Yesterday the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that it is not child neglect to withhold medical care from sick or injured children, even when a child dies, if parents are doing so because of their legitimate religious beliefs.
The case they ruled on involved Bible-believing Christian parents, Joshua and Rachel Piland, who in 2017 withheld necessary medical care from their three-day-old daughter Abigail. Abigail suffered from easily treatable jaundice. Instead of medical care, they followed the Bible's superstition-based teachings and prayed for her healing. Abigail died. After Abigail died, her faith-based parents prayed that she would be resurrected. She was not. Based on the Bible, at John 14:12-14, she should have been healed, and even thought she died, her parent's prayers should have raised her from the dead, since Jesus promised Christians can do all the things the Bible claims he did, plus more.
Like too many states in the US, Michigan has faith-healing laws. In Michigan the law states:
"A parent or guardian legitimately practicing his religious beliefs who thereby does not provide specified medical treatment for a child, for that reason alone shall not be considered a negligent parent or guardian."
How can ancient superstitions like faith-healing still be taken seriously in the 21st century? The answer is because they are given unearned respect by far too many people. The World Union of Deists frequently is criticized for not showing respect to Christianity, Judaism, Islam and other nonsensical and harmful man-made "revealed" religions. This case of Abigail, and of far too many other child victims of religion, should make very clear why it is wrong to give respect to ideas and beliefs that do not at all deserve respect. The nonsense they spread should be treated as what it is, nonsense. Thomas Paine pointed this important fact out in The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition when he wrote:
"Nonsense ought to be treated as nonsense, wherever it be found; and had this been done in the rational manner it ought to be done, instead of intimating and mincing the matter, as has been too much the case, the nonsense and false doctrine of the Bible, with all the aid that priestcraft can give, could never have stood their ground against the divine reason that God has given to man."
