(no subject)

[realthog]

So Wisconsin Pentecostalist Dale Neumann has, like his wife Leilani earlier in the year, been found guilty of second-degree reckless homicide for declining to consult a doctor over the protracted period during which his 11-year-old daughter died of undiagnosed diabetes, instead praying over her in the misguided belief that God would do the job: "If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God. I am not believing what He said He would do."

When sentenced in a few weeks' time, Dale and Leilani could each be sent away for as much as 25 years.

This seems to me complete imbecility -- and barbarous imbecility at that. The two Neumanns are quite clearly, by any rational definition, batty as fruitcakes. With normal people one might feel that the loss of a child would be a harsh enough lesson that no further human intervention would be necessary; to judge by Dale's cocky, validated grin in court, losing a daughter has been a price well worth paying to curry favour with Him Up There. This is an evil born not of the calculating mind but of the severely deluded one. To send this deeply insane man to prison would not only do him no good at all -- if anything the sentence would merely confirm him in his rightness, permitting him to vaingloriously identify with someone else who was sentenced -- but would also be an act of abominable cruelty: tormenting the insane for their insanity is surely a piece of sadism that began dying out from about the mid-19th century onwards . . . at least in civilized societies.

Sentencing Dale Neumann to a long spell in prison would also allow others to play the card that he is being martyred for his faith.

What the Neumanns really need is psychiatric care -- oh, boy, do they need psychiatric care. And this is surely what the judge, if possessed of any compassion at all, will prescribe: that the Neumanns be detained in a mental-health facility until such time as, presumably through confronting the crime they have committed, they can become mentally competent enough to be allowed back into society in the certainty they'll do further harm to neither themselves nor others. (It's of course possible this time may never come.)

A secondary benefit would be that, rather than sending the message that the Neumanns are martyrs for their faith, the judge would be indicating that people who stand back and watch their kids die are not noble martyrs but nutcases.

We could do with a bit more, in this society, of nutcases being told (in the kindest possible way, but forcefully nonetheless) that they're nutcases rather than everyone being forced to pussyfoot around the issue for fear of upsetting others' sensibilities. Dale and Leilani Neumann's daughter died in large part because no one told her parents long ago to stop being such selfish, egotistical dimwits and start showing consideration for those outside their cozy self-congratulatory cocoon. It'd be kind of nice if we didn't have too many other kids dying unnecessarily because all of us were too cowardly to risk upsetting their parents' iddy-poo boats.

Comments

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

A secondary benefit would be that, rather than sending the message that the Neumanns are martyrs for their faith, the judge would be indicating that people who stand back and watch their kids die are not noble martyrs but nutcases.

Right on.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

You'll get no argument from me.

I once heard a man who calls himself one of god's "high priests" talking about a paraplegic who, when he didn't get up and walk after this priest laid hands on him to heal him, lacked sufficient faith to be healed. Now, it would seem to me that being a paraplegic confined to a wheel chair would be enough grief for this young man to bear without an ego-maniacal religious fanatic announcing to him that he lacked faith in god; ergo, it was the paraplegic man's fault that he couldn't walk, not god's or god's priests.

I agree that the majority of people who subscribe to this kind of thinking are nuts and need extensive therapy. But . . . there are also quite a few psychopaths (psychopathy and bizarre ideation are mutually exclusive, although the two separate dynamics can occur together in an individual) who are drawn to these wacko churches because the religion gives them a platform from which they can dominate others and practice their "special" kind of sadism and grandiosity. These monsters should be in prison. In fact, prison is too good for them.

[awallens.livejournal.com]

As a person with a disability I have gotten this more than I can count. Because I have not been healed by a person praying over me I am tainted. It turned me off of Christianity for life.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

I completely understand what you're saying.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"As a person with a disability I have gotten this more than I can count. Because I have not been healed by a person praying over me I am tainted. It turned me off of Christianity for life."

And I'm not surprised that it has; all my sympathies that you've had to put up with this stuff. How disgusting and self-worshiping these so-called holy people must be.

[awallens.livejournal.com]

The thing they don't understand is that I wouldn't want my sight back if they offered. Being born blind, you know nothing else. It would be disabling for me to get sight back, the human brain can't process what it's seeing if it doesn't learn how to do it young. so they want me to become disabled so I look "normal" in their eyes.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"These monsters should be in prison. In fact, prison is too good for them."

Don't forget, Jodester: psychopaths are nutcases too.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

The Neumanns have awakened in me a desire to buy a pair of steel-toed boots. In order to educate them.

The treatment for childhood diabetes is simple, straightforward, and has been known for years. However, the Neumanns didn't want "to put the doctor before god". Perhaps they didn't travel by automobile because those aren't mentioned in the Bible? Though I doubt it. Did they refuse to take aeroplanes? Or use the telephone? They sent out an appeal for prayer by e-mail. I missed where computers, and the internet, were mentioned in the Pentateuch. Perhaps they turn up in the Pseudepigrapha, which I know less about.

A colleague of mine's first university job was teaching at the University of Maiduguri in Nigeria. He's currently worried because old friends of his are caught up in the current mess there, led by the equivalent of the Neumanns, Muslims who belong to an organisation called "Boko haram" -- secular learning is forbidden -- which wants to ban "Western" knowledge because it is a threat to their version of Islam. All over the world, the advocates of the most hidebound, narrow religious interpretations are afraid of plain, ordinary scientific knowledge because it means that the purveyors of mumbo-jumbo can no longer sell fake solutions to real problems. Their answer is to kill people or let them die from inattention, whether it be Muslims who disagree with them, or little girls with diabetes.

[melindadansky.livejournal.com]

And this is surely what the judge, if possessed of any compassion at all, will prescribe: that the Neumanns be detained in a mental-health facility until such time as, presumably through confronting the crime they have committed, they can become mentally competent enough to be allowed back into society in the certainty they'll do further harm to neither themselves nor others.

It won't help, and the people who follow them will still think they're being martyred.

We could do with a bit more, in this society, of nutcases being told (in the kindest possible way, but forcefully nonetheless) that they're nutcases rather than everyone being forced to pussyfoot around the issue for fear of upsetting others' sensibilities.

I am pleased and excited that a judge had the stones to convict them of manslaughter. That's a giant leap forward from the days when it was OK to forego medical care for your children based on "faith".

...but what to do with them. I don't know. You're right that they need psychiatric care, but that delusional mindset is nearly impossible to crack.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"I am pleased and excited that a judge had the stones to convict them of manslaughter. That's a giant leap forward from the days when it was OK to forego medical care for your children based on "faith"."

Too right!

"that delusional mindset is nearly impossible to crack."

Which is why professional shrinks get paid the big bucks!