Humanism, atheism and other freedoms

The next time someone tells you that religion is a “force for good”, remind them of the Oregon fundamentalist Christian couple currently under indictment for the death of their 15-month old daughter. And, sadly, this looks like it’s not an isolated case. It’s time people were held fully responsible for their strange, and sometimes dangerous, beliefs.

According to press reports, Carl and Raylene Worthington have been indicted by a grand jury in Oregon’s Clackamas county following the death of their daughter Ava. She succumbed to bronchial pneumonia and a blood infection – conditions that could have been treated easily and effectively with antibiotics. The parents chose faith healing.

At the very least, entrusting the wellbeing of your child to supernatural forces is criminal neglect – child abuse of an extreme form. In this case it led to death, so the charge – quite rightly – is manslaughter.

If this were an isolated case, it would be easy to dismiss it as another instance of poor parenting. It is a sad fact that too many children suffer from the stupidity, ignorance, mental illness or inadequacy of their parents. Religion does not have a monopoly when it comes to dumb ideas that lead to bad parenting. Certainly, it doesn’t make the parents any the less culpable, but we would have no need to worry about a larger issue.

But that’s not quite the case here.

The Followers of Christ fundamentalist church, which boasts 1,500 members, has a worrying record. Back in the 1990s, the deaths of several children prompted the Oregon authorities to enact a 1999 law that removes a ‘religious defence’ in cases of murder, manslaughter and child abuse.

Some of us might see it as bizarre that it took that long. Why should we have ever considered strange and insupportable beliefs in supernatural forces to be a reasonable excuse for child neglect or worse? Would courts have ever considered belief in UFOs, CIA mind control or vampires as valid defences (other than proof of possible insanity)?

While this fundamentalist community has had an apparently clean record since the law was passed (an investigation into the 2001 death of the same couple’s son was dropped), there are now some concerns about an allegedly high infant mortality rate among families belonging to the church.

If you choose to turn your back on the immeasurable benefits given to mankind by science and rational progress and put your life in the hands of some imagined superbeing – well, that’s your funeral. When you make that decision on behalf of those in your care, innocent children dependent on your ability to make decisions critical to their wellbeing, then you carry a great responsibility. Rejecting life-saving treatment in favour of medieval superstition is a gross dereliction of that duty. At the very least, it makes you an incompetent parent. At worst, it makes you a child killer.

PZ Myers, scientist and author of the famous Pharyngula blog, was recently prevented from attending a screening of a documentary movie in which he appears. The movie is called Expelled. How ironic.

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Mike Huckabee’s failed bid for the Republican nomination might seem to consign him to the list of also-rans. Yet the fact that he was ever in the running has profound and dark implications for America’s future.

[photopress:huckabee.jpg,full,alignright]At the time of writing, Mike Huckabee’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination looks all but over. Many will breathe a sigh of relief, but that may be premature. The significance of Huckabee’s run for the most powerful job in the world is not that he lost, but that he was taken seriously. That should be a matter of deep concern to anyone who truly values freedom.

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Who’d have thought Bill Maher would have had such a negative view of the Republican party’s religious nutjobs. Certainly opened my eyes.

The ‘intelligent design’ trial in Dover, Pennsylvania was a landmark case. It established that ID is just a dishonest re-badging of creationism and has no place in a science class. It was an important victory for rationalism, commonsense and science.The video above is the 2006 BBC Horizon programme on the case and the underlying issues.I would also strongly recommend ‘40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, Oxycontin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania’ by Matthew Chapman – a personal, often funny, scrupulously fair and sensitive account of the trial and the people involved.

Humanity, law and democracy are poor protection against religiously inspired murder. But they are the only means available to us that offer some measure of safety while allowing us to call ourselves civilised.

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via videosift.com

The Inquisition is not over. Faith continues to kill and torment. In Africa, for instance, witch hunts are causing mothers to turn against their children. Even babies are being brutalised and murdered. But this is not driven by some Dark Continent cult: this is fundamentalist Christianity at work.

Professor Richard Dawkins’ appearance on the BBC’s Have Your Say programme prompted Father Jonathan Morris, Fox News’ religious attack poodle, to dredge up the old and insupportable myth that Stalin and Hitler killed millions in the name of atheism. (Catholic priests and Fox News presenters are, of course, both accustomed to spouting insupportable myths.)

This is a standard and intellectually dishonest knee-jerk response to an inescapable truth: that throughout its history, Christianity has been responsible for widespread death and misery. The Inquisition comes immediately to mind. That said, today we most frequently associate religiously inspired murder and violence with Islam. Aside from Islamic-inspired terrorism, brutal, so-called ‘honour’ killings are shamefully frequent in places like Pakistan and even among Islamic communities in more enlightened countries, such as the UK. A recent report in The Guardian highlighted the murders and burnings of women in Iraq, now that Islam can use the chaos of that benighted country to reassert its atavistic influence.

But Christianity has not finished killing.

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Christianity is a peaceful religion? Well, maybe some of it is ineffectual and a large proportion of its adherents are placidly deluded. But like islam, it contains a hardcore of activists who are not only prepared to contemplate violence but positively relish the idea.

Read this article on AlterNet to see how some fundamentalists believe that war is righteous and desirable. Then check out the video.

It would be easy to dismiss these people as the loony fringe. But they are simply the most visible symptom of a disease that runs right through christianity. Some of these people may be insane. Some may have hidden political agendas. Some may be just plain vicious. The majority are probably just deluded. But they are all dangerous.