God Doesn't Have a Medical Degree

By all accounts, Austin Sprout (right) was special. "He's one of those students you love to have. Never a discipline problem, always on time, always gets his work done. You know, asks questions, always real polite. Just a great kid," said his math teacher Gary Jones said.

Until his parents killed him, of course.

The Oregon teenager died at home from a treatable illness because his parents, Brandi and Russel Bellew, decided prayer was a better option than medication.  The family has made that choice before: Austin’s father, Brian Sprout, Brandi Bellew's first husband, died in 2007 of sepsis in his leg.  He had a direct interview with God soon after refusing to have the injury properly treated.

Why would the family choose to ignore modern medicine? The family belongs to the General Assembly Church of the First Born, which practices faith healing.

It’s a small Pentacostal sect – not affiliated with the Mormons; that’s a group with a similar name -- with “a few dozen, independent, loosely affiliated congregations,” according to a website devoted to providing information about it.  Members believe they will be saved by adhering to biblical laws and following four basic rules: faith in Jesus; repentance from sin; baptism by immersion; and the laying on of hands.

Pentacostal religious services, like the one seen above, often feature emotional outbursts.

Faith healing, the view that God can heal anyone, is just one part of that.  That’s not particularly unusual.  Christina Scientists believe that the real world is spiritual, and therefore disease is an illusion caused by faulty beliefs.  As a website on the subject noted:  “Devout Christian Scientists do not use medications and usually eschew medical aid. They are opposed to vaccination, immunization, and quarantine for contagious diseases, although official church policy advises members to comply with state laws.”

Christian Science has its own famed newspaper and an estimated 50,000 members.  Although numbers are declining in recent years, it’s still much bigger than the General Assembly Church of the First Born. 

One of many such sects, General Assembly Church of the First Born wouldn’t seem likely to garner much publicity, but the members of the sect do get in the news occasionally. For example, in 2012, one leader, Terrill Dalton, was found guilty of “raping his daughter and allowing a friend to rape her, too,” according to published reports.

Grady

More commonly, however, children die.  For example, in 2010, an Oklahoma woman who was a member of the church was charged with child neglect because her 9-year-old son died when she opted for prayer instead of medical assistance.  Susan Grady (left) told police: "I was trying to live by faith and I felt like God would heal him.”

Online reports of such deaths go back to 1994.  That’s when an Oregon man who was a church member was convicted of criminally negligent homicide in the death of his 7-year old son.

“If the parent's failure to be aware of a substantial risk that the child will die is a gross deviation from the standard of a reasonable person, and if as a result the child dies, the parent is guilty of the offense," the Oregon Court of Appeals court said when it got the case several years later.

It’s not as if pray isn’t a nice thing.  Or that prayer is reassuring.  It’s just not a cure.  It’s definitely not even adequate treatment.

That doesn’t mean people can’t be cured by non-medical means.  Such miracles happen.

For example, an Arizona native, Charles Burrows, had inoperable liver cancer that suddenly disappeared. "I won a lottery, and I don't understand why," he told reporters. "I would like someone to explain to me what the heck happened."

In Denmark, Ole Nielsen Schou found out that the cancer that had spread throughout his body had almost vanished after he took a daily “cocktail of 17 vitamins and supplements, including shark cartilage pills, and imagined the metastases were rats and he was chasing them with a club.”

There are several hundred attested cases of spontaneous remission in the medical records and probably many more not recorded. 

All of the patients prayed.  It probably helped reduce stress.

However, doctors believe more that that was involved.  They already knew that cancer – and many other diseases – can be overwhelmed by the body’s immune system outside the body.  However, something prevents that from happening inside the body – except in a small number of cases.

Maybe God is involved; maybe it’s natural.  Scientists hope to find out.  They can ask God for help.  Mostly, though, they plan to reply on testing and study, the old-fashion and more-effective way to find a solution.

Meanwhile, parents who decline to seek medical assistance can consider a question raised some 2500 years ago by the Prophet Jeremiah (as depicted, right): “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?”  (8:22)

In Austin’s case, there were doctors available.  His parents chose not to use them.

Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.com.  He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers. 

Sheikh Recommends Razing Churches

Abdullah

Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin Abdullah, the top Islamic leader in Saudi Arabia, got in some hot water this week by recommending the destruction of all churches on the Arabian Peninsula. Abdullah (right) called for the destruction of “all the churches in the region. There are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula.”  He was speaking in response to a question from Kuwaiti representatives after the same idea came up in the Kuwait parliament.

The good sheikh didn’t go far enough.  He should have recommended the destruction of all religious buildings, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and anything erected to hold religious services.

They are a complete waste of money and manpower to build, of electricity, water and the rest to keep them open.

Notre Dame

Why stop with the Arabian Peninsula?  Raze them all, everywhere.  Who needs the huge churches in Europe, which dominate towns -- like Notre Dame Cathedral (left) in Paris -- and may have taken centuries to build?  They might be architectural masterpieces, but as religious structures, they are usually cold, drafty and very uninviting.

People may like the places – in fact, they are often beloved – but what’s their purpose?  To house God?  That was the intent of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.  He must not have been very fond of it.  The Temple was destroyed twice and remains a distant memory.

Besides, religious buildings are not necessary for prayer.  No religion teaches that.  God, in all monotheistic faiths, is everywhere.  Like Santa, He knows “when you are sleeping and when you are awake.”   Location doesn’t matter:  The revival tent, the quiet corner of a gymnasium, the back room of a house.  You can pray anywhere.  In fact, that kind of behavior is encouraged.

The loss of churches might cantilever a few architectural careers, but it would also stop the ridiculous one-upmanship that often accompanies construction.  In fact, in both Christianity and Islam, religious structures were required to be the biggest buildings.  Many European structures extended underground to evade that stricture.

The services held on the ocean shore, by a lake, in quiet fields and other such bucolic settings would quickly replace the destroyed buildings.  It would also solve a Jewish dilemma of finding enough room for all the Jews who suddenly remember their faith during High Holy Days.  No more tickets necessary.  There’s plenty of room in a field where everyone can commune with nature and “feel” God’s presence in the rippling breezes.

With modern technology, microphones would be no problem.  Everyone could be in the same chatroom or on Facebook anyway.  The simulated church could replace the real one, with resulting savings on travel expenses, parking and maintenance.

Antepli

The sheikh’s comments were instantly condemned, of course, by leaders with vested interests in keeping their property. Abdullah T. Antepli (left), a Muslim chaplain at Duke University, harshly criticized Abdullah's statements. In an email, he wrote:

"Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah should be condemned and protested for his very unfortunate and un-Islamic statement about the Christian communities in Arabian Peninsula. This is clearly violation of Islamic Law, Islamic morals and ethics.  I highly encourage Christian communities in the area to press charges against him both in Sharia courts and regular courts on the basis of violating the rights of religious minorities. Saudi society deserves a better grand mufti. This is a clear example of how highest religious authorities have become puppets and clowns in the hands of ruling tyrants in the Muslim world."

Forget hiring a lawyer. Actually, everyone should get behind the wrecking ball.  Start bringing the churches down as soon as possible.  Then, get the other buildings.

Once they are gone, the next logical step is to get rid of organized religion.  This was what, I believe, the sheikh had in mind.  Of course, being the head of a religion, he couldn’t say that.  He could only recommend a step that seems drastic, but would actually lead to complete religious freedom.

That’s the only way there will be peace in the Middle East.  In Palestine, Israeli authorities are tearing down mosques being used – they said—as staging areas for terrorists.  Synagogues in that country have been attacked; so have mosques.

Nor is it limited to just one country.  In this country, religious leaders have used mosques to call for a jihad.  Christian ministers have fomented racism and hatred from their pulpits.   Get rid of the pulpits by destroying the churches.  They can still communicate by e-mail, but everyone can just delete that, too.

That sheikh definitely hit upon the solution to bring peace in the world.  What foresight.  He deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.  After all, if he was really advocating simply an attack on someone else’s religious structures, he could be initiating a universal religious war.

No one would be that stupid.

Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.com.  He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers. 

God in Yards and Inches

To help my international students understand English better, I regularly translate English measurements into metric: a yard to a meter; an ounce to a gram etc.  It’s an easy process, abetted if necessary by using the computer.  Of course, as we all know, the U.S. is the largest country in the world not to use the metric system.  I just didn’t realize until recently that God was involved in the decision not to join everyone else.

The metric system was developed in France in the late 1700s during the revolution that overthrew the monarchy.  The leaders wanted everything to be equal, including measurements.  Before that time, businesses worked with a dizzying array of measurements, which varied around the globe and even from one city to the next in the same country.  As a result, cheating was rampant.  

The French were determined to change that.   They chose the word “meter” from a Greek word meaning "measure" to stress the universality of the measurement.  Kilogram was coined the same way.  Terminology was the easy part.  The actual process of creating a scientifically acceptable system took years to complete.  After all, what is the perfect measurement that could be replicated over and over again?

After decades of debate and effort, countries around the world finally accepted the metric system.  The U.S. was expected to join, especially since one of its leading intellects, Thomas Jefferson (left), originally promoted the idea.

It has never happened.

National leaders tried.  They pushed educational programs, believing that schoolchildren taught the metric system would eventually lead the country in that direction.  The need was evident.  As machinery grew more complex, tolerances became narrower.  To work properly, equipment had to be calibrated on such a narrow margin that nearly perfect measurements were absolutely required.  The English system was simply not exact enough.  

It had been developed – as names implied – by random measurements of the human body.  A “foot’ was the length of the king’s foot, and so on.  No one knew exactly how long a “yard” was, an “inch,” or the amount in a gallon.  

Initially, every attempt to move to the metric system was thwarted by a handful of politicians sure the cost of conversion would outweigh the benefits.  Then, in the late 1800s, as Congress finally debated the issue, God intervened.  Or, at least, religious fanatics did on His behalf.  

As author Robert Crease noted in his book on the history of measurements, “The extreme anti-metric system was born in Ohio and exhibited the classic signs of American antireform moments: xenophobia, rapid rhetoric, fabrication of ‘facts,’ reimagining history, conspiracy theories and appeals to the purity of nature and nation.”

In the 1800s, they claimed to oppose the metric system because, Crease added, they were supposedly “patriots, capitalists, Christians and adherents to God, country and nature.”

Sound familiar?  These are the ancestors of today’s purveyors of religious ideas whose snake oil claims still drench American life.

Objections to metrics were based on the Great Pyramid (left) in Egypt, which supposedly contained secret knowledge.  In their view, the pyramid was designed by some Israelite, possibly Noah, who was following God’s directions.  As a result, the pyramid contained the “measure of man” created divinely to guide mankind.  

One anti-metric opponent, John Taylor, claimed the pyramid “was an altar to the Lord in the middle of Egypt.”  

It was, another adherent wrote, “a Bible in stone, a monument of science and religion never to be divorced.” 

By adopting the metric system, Piazzi Smith added, the French “did ... formally abolish Christianity, burn the Bible, declare God to be non-existent, a mere invention of priests, and institute worship of humanity, or of themselves.”

Under that logic, the choice became one between the God-given system – the American version of it, of course – or the artificial metric system developed by mankind in defiance of heaven.

No one can be surprised to learn that the facts about the pyramid that such logic was based on were wrong.  For example, the Egyptians did not, as claimed, use pi -- the ratio of height to sides and which was not developed until centuries later -- but a separate ratio that does nothing to support claims of divine guidance.

Such knowledge did not deter anyone.  People pushing metrics were decried as “atheists, part of a worldwide conspiracy.”

In the end, opponents to the metric system won.  Congress did finally approve adopting metrics in the 1970s, but nothing really has happened in the general public, although the universal system has become mandatory in “godless” science.

The echoes of that religion-soaked debate still reverberate throughout our society, poisoning education, politics and almost every aspect of our country.

The result is one eternal truth:  by any standard, an argument that relies on God to buttress it does not measure up.

 

Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.com.  He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.