Catholic Church is Looking for MORE Exorcists. Seriously.

Good grief! It's hard enough to take the Pope and the Catholic Church's politics seriously these days, given all their misguided priorities and scandals. But exorcism? For real? Do these people still believe in demonic possession?

Apparently they do. And it's not just something that the Roman Catholic church winks at. Exorcism is an official duty of Roman Catholic priests, one that requires special training. And worse, they seem to have a serious shortage of exorcists!

I'd like to think that this is just a funny joke. But there are real live victims at the bottom of this story.

These "demonically possessed" people are mentally ill and in need of serious professional medical help. To the church's (small) credit,

Yoga sex scandal reveals more quack medicine

I was about to give another "ho, hum" when I read of yet another sex scandal by a purported religious/spiritual leader. Ilichi Lee, a yoga leader, is accused of seducing his female followers ... what else is new? And even when I read that he's accused of bilking followers out of money using heavy-handed tactics, it was just another story. That's pretty much what all churches do, he just took it farther than most.

But then I read this on CNN:

Dahn Yoga teaches that what it calls brain wave vibration can ease some of the debilitating symptoms of illnesses such as diabetes and arthritis.

This is nonsense, pure bad science!

Religion disguised as medicine or science is inexcusable. My faithful reader know this a hot topic for me. (I've written about this before, also see Don Imus' cancer, or Christian Science, and schizophrenia).

Yoga, at least the popular activity that's practiced in America, is a great form of meditation and exercise, and teaches good lifestyle habits. What we call "yoga" is derived from Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, and emphasizes mind-body balance, peaceful contemplation, and meditation. These are all good things.

But when any religion claims to cure a disease, they're risking people's lives. Arthritis is merely painful, but ignoring diabetes can be deadly.

If I told you that you could improve or cure your diabetes using some unproved drug or technique, I'd probably be in trouble for practicing medicine without a license. Why are religions exempt from legal scrutiny and prosecution when they do the same thing?

Ilichi Lee, you should stick to seducing women and taking obscene amounts of money from your followers, but don't try to be a doctor, OK?

Faith Based Medicine: A Tragic Story

My previous blog poked fun at faith-based medicine. Little did I know when I posted that light-hearted satire that today's blog would be a true-life tragedy.

An Australian couple let their baby die because of their "faith" in homeopathy. And worse, this wasn't some quick death due to fever, it was a terrible, lingering, painful death. Judge Johnson, who presided over the case, called it what it was: cruelty.

I believe it was the philosopher William James (no relation) who said that the strength of a person's beliefs is proportional to their investment in those beliefs. In this case, the father was Thomas Sam, a lecturer in homeopathy at a homeopathic college. "Professor" Sam's entire career and academic reputation rested on the foundation of his beliefs in the efficacy of homeopathic remedies. If he'd sent his baby to physicians who use proper, science-based medicine, he would have been admitting that his entire career was a sham.

Well, his career was a sham. The "professor" just didn't know it, and now his baby is dead, and he and his wife are in prison.

Homeopathy is a religion, nothing more, nothing less. It's based on a theory that is plainly wrong. Anyone with even a modest grasp of the basics of how the universe works can instantly see that homeopathy can't possibly work. There are only two ways one can accept homeopathy: Either through sheer ignorance, or through a deliberate rejection of logical thinking.

In Thomas Sam's case, we can't even give him credit for ignorance. He was a well-educated man who deliberately, callously, and selfishly put his career and reputation ahead of the life of his child. Six years in prison will never erase that baby's suffering nor bring it back to life.

Faith-Based Medicine: A bit of Humor

A little bit of fun today. What if you went to the Emergency Room, and all of the medicine was based on faith instead of science?

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.