Number of Atheists on MAP

http://religion-compass.com/2009/07/26/news-faith-healing-vs-medicine-in-recent-child-death-cases/

As a judge and lawyers in Weston, Wisconsin, decide on jury members to try the case of Dale Neumann, who, with his wife Leilani, chose to pray for his daughter’s recovery from a diabetes-related illness rather than seek medical help, leading to her death in March 2008, Raylene Worthington is acquitted of similar charges in Oregon City, Oregon, while her husband Carl is charged with criminal mistreatment of their 15-month-old daughter Ava, who also died in March 2008, from pneumonia and blood infection. Both deaths, the courts allege, probably could have been avoided with medical treatment.

Both the Neumanns and the Worthingtons belong to religious movements with Pentecostal roots. The Neumann’s are reportedly “Full-Gospel Christians.” Dale Neumann viewed his daughter’s illness as a “test of faith” and solicited prayers from numerous people, believing they would save his daughter. The Worthingtons belong to the Followers of Christ, an Oregon-based sect with a little over a thousand followers that has aroused controversy for their practice of “shunning” members who seek medical care rather than rely solely on faith healing. See stories here and here.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6840628
When a Jehovah's Witness refuses to consent to needed medical treatment on religious grounds, a hospital's treatment team confronts a variety of ethical, legal, and medical dilemmas. This article explores the background and issues relating to cases in which Jehovah's Witnesses have refused treatment and discusses how the worker can effectively perform the tasks of case preparation, intervention, and advocacy with these clients

http://getbetterhealth.com/my-brothers-keeper-revisited/2010.06.23
A few weeks back, I had introduced a patient who was willing to let her religious beliefs stand in the way of receiving the proper medical treatment she needed to stay alive. I want to revisit with you this dying patient, who hadn’t known me or any doctor for over 30 years.

As the rest of the family, who were not as committed to a religious path, stood by her expectantly, I said to her: “I had a brother who was a true believer in the power of God and that faith could heal all things or be called God’s will. Like you, he was a competent adult in charge of his decisions. He wouldn’t listen to anyone else — not his wife, father, mother, children, brother — not even me, the doctor. He died two years ago, leaving behind 10 children and a wife who depended on him. We all believe he died unnecessarily.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1463495/religion_and_the_refusal_of_medical.html?cat=5

http://www.religioustolerance.org/medical9.htm
Some devout believers favor pursuing prayer instead of seeking medical assistance when they are ill. This can become a major concern for child protective services when parents refuse to have their children treated for routine health problems that can prove fatal without medical intervention. Resorting to prayer in the place of medical treatment also become a matter of social concern when death rates among certain religious groups greatly exceed the average for the rest of society.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_claims_in_Scientology_doctrine

And keep in mind, these aren't illiterate tribesmen living in backward area's. These are people living in major cities who've probably had a reasonably good education, Can you imagine what the situation is link in un developed area's where religion and superstition chiefly hold sway?

Many Many Cases here, I'l only quote one

Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton, has a written an opinion piece examining a utilitarian analysis of what could have been achieved with the $150,000 Priests for Life spent on an operation for a child with no existing or anticipated quality of life. Hint: the answer is to have instead saved at least 150 lives worth living

I'l leave you with a quote that should make you think about who really is the tremendously ignorant one

 

Seriously. Does it actually take place in the UK or are the women taken back to Africa and forced to have it done there?

 

What difference does it make?

 

Well he never said as much and while I might be telepathic. I think I'm out of range.

The excuse is religion. The "reason" is a fear of, or unwillingness to change or to allow society to change as naturally happens over time. Modern radical Islamic groups came into being after America started exporting their culture to the middle east. Some people didn't like this and started to work against it. They cited the Qur'an and identified their enemies as the "infidels" in a bid to draw in followers and use the promise of martyrdom to get other people to do their dirty work for them. Before that happened Muslims in the middle east were perfectly happy to life a more westernised life style.

I mean seriously if people like Bin Laden were really that devout, wouldn't they be strapping a bomb to themselves and walking into to an American to "give themselves up"?

Just like in the Bible and probably every other religious book, There are passages in the Qur'an that can be interpreted in a very negative and dark way. Which are used to justify all manner of unseemly behaviour. There are however also passages in the Qur'an that are directly contradictory to this. Just as there are in the Bible. So these books aren't like flat-pack instruction manuals on how to live your life. There is scope for interpretation where a person must make a moral choice.

So Islam gives certain types of people an excuse to treat other people badly or worse.

It's a failed trial because it was abandoned before the data could be collected and analysed properly. The trial failed to produce any useful or meaningful insights so far as I can seem.

Some people do indeed prefer to turn to their religious beliefs rather than seek medical help. There are various reasons why people do this. Sometimes they are just old or have been sick for so long they'd rather take their chances with God rather than be forced to live on. In the most extreme cases there tends to be a cult like element at play that pushes people to the extremes of belief and faith.

The market for alternative medicine in the western world is more likely than not, fuelled by the same fashion trend that's supported the growth in the market for vitamin supplements. Which has further been compounded by bad science and erogenous unproven claims by advertisers.

 

You're the one that questioned a very tiny part of my post. You tell me.

 

Yeah, but how come none of these people are on the bandwagon for airplanes built by alternative engineers?

 

Because even stupidity has it's limits?

 

They don't need to fly - they'll get enough of that during the Rapture......

 

Wikipedia.

To actually suggest that religion is only an excuse for these groups and that they would exist any way even without religion is extremely fallacious. based on what we know, religious belief's are a very big reason for the formation and actions of these groups.

 

Correct.

And aikiwolfie, to merely be flippant about "telepathy" as an excuse to try to squeak your way around what was obviously my point is counter-productive.

 

Well I clearly disagree. A while back in this thread those in arguing for science were claiming religion had given us nothing. Now it's given us terrorists? The people who join terrorist groups make the moral choice to join those groups and kill people. Their religion does not force them to do these things.

While many terrorist groups do seem to have religious connections. Their motivations are political and in many cases nationalist in nature. The religious element is incidental. The IRA for example were more than likely as near as makes no difference all Catholic. The IRA however did not strictly speaking have a "Catholic" agenda. They were fighting a "nationalist" agenda.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_terrorism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Australia#Sydney_Hilton_bombing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Early_modern_period

 

For the people running the program there is always an agenda, for the people blowing themselves up its religion. You don't blow yourself up for an agenda.

 

As I said. The religion is used to attract followers to the cause! Please learn to read :bang:

 

This is what you said. You said the religious element is incidental. I'm just pointing out to a lot of the folks on the front line the religious element is not incidental.

Please learn to write what you mean.

 

I did. Several posts back. Funny how you managed to miss that.

 

Incidental may have been the wrong word for Wolfie to use, but the two of you are not as far apart in your views as you seem to think you are. The IRA was definitely a political organisation - religion only came into the equation because the Nationalists (IRA) were overwhelmingly Catholic and the Loyalists were mostly Protestant. This meant that someone's political sympathies could be determined (most of the time) by the church they attended. If both sides had had a common religious background (or none), The Troubles would still have happened but religion would not have played a part.

As for Al Quaida and militant Islam, the people at the top of the terrorist organisations want to overthrow all Western democracies and install a Universal Caliphate, governing the whole world with Sharia law. This may be presented to the masses as a jihad, or holy war, against unbelievers, but the reality is that the leaders of these organisations have aims that are political in nature, and religion is being used as the excuse for war, destruction and the murder of innocents to effect regime change. The grunts on the ground (that would be the suicide bombers) believe they will go to heaven if they do as they are told; if all their bosses were offering was a change in government if they won the war, does anyone really believe they would throw their lives away like that? They might still fight, but they'd be a little more reluctant to die for their cause......

In summary: The bosses at the top have political aims, but dress up their cause with a dash of religion because people who believe in a cause will fight harder for it and sacrifice more for it than people who support the cause through logic and reason. Religion can promise rewards beyond the grave; politics can only promise earthly rewards (and if you die for the cause, when do you collect?). Opium, anyone?

 

In general I think you're making some good points, but in relation to the "God Particle", by which I assume you mean the Higgs boson (there's really nothing too Godly about it, to be honest, though), I think you're a bit off.

I'm not a particle physicist, and although I have a basic understanding of the Higg's mechanism, I couldn't tell you off hand what energy scales are involved or what has gone into calculating the mass cutoff, but there hasn't exactly been the goalpost shifting that you seem to think there has been. Successive tests have eliminated the possibility that the particle exists within certain mass ranges, but it was never necessarrily expected to be within those ranges, either. There is a theoretical maximum on the mass of the Higgs boson, and various energy scales have been tested as it has been possible to do so. CERN is expected to be able to either prove or disprove the existence of the Higgs boson.

But regardless, there are very good theoretical reasons to believe that the Higgs boson does exist. In fact, a version of the Higgs field and Higgs bosons exists in superconductors as the interaction of spins with photons, effectively giving them mass (in a similar manner that positron-like quasiparticles exist in semi-conductors as "holes" that electrons can fall into).

As for dark matter, which I recall you meantioned somewhere else in this thread, the idea of dark matter only came about because of experimental evidence for its existence. Galactic rotation curves show that the total mass inside of a galaxy must be greater than the amount of mass that is visible. Further observations of colliding galactic clusters have essentially ruled out other possible explanations.

Dark energy, also definitely has to exist since the rate at which the universe is expanding is increasing. This by definition means that the curvature of the universe as a whole is slightly negative (and in general relativity, curvature and energy are essentially the same thing).

 

The "God Particle" is it's common nickname. So called because without it the standard model that scientists have so much "faith" and "belief" in basically falls a part at the seems. Without it science can't explain where "mass" (not the religious kind) comes from. Without mass we can't have gravity since gravity seems to be a function of mass. Which means we just can't explain why the universe is the way it is.

Don't get me wrong. The actual world isn't suddenly going to fall apart around us. Our TVs will still work and microwave ovens will still work. But science kinda goes back to square one. It means we really don't know why things work.

Edit: "It definately has to exist"? Sounds like a statement of faith to me. A belief in something that hasn't been proven.

As for the dark matter I think your wrong. All the experimental data came after someone filled in the blanks on a blackboard and called it dark matter. So practical scientists went out looking for something on the say so of a theorist not knowing if they would or wouldn't actually find it. When they did find some sort of indication that dark matter existed they were still short on the numbers. So they created dark energy on the black board. And incidentally these are theories that are now starting to lose favour because the numbers just aren't stacking up. But without dark matter and dark energy there isn't enough mass in the universe to generate enough gravity to hold it all together.

 

The thought of a fun filled afterlife makes the thought of blowing yourself up easier.

I think blowing yourself isn't really good for your political career. It appears you didn't read the snippet I posted from Wikipedia earlier. Religion is a major cause of the terrorist activities, especially for those doing the actual fighting.

If you recall Osama Bin Laden was a very successful business man with asset's running into billions of dollars, how exactly have his current activities benefited him?

Also

Religion lead to people being burnt for having strange birthmarks.

The god particle was a conclusion drawn by people who applied their mind to the problem and came up with the best solution. They didn't rely on faith,dogma and ancient contradictory texts, nor did they make random guesses. They took everything that they knew, and interpolated using every single resource at their disposal.

To compare the concept of some deistic god with this, is extremely crude

To suggest that all hypothesis are made equal and comparing the god particle hypothesis to the "god" hypothesis is illogical.

It's the difference between solving a mathematical problem to the second last step and then guessing the answer versus screaming out a number you like before even reading the question.

If I find a guy with his throat slit and his wallet and personal effects missing I could assume that he'd been the victim of a botched mugging, or that time travelling templars from an alternate dimension had journeyed to our world because that mans great great grand son was going to be the anti christ and destroy our world and then move on to the Templars dimension. Hence to save the world they took this extreme measure.

Both are just theories with no evidence behind them. Do you think they're equally valid?

Also keep in mind, that while theologists may fiercely debate over "god", All of them start from the same basic position that a god exists and then argue over individual characteristics.

It's like deciding the moon is made of cheese without discussion but passionately arguing over which kind of cheese.

 

Aiki, as Rhade has already said the leaders of these movements may be just as religious as the followers. They can be every bit as driven by their beliefs as those whole wear the bombs.

The issue is more complicated than most people are willing to admit. Its not as simple as cynical leaders are using religion as a tool to dupe people into doing their bidding. Although that can be a factor as well.