In Age of Science, Is Religion 'Harmful Superstition'?

[beam me up scottie]

30. Oh hell yes:

One of the most moving sections of your book is about Ashley King. Tell us her story and how it illustrates the dangers of religion?

It illustrates the dangers of what I call, “vertical proselytizing faith,” where you enforce your beliefs of religion on your kids when they’re too young to know otherwise. This religion is Christian Science, in which disease is seen as having spiritual causes. Christian Scientists reject science-based medicine in favor of prayer and spiritual healing.

Ashley King was the daughter of two well-off Christian Scientists in Arizona. Not the toothless Bible thumpers you think of when you think of fundamentalists. Ashley developed a lump on her leg, which turned out to be bone cancer. Instead of taking her to a doctor, they took her out of school and tried to treat her with prayer. The lump eventually got to be as big as a watermelon. Child services finally took her away from her parents.

Ashley went to the hospital and the doctor said, “It’s too late. This tumor’s too big. But we can give her some time by amputating her leg.” Her parents refused and stopped her being given pain-killing medicine.

Instead, they put her in a Christian Science sanatorium, which, by the way, is subsidized by the U.S. government. Her medicine consisted of giving her water and prayer. She started shrieking and crying out. The thing was incredibly painful. But all they did was pray. Finally, she died.

Her parents were prosecuted and convicted, but they were only given unsupervised probation. In 43 out of 50 American states, faith healing that harms your children is not a civil or criminal problem. Thousands of kids have died through Christian Science and the Followers of Christ in Oregon and Idaho. There are graveyards filled with dead kids who were given faith healing.