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SteveG wrote
I honestly don't get it. At times you seem to want to use almost anything you can get your hands on to bash religion. Please explain to me how this man's plight was trivialized by religion?
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As I read it, they felt that the boy's condition was decreed by God at his birth. That could suggest that trying secular remedies would be useless or even contrary to God's plan. Having tested this hypothesis at Lourdes etc. and found it was not the case, tacit divine permission to seek non-religious methods was reasonable. The progress in a secular setting suggests that the original condidion at birth was, in fact, not "the will of God".
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What religious precept kept your aunt and uncle from doing the totally prudent thing and putting your cousin in that school from the beginning? What doctrine tells a parent to hope for a miracle but in the meantime not do anything else. I really want to know how this is religions fault.
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Extreme examples might illustrate religion's fault-- the cases of JWs forbidding transfusions for their children even when doing so caused their death. The woman who drowned her children to protect them from temptation and sin.
It is a special case of the general doctrine that, for problem solving, prayer trumps informed action.
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In addition, can we ask how many of the people who work in that school do so because of their faith, because they want to help the least among us. And no, I am not saying those without faith can't so the same, but asking you to look at the whole picture here. Do those of faith who help the mentally handicapped get 'credit' for doing so, or is their faith trivializing him also.
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Might as well assume that all of them do it out of faith and compassion. Their faith is not trivializing him, his practical improvement by other than theistic methods trivializes the religion in this situation.