The Simulacrum of Objectivity and the Schaible Case
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wi...
The Schaible's have now lost two children who might have lived had the children received medical care. Instead, they received prayer. After the death of their first child the parents were convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and they were put on probation for a decade.
The death of an infant child is not an appropriate topic to make sport of, and I do not intend to ignore the intensity of the tragedy, but the more abstract forces at play in this situation ought not be ignored.
I value freedom, and if either parent chose prayer for himself or herself over "proper" medical care, I could respect that decision. There is an ethical argument to be made which suggests that as an infant is unable to choose medical treatment over prayer, the parents are obliged to make the correct decision in the child's place. The jury's having found the family guilty for making this decision once suggests that prayer alone is an incorrect, an illegal, way to deal with health problems.
The proof for this choice being incorrect is, of course, that the child died. The value of prayer is determined by its observable functionality. Had prayer "worked," the case would never have been brought before a court. Had the parents taken the child to a medical professional, and the child had still died (assuming no negligence or malpractice), then this would simply be a blameless tragedy or an act of God depending on one's perspective.
The court's decision that prayer alone makes one an unfit parent is a judgment against prayer that places a limitation on freedom of religion. I do not, personally, believe in the value of prayer as a means of healing. I would not make the choices these parents made, but this case exposes the limitations on freedom that are in place and those limitations suggest the touch of the Simulacrum of Objectivity on the American legal system just as the position of the fundamentalist Church to which the parents' belong is a reaction to it.
Cultural Relativism is the buzzword which represents the coping mechanism our culture has developed to deal with the ethical consequences of globalization and the challenges technology poses for traditional religious world views. Clogs are cute. Female genital mutilation is evil. The whole notion of accepting difference is false. It is not accepted. There is little genuine plurality of values. Pain, suffering, and death mark the boundaries of our acceptance of difference. Be different so long as no one gets hurt. Believe as you wish, so long as your beliefs threaten nothing.
Believe in God or don't. Just take your sufficiently sick kids to the hospital. This is, of course, not true belief. These parents' actions were the actions of true believers, and the court's response amounts to an outlawing of that kind of belief. Belief that does not conflict with the observable, measurable, functional world is safe. Belief that conflicts with it is dangerous or silly depending on the consequences of the conflict.
As much as we pretend to be governed by nothing or God, again depending on perspective, it is pure functionality which reigns in contemporary America. The autopsy of the most recently dead child will determine whether the parents are murderers or just foolish believers. It is the application of science which will determine what truly happened, and whether the parents are guilty of something.
We respect people's right to believe in God however they choose up until that belief conflicts with something functional, like applied biology, medicine. Beneath the functionality of the medical field lies the theoretical chaos of Science made into something objective by institutions and by the performative value of its application.
This is the Simulacrum of Objectivity at work. Traditional faith has nothing to do with functionality or the empiricism that it descends from. The validity of the parents' belief cannot be determined from any position of knowledge available to living human beings. Their right to make decisions based on their faith is limited by the functional consequences of their actions, and to compromise one's faith for such reasons is to deny it. This case says it is illegal to be a true believer.
True faith in a traditional religious sense is illegal because only faith in objectivity can allow for a unified and functioning world. Thankfully, objectivity provides its own miracles (from the heart transplant to the iPad) to make this neo-faith easier to accept as it is far less comforting than its traditional antecedent.
The Schaible's have now lost two children who might have lived had the children received medical care. Instead, they received prayer. After the death of their first child the parents were convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and they were put on probation for a decade.
The death of an infant child is not an appropriate topic to make sport of, and I do not intend to ignore the intensity of the tragedy, but the more abstract forces at play in this situation ought not be ignored.
I value freedom, and if either parent chose prayer for himself or herself over "proper" medical care, I could respect that decision. There is an ethical argument to be made which suggests that as an infant is unable to choose medical treatment over prayer, the parents are obliged to make the correct decision in the child's place. The jury's having found the family guilty for making this decision once suggests that prayer alone is an incorrect, an illegal, way to deal with health problems.
The proof for this choice being incorrect is, of course, that the child died. The value of prayer is determined by its observable functionality. Had prayer "worked," the case would never have been brought before a court. Had the parents taken the child to a medical professional, and the child had still died (assuming no negligence or malpractice), then this would simply be a blameless tragedy or an act of God depending on one's perspective.
The court's decision that prayer alone makes one an unfit parent is a judgment against prayer that places a limitation on freedom of religion. I do not, personally, believe in the value of prayer as a means of healing. I would not make the choices these parents made, but this case exposes the limitations on freedom that are in place and those limitations suggest the touch of the Simulacrum of Objectivity on the American legal system just as the position of the fundamentalist Church to which the parents' belong is a reaction to it.
Cultural Relativism is the buzzword which represents the coping mechanism our culture has developed to deal with the ethical consequences of globalization and the challenges technology poses for traditional religious world views. Clogs are cute. Female genital mutilation is evil. The whole notion of accepting difference is false. It is not accepted. There is little genuine plurality of values. Pain, suffering, and death mark the boundaries of our acceptance of difference. Be different so long as no one gets hurt. Believe as you wish, so long as your beliefs threaten nothing.
Believe in God or don't. Just take your sufficiently sick kids to the hospital. This is, of course, not true belief. These parents' actions were the actions of true believers, and the court's response amounts to an outlawing of that kind of belief. Belief that does not conflict with the observable, measurable, functional world is safe. Belief that conflicts with it is dangerous or silly depending on the consequences of the conflict.
As much as we pretend to be governed by nothing or God, again depending on perspective, it is pure functionality which reigns in contemporary America. The autopsy of the most recently dead child will determine whether the parents are murderers or just foolish believers. It is the application of science which will determine what truly happened, and whether the parents are guilty of something.
We respect people's right to believe in God however they choose up until that belief conflicts with something functional, like applied biology, medicine. Beneath the functionality of the medical field lies the theoretical chaos of Science made into something objective by institutions and by the performative value of its application.
This is the Simulacrum of Objectivity at work. Traditional faith has nothing to do with functionality or the empiricism that it descends from. The validity of the parents' belief cannot be determined from any position of knowledge available to living human beings. Their right to make decisions based on their faith is limited by the functional consequences of their actions, and to compromise one's faith for such reasons is to deny it. This case says it is illegal to be a true believer.
True faith in a traditional religious sense is illegal because only faith in objectivity can allow for a unified and functioning world. Thankfully, objectivity provides its own miracles (from the heart transplant to the iPad) to make this neo-faith easier to accept as it is far less comforting than its traditional antecedent.
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