Yes, religion really is child abuse

This may well be the most disgusting thing I've read about any apparently modern democracy, in a lifetime of being cynical and disgusted by other apparently human beings:

"About 300 children have died in the United States in the last 25 years after medical care was withheld on religious grounds, said Rita Swan, executive director of Children’s Health Care Is a Legal Duty, a group based in Iowa that advocates punishment for parents who do not seek medical help when their children need it. Criminal codes in 30 states, including Wisconsin, provide some form of protection for practitioners of faith healing in cases of child neglect and other matters, protection that Ms. Swan’s group opposes." Trials for parents who chose faith over medicine (New York Times)

I can understand when the uneducated and otherwise ignorant, the frightened and the confused seize hold of bullshit told by the charismatic and refuse to vaccinate children - I will tell them to their face that they're being ignorant and conned, but I can understand it.

But the degree of blind faith that sees people chose prayer which continues to fail as a cure when their child has reached the point of "“Kara laid down and was unable to move her mouth,” the report said, “and merely made moaning noises and moved her eyes back and forth.”" - that is child abuse of the highest order.

"We knew that once we went to the doctor, we would be cut off from God."

That, to me, is a God it is not worth being connected to, not worth believing in, not worth paying any sort of lip-service to. That God, who consistently fails to act when petitioned through prayer and lets children die in frequently horrible circumstances, is deserving only of condemnation and hatred. If you must believe in God, then be angry at this God's conduct.

I don't really have the energy right now to say what I really think, so I'll close with the fervent wish that the people who claim that the neglecting, murderous little family are being "persecuted for praying" burn for all eternity in the hell they believe in.

Link to New York Times article