{"id":671,"date":"2015-04-10T10:01:27","date_gmt":"2015-04-10T14:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=671"},"modified":"2015-04-10T10:06:13","modified_gmt":"2015-04-10T14:06:13","slug":"faith-and-moral-peril","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=671","title":{"rendered":"Faith and moral peril"},"content":{"rendered":"

A heartbreaking and utterly pointless set of deaths<\/a> in Australia illustrate perfectly the soundness of William Clifford’s famous dictum: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”<\/p>\n

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The pregnant Jehovah\u2019s Witness came to a Sydney hospital with leukemia and a directive against blood transfusions, a decision stemming from her religious beliefs.<\/p>\n

The hospital\u2019s staff was faced with an extremely difficult situation: How to treat the 28-year-old woman and her fetus while respecting that her religious beliefs prohibited them from administering potentially life-saving treatments.<\/p>\n

The case ended tragically with the fetus dying in utero, followed by the mother, who suffered from organ failure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The woman was 7-months pregnant, and the fetus was viable. What is more, modern treatment of her form of leukemia makes it quite likely that the mother and the baby would have lived; the survival rate is over 80%.<\/p>\n

Had the doctors removed the baby via a Caesarean delivery, unable to offset the inevitable blood loss with a transfusion, it would have amounted to scheduling the death of the mother — an ethical No-Go zone.<\/p>\n

So: two needless deaths, a husband’s life thrown into disarray, doctors traumatized by a simultaneous request for help and proscription against help. Let’s not forget, either, that the baby was certainly not a Jehovah’s Witness; the mother effectively chose<\/i> for it to die. You might expect the anti-abortion crowd would be up in arms, and some are, but her fellow JWs are praising her faithfulness.<\/p>\n

Faith — belief without evidence, or even in spite of<\/u><\/i> evidence — is not just about epistemology; it is morally consequential. I say again, then: When some crooning yahoo urges you to set aside your mind and your reason, set aside your doubts, and “just believe” — run for your life, because that is what is at stake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A heartbreaking and utterly pointless set of deaths in Australia illustrate perfectly the soundness of William Clifford’s famous dictum: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” The pregnant Jehovah\u2019s Witness came to a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=671"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":676,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions\/676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}