Amy Winehouse: Rabbi Raises Ugly AA Claims

The tragic death of Amy Winehouse has once made the Alcoholics Anonymous you-need-God myth raise its ugly head once again. It's like a monster that won't die.

You know the myth I'm talking about: the only way to recover from addiction is to turn yourself over to a "higher power." Unfortunately for addicts everywhere, study after study has shown that AA doesn't work, and actually hinders recovery for most people. (I've written about AA before; see Christian Shocker: God-Based AA Program Harms Alcoholics.)

Here's what Rabbi Shais Taub had to say over at Huffington Post:

"In a grim sort of way, the only "news" to me about Amy's death is the date. After all, what really could have stopped this from happening? The only time I have ever seen recovery in a case like Amy's is by an act of God. ... One of the axioms of recovery is that the addict is beyond human aide and that's why addicts need a "higher power" to live. You can call that hocus-pocus. I call it an everyday reality. There is no fact more real to me than the idea that no human power can stand up against the power of addiction."

Except for one thing: Rabbi Taub, you are wrong. Dead wrong. It is not an "axiom." It's a myth that's been

Faith Healer Parents Guilty of Criminal Mistreatment - Daughter Saved

I usually try to write with a bit of humor, but the latest case of faith healing in the news is just disgusting. There's no humor in it.

Timothy and Rebecca Wyland's infant girl was born with a large birthmark near one eye that turned into an abnormal growth of blood vessels. It swelled and grew into a huge hemangioma that covered her eye completely. Without treatment, it was certain that their baby would lose her eye, and she would have been disfigured.

Normal parents, that is to say parents not infected with crazy and immoral religious ideas, would have taken their beautiful little girl to a doctor and had the hemangioma fixed. But the Wylands are members of the Followers of Christ church, a radical sect that believes in faith healing. Their idea of medical treatment is prayer, anointment with oil and laying on of hands. They believe that if you seek medical treatment, you are rejecting faith.

In spite of their daughter's huge hemangioma that continued to grow and produce a nasty discharge, the Wylands chose faith healing over proper medical care. They put their faith in God. (Wasn't that the same God who disfigured their daughter in the first place?)

Luckily, the State of Oregon has a law protecting children from this sort of neglect. A jury took only one hour to

African Missionaries Exorcise Schizophrenic - Doing Satan's work in God's name

The Mission News Network has a serious article about an exorcism in Africa. This idiocy might be funny except for two things. First, these ignoramuses are allowed to vote and carry guns, which is kind of scary. And second, it's 100% obvious that this is a tragic case of schizophrenia.

From the "news" report:

"South Asia is riddled with cases of people who are possessed by demons. Visible spiritual warfare is very much alive, and the only way to end it is with prayer.

"A 17-year-old boy in South Asia was recently taken over by demons and subsequently became extremely violent. Much like the possessed man coming from the tombs in the Gospel of Mark, this young man had to be chained down to bind his unnatural strength.

"When a Gospel for Asia-supported missionary met the boy and his family, he explained to the frightened family what was wrong with their son. He then went on to share the Gospel with the family, helping them to understand that the only way their son would be freed was through faith in Jesus and prayer."

The article goes on to claim that the boy is cured,

The Science of Luck - Really!

When I saw the headline, "Be Lucky – It's an Easy Skill to Learn," I thought, "Oh boy, here's another unscientific bit that might be fun to deconstruct!" Imagine my surprise and pleasure to instead find that this article about good luck was actually scientific, well researched, and fun to read!

Prof Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire (UK), according to his own web page, "has gained an international reputation for research into quirky areas of psychology, including deception, humour, luck and the paranormal." He has a REALLY cool blog with some great illusions and puzzles.

Many people, perhaps most, think their luck is a metaphysical phenomenon, controlled by beneficent or malevolent forces of good and evil, or maybe god, fairies, devils, what have you. When bad things happen, they are victims; when good things happen, they don't take credit.

Wiseman took the approach of a true man of science. He studied it, and discovered that the people themselves caused their own fortune and misfortune. After interviewing hundreds of self-described lucky and unlucky people, he discovered the underlying reasons:

• Lucky people were able to spot opportunities quickly and take them. Unlucky people overlooked opportunities, even obvious ones.
• Lucky people were optimistic and relaxed, unlucky people were anxious and worried.
• Lucky people listen to their intuition, unlucky people do not.
• Lucky people had positive expectations, unlucky people expect the worst.

If that were the end of it, you might imagine that unlucky people were pessimistic and shunned their intuition because bad luck had taught them bitter lessons. But Professor Wiseman went a step further: he offered lessons in how to improve luck, and it worked!

This is real science, and it's refreshing. All too often in this blog, I find myself criticizing yet another silly quasi-religious pseudo-scientific theory, whether it is homeopathy, scientology, or faith healing. It's too bad there aren't more men and women like Professor Wiseman, showing world that our fates are really in our own hands, not some mythical, mystical world of demons, fairies and gods. Life is much better when we live in the real world.

"Faith healing" causes another child's death

It just makes me sick to read another one of these stories. A young girl died while her parents and other members of their religious sect tried to heal her with prayers rather than seeking proper medical care. The girl had diabetes, not a pleasant diagnosis, but she could have controlled the disease and grown up to have a happy, healthy life.

Instead, her life was tragically cut short by ignorance. Although I would like to blame her parents, they are just as much victims of this fraud as their daughter. Their sect teaches that God will bring cures, a belief that is plainly, blatantly wrong.

The obvious and glaring answer to this foolish belief (assuming you believe in God) is that God did provide a cure for this child. He gave us all brains, so that we could learn about His universe, about biology, physics and chemistry, and invent cures for the diseases that God chose, in His infinite wisdom, to inflict upon us. God provided the cure, these parents rejected His wisdom in favor of ancient voodoo and hocus pocus.

Or maybe there is no God, we're on our own, and we have to take care of each other. What a beautiful concept.

How very tragic, for the girl, for the parents, and for all of us.

Hot Peppers Cure Don Imus' Cancer? Or Quackery?

Faith-based medicine, one of my favorite targets, is raising its ugly head again, this time with the help of a celebrity, Don Imus, who is using quack medicine as an attempted remedy for his cancer. (Thanks to Troy Patterson's blog for bringing this to my attention.)

Sadly, Imus has what sounds like a very aggressive form of prostate cancer, which will almost certainly prove fatal without, or even with, treatment. I can hardly blame a man facing such a dark future for wanting to try anything. And I can't find fault with people who want to try such things in addition to treatments that might work. But when they abandon the only medicine that might work, it's a death sentence, and the person who convinced them is, in my opinion, a quack who should be jailed.

One of these quacks is trying to capitalize on Imus' misfortune. (I won't name him or link to his web site, you can follow Troy's link if you really want to see his drivel.) Imus has been convinced that a concoction of haberneros peppers and garlic will cure his cancer in just two weeks.

Once again, I'm struck by the parallels between religious faith and medical faith. Both require you to accept unprovable, unproven, and illogical "facts." And worse, in order to accept these illogical beliefs, you have to reject logical, rational thinking, the very science that has done so much to make our lives long and healthy. By learning as a child to put faith and authority before curiosity and investigation, religion makes adults who are unable to distinguish good science from bad, quackery from competence, and cures from useless concoctions.

When Don Imus dies, what will this guy who advocates haberneros peppers have to say?

Mom letting 13-year-old son die for religion

It's hard to know what to say about the mother who is letting her thirteen-year-old son die of cancer (Hodgkin's lymphoma) rather than get proper treatment, because of her religious beliefs. I'd like to call it outright murder, but that requires intent, and her religion has so completely scrambled her ability to form a rational thought that the idea of intent just doesn't apply. I suppose they'll only be able to convict her of reckless child endangerment, contempt of court, and if the boy dies, of manslaughter.

I've blogged about medicine-as-religion and religion-as-medicine several times in the past. All of these stories have an underlying theme: Children are raised on the Bible and Christianity, which by their very nature force believers to reject logical thinking, and accept magical explanations. And because of the weird, contradictory, inexplicable, and even horrifying stories in the Bible, believers also have to accept that "God has a plan" that is unknowable to mere humans, that in God's greater scheme for humanity, there is a purpose to all of the illogic, immorality, irrationality and pain. They're taught to reject their own ability to judge, to make rational decisions and moral judgements, and just accept stuff that doesn't make sense.

It's no wonder that people raised this way become adults who aren't able to distinguish real medicine from quackery, real science from charlatanism.

This story, of the misguided mother letting her son die of cancer, is just another sad data point in the ongoing saga of medicine-as-religion. It's not the first, it's not the worst, and it won't be the last. The only good thing that's coming out of this story is that most American Christians, even the most conservative Biblical literalists, are disturbed by this story. Nobody wants to see a child die from neglect, and no Christian wants his/her religion besmirched by people like this.

Let's hope they catch the mother and her son in time to save him. Without treatment, his chances of being alive in a year or two are 5%, but with treatment, he's got a 95% chance of a long and healthy life.