the father considered the illness "a test of faith" (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080429/ap_on_re_us/prayer_death)

Well god (I use the g on purpose) certainly came up trumps there. A young girl dead for no good reason? Lock them up with a bible for company.

they were praying to the wrong god. in wisconsin bret favre is god and they must have been praying to him. idiots.

Well god (I use the g on purpose) certainly came up trumps there. A young girl dead for no good reason? Lock them up with a bible for company.

I'm the same way. Whenever I want to test people and make sure they love me, I just kill one of their daughters.

I don't know why people are making a big deal of it...sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

That's why whenever someone around me gets really, really ill, I figure it's all about me and that it must be a test of some sort.

:slap:

Well god (I use the g on purpose) certainly came up trumps there. A young girl dead for no good reason? Lock them up with a bible for company.

Amen brother......i am sick of religious zealots letting their familly's suffer due to their twisted and primitive ideals.There is no place in heaven for a man that is complicite in neglect through dogma.

Parker

Dead link Noah, at least here. But hey, check out this aussie red necker, :lol:


A car driver in Australia has been fined for strapping down his beer rather than his young child.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7397867.stm

Dead link Noah, at least here.

Here's a different link. I think it's the same exact version of the report:

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080428/GPG0101/80428035/1978

Others:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-ap-wi-prayerdeath,0,5766258.story
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/28/prayer.death.ap/

And another apparently unrelated but similar case:

http://www.rickross.com/reference/firstborn/firstborn8.html

Yep, that link you provide is pretty damn disturbing too.

Unreal. Read the website set up for their defense and the arguments put forward. I thought the jovies were bad enough with the blood transfusion thing, but this is just stupid. It is in the constitution that it is legal for a parent to deny their child medical assistance because they are praying for recovery? Bloody hell. I knew you guys had issues with fundamentalists over there, but shit... Trouble is it will no doubt spread to here too. Dammit I am pissed off now.

If it spreads here the parents will get a 6 months holiday for rehabilitation and loads of benefits paid for, whilst the rest of us will get social services on the doorstep if your kid falls over and grazes their knee whilst playing because of your "neglect"

:rolleyes:

It is in the constitution that it is legal for a parent to deny their child medical assistance because they are praying for recovery?

That's debatable. Here's what the constitution actually says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Now, if one takes that at face value it seems to say that if torture and murder of others is part of your religion--and there are several world religions that qualify--then there can be no law made against the "free exercise thereof."

But that's ridiculous and I don't think anyone would claim this is what that sentence intends. Unfortunately the founders didn't define what religion is or what qualifies as religious actions. That means it is upon us to establish what is protected by that statement and what is not. This means that there are many acts that no matter how much you yell "God" while doing will not qualify as religious worship or service and are thus not protected by the first ammendment.

Personally I feel that child neglect, which this certainly qualifies as, to be of this latter category.

The litmus test for this may be how much another person is affected. I'm working on a thesis on morality in which this is a certral question to everything. Obviously this little girl was effected in a big way by her parents' choices and she had no choice in this at all. Furthermore, she isn't really old enough to have her own choices in matters of this magnitude. Children may understand them, but at this point in their lives (age 11) they are still basing their personal opinions on what their parents decide.

Parents do not own their children and the state is responsible for protecting members of society from each other. This is one of the central purposes of government (see Thomas Pain - The Rights of Man). For this reason I, personally, think it is not only ok, but it is a moral obligation for the state to step in and protect children from malicious forms of religion. I would even consider many forms of "home schooling" to qualify as child abuse.

Another thing that should be kept in mind that arguments like, "The constitution gives me the right to xxxx," forget is that the constitution can and should be changed when it proves itself to be inadiquate. This may be such a case. Maybe it is time that Congress ammended the constitution to declare exactly what qualifies as religion under the first ammendment clause.

If it spreads here the parents will get a 6 months holiday for rehabilitation and loads of benefits paid for, whilst the rest of us will get social services on the doorstep if your kid falls over and grazes their knee whilst playing because of your "neglect"

:rolleyes:

It's spreading over there dude. There are Christian brainwashing farms (religion based "home schooling") popping up in London for example. They teach the same garbage to those kids as the ones in the US do.