Does faith healing infringe on fundamental liberties?

[Meleagar]

Let's say your child comes home with a knife in his gut. You have a car; you can take him to the hospital. Instead you stand over him, praying. An hour later, he dies of blood loss.

This, in your view, is not the clearest, most severe case of neglect possible, and you should in no way be punished for it. I am in awe of you.

Did you not read my post? I said, if the faith healing failed, it seems to me reasonable that the person who failed at the faith healing might be held responsible.

Faith healing, while utterly futile apart from the placebo effect, is not the issue. The issue is parental neglect. See my example above. You can attempt all the faith healing you want, so long as you don't neglect the real medical needs of your child.

"Neglect" is one of those amorphous words that can be adjusted easily to expand government intrusion.

Letting your child bleed out, or undergo any other preventable process of death, is more immoral than having sex with him.

By what principle of morality?

[crimethinker]

Did you not read my post? I said, if the faith healing failed, it seems to me reasonable that the person who failed at the faith healing might be held responsible.

You would prosecute the 'faith healer' but not the parents?

"Neglect" is one of those amorphous words that can be adjusted easily to expand government intrusion.

What is your answer? Let parents neglect their children to the fullest extent possible?

By what principle of morality?

Would you rather be murdered or raped?

[notthecheatr]

You have conveniently ignored that which is the important distinction between an abortion and a child that dies in an attempted faith healing: intent. It is the intent of the woman to kill the fetus; it is not the intent of the parents to kill the child they are attempting to faith heal. Even so, I would not outlaw abortions.

That's where your morality differs from mine. From your point of view, if someone "accidentally" killed millions of people not intending to hurt anyone, it's okay - but if I kill one with intent, I am more morally culpable. While I wouldn't at all say I'm fully consequentialist, I think the reasoning is absurd. Intent alone means nothing.

If refusing medical treatment in favor of faith healing is known to kill people, intent be damned - if you choose to do that, then any resulting deaths can be considered your fault.

That's not really what I said. I said they should be allowed to attempt to faith heal their child in lieu of professional medical treatement. You are equivocating that to "killing their child" as if that is what they are trying to do, as if it is a foregone conclusion, and as if I am saying it is the parent's right to kill their child if they want to..

If it kills the child, it kills the child. Intent is irrelevant.

Also, we're talking specifically about bodily rights here - regardless of intent to kill or not, you're saying that parents should have rights to their child's body (up to and including killing them) so long as they don't intend to kill them - but parents do not, apparently, have rights to their own body when they are pregnant.

Of course it shouldn't be legal for a parent to deliberately try to kill their child, (at least not under any normal circumstances), nor should any self-evidently immoral act be legal. But, that's not what we're talking about.

Why should it be legal for a parent to deliberately do something that is known to kill children?

I will say this: just as we arrest and prosecute people for homicide even if they didn't intentionally kill the person, I think it might be appropriate that parents that fail in their faith-healing efforts be arrested for the appropriate unintentional charge, just as a parent should be arrested for other appropriate crimes that lack intent when harm is the result. Note: I said the result - not the imagined, probable result.

I agree, but that doesn't mean faith healing should be legal any more than meth should be. Why is meth illegal? Because it's known to kill. Why should faith healing be illegal? Because it's known to kill, not to mention the fact that it cons innocent people out of thousands of dollars.

See what you get when you assume things? I think that abortion is right there with faith healing; it's somethng we have to tolerate even though we mght personally find it abhorrent in order to ensure that we preserve meaningful liberties - not just to pick out clothes, a job, and what school we will attend, but meaningful, important, and dangerous liberties.

I admit that I was wrong in assuming you were not pro-choice. If you really are pro-choice then I suppose I have no argument with you on this point. However, I disagree with your equation of faith healing to abortion. One is a known con that kills people - the other allows people to have freedom over their own body, no deception or cons involved.

Another thing to note here; preventing the parents from attempting the faith-healing is the same as the state saying "we know your beliefs are false, so we're not even going to allow you to try becaise we know what's better for your child than that nonsense you believe in".

Banning faith healing should be done as an act toward the faith-healer, not the people who want to be healed. We put con men in prison; why is it legal to be a con man so long as your cons are religious in nature? Why is it illegal to promise a material reward and not deliver, but not illegal to promise an immaterial reward that has never and can never be delivered?

[Meleagar]

Intent is irrelevant.

I see. Intent is irrelevant except when you are judging the intent of the faith healer, which you assert as being "a con". I guess you're only a "consequentialist" when it suits your argument, seeing as that before the child dies, there is no "consequence" to consider. If you were really going to judge situations based on the consequences, then you'd have to wait until you have a consequence by which you could judge it.

I guess if we stumble upon some people planning to blow up a skyscraper, we should let them go, because intent doesn't matter to you. In your morality, an intentional murder is the same as a faultless accident, so you wouldn't mind being put in jail for murder because you unintentionally killed a guy who ran right in front of your car.

Since intent doesn't matter to you, then if the parent takes the child to the hospital, and the child dies, then the parent is as responsible for the death as when the parent attempted to faith-heal the child, because in both cases the parent had the best of intentions, and in both cases the child died. Under your reasoning, the parent is equally culpable in either situation. You do know that doctors are the leading cause of death in America, don't you? Doctors cause far, far, far more death than faith healings.

BTW, you are assuming that faith healing will fail, and you are assuming for your argument that it is a con. That called a convenient characterization. You might believe that faith healing is a con and will not work; but that is just your belief. Others might believe that modern medical science is largely fraudulent and that hospitals are death traps.

Science might claim it is not effective; science has been wrong about just about everything at one time or another, and the state justifying interfering in personal lives based on current scientific beliefs is - again - a very dangerous path, especially when Government can and does fund a lot of scientific research, it's a short road to buying & manipulating the results you want and using those to justify various laws or policies.

[Meleagar]

You would prosecute the 'faith healer' but not the parents?

If you take the child to a doctor, and the child dies, do you hold the doctor or the parents responsible? However, I was assuming that the parents would be the ones attempting the faith-healing, so in that case they would be responsible.

What is your answer? Let parents neglect their children to the fullest extent possible?

As I said, the problem with 'neglect" is that it is a nebulous, subjective concept. You have to do better than that term in order to meaningfully argue what should and should not be allowed under the law.

Would you rather be murdered or raped?

Since, in answer to my question about what moral principle you use to evaluate the relative morality of various actions, you ask me which action - murder or rape - I would prefer, I conclude by this answer your 'principle of morality" is "whatever the person involved would prefer." Is that correct?

[Peter]

Anyone who withholds proven medical assistance from another injured person because of their own belief in magical healing should be charged with a crime.

[Meleagar]

Anyone who withholds proven medical assistance from another injured person because of their own belief in magical healing should be charged with a crime.

Based on what principle?

[Apeman81]

These children die because of the illnesses and conditions they contract. The child does not die because the parent did not allow treatment, they died because the condition killed them.

Should the parent of a cancer child be forced to allow "best possible" treatments for their child simply because this is most likely to succeed course of care that is agreed upon by the AMA? Even if the treatment is debilitating and cure is far from certain?

The same logic that applies to this scenario applies to any condition. Is it the duty of the state to act "en loco parentis" to order approved medical treatments? Does the duty of the state override the liberty of the parent?

Choosing how to treat an illness should remain with the parent.

Its funny how far we are willing to go to protect our "freedom of expression" compared to how easily we seek to weaken of "freedom of religion".

[Peter]

These children die because of the illnesses and conditions they contract. The child does not die because the parent did not allow treatment, they died because the condition killed them.

The child was killed because the car crushed their skull not because the drunk who was driving fell asleep.

Based on your comment above you would absolve the drunk of any responsibility. Really?

[Second as Farce]

Hey- I'm completely new here, so sorry for butting in, but there were just a few things I felt like mentioning.

I guess if we stumble upon some people planning to blow up a skyscraper, we should let them go, because intent doesn't matter to you. In your morality, an intentional murder is the same as a faultless accident, so you wouldn't mind being put in jail for murder because you unintentionally killed a guy who ran right in front of your car.

While I'd disagree with the statement that intent is totally irrelevant, even if it were, this wouldn't work as a counter-example. Even if someone were a strict consequentialist who believed that an actor's intentions were completely extraneous to moral considerations, they would still want to stop the hypothetical plot you described. Regardless of the actors' intent, a building being blown up and the resulting death is an outcome which any consequentialist would want to prevent.

But like I said, I'm not a strict consequentialist. Yes, intent matters, but it's a mitigating factor when you consider whether someone is morally culpable for something, and an absence of malevolent intentions doesn't absolve someone of guilt. For example, if I'm driving my car and I decide to jump the curb and intentionally run over a pedestrian, that's murder. If I'm driving my car and decide to try driving while blindfolded and end up running someone over that way, that isn't murder, but it is manslaughter/reckless endangerment/criminal negligence. It's a lesser crime than murder because the intent to take a life wasn't there, but it's still a crime because I willfully took an action which I knew would put others' lives in substantial danger. Which brings me to this next part...

Since intent doesn't matter to you, then if the parent takes the child to the hospital, and the child dies, then the parent is as responsible for the death as when the parent attempted to faith-heal the child, because in both cases the parent had the best of intentions, and in both cases the child died. Under your reasoning, the parent is equally culpable in either situation. You do know that doctors are the leading cause of death in America, don't you? Doctors cause far, far, far more death than faith healings.

This, again, isn't analogous because it doesn't recognize that there's a distinction in kind between faith "healing" and modern medicine (which I'll talk about in just a sec). I suppose it's technically true that medical malpractice might kill more people than faith healers, but that's only because first, many, many more people are treated by doctors than faith healers and, second, faith healing doesn't actually do anything.

Someone is much more likely to die from a mistake during open-heart surgery than a mistake made while having oil sprinkled on them, because one is an invasive medical procedure with high risk and high reward potential, and although the other is less likely to directly cause death (though you could say it indirectly causes death by deterring people from meeting a doctor), it's also much less likely to have any positive impact, either.

BTW, you are assuming that faith healing will fail, and you are assuming for your argument that it is a con. That called a convenient characterization. You might believe that faith healing is a con and will not work; but that is just your belief. Others might believe that modern medical science is largely fraudulent and that hospitals are death traps.

Science might claim it is not effective; science has been wrong about just about everything at one time or another, and the state justifying interfering in personal lives based on current scientific beliefs is - again - a very dangerous path, especially when Government can and does fund a lot of scientific research, it's a short road to buying & manipulating the results you want and using those to justify various laws or policies.

OK, so let's talk about science for a minute. Science is based on objective observations of patterns in the world around us. In medical science, you look at patterns of causality- if we give patients antibiotics for infections, we see that in the vast majority of cases, the infection goes away. This is a pattern which has been observed, literally, millions of times, verified by outside observation. At that point, we can conclude based on this overwhelming evidence that if someone has an infection, antibiotics will most likely cure it.

This is no different from pattern-based observations we all make every day. We know, from having observed the phenomenon millions of times over, that if I hold something at arm's length and drop it, then it will fall to the ground. Anyone who claimed that this wouldn't be the outcome of dropping the object would be (justifiably) labeled as delusional, because that specific pattern of cause and effect has been observed so many times that it would be insane to suggest a different outcome. The same principle applies here.

You're right- science has been wrong before but it's not sufficient to simply say it's been wrong in the past- you need to demonstrate why it's wrong now. You need to show why, in spite of overwhelming empirical evidence medical treatment is effective, we should not believe that evidence. We can point to the billions of times people around the world have received a given medical treatment and have been helped by it. These results are carefully documented, scrutinized and peer-reviewed. "Faith healing" can make no such claim. Medical science gives us a compelling reason to believe that it works based on countless prior observations; faith healing does not.

So, where does that leave us with regard to the moral position of these parents? I'd say they're negligent and the state can justifiably punish them for that negligence. Sure, they believed they were helping their child, but only that mitigates their guilt- it doesn't absolve it. Suppose someone believed that it would be a great, character-building experience to let their child play with a Kodiak bear, and they genuinely, sincerely thought that their child would not be hurt by this. This person is still morally and legally culpable for the inevitable, unpleasant outcome of their action even if it wasn't intended, because they should have known better- they should have considered the well-established fact that large, clawed predators and small children usually don't mix well.

It's fundamentally the same thing here. Even though I don't doubt that parents who send their children to faith healers are acting in good faith, to deny a sick and dying child something which has been proven, time and time again, to save lives in favor of something which can provide no real evidence that it saves lives is to willfully endanger that child's life and to accept the consequences.

[Second as Farce]

The same logic that applies to this scenario applies to any condition. Is it the duty of the state to act "en loco parentis" to order approved medical treatments? Does the duty of the state override the liberty of the parent?

Yes- it absolutely does. The state has an obligation to protect everyone under its authority, especially children and other people who cannot protect themselves.

Parental rights matter, but as with any right, there's a limit; parents do not, and should not, enjoy absolute authority over their children. Yes, the line of where these rights end is often unclear, and I'd agree that we should generally defer to allowing parents to make the choices they see as best, but if those choices are actively endangering the lives of their children, preventing them from receiving life-saving treatment, then those rights can and must be abrogated to protect the child. The child has rights too, and the most fundamental of these is the right to life. If the parent's decision to exercise their rights over their child threaten that right to life, then, as always, the right to life must supersede it.

[Peter]

Well said and welcome.