Should a belief, even if true, be suppressed if it might lead to some harmful consequence?
The practices cited here were not introduced by Jesus Christ. All the above healing religious practices or customs or superstitions existed prior to Jesus, but they were done under different deities or religious institutions, mostly outside Judaism. They prayed and chanted for healing and did various rituals to produce healing.
So what?
So you can't blame "Christianity" that someone chose to bypass standard medical treatment and elected some alternative that ended up failing. That was going on centuries before Christ, and so you cannot blame "Christianity" for it.
Superstitious and ineffective claptrap is OK for those who know no better; but when workable alternatives are available, but are ignored because people have faith, then that faith is actively harmful -- no matter whether it is in Jesus, or in Allah, or in the spirits of the forest.
You are right, if you mean no one should ignore workable medical procedures.
But you are wrong if you extrapolate from this that it's wrong to believe in Christ because some believers mistakenly ignore workable medical procedures because of their belief. One's belief is not falsified, or disproved, by the fact that some believers might make an incorrect choice about a medical procedure.
In the modern world, believing -- in Christ, or in fairies, or in any other non-existent entity is directly harmful.
Fairies and non-existent entities? You score a point for that clever one-liner.
But your pre-occupation with "harmful" shows you have a problem addressing whether one's belief in Christ is true or correct. How is a "belief" judged? Is it by 1) whether it's true or false / correct or incorrect, or 2) by whether it might be "harmful" in some way?
Granted, there is harm if one makes a misjudgment about what medical treatment to choose. But does this harm then disprove their belief?
If the theory of evolution leads some believers in it to then practice eugenicide in order to eliminate defective genes and thus create a healthier race, does that misjudgment on their part then disprove the theory of evolution? Would you say belief in this theory is harmful, and so people should not believe this theory, because it led to this harmful result?
So, because some believers might make a misjudgment about refusing standard medical treatment, it does not follow that it is wrong or incorrect for people to believe in Christ. I.e., it does not follow that their belief in Christ is untrue or false, or factually erroneous.
A belief might be difficult in some ways, even though it's true. But what matters is whether it's true, not what social consequences might be caused by it.
Is your only point that belief in Christ does this harm? You can't show that it is incorrect or false or wrong?
Is it possible that a true belief could lead to some harm in some cases? Yes, that can happen. But it doesn't matter. This could be a case where a true belief might lead to a harmful result. If you can only claim that there is a harmful result, but not that the belief is actually incorrect or false, then you flunk the course, because to pass this course you must give a "reason to reject Christianity." And if you allow that the belief is true, then you fail to give any such "reason" regardless how much "harm" or damage you claim that this true belief might inflict.
The only "Christ" under discussion here is the real existent (not non-existent) historical person who performed healings about 30 AD in Galilee and was executed and then reportedly came back to life. And the only "Christianity" here, to be rejected, is one centered on this historical figure.
At the core of "Christianity" is this historical person and the belief in him because of the power he had, and the possibility of personal salvation, or escape from being annihilated at death by means of that power.
This cannot deteriorate into a petty quarrel over whether those who have this belief are good people or make some bad decisions or did some bad thing or if their belief might lead to some perceived harmful result. It is not necessary to prove that Christians or believers in Christ are morally superior. It could even be that the offer of salvation in Christ actually attracts people who are morally inferior. Even if that is true, it is still not a "reason to reject Christianity."
There was rivalry between the different practitioners and cults so that one faction thought they had a legitimate healing procedure and that the others were fraudulent or evil.
Yes, that's what happens when people don't care to look at the results instead of deferring to the authorities.
But they DO look at the results, and defer only to those "authorities" they believe will produce better results.
I don't think there was any clear pattern, or is even today, to prove which "authority" is the right one or which "science" is always the best one. I don't think we can always trust the AMA or the NEJM, even though maybe they're right most of the time. I think it's been shown that standard medicine was wrong or failed many times.
And some of the alternative schools, like yoga, biofeedback, TM, etc. sometimes worked better for some patients than the official standard procedures. So you can't say which one school is always the true bonafide practitioners and who are the unscientific ones.
And when you condemn someone for making the wrong choice, this is just done with hindsight. It's often "Monday morning quarterbacking" to condemn someone who made a wrong choice for some alternative approach, because after it fails you can say "See, I told you so!" and yet you really did not know beforehand that their approach was going to fail. Standard medicine has failed many times.
At best, all standard medicine can claim is that they usually have some scientific numbers to rely on and so the probability or the stats favor them, or the odds are in their favor. But then again, maybe their method costs ten times as much, and the percentages might favor them by only 10% or 20%, leaving a high risk of error.
So many of these cases you're complaining about are really only a judgment call, and not a clear case of someone rejecting science in favor of superstition.
It's not true that's there's any rash of bad choices, or epidemic of them, of patients dying because they chose an alternative to conventional medicine. We can rely on people generally to make the best decision about what's in their self-interest. It is arrogant for an outsider to interfere in this and condemn someone for their choice simply because it turned out not to be successful.
All that is described in the above websites about someone withholding medical treatment and relying instead on their spiritual or religious source for healing is something that predates Christ and was not introduced into the world as a result of Christianity. You cannot blame Christianity for practices that were already going on prior to the first century AD.
No, but I can and do blame Christianity for practices that are still going on, explicitly in the name of Christianity, today.
No more than YOU could be blamed for them if they were done in your name. Are you guilty of something someone else does because they claim to be doing it in your name?
Why are they doing it "in the name of Christianity"? Why not some other name? Answering this question is more important than blaming someone because they made a different choice than you would have made and so judging them as morally inferior to yourself. Even if you're right that you're morally superior to them, it still is not important.
Assuming there is overall net harm done by these practices, which you have not demonstrated (alternative non-conventional medicine is not always wrong, though it may be in some cases), how is "Christianity" to blame, or how is Christ to blame, that those engaging in these much earlier practices then chose to do them in Christ's name, beginning from the 1st century?
Why did these practices suddenly begin to be attributed to Christ at this time, and how does this switch from earlier pagan gods to Christ mean that now he or "Christianity" becomes guilty of something thought to be wrong about these practices which did not originate from Christ or from "Christianity"?
It's not wrong for these alternative methods to exist. But it's wrong to condemn them all just because in some cases they didn't work. Conventional medicine also doesn't work in many cases. Plus it's so much more expensive.
There were hundreds or even thousands of legitimate medical procedures used, which had some benefit and could even save lives, and there were cults which practiced different methods than the legitimate ones and refused to patronize them. No doubt thousands or millions of sick people died who could have benefited or recovered if they had been able to find treatment by the legitimate medical procedures, but who instead chose methods that were ineffective.
Yes. And now that we know better, there is no excuse for not doing better than that . . .
But we ARE doing better. It has improved, but standard medicine is still sometimes ineffective. There is nothing wrong with having the alternatives to conventional medicine.
-- and yet many people use religion as just that excuse.
An "excuse for not doing better"? Who doesn't want to do better? You think patients want worse outcomes? How could anyone be looking for an "excuse" to do worse and get worse outcomes? You accuse someone of NOT WANTING BETTER results simply because they made a misjudgment?
Hardly any religious people forego conventional medicine that is proven. It's the less proven and less reliable procedures that they're suspicious of. It's precisely because they do want better results that they turn to the alternatives.
This kind of behavior can be described as mistaken or just unlucky because one resorts to a solution that does not work instead of one that would have worked.
No, not mistaken or unlucky - wilfully ignorant and harmful.
No, when the
conventional methods fail, is it
wilfully ignorant and harmful by those doctors who chose those methods? You can't condemn someone for making a good-faith choice that turns out to not work. When a surgery fails, is the surgeon to be condemned for choosing to be ignorant and wilfully doing harm?
There is no proof that the accepted medical procedure is always right and the spiritual methods wrong.
Yes, there is. Indeed the entirety of modern medicine is exactly that. Every single issue of any one of hundreds of medical journals is proof of this.
The medical journals are not a totally objective source of information on this. They have a vested interest in promoting the standard conventional procedures.
There is so much proof, it is hard to know where to start; there is enough proof that you couldn't hope to read it all in one lifetime. It is beyond embarrassing that anyone could seriously make such an ill-informed statement as "There is no proof that the accepted medical procedure is always right and the spiritual methods wrong."; The definition of "accepted medical procedure" is that it is demonstrated to work.
Not always. There are plenty of standard medical procedures that have less than 50% chance of working, and yet they're done anyway, because they increase the chances by a small percentage.
Some of these may not be worth the extra cost. There's much subjectivity in these decisions. It's not pure science, but a certain degree of luck and guesswork. And not all doctors do the same procedures.
There are some hospitals and MDs who are encouraging some alternate methods now. They know that the conventional methods are not always the only approach.
In any case, Christ did not introduce this problem into the world. It was going on long before he appeared on the scene.
Christ may well not even have ever existed. I am not blaming Christ for this shit - I am blaming CHRISTIANITY. And that includes you.
Well you're really off topic here. Or you're slopping your way into a line of "reasoning" or rather "emoting" which has no relevance to anything.
I have to make this clear: Claiming that certain "Christians" or believers in Christ are bad people and did something wrong is NO "REASON to reject Christianity."
This ad hominem kind of emoting, or arguing from emotional outburst, really has nothing to do with the basic claim of the truth of Christianity.
Here is the basic claim: Christ was a person in history who had power, which he demonstrated, so there is evidence (not proof) that he had this power, and because of the nature of this power, if it is extensive enough, it could be a source of eternal life, which he spoke of, and all he required was that people believe in him, or believe in this power he had.
(For now I'm skipping over the theme of "sin" and "forgiveness" as part of the basic core, because it was not something new that Christ introduced.)
This is pretty much the basic narrative which lies at the center of "Christianity" or all the different forms of believing in Christ. This is what the "reasons to reject Christianity" need to address, not petty immature bickering over some Christians who did something bad or are morally deficient or less righteous than someone else and so on. It's a total waste of time to quarrel over who is more righteous or whether some Christians should be scolded for this or that naughty act.
Obviously Christians have done some bad things, and it would be a worthless endeavor to try to defend against every petty complaint, or even major complaints, leveled against all the believers.
So these kinds of petty ad hominem arguments are not really part of the discussion. The basic core Christ narrative says nothing about the believers in Christ being morally superior, so the accusations that they are not righteous enough or have moral flaws are off point. Those complaints need to be directed toward someone who claims that Christians are morally superior. Traditional "Christianity" or Christian teaching does not claim this.
Christianity does direct and demonstrable harm to the world. It should stop doing that.
And YOU should stop doing the harm that you're doing. And so should the Girl Scouts stop doing the harm they're doing. There's probably not one person or group or class of people that hasn't done some harm in the world, and whatever harm they're doing -- they should stop it!
But what does that have to do with whether Christ had/has power to give eternal life? If you're saying your complaint is irrelevant to that question, then it's also irrelevant to any "reason to reject Christianity" which is the topic here. Petty complaints about some bad behavior done in the name of "Christianity" and which were done in the name of Asclepius centuries before "Christianity" even existed has virtually nothing to do with any "reasons to reject Christianity."
I am trying to disagree with the "reasons to reject Christianity" -- but this doesn't mean I'm claiming Christians never did anything harmful, or don't have to stop whatever harm some of them may be doing -- is that what this has degenerated into? Preaching that some Christian did a bad thing somewhere and they should stop it?
The "reasons to reject Christianity" argument should not degenerate into a schoolyard quarrel among kids pointing at each other and accusing each other of doing something naughty.
These cultists today who refuse standard medical treatment would probably be doing so in the name of some other god than Christ, if the Christian cults were not available to them. It is not Christ or Christianity that is to blame for any wrong decisions they made.
They say it is Christianity that guides their (poor) decisions. Nobody else knows what the fuck they are thinking, but there seems to be no reason to assume that they are lying.
It doesn't matter what they're thinking or if they're lying. What matters is that all this would be happening anyway, even if Christ or "Christianity" had never existed. The harm you claim is happening would be happening anyway. This is not a phenomenon that you can attribute to Christianity.
And their belief is not disproved by showing that a believer did something wrong. Anymore than belief in evolution is disproved because someone, e.g., a eugenicist, did something wrong in following evolution theory.
Mistrust of doctors and medical science was not introduced by Christ or the church. The Christian church generally, or mainline Christianity, has not ever recommended avoidance of standard medical care.
Yes, it has. By claiming that prayers are answered, you imply that other actions are not needful;
No you don't. "Praying" is something people do as a last resort, when nothing else seems to work. Or when the medical procedures have done all they can. It's done
in addition to the other actions.
or that time and effort that could be spent doing something useful should instead be wasted in prayer.
No, the "prayer" is done only when the "something useful" actions have been exhausted. Not "instead" of them.
There are lots of mistakes in medical care and many occasions for blaming someone AFTER it is discovered that this or that procedure would have produced better results. It's easy to point the finger at this or that culprit AFTER we see a bad outcome. It is petty to take this general problem of human society going back to the beginning of civilization and use it as a debating point to bash Christianity.
Not just Christianity - religion in general. Christianity is the current manifestation of this ugly, stupid and dangerous behaviour, . . .
But when a
standard-procedure operation is performed, according to the book, and it fails and that patient dies, was that treatment also an example of "ugly, stupid and dangerous behaviour" on the part of the doctor? Why not?
The harm from the unnecessary high costs of much conventional medicine is actually more ugly and stupid and dangerous than the minor harm due to avoidance of mainline medical care because of superstition or religion or alternative methods.
. . . and it is absolutely not 'petty' to bash the crap out of an organisation that exists to promulgate ideas that directly harm people.
You mean your ideas?
Again, you've not shown any noteworthy harm. The harm done by abuse of meds and by malpractice and high costs and over-treatment and medical mistakes is vastly greater than any harm from this thing you're bashing. It's good that conventional medicine loses some patients because of this competition. The ones who need conventional medicine will get it -- the few who seek alternatives do so because standard practitioners have fallen short, and there are some bad practices that undermine the confidence of consumers in the medical establishment, which needs to clean up its act. This is where the most harm is.
That some other religion was (or is) just as bad is no excuse at all.
There is no "just as bad" here. Christianity has done nothing "bad" just because some ancient practices shifted and attached themselves to this new Jewish Christ cult. This "bad" thing, which really wasn't so bad, was already happening and cannot be blamed on Christianity.
I haven't even started on religious persecution of adults, religious wars, any activity by non-Christian sects.
Wars and persecutions were going on long before Christ and the church. If there had been no Christ or church around, they would have done the same in the name of something else.
But they actually did it in the name of Christianity. If they had done it in the name of something else, then I would be opposing that 'something'. But they didn't.
What if they did it in YOUR name -- they commit a heinous crime and do it in YOUR name. Are you to blame for that crime?
By your logic, a criminal could get away with any crime by just saying, "I did this crime in the name of [whatever]," and then the cops would go after the whatever and ignore the culprit.
And you would impose no penalty onto those parents who withheld treatment from their child -- and the child dies as a result -- because you blame their religion and not those parents?
And because it was "in the name of" that belief that this bad result happened, that belief must be suppressed even though it might be true? You concede that it might be a true belief, but still it must be suppressed because it's dangerous? Even if it's true, still it must be suppressed and people prevented from holding that belief?
But even if we accept, for the sake of argument, that 'faith' as a means to gain healing or salvation began with Christianity, that still doesn't change the fact that it is completely ineffective . . .
The healing acts of Christ were effective.
Explaining this new "faith" element would be helpful. But not rehashing the ancient problem of what healing procedure should have been tried instead of this one that failed. If you want to bash Christianity, find something unique to it, or something that began with Christ, and which you think led to disaster.
Why? You don't get to do harm with impunity because others are doing it; or because someone else did it first.
Impunity? Who is it you want to punish for violating your doctrine that only treatments that ended with a good result were justified? a doctor who performs standard treatment and the patient dies anyway? What's his excuse? Others did the same thing?
Why don't you address our topic "reasons to reject Christianity" rather than preaching your moral superiority to some Christian because their belief is different than yours? or because they are guilty of a misjudgment? Even if you're right in 1 or 2 of these cases and you really are morally superior to them because they guessed wrong, that is not a "reason to reject Christianity."
Everything you're complaining about were problems, or alleged problems, BEFORE Christianity even existed. So you only THINK you're bashing Christianity, but you're not. All you're bashing are some practices that were already in existence prior to Christianity.
I do want to bash Christianity -- because it is currently killing children.
No more than the certified MD who uses standard medical procedure and the child dies anyway. That doctor is "killing" children? Why are you so eager to accuse someone of killing if you can connect it somehow to "Christianity"? Why does someone's belief in Christ enrage you so much that you need to find some crime to pounce on them for?
Let's assume you're right that there are a few isolated cases where some Christian parents wrongly withheld treatment from their child -- if they did this in YOUR name, then you would be the killer of that child? Anyone can turn someone else into a criminal by committing the crime and then saying they did it in that other person's name?
In your clumsy fixation on bashing "Christianity" you're striking out even worse than that guy who "couldn't hit a bull in the butt with a banjo":
stike one: You're saying a homicide, or killing is going on, even though these cases are mostly
judgment calls. It's not true that the standard conventional costly treatment is always right. Your insistence on this is YOUR religion which you're trying to impose onto everyone. They are not "killing" children just because they made a different choice than you would have and the patient died. Even if there's provable negligence in some rare cases, in most cases it's a judgment call, and the rage doesn't come until AFTER the bad result took place. Again, sometimes the
conventional treatment also fails.
strike two: When they make a wrong choice, it is not "Christianity" that is to blame, anymore than YOU would be to blame if they did it in YOUR name. Rather, it's those parents who made the choice who are responsible. Refusing medical treatment is not something "Christianity" introduced into society. It's those particular parents who made the choice and whoever advised them who might be to blame or who made a wrong choice, not Christianity.
strike three: Even if a choice was wrong, and even if there's a disaster as a result, a belief is not disproved simply because a believer made a misjudgment about something. Even if that belief contributed to the wrong choice, it doesn't disprove the belief. Anymore than a wrong action by a eugenicist disproves the Darwin evolution theory that led to the wrong action.
You don't get to say "But other cults are killing children, so it's not fair to pick on us".
No, there are no cults "killing children" here. The parents make the choice, not the cult. Your dogmatic ideological commitment to your theories about medical treatment, and your rage against some cults or against "Christianity" does not justify making accusations of homicide. Where is this rage when the standard costly
conventional treatment is followed and the child dies?
You don't get to say "People killed children before our cult even started, so it's not fair to pick on us".
You don't get to scapegoat someone and accuse them of murder based on your ideology and the possibility that a decision made might have proved wrong when viewed from hindsight. Scapegoating "Christianity" instead of addressing what's really wrong might be easy, but it doesn't make anything better. You yourself are "killing children" if you persist in this scapegoating and detracting from fixing responsibility and accountability properly. Children die as a result of this rage and irrational unproductive scapegoating that you're engaging in.
If some Christian made a wrong decision, then that individual might be to blame, but it is immature and petty to accuse "Christianity" of killing children because of some possible mistake or misjudgment in a medical decision.
You can't impose onto everyone your dogma that the conventional medical treatment has to ALWAYS be the right one no matter what. If a wrong choice was made, it doesn't mean someone is guilty of homicide, despite your desperation to find something to bash "Christianity" for in order to make yourself feel morally superior.
Your religion, like everything else, is judged on its results.
Conventional medical treatments sometimes produce harmful results. Sometimes they even literally KILL the patient.
Needless deaths of children are not an acceptable result under any circumstances.
Including when caused by conventional medical treatment, or when conventional treatment fails.
Whining about being picked on for killing children . . .
Yes, like when conventional medical treatment was tried and failed and so the doctors whine that it wasn't their fault.
. . . because others [e.g., other doctors] are doing, or have done, the same . . .
And the same treatment sometimes worked before, and sometimes not.
. . . is one of the most disgusting pieces of snivelling, filthy, and downright despicable behaviour I can imagine.
Calm down.
Don't be too tough on those snivelling filthy disgusting MDs who tried their standard medical procedure that didn't work in a particular case and who whined that it wasn't their fault. It usually works. Don't accuse them of murdering that child just because it didn't work in that one case (and 2 or 3 others).
