Philosophy Now Forum

"WAUSAU, Wis.—A central Wisconsin father charged with reckless homicide for not taking his dying daughter to a doctor told police that he believed God would heal her and that he thought she was simply sleeping when she became unconscious.
Madeline Neumann died on March 23, 2008, on the floor of the family's rural Weston home as people surrounded the 11-year-old girl and prayed. Someone called 911 when she stopped breathing."

http://www.twincities.com/ci_12930884?I ... ck_check=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Is a belief that God makes promises a rational belief?

In view of the daughter's death, what should the father now believe?

A challenging case, as well as a tragic one.

I don't have answers to your two questions Tom, but I would approach the issues in something like the following way.

1. You can have what beliefs you like, so long as no-one else is affected.

2. When someone to whom you have a duty of care would be affected, you should act in their interests (at a minimum not against their interests, but when it is your child, positively in their interests - that is, the duty of care is particularly strong).

3. To do what you should do in 2., you must do what you believe would be best for your child.

4. The critical question then is, is there any space for a difference between what 3 tells you to do and what your religious beliefs tell you to do? That is, should you say "According to my religious beliefs, I should just pray for my child, but I recognise that most people would call a doctor, and it is likely to be in the best interests of my child to call a doctor because there is a good chance that my own beliefs are mistaken (even though I hold them very firmly)"?

The sort of distancing from one's own stong convictions that I am suggesting would not be easy. But I think we can ask whether it should be required when other people's interests are at stake. Roughly, does the involvement of another person's interest require you to give other people's basic approaches to the world (faith in medicine over prayer, in this case) validity on a par with your own approach?

I wasn't able to read the article to comment on the specifics.

In general I do not understand the various Christian cults' logic that has them not allow modern medicine or blood transfusions or modern technology and so on and by cult I still imply that they are Christian, ie: central doctrine the same.

For me it seems like testing God, like jumping off a cliff and asking God to catch you. Whilst I believe in miracles of course I suspect were I ever to experience one it would be wonderous because I don't plan for them.

If I broadened the discussion to people doing crazy things based on their beliefs I think we can start to include abortion, assisted suicide and many other common practises into the I can't believe they do that category. But for now let's stay on track, it seems like a needless death due to a faulty belief. For me that faulty belief was not the one in God or miracles but in expecting God to act when we have other options.

Wootah wrote:crazy things based on their beliefs I think we can start to include abortion,

And for the really really crazy, lets consider people who oppose abortion AND sex education.

Gustaf wrote:

Wootah wrote:crazy things based on their beliefs I think we can start to include abortion,

And for the really really crazy, lets consider people who oppose abortion AND sex education.

Anyone opposing sex education is crazy.

Wootah wrote:Anyone opposing sex education is crazy.

No argument - yet it is common among those who oppose abortion.

Here is some relevant Scripture. What I think is irrational is the rejection of medical science.

"The Bible actually gives us some directions on how to pray for healing. For example, in James 5:14-15 we are told: "Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15) And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven." and in James 5:16 we are asked to "confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed." and then told that "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." In Mark 11:23-25 Jesus further instructs to forgive when we pray "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, `Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. 24) Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25) And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." http://www.healingscripture.com/index.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.healingscripture.com/HealingWords.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Gustaf wrote:

Wootah wrote:Anyone opposing sex education is crazy.

No argument - yet it is common among those who oppose abortion.

Well that seems stupid of them.

Richard Baron wrote:The sort of distancing from one's own stong convictions that I am suggesting would not be easy. But I think we can ask whether it should be required when other people's interests are at stake. Roughly, does the involvement of another person's interest require you to give other people's basic approaches to the world (faith in medicine over prayer, in this case) validity on a par with your own approach?

It is a good idea to pay attention to other peoples' views, as other people are often in a good position to spot your errors.

But I do not see why involvement of another person's interest would require me to give other peoples' views equal validity to my own. Yes, whatever I do there is some risk that my best judgment turns out to have been seriously flawed. But then, so can other peoples' best judgment. Ultimately, I cannot help but rely on my best judgment - even if I decide to subordinate my views to those of others, it is my judgment and not theirs.

Hello Gustaf

I agree that whatever you decide must in one sense reflect your judgement. After all, you are doing the deciding. But perhaps we could create the space for what I am suggesting by distinguishing between different levels of judgement. There are first-order judgements about the world - that prayer is what works, or that calling a doctor is what works. Then there are second-order judgements about the weighting of the first-order judgements. Thus although someone's first-order judgement about the world might be that prayer was what worked, he could say that in weighting first-order judgements, he should give significant weight to other people's first-order judgements whenever other people's interests were at stake. (The two sets of other people, those who made judgements and those whose interests were at stake, might not be the same.)

I think that the distinction between first-order and second-order judgements makes sense when the first-order judgements are of a factual nature - this is what works, or this is how the world is. Indeed, you need to make the distinction in order to make sense of the discussions that epistemologists have about the significance of epistemic peers who disagree with you. But the distinction looks more suspect if the first-order judgements are not factual, but concern what is the right thing to do. It looks suspect because when you make that sort of moral judgement, it becomes very hard to see others who disagree with you as your peers, and very easy to see them as misguided in their evaluations. In the example we are discussing, we might well be in that territory. That is, it looks as though the parents' view may very well have been not that prayer would work, but that whether it worked was irrelevant, and that all that mattered was that you put your trust in God and accept the outcome.

Richard,

If you are suggesting that people should be a bit more critical about claims that we should pray rather than go to a doctor, you will get no argument from me.

But you seem to be trying to come up with a general moral principle, and I have trouble following your reasoning.

We should act in the best interests of our children - I am sure that you, I, and the religious nut in question would agree there.

Would there be any disagreement between us and the nut about any moral principles? Or could it be that the disagreement would be concerning empirical matters - such as effectiveness of prayer in promoting healing, existence of God, etc.?

Could an argument be made that the nut was honestly mistaken in a way that does not make him morally culpable? Perhaps he is no more morally culpable than a parent who chooses a bona fide medical treatment for her child, and it just so happens that the treatment is ineffective in this particular case?

Hello Gustaf

I agree that we should act in the best interests of our children.

If you asked the religious nut, he might agree - in which case he would be committed to asserting that prayer was what worked. Or he might say no, it is not for us to promote interests because we cannot work out what interests are. We must just hand it all over to God, who will decide what is best and will ensure that it happens. That would be his justification for prayer, but that would take him so far away from the moral attitudes of most people, including most religious people, that it would be hard to have a sensible discussion with him. It might even be appropriate to regard him as not guilty by reason of insanity (although he would not meet the judicial test for that verdict).

Assuming that he did agree that we should act in the best interests of our children, it would then look as though we had a straightforward factual disagreement: he thinks that prayer works, while most of us think that medicine works. But it is precisely when we do appear to have an honest difference of factual opinion that my approach has, I think, some purchase. My line of thought is this.

1. You have a factual question to decide, and the welfare of another person is at stake in a very serious way.

2. You have your view on the factual question.

3. You are well aware that most people disagree with you.

4. In such situations, you should not impose the consequences of your view on the other person, because even if you are very firmly of your own view, the distribution of views across the population makes it perfectly clear to you that there is a good chance that you are wrong.

This all depends on your being able to hold a view firmly while acknowledging that you might very well be wrong. But I do not think that is impossible.

Richard Baron wrote:If you asked the religious nut, he might agree - in which case he would be committed to asserting that prayer was what worked. Or he might say no, it is not for us to promote interests because we cannot work out what interests are. We must just hand it all over to God, who will decide what is best and will ensure that it happens.

If the nut selects the second option, then he is in effect stating that handing all responsibility over to God is in fact the best way to look after the welfare of our children. There is still, as far as I can tell, no disagreement on any fundamental principles of morals here.

That would be his justification for prayer, but that would take him so far away from the moral attitudes of most people, including most religious people, that it would be hard to have a sensible discussion with him. It might even be appropriate to regard him as not guilty by reason of insanity (although he would not meet the judicial test for that verdict).

More precisely, it would take his views of the empirical workings of the world so far from those of most people as to make meaningful discussion difficult if not impossible.

4. In such situations, you should not impose the consequences of your view on the other person, because even if you are very firmly of your own view, the distribution of views across the population makes it perfectly clear to you that there is a good chance that you are wrong.

I have an issue with #4. There are plenty of issues on which "most people" are wrong. For example, the chances of your child being abducted and murdered by a stranger are far more remote than the chances of drowning, fatal traffic accident, accidental consumption of household cleaners, etc. Most people mistakenly believe otherwise.

I would be derelict in my duties as a parent in allowing peoples' erroneous views on the matter guide my actions with regards to safety of my children.

Gustaf wrote:

Richard Baron wrote:If you asked the religious nut, he might agree - in which case he would be committed to asserting that prayer was what worked. Or he might say no, it is not for us to promote interests because we cannot work out what interests are. We must just hand it all over to God, who will decide what is best and will ensure that it happens.

If the nut selects the second option, then he is in effect stating that handing all responsibility over to God is in fact the best way to look after the welfare of our children. There is still, as far as I can tell, no disagreement on any fundamental principles of morals here.

I think there would be a disagreement on fundamental principles, because the position would be that we had no idea what should happen. Something will happen, and we just have to accept that God has ensured the right outcome. That need not be anything that we could recognise as a good outcome. It could involve great suffering with nothing that we could recognise as a benefit to anyone. I was not clear on this in my earlier post. I only suggested that in the nut's view, we could not work out what interests were. But on reflection, I think that the nut could be stronger than that. Interests, in any form in which we could recognise them, could drop out of the picture.

I think this amendment to my picture of the nut addresses your next point, by making the nut's position not merely a bizarre view of the empirical workings of the world.

Gustaf wrote:

Richard Baron wrote:4. In such situations, you should not impose the consequences of your view on the other person, because even if you are very firmly of your own view, the distribution of views across the population makes it perfectly clear to you that there is a good chance that you are wrong.

I have an issue with #4. There are plenty of issues on which "most people" are wrong. For example, the chances of your child being abducted and murdered by a stranger are far more remote than the chances of drowning, fatal traffic accident, accidental consumption of household cleaners, etc. Most people mistakenly believe otherwise.

I would be derelict in my duties as a parent in allowing peoples' erroneous views on the matter guide my actions with regards to safety of my children.

I agree that a lot of people get a lot of probabilities wrong. But I don't think we have a close analogy here. All of the risks you mention are pretty small, once you have done the basic things like telling your children how to cross the road and not to drink the bleach. Parents probably take reasonable precautions against all of them, whatever their precise assessments of the probabilities. In the prayer v medicine case, it is clear that there is a high probability that the wrong decision will have serious consequences. I should perhaps expand the words in 1., "is at stake in a very serious way", to bring this out.

"A central Wisconsin couple who prayed rather than seeking medical care for their 11-year-old dying daughter each were sentenced Tuesday to six months in jail and 10 years' probation in the girl's death.

Dale and Leilani Neumann could have received up to 25 years in prison for second-degree homicide in the March 2008 death of Madeline Neumann, who died of an undiagnosed but treatable form of diabetes. Prosecutors had asked for a three-year suspended prison sentence and 10 years' probation. Defense attorneys had sought four years' probation"

http://www.twincities.com/ci_13502118?I ... cities.com

http://news.aol.com/article/praying-par ... h%2F599327
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I think this is a reasonable sentence. I'll be interested in the appeal.