We have stopped posting D’s comments because they contained many false accusations, assumptions and other faulty items BUT with that said we will address his last two comments, which did not make the board, in this post because they are words that need an answer.
#1.It is also rather telling that once again you have run from evidence in favour of stripping my post down to one paragraph. Why are
you so afraid of my words that you cannot let them stand unaltered?
No we are not afraid to leave posts unedited but in the case of the last published comment, that was the only point worth discussing. He was not providing evidence, and we let a lot of his links stand untouched as he made his point in previous comments. Yet, he was not presenting evidence because those links did not provide any information we did not already know or considered.
Autopsies are limited and can only leave the examiner with assumption or speculation. They cannot conclude that the deceased could have been saved with the use of a different medical method. Also, his argument goes both ways. We can look at those who died at the hands of modern medicine and state that they could have been saved if they had prayed and used a true faith healing for their medical needs.
His comments went to the absurd when he decided to go to percentages,a statistic that bolsters his point by inflating the figures to hypothetical levels and removing them from reality. 172 deaths is not a figure that can be transferred to percentages because we do not know how many people sought faith healing help during that 20 year period. That number could reflect .01% of the total. But since no one knows the total percentages do not work in this instance except to distort the argument.
Then if we want to use a standard that can convert both sets of numbers to a comparable statistic then we should multiply (and we can average it down if we want) the modern medical deaths per year by 20 and then compare– 172 versus 4,000,000 (using 200,000 as a round number for easier figuring. We can go to 150,000 or 100,000 if you want to and you will still get a staggering amount of deaths from modern medical practices).
D has no argument here. 2 million, 3 million or even 4 million over 20 years just cannot trump 172 over the same time frame.
The person who is afraid is the person who refuses to be honest and see the whole picture. We will not blame modern medicine because that field has no power over life and death and people will die no matter what medical treatment they receive. This is a point we made in one of our posts. Even faith healing cannot stop people from dying when their time on earth is over. This is another fact ignored by D in his agenda against faith healing.
#2.Since you replied so quickly it is only fitting that I add this to site as well. If you don’t publish this comment that’s your prerogative – but the hypocrisy here is astounding. A parent owes a duty of care toward their children. I speak as a parent, and I would never rely on an unproven, unverified means of helping my daughter if she were sick, over a system that is proven to work. I would be criminally remiss in my responsibilities as a parent if I let her die of a curable disease or injury, and that is how it should be. You are not God either, yet you speak in absolutes frequently, which is mightily arrogant on your part. I would suggest you do not try to hold faith healing as a viable alternative to medicine – it is grossly irresponsible of you to distort the facts to that end.
Many years ago when the Korea Time had a decent comment section I got into a discussion with a few other westerners. One of them continued to write about how Koreans should be raising their children. When it was mentioned that he would not like anyone telling him how to raise his children, he went ballistic ‘yelling’ that ‘no one tells him how to do that’. The hypocrisy is not on our side but on D’s side as he will tell others how to raise their children while not allowing them to interfere in his parental duties.
His lack of understanding of faith healing is enormous and we just did not feel like addressing his points in the comment section. Faith healing is not letting someone die but taking an alternative option. As we stated in one of our posts, it is taking medical action, it is jut not one favored by those who do not believe God. It is not ‘criminally remiss’ nor is it sinful or unparental to use faith healing. God has not outlawed that practice or aid any parent is wrong in seeking hi aid in medical affairs.
This is a point D misses or ignores on purpose. Parents are instructed to follow God’ leading not D’s or other parents’. D continued to use the words ‘unproven and unverified’ when referring to faith healing. He does so even though we told him that faith healing has gone on for over 5,000 years and has been proven effective and it is verifiable. Jesus sent some he healed to the priests to show them what took place; being given healing miracles have gone to doctors to show them what God did.
True faith healing is well documented, proven and verifiable, Just because D is not in the loop does not mean that it isn’t. Then it is not irresponsible to follow God’s instructions to use faith healing. God has the power over life and death thus when he heals he heals without the side effects and complications that come with modern medical practices.
What would be irresponsible is to use faith healing if you are not using someone who has God’s gift of healing or are a member of cult. Such people only trick parents into faulty exercises of faith. Yes parents are to take care of their children but that care is not lacking just because someone who does not believe opposes their choices.Parents are given the authority over their children and are granted the ability to make decisions for them. Not everyone will agree with the choices made but those who disagree are not given authority or the right to interfere or force their views on other parents. This is nor including when parents violate the law.
Yet to create a law outlawing faith healing does not mean the parents acted wrongly or did something criminal. That act just demonstrates bias and the forcing of one or a few person’s views on those who want faith healing as a viable option after all given the track record of modern medicine, it is always good to have a back up option.
No one is forcing D to use faith healing. No one is forcing anyone to use faith healing thus their anger and opposition to that practice is unwarranted and without merit. They are free and have the right of free choice to use whatever medical treatment they wish; they just need to grant those rights and freedoms to those who use faith healing as a viable option.
The hypocrisy is on their side alone.
D talks about curable disease and he should be told that I had a childhood friend die of appendicitis at the age of 18 when that illness was extremely curable. My friend died in the hospital at the hands of trained medical professionals not at the hands of a faith healer. The evidence undermines his arguments. Death is not placed in the hands of medical professionals. God has kept that one for himself and no matter which option we use, we need to make sure we are following God’s leading for the best result.
We stated in our posts that believer are not restricted to faith healing only but we told our readers that no matter which option they choose they need to ask God to be a part of the process so that their loved ones could get good care from modern medical practitioners. There are a lot of quacks out there and God knows them all and how to direct believers away from them. it is the best use of faith to look to God for help in the use of either option.
D misses this point as well in his haste to defend something he favors. He forgets that other people have different preferences and experiences which lead them to make the decisions that they do. He lacks compassion and understanding in this issue and thinks everyone should do things his way. He is not God his ways are his ways and they do not trump or are superior to anyone else’s.
Now we will allow D to make comments in reply to this post. If his comments are honest, logical, as well as a few other positive characteristics we will make an exception to our refusal to publish his comments. He has the right to defend his position and respond to what we just wrote.
theologyarchaeology 
P.S. just because children are involved does not mean that God’s rules change, that God’s directions change or that people are given authority to meddle in other parent’s business. Children are not an excuse to force your ways upon others nor interfere with their parental rights and authority. Unless the parents are doing something illegal, disagreeing with them is not justification to meddle in other people’s affairs.
And by illegal i do not mean trumped up laws that target christians and faith healing
we are not going to respond to the above comment. Our silence is not an indication that D is right but that it does no good to continue to talk to an unbeliever who will not believe no matter what you say.
His abject dismissal and reclassifications of my points simply demonstrate that he will not listen to any argument other than his own.His failure to realize that he is not appointed protector of children also tells us to end this discussion.
He oversteps his boundaries while refusing to allow other people to do the same in his parenting. We will not be publishing any more of his comments.
Autopsies are limited and can only leave the examiner with assumption or speculation. They cannot conclude that the deceased could have been saved with the use of a different medical method. Also, his argument goes both ways. We can look at those who died at the hands of modern medicine and state that they could have been saved if they had prayed and used a true faith healing for their medical needs.
I’m sorry but this is factually incorrect. Autopsies can tell us a tremendous amount of information (I’ve already covered how forensic examination of bones that are hundreds of years can do this, let alone an autopsy) about a person, including how they died. I do not make absolute statements that assume the 100% effectiveness of modern medicine in saving that person, but we can know to a reasonable degree (if they died from an infected wound that became septic, as an example, the chances are having the wound cleaned and being given antibiotics would have saved them. It would certainly be more effective than ignoring the problem, which is what faith healing amounts to).
His comments went to the absurd when he decided to go to percentages,a statistic that bolsters his point by inflating the figures to hypothetical levels and removing them from reality. 172 deaths is not a figure that can be transferred to percentages because we do not know how many people sought faith healing help during that 20 year period. That number could reflect .01% of the total. But since no one knows the total percentages do not work in this instance except to distort the argument.
You misunderstand and misrepresent. Since statistical data on faith healing is not available, it is impossible to verify. For all we know those 172 children seen by faith healers represent 50% of all cases. Your argument therefore cuts both ways. On the other hand, with modern medical treatment, cases of death through neglect (which was your original point remember?) are 1.6% percent of cases over a three year period involving 37 million patients.
For all we know, the 172 deaths reported in respect of faith healing are just the tip of the iceberg. You aren’t able to provide data on it after all, so we can just as easily hypothesise that there are more deaths than those being reported. This is the point that you are refusing to understand – it cannot be substantiated. It doesn’t have evidence to support its effectiveness. It is dangerous to turn to it, and to take a child to see a faith healer over a system proven to work is denying that child access to proper medical care. If you can’t understand why that is wrong, then this conversation can proceed no further.
Then if we want to use a standard that can convert both sets of numbers to a comparable statistic then we should multiply (and we can average it down if we want) the modern medical deaths per year by 20 and then compare– 172 versus 4,000,000 (using 200,000 as a round number for easier figuring. We can go to 150,000 or 100,000 if you want to and you will still get a staggering amount of deaths from modern medical practices).
D has no argument here. 2 million, 3 million or even 4 million over 20 years just cannot trump 172 over the same time frame.
That is a woefully flawed means of comparison when no data exists for the effectiveness of faith healing (something you have admitted to). If those deaths from faith healing turn out to be 172 out of say, 300, that would work out to be a casualty rate of more than 50%. If out of 1000 cases it would still in percentage terms carry more risk than death through neglect in modern medicine. Once again, the key point here is that you have been unable to supply any data to support your conclusions.
The person who is afraid is the person who refuses to be honest and see the whole picture. We will not blame modern medicine because that field has no power over life and death and people will die no matter what medical treatment they receive. This is a point we made in one of our posts. Even faith healing cannot stop people from dying when their time on earth is over. This is another fact ignored by D in his agenda against faith healing.
Go back and read what I have actually said. I have never (not once) claimed medical science is perfect. That particular argument of yours was a strawman (something I pointed out). I did point out that you can be no more certain that faith healing would have cured those who died in the event medical treatment failed.
The ‘agenda’ you speak of (and a point I have raised more than once, but you don’t see the distinction) has never once said to any adult ‘you can’t seek faith healing’. I think it’s stupid to rely on a totally unproven method of dealing with disease when a proven alternative exists, but an adult can make an informed choice. A child can’t. They are at the mercy of their parents’ judgement.
To use an analogy, if the law says ‘wear a seatbelt’ and as an adult, you don’t and get hurt, that’s just idiotic. If you won’t let your child wear a seatbelt and they are injured or killed, what do you think should happen next?
Many years ago when the Korea Time had a decent comment section I got into a discussion with a few other westerners. One of them continued to write about how Koreans should be raising their children. When it was mentioned that he would not like anyone telling him how to raise his children, he went ballistic ‘yelling’ that ‘no one tells him how to do that’. The hypocrisy is not on our side but on D’s side as he will tell others how to raise their children while not allowing them to interfere in his parental duties.
This is a classic example of a red herring. We are not discussing how to raise children. You and anyone else is free to raise them as you see fit and I have never claimed otherwise. What we are discussing is child protection. We are talking about a duty of care to provide children with access to medical care.
His lack of understanding of faith healing is enormous and we just did not feel like addressing his points in the comment section. Faith healing is not letting someone die but taking an alternative option. As we stated in one of our posts, it is taking medical action, it is jut not one favored by those who do not believe God. It is not ‘criminally remiss’ nor is it sinful or unparental to use faith healing. God has not outlawed that practice or aid any parent is wrong in seeking hi aid in medical affairs.
You have not been able to provide any evidence to support faith healing as a viable alternative to medicine and medical treatment, and have misrepresented the evidence that shows medical treatment to be very low on cases of neglect. The vast majority of patients seen (98.4% remember) were treated properly. Would all of them have lived? Of course not. Did they have access to the right, informed treatments for their conditions? Yes. Can the same be said for faith healing?
I have made the point repeatedly but will make it again for emphasis. You have no evidence to support the idea faith healing is a viable alternative to modern medicine. There is evidence to suggest medical treatment had a chance to save 140 of the children who died when their parents turned to faith healing (you dispute that evidence because of a lack of absolutes but isn’t the point). There is no evidence to suggest faith healing was going to save them. To deliberately turn away from something proven to work and turn to something unproven is negligence, pure and simple, so yes, there should be prosecution in those circumstances.
This is a point D misses or ignores on purpose. Parents are instructed to follow God’ leading not D’s or other parents’. D continued to use the words ‘unproven and unverified’ when referring to faith healing. He does so even though we told him that faith healing has gone on for over 5,000 years and has been proven effective and it is verifiable. Jesus sent some he healed to the priests to show them what took place; being given healing miracles have gone to doctors to show them what God did.
I’ve asked you repeatedly to provide evidence that supports faith healing as a viable alternative to modern medical treatment. Referring to a handful of biblical examples does not constitute proof. Mentioning it’s been practiced for 5,000 years means nothing without a measure of how effective it’s been over that time. All you are offering are statements, not facts.
D talks about curable disease and he should be told that I had a childhood friend die of appendicitis at the age of 18 when that illness was extremely curable. My friend died in the hospital at the hands of trained medical professionals not at the hands of a faith healer. The evidence undermines his arguments. Death is not placed in the hands of medical professionals. God has kept that one for himself and no matter which option we use, we need to make sure we are following God’s leading for the best result.
I am sorry that you lost a friend, but I never said because a disease is curable that it is 100% guaranteed to be cured in every instance. This is not the point though – as I have already stressed, there is a better chance of survival if medical treatment is received than if it isn’t. I refer you back to my very first comment, regarding the measles vaccine. Can you point to any evidence that faith healing would have been better at preventing measles than vaccination?
We stated in our posts that believer are not restricted to faith healing only but we told our readers that no matter which option they choose they need to ask God to be a part of the process so that their loved ones could get good care from modern medical practitioners. There are a lot of quacks out there and God knows them all and how to direct believers away from them. it is the best use of faith to look to God for help in the use of either option.
D misses this point as well in his haste to defend something he favors. He forgets that other people have different preferences and experiences which lead them to make the decisions that they do. He lacks compassion and understanding in this issue and thinks everyone should do things his way. He is not God his ways are his ways and they do not trump or are superior to anyone else’s.
I don’t miss the point because the point you raise in the above two paragraphs is a red herring. I have never claimed that people can’t turn to faith healing, either to strengthen their faith in medical procedures they are ongoing, or (if they are an adult) they can opt out of medical treatment altogether – that is their right. It is not compassionate to deny a child access to potentially life-saving treatments in favour of a totally unproven method.
Now we will allow D to make comments in reply to this post. If his comments are honest, logical, as well as a few other positive characteristics we will make an exception to our refusal to publish his comments. He has the right to defend his position and respond to what we just wrote.
How exactly are you defining honest and logical? I have provided links to verify my claims (vaccination, forensic examination) and logic in the form of a proper representation of statistical data. I will not deviate from this approach, simply to jump through hoops for you. If that alone is enough for you to decide not to post my response then there’s nothing I can do about that – though I can of course, post it on my site.