know which is the case? I guess you would need to know them to be able to tell. In case A, going after them is good, more so because you're saving others from repeating their mistake by breaking up their leadership. In case B, going after them will further victimize them.
So, I think the law should aim to go after child abusers, and I think the law should aim to go after con men who use religious claims to commit their crimes, but I don't think the law should go after misled people who fall victim to con men, and misled people who have to live with the regret of having lost their child over a poor decision.
but "depth" you certainly have. I read you as a very compassionate person who's empathic "innards" sometimes make me feel what you're describing in your posts which you sometimes hide with a hard shell. At least that's the feeling I get. I don't understand, or maybe I find it too complicated, why someone would post their thoughts that were not their real thoughts. I don't play devils advocate very well so I tend just to post how I feel inside.