Faith Healing
Gross on faith healing
In March 2008, 11-year-old Kara Neumann lay on a mattress on the floor of her family’s home in Wisconsin while parents and friends around her were praying.
Within minutes she had died from undiagnosed but treatable diabetes. Her parents had not sought medical assistance but had tried to save her through prayer.
Kara was a pulchritudinous girl and a great student. Her despairing aunt had rung the 911 emergency services but by the time the ambulance arrived, Kara’s curable disease had taken her life.
The aunt’s heroic and frantic pleas to intervene in her sister-in-law’s family were answered too late. The parents blamed themselves, not for “not having enough faith” and rather than call in a doctor were desperately calling more people to offer prayer over Kara’s rapidly expiring body.
How can they have been so stupid? Kara had not seen a doctor since the age of three. Her parents belong to an online church Unleavened Bread Ministries whose web page proclaims “Warning: These are America’s Last Days”. The page is in incomprehensible mixture of dire proclamations and uplifting anecdotes of faith healings. I tried to discern the underlying rationale of the faith but it is a diatribe even more opaque and illogical than this blog (amazing but true).
Her mother, Leilani, is quoted as saying, “I thought it was a spiritual attack. We stayed by her side non-stop and we prayed.” Leilani expects that Kara to be resurrected. I wish she was right. I know she isn’t.
The parents were later charged with second-degree reckless homicide and found guilty. The received an innovative six-month prison sentence where both parents are jailed for a different month once a year for six years so that the three remaining kids had the, perhaps dubious, blessing of having a parent at home.
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Dr. God, Queen Antionette and a little boy lost
It’s just such a miraculously happy time here in Australia. What with Magic Mary McKillop Miracles and all, I kinda feel like a cranky old cynic.
With the cute image makeover into a cross between a chastely dressed Barbie Doll and Joan of Arc, the merchandise being churned out faster than Rudd’s self-flagellation and the splendid balderdash spat out by Christian Apologists, I’m baffled as to why hospital staff insist on turning up for work.
Just ask Trevor Stitt how effective Dr. God is. Or pause to remember Madeline Newman whose parents chuckled their way right through Reckless Homicide hearings, into a Wisconsin jail.
And what post from yours truly on this topic is complete without reminding readers that QLD based Dr. God Albert Stuart Reece killed 25 patients in 20 months with dangerous, unproven yet highly lucrative naltrexone implants. All whilst baptising their “bastard sons and daughters” in his surgery hand basin, demanding bible classes and “Jesus Music” once having lured clients onto benzodiazepine doses of crippling addictiveness, to ensure “compliance”.
Fortunately Doctor, Pastor Margaret Court’s Drug Free Australia have restricted his activity to “holding a world safety record” in the same cash cow, and keep him on a short leash as “naltrexone fatality expert”. And, no – they aren’t joking.
Sadly, adding to the insanity that is Christian Science and the increasingly malignant – yet decades old – Faith Healing unto Death meme, is a story of yet another Christian tragedy that the Propheteers of mainstream Christendom are content to ignore.
Mother Of Starved Child Believes He’ll Live Again. © Associated Press, Feb. 24th 2010:
Origin – Baltimore:
For more than a week, Ria Ramkissoon watched passively as her 1-year-old son wasted away, denied food and water because the older woman she lived with said it was God’s will.
Javon Thompson was possessed by an evil spirit, Ramkissoon was told, because he didn’t say ”Amen” during a mealtime prayer. Javon didn’t talk much, given his age, but he had said ”Amen” before, Ramkissoon testified.
On the day Javon died, Ramkissoon was told to ”nurture him back to life.” She mashed up some carrots and tried to feed the boy, but he was no longer able to swallow. Ramkissoon put her hands on his chest to confirm that his heart had stopped beating.
Ramkissoon and several other people knelt down and prayed that he would rise from the dead. For weeks afterward, Ramkissoon spent much of her time in a room with her son’s emaciated body — talking to him, dancing, even giving him water. She thought she could bring him back.
Ramkissoon told the tale of her son’s excruciating death from the witness stand Wednesday, at the trial of the woman she says told her not to feed the boy. Queen Antoinette was the leader of a small religious cult, according to police and prosecutors, and she faces murder charges alongside her daughter, Trevia Williams, and another follower, Marcus A. Cobbs.
The three are acting as their own attorneys.
Javon died in either December 2006 or January 2007; Ramkissoon isn’t sure of the exact date. His body was hidden in a suitcase for more than a year and has since been buried. But even now, she maintains her faith in his resurrection.
”I still believe that my son is coming back,” Ramkissoon said. ”I have no problem saying what really happened because I believe he’s coming back.
”Queen said God told her he would come back. I believe it. I choose to believe it,” she said. ”Even now, despite everything, I choose to believe it for my reasons.”
Later, she acknowledged that her faith makes her sound crazy. ”I don’t have a problem sounding crazy in court,” she said.
Ramkissoon, 23, was born in Trinidad and moved to Baltimore at age 7. She stands 5 feet tall and weighs about 100 pounds.
She wore a white sweater and blue jeans and was calm throughout her testimony, speaking in a clear and even voice. She appeared mildly agitated at certain questions but otherwise showed little emotion, even as she described how her starving son lost weight, became lethargic and lost his voice.
She was led to the courtroom in handcuffs. She pleaded guilty last year to child abuse resulting in death, agreeing to the deal only under the condition that if Javon is resurrected, the plea will be vacated. Prosecutors and a judge accepted that extraordinary condition, specifying that only a ”Jesus-like resurrection” would suffice.
Because Antoinette is representing herself, she was able to cross-examine the young woman who lived with her for two years, much of that time after her son’s death.
Antoinette asked whether her statement about not feeding Javon was an order or a ”suggestion.” Ramkissoon said she has consistently told prosecutors and her attorney that she was not forced to starve her son, but she made clear the idea was Antoinette’s.
”When I was about to feed him,” Ramkissoon said to Antoinette, ”you said, ‘You shouldn’t feed him anything,’ and then you told me why. … I believed you.”
Williams and Cobbs also lived in the home, along with Antoinette’s three other children and a childhood friend of Ramkissoon’s. No one challenged Antoinette’s statement that the boy should not be fed, Ramkissoon said.
Ramkissoon detailed how the group relocated to Philadelphia and brought Javon’s body in a suitcase. She described how Javon was packed with sheets and blankets and how she sprayed his body with disinfectant and stuffed the suitcase with fabric softener sheets to mask the odor.
The suitcase was hidden in a shed in Philadelphia for more than a year before it was discovered by police, according to testimony. Members of Antoinette’s household were told to wear only white, blue and khaki. They left the home only in pairs, and they avoided doctors or hospitals. They destroyed identification cards and had little contact with their families.
Ramkissoon said she often questioned Antoinette’s rules and orders but never disobeyed her because she believed her to be ”a godly woman.”
”Looking back now,” Ramkissoon told Antoinette, ”I won’t say that everything you thought was right, was right.”
© Associated Press, New York Times.
Herbal Remedies or Herbal Rip Off?
From ABC 7:30 Report, Feb. 24th, 2010:
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfhJm6NVDFw
Herbal remedies are not regulated nor tested properly prior to marketing. No quality control exists to prevent dose mismanagement or to identify adulteration with contaminants and poisons.
25% of herbs originating from one Asian source contain Western Medications. This leads to dangerous allergic reactions, cross reaction, herb/drug interactions and a plethora of side effects.
Herbal remedies also contain mercury, arsenic and lead. Arsenic is a metalloid. Lead & mercury are metals. Lead poisoning is devastating. The mercury is not monitored, measured or controlled – nor does it serve any purpose: it is a Contaminant.
More so, it is likely to be Elemental Mercury – not methyl mercury as found in biomass nor ethyl mercury used in the clinical and adultery free preservative Thimerosal. Thimerosal is used as a preservative in many medicinal products, including some vaccination preparations.
This makes a predictable mockery of anti-vaccination claims that vaccines “cause autism” due to containing Elemental Mercury, such that vaccine preventable diseases may be “managed” with herbs. This sad revelation is made worse in that lead poisoning leads to many of the horrors blamed on vaccines by pro-herbal antivaccination lobbyists: convulsions, encephalopathy, nerve damage, CNS developmental problems, etc, etc.
http://www.lead.org.au/fs/fst7.html
These herbal remedies have high potential for Adverse Reactions, Drug Interactions and Side Effects – certain to be misdiagnosed by naturopaths who protect vested interests and will prescribe… Herbs.
In the case of imagined “vaccine dangers” or “vaccine reactions” it is known that pure guesswork [and blame] is the primary variable. incredibly these “reactions” are then treated with demonstrably contaminated herbs – actually causing or exacerbating any health problems.
Finally, Panic Merchants love to exaggerate toxicity reports in order to mount arguments peculiar to their own ideology – usually blaming the presence of one drug for multiple deaths.
It is thus over-due that the TGA vigorously examine the toxicity reports post autopsy for herbal/drug interactions and also for cumulative adulterant poisoning leading to neurological pathology.
More so, strict and exact standards must be enforced by the TGA demanding alternative preparations meet safety standards *before* being marketed to an ignorant and unsuspecting, yet trusting public. Indeed claimed efficacy must be demonstrated as verifiable and falsifiable. Immediate penalties for the unqualified and ideologically focused charlatans who profit from marketing not medicine, are long, long overdue.
See:
University of Adelaide forensic pathologist Roger Byard’s media release:
http://bit.ly/ce3Bnh
Economics of Snakeoil by Steve Novella:
http://bit.ly/b7eA5t
Homeopathy: useless & unethical:
http://bit.ly/cd0WtI
Australian Skeptics expect better from our Pharmacists:
http://bit.ly/cPHf7e
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Dr. God & Red Clay for Cancer: “I’m still alive”
From Channel 7′s “Sunday Night” programme †. The appalling situation of young Tamar Stitt who whilst dying from hepatoblastoma || Wiki || [a rather graphic histological mutation & rapidly terminal cancerous growth in the liver] was whisked out of Australia by her deluded faithful Christian father to avoid medical treatment, and legal requirements to provide same.
Documents plainly spell out the living hell and painful death ahead for this innocent girl. Stitt wants to go to heaven, and will obviously kill to get there. Christian Jihad? Trevor Stitt – perhaps a few screams short of a tantrum – claims no “negative thoughts”, Dr. God and “special” red clay which “isn’t some mumbo-jumbo, sprinkling some dust and saying prayers” is the answer.
One is reminded of the fable of Abraham and Isaac. In this video we see a very ill child wise beyond her deluded fathers years. Her face almost speaks the verse, “where is the lamb father?” as Isaac the son, asked Abraham his father, who was about to sacrifice him to please his imagined god.
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7: And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here am I, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
8: Abraham said, “God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together. (Gen. 22:7-8)
Part One:
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdJlndZ48FY
Part Two:
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q4LWn_296c
There never was any lamb – just a lie to a child for the same sick irrationality today sustained by biblical fundamentalists across the globe. Without the compost of lying religious moderates in which fundamentalists germinate, their insanity and delusions we endure would not be as prominent.
Indeed. Where is the cure father?
Answer? I’m the one to be cured, child. You will merely die for this. God will provide.
How little changes in 4,000 years. “God did it”… again.
And Tamar’s fate? Whose father asked “Who am I to fight against it?” – “it” being God’s choice whether she lives or certainly dies under his abuse. Well, as was plain in his answer, this gig really has nothing to do with curing cancer by schlock hanky panky. This is all down to Trevor Stitt’s theopathological delusion that his fate, his daughter’s life and divine intent are linked.
Tamar died not long after the above was filmed, in San Salvador on November 12th, 2009. There’s an article here, from October 12th and a number of comments, spanning the time of death. They include input from Trevor Stitt whose limelight attraction stands in blinding contrast to the usual expressions of parental grief. Ultimately, his daughter’s demise and the socio-pathological insistence of perfection from meddling religious supporters played out in comments across many weeks. In the comment below, he slips up by admitting “the struggle is just beginning”, then stresses this struggle is not for his daughter’s life, but against “orthodox” medicine.
This is as close to an admission of manslaughter as I can remember in these cases. If we add all facts including the footage above, Stitt’s bumbling on camera image-coaching and overt defensiveness, one can identify a man clearly cognizant of the terminal risk and in denial of his own guilt as much as reality. His reaction to footage of specialists is one of disgust, fear and overt immaturity including an attempted walkout.
Comments [n = 39] from Australian couple treating daughter’s cancer with natural remedies:
Sam writes:
Unfit to be parents. I’m completely disgusted. If there is any justice in the world Tamir will be immediately removed from their custody and placed in social care where she will be in a position to be treated properly. To Tamirs parent: You are killing your daughter with your ignorance. Without treatment she will die, and it will be all your fault. I hope you spend the rest of your life in prison for murder.
T. Donnim argues a meandering yet revolting false dichotomy and proffers the personal incredulity typical of faith-crippled minds, topped off with appointing himself family apologist [bold mine]:
You people are all pathetic. If you knew this man as I do and knew what is happening in his family’s life, currently,besides their Beautiful Daughter’s tragic illness, you’d know about his actions. If the last person really does work for channel 7 (as they claim to) they’d know that the hotels were paid for by channel 7 (where their crew were staying) and on his early return for reasons known to him and immediate family and how channel 7 in a bid to seal their little box of lies, offered to pay for his hotel again in Los Angeles on his way home. Not everybody can make a long trip like that in one go. Yes he did give his younger Son, also going through hell, a visit to the kids attraction in LA to help bring him through, so what, this just demonstrates what kind of good father he is.
A lot of people, even some in his outer family circles are bitterley jealous of what this family has (Tamar’s condition aside) in faith, happiness and general stability. These people really need pity as do any other jealous folk with nothing better in life than gossip, backbiting and hateful jealousy. For them we should feel great pity. If you people want to do something positive for this family and what they’re going through then LEAVE THEM ALONE and let them deal with what they have to, in their way. The little girl is not in any harm and is actually responding quite well to her present situation and looking forward to coming back to Australia- Home- and having a stress free life with or without natural remedies. at present she is receiving both (small doses) of chemo along with natural nutrients, vitamins and supplements.
I have been asked by Trevor to deal with any situations like this from here as he is no longer interested in (as he says)negative behaviour, so will from time to time monitor these sites and relay to him and family pertinent info.Thanks Tsu.
the truth had written:
No trevor. i know exactly whats going on. Why don’t you tell the whole world the truth. Your pathetic ignorance will cost your daughters life. But then again what would you care? I’ve never known of a father who stays in a hotel while his daughter is dying …you’d think you’d want to be next to her 24/7. I pray that your daughter will survive. Just so that you know i work in channel 7 and i have let them know exactly whats going on.
MJ had previously written:
I would like to let you all know that Tamar Stitt is very Ill now and her mum has taken her to a Salvadorean hospital. She’s now receiving chemotherapy.
Trevor Stitt had written:
Hello to all of you, yes I am Tamar’s Father. Channel 7 came into our lives to supposedly portray 2 sides of the story, sadly they’ve lied and left out half the truth that they filmed. They were supposed to interview people (Doctors) and natural healers [ψ] who’ve cured people of cancer successfully, but “pulled the pin” on the interviews because it would topple their one-sided story. They also ommited to say that I trained at Guy’s Hospital, London and worked as an Operating Dept Practitioner in Anaesthesia in the UK for 10 years before coming to Oz in 1998,worked at Royal Marsden cancer hospital in London and so have quite good research engines at my disposal. I have seen “clay wraps” cure my Tamar of asthma at 2 yrs when PMH only offered steroidal inhalers, she’s never had an attack since. If 7 had’ve told the truth about what they saw without overdramatising the San Salvador situation and others for sensationalism, then maybe folks would know more of what we are doing for Tamar, who IS getting a little better each day. I have to say I don’t really know who you are Josie, you say you know us, do you have another name?
I guess the struggle is just beginning (and I don’t speak about Tamar’s condition here) those “orthodox”people will not be happy, google Roy Rife, see what happened to him. Remember Patch Adams? (a true story) didn’t fit in to orthodox practice, too happy, he had a proper bedside manner (taboo in today’s conventional medicine). “There are none so blind as those who will not see”- with the eye of faith you don’t only see, you begin to LIVE! Thanks to All who support us and also to those who don’t. [Source]
Ah. How sad. As suspected this is about Stitt’s “eye of faith” being more important to him than his daughter’s life, presumably because of what he thinks he can “see”. He is “alive” and well kicking back in a hotel whilst his daughter dies slowly in San Salvadorian heat. At least he’s right on one point – only faith can allow one to “see” when it is plain they are so very blind.
Pearl Jam in their hit song “Alive” [below], may have unwittingly penned lyrics to a much needed “spiritual visitation” that would, in Stitt’s mind, be entirely probable:
“Is something wrong?” she said
Of course there is
“You’re still alive,” she said
Oh, and do I deserve to be?
Is that the question?
And if so…if so…who answers…who answers…?
So what is happening here beside a seriously messed up arsehole killing his daughter? I touched on this last October and suggested ‘anosognosia by proxy’ may serve as a model for understanding what’s occurring. True anosognosia exists consonant with motor cortical damage that isn’t recognised by higher functions or even visual input. Specific regional strokes elicit such symptoms as denying an obviously paralysed limb is dysfunctional. The point, is that no amount of insisting the patient is wrong will by itself help.
The complex symphony that is awareness simply lacks a crucial “instrument” that contributes to perceiving and articulating movement. In recent years some psychologists and psychiatrists have extrapolated this approach to schizoid disorders – the patient’s reality is the reality we must work within. With emerging research indicating compromised analytical ability and propensity toward physically manifesting drug seeking behaviour this brings addiction into new realms of “choice” and “will power”. In the latter case applying the notion of anosognosia is most wise.
In cases of malignant religiosity denial of reality kept to oneself is really just faith – our most common cognitive detriment. Yet extending this denial – or anosognosia – such that one interferes and/or harms by proxy is disturbingly on the increase. What is far less clear is what – if anything – will be done about such quackery. Given the prior Howard government allowed a Standing Senate Inquiry chaired by Bronwyn Bishop with predetermined agendas to be hijacked by biblical fundamentalists, culminating in calls for the children of pot smokers to be permanently removed, one may be forgiven for thinking religion still commands default respect.
If we note that bigoted and homophobic extremists Focus on the Family now has command of Australia wide “How to drug proof your kids” programmes endorsed by Bill Shorten and many of our most senior D&A professionals, it’s axiomatic what reading between the lines tells us: God can get away with whatever those holding the purse strings demand. Either way, Trevor Stitt is a selfish Christo-criminal and now a killer of an innocent. At no time did he act upon his daughters needs. At all times he sought to place his own insane beliefs at the buffet table.
At a time when so many Australian Christians “rejoice” over a dead nun being made a mutant clone of a zombie messiah-savior, via a demonstrably outrageous claim about the origin of spontaneous remission, one wonders what they make of those who kill in their saviors name. Real Christians, right now killing innocents all in the name of their so-called Savior. The only “miraculous” outcome here is that Stitt remains at large.
You can check out an article by Maggie from early January at The Skeptics Book of Pooh-Pooh and gain valuable insight from a commenter [Oct. 14th] by the same name.
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YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbhsYC4gKy4
† Covered by Young Australian Skeptics October 2009.
ψ Natural healers are not “doctors”, have no qualifications in medicine, cannot claim to be “medical doctors” and cannot practice any form of medicine.
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