Child dies due to faith healing; parents get 6 months of jail time

[Louis VI the Fat]

One parent will serve the term in March and the other in September. The judge told the Neumanns this would give them time to "think about Kara and what God wants you to learn from this".

He added that they were "very good people, raising their family, who made a bad decision, a reckless decision". He added: "God probably works through other people, some of them doctors."

I'm more worried about this than about the death of the child. Outrageous. A judge of the same cult judging fellow cultists.

America has a law, and reason. That ought to be the guiding principle of a judge. Not the membership or not of the same persuasion as s/he himself.

Faith replacing medicine, and cult membership replacing justice. What a travesty. This would not not stand if race instead of faith was at the basis of this case. ('You are good White people. I'll excuse you for killing a negro. The White race works through your hands')

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I think six months is about right. My sense of justice does not really cry for excessively long imprisonment.
These parents are a mere symptom of a larger wrong. They were send as children to authorities who told them a Supreme Being interferes in their lives. Talks to them directly. Hears their prayers. They were told by another authority, their teacher, that this Being created the world by his own hands, and that they should mistrust rational science. They are told as adults by another authority, a judge, that this Supreme Being will be the one to pass judgement on them, so that He should be the guiding principle of their conscience and their actions, instead of the words and deeds of their fellow man.

So all that is their fault, really, is actually taking these authorities for their word.

Perhaps interpreting their words unconventionally. Who can blame them? 'Jesus heals, you need to pray, he will hear you! Oh, but you do need to call a doctor, because Jesus might, in fact, not hear you after all'. This ambiguity is too much for most minds.


So I say, in a theocracy, as is the case here, one can scarcely blame the individual. Not these small-minded simple folk, but their judge, their creationist teacher and their priest should stand trial.