Posted on 05/13/2012 12:12:29 PM PDT by KantianBurke
One day last summer, Anne and her husband, Miguel, took their 9-year-old son, Michael, to a Florida elementary school for the first day of what the family chose to call “summer camp.” For years, Anne and Miguel have struggled to understand their eldest son, an elegant boy with high-planed cheeks, wide eyes and curly light brown hair, whose periodic rages alternate with moments of chilly detachment. Michael’s eight-week program was, in reality, a highly structured psychological study — less summer camp than camp of last resort.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That’s what used to be done in insane asylums before the more modern and humane “moral treatment” came into vogue in the nineteenth century... back when what we call psychiatrists today were known as alienists (no kidding). It didn’t do very much to help the situation, to all accounts. This is to all signs a nut of that caliber. Save the righteous indignation for the willfully misbehaving, totally indulged non-nuts.
“Most of what we consider evil is undoubtedly physiological in nature. With advances in science, especial the advent of the FMRI in psycho/neuro studies we have learned that a lot of what we once believed were simple self-control issues are much deeper.”
I am going to disagree with you there. God makes no such delineation in His Word.
Am I to believe that God sends people to hell for having a physiological problem?
“I would spend a vast amount of time proving to your satisfaction that evil exists in the metaphysical...and physical world.”
So where do germs fit in to all this? They only infect those who you deem as being naughty?
Evil is evil!
I am open to germs...are you open to metaphysical influence?
Smile. Although you are sure to dislike this answer, that is the very question that eventually freed me from superstition, and most recently I might add.
Future Harvard Law professor?
God judges souls, not bodies. And only God has the true X ray vision, so to speak, that can tell what is due to a soul and what is due to a body. In the meantime that should prove no deterrent to the best medically scientific efforts of humanity to assist bodies to function better — nor to the efforts of moral teachers that instruct souls about the choice to make the best or worst of the environment they have to deal with.
You didn’t answer my question.
Superstition is not synonymous with a supernaturalist world view. All major religions are aware of practices and beliefs that are below the dignity and reason believed to be held by their deities, that they would regard as superstitions.
Bath water is a great thing to throw out. Babies, not so much.
Please clarify and I will try!
Do germs infect only those who you deem are sinful?
Sounds like an imperfect, but still useful analogy to me. Germs don’t choose the sinful, but people with poor hygiene might pick up more germs. There are spiritual analogies to hygiene.
I am sinful...I did not deem it so...but I have accepted the redemption of that sin.
We are all sinful...and our redemption is readily available!
And it isn't ordinary...it is sublime! It is eternal!
Your Father and Creator loves you (and deep down inside you know that he does)...just ask Him...He will answer in the most profound manner!
He loves YOU!
That’s very strange.
Now, the family in the Times story sounds pretty normal, although the part about the husband being thought of as “loco” in his youth was noteworthy. Esp. when it talked about how these tendencies can be hereditary.
I wondered about what would it have been like had the kid remained an only child. Maybe these tendencies never would have emerged, but perhaps they still would have been there.
Only children can get away with a lot of stuff I think. I mean I had an only child, but I grew up with 2 brothers. If you have siblings, you know, sometimes they rat you out.
I’m pretty sure my kid pulled stuff on me that she wouldn’t have been able to had she had siblings.
Well, I felt bad for that family, it’s concerning for the younger kids, that’s for sure.
“Smile. Although you are sure to dislike this answer, that is the very question that eventually freed me from superstition, and most recently I might add. “
I guess you are calling Christianity superstition? I am not certain. If so, while I am sorry about your answer, you are not the first atheist I’ve ever encountered!
I was an essential or a sincere atheist the first 21 years of my life, so, nothing really shocks me. My mom raised me so.
I do believe (obviously) there there is real evil in the world, and that God judges it, and that no brain scans will justify us before Him.
The interesting question to me is, what of our behavior is our own sin and what if anything is the fault of a chemical lobotomy or similar?
Now, a lobotomy, or a car accident, or the deprivation of oxygen, etc., can affect your mind considerably. You may become confused, irrational, or retarded. But can these things make you be evil? I posit the answer is “no.”
“God judges souls, not bodies. “
Indeed, and the question before us is, are the actions and speech of the ‘enfant terrible’ in this story due to his soul or his body?
I don’t totally know, of course, but I do know that there is such thing as evil and some of us are more evil than others. Also, some of us hide our evil better than others.
I am loathe to put evil behavior down to simple physical factors; God does not.
There are foster parents without other children in the home willing to take in kids like this.
And if a parent goes before a family court judge and gives a damn good reason — like this kid’s psycho behavior — for wishing to surrender custody to the state, a judge will go along with it.
And even if such a home isn’t really a “help” to the boy, at least he’s not gonna be able to hurt his siblings.
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