Yup you heard me right. Im a Christian. I have a set of beliefs and ideologies that give me great strength and peace when times are tough. They also give me guidance on how to live my life in a way I would like to.
Is that a bad thing? No. Does that make a me a ‘jesus freak’ or a ‘God botherer’ no. It makes me the same as millions of people around the world who have a faith, whether it be a deep seated faith where you attend church every week and are devout or, like me, who choose to practice their faith in a more private way.
Somewhere, I forget where, a poster has been placed by a religious group publicising a healing event. No big deal you might think. these events happen up and down the country without comment. But not this time. Now the group are being told that they have to have a disclaimer on their poster pointing out that they cannot claim to cure people. I disagree with this fundamentally. Not just because I am Christian but because I am a liberal. We as a society do not get to tell a group of people of faith that their belief is wrong simply because we disagree with it. We don’t get to call those people jesus freaks and God botherers because we disagree with them either but that is exactly what has happened today and its been done by some who claim to be liberals. I find that really disappointing.
My point in all of this is that you cannot simply tell people of religion that their view is wrong because you take the atheist or scientific belief. The black and white facts of the matter are that neither point of view, when your strip them both back, can be proven as right or wrong. Who is to say that every scientific discovery that has been made so far is right and accurate and supersedes religious belief? Who says that religion is right over science? No one can categorically say either overrides the other and thats my point.
So until one side is proven beyond all doubt to be accurate and the other wrong, neither side has any right to prejudge the other, either by mocking them or calling them names. Neither do they get to censor them by making home put disclaimers on their posters which they cannot legally prove beyond all reasonable doubt. I am not saying that faith can cure sickness and disease but I am also not saying that it cannot. The world is full of personal accounts of people who have had religious experiences where they have been cured. Not just in the bible but in modern times too. Who is anyone to say that they are wrong? In many cases medical science cannot say that they are wrong either and are loathe to offer explanations because they cannot factually prove one or the other that the event did not occur. If people choose to believe it is up to them.
Faith cannot be regulated science and to attempt to do so is just plain daft.
So, until such time as you can, then we should be liberal and respectful. Let people claim they can cure people all they want. There is no harm in it. People will still go to hospital if they are feeling ill and in need of treatment. Suggesting that one poster for heeling ‘could’ prevent someone seeking treatment is knee jerking in the extreme. I refuse to believe that people are simply that blind. The majority are not.
So if you don’t believe in God or have a faith thats fine. If like me, you do thats fine too. But don’t think that your opinion has any right to trample over the rights of the other side because you believe you are right and the other side is wrong. Its arrogant, rude, and shows startling lack of respect and tolerance.
Peter says:
I class myself as a Christian,I do not go to Church although I used to go.This sounds as stupid has putting a keep off the grass sign on a football field.
Will they also ask Spiritualists to put a disclaimer saying we may not contact the dead.
Or Muslims saying if you die in battle you may not be welcomed by a dozen Virgins.
Its just a bit stupid.The Christians should put up a sign,pointing to the disclaimer saying,some Jerk gets paid for thinking this stuff up.
Its like the Woman who could not wear a cross working for B.A.if I remember rightly.
We are after all supposed to be a Christian country.I have no objection with multiculturalism,but those I have spoke to of other faiths have always told me they are not offended.They are not offended by Christmas or Nativity Plays.Its just some stupid pratt,who gets paid a lot of money to come up with this crap.
If anything,by beaming in on daft things,it would be more likely to be more racial,or religious prejudiced because people start feeling marginalised.
I sometimes think,the Government employs someone to come up with these things to annoy people,so that they get distracted and stop looking at the bigger picture.Red Herrings if you like.Put out disinformation,turn one group against another and people stop looking at the Leadership and the country being smashed,put up for grabs by a gang of Eton Bullies.
But I am just a Conspiracy Theorist.
John Jones says:
No – I’m NOT a Christian- although I do respect anyone’s right to follow their religion. Personally, I just think it’s a load of jumbo jumbo nonsense- but that’s my personal opinion. However- just as I don’t stick my nose into christian people’s business- I don’t think they should be sticking their noses into non-Christian people’s business. I mean what has it got to do with anyone else? Why try to change people? It’s like trying to change left-handed people to right- handed ones because your religion happens to say that EVERYBODY should be right-handed! Sorry for any offence
Spidey says:
I dont think that anyone is sticking their nose into anyone else’s business. What they are doing is asking for the right for their religious freedoms to be expressed in a free society
Chris says:
The power of faith has been shown to happen. I’m not going to use religion as the example instead I’ll cite the placebo effect. Faith and belief are very stong forces and can cause effects that cannot be explained by science (yet).
Will the power of faith heal in all cases? No of course not. But neither does the scientifically based conventional medicine.
I personally am agnostic and so try and keep an open mind. There is much we don’t know, and perhaps we as humans will never know. To just dismiss something out of hand because it doesn’t fit with current theory is something scientists would do well to remember is just plain wrong. It is for science to challenge and prove one way or the other using experimentation to try and uncover the facts. As they have not satisfactorily done this, then there is a basis for people to use faith to help them get better.
Spidey says:
Thanks Chris. Some sensible comments in a plethora of anti religious rhetoric. Appreciated my friend
George Potter says:
I’m sorry to have to say this but:
Nonsense. Absolute tish and tosh.
The advert was banned was an advert which said:
“Prayer can heal”
And then gave a list of ailments it claimed could be healed.
These people are perfectly allowed to make that claim. But they are not allowed to make medical claims in adverts unless they can provide a basic level of proof that their claims are true.
If you think that all products advertised (and yes, faith healing is a “product” in marketing terms) should have to be able to prove the claims they make then you should apply that equally.
So either you are asking for a special rule for Christians (not other religions, just Christians) or you are asking for the entire system of regulation to be scrapped.
If you’re advocating the latter then you open advertising to all sorts of charlatans and quacks. For example, I’d be able to make an advert claiming that Christians have small brains and low IQs and that reading the Bible and going to Church causes cancer, erectile dysfunction and bird flu. And as long as I professed to believe it then, by your logic, I should be allowed to air adverts claiming it without any proof whatsoever.
Spidey says:
Give me one piece of proof that says prayer cannot heal and I will take your point. The fact is that you cant. The power of prayer is incredibly strong for many people and has also been proven to have positive mental effects (that often translate physically as any psychologist will tell you) so your point is rooted firmly in the anti religion camp.
Just because you do not believe in something, does not mean it therefore does not exist. We live in a free and liberal society and banning religious freedoms is a dangerous precedent to set. Even more so when that behaviour is being advocated by people who claim to be ‘liberal’ democrats
George Potter says:
P.S.
Personal accounts and unverifiable individual experiences are what we like to call “anecdotes”.
A bunch of wildly differing personal accounts do not have the same weight as scientific, randomised trials on thousands of people.
Lots of people claim to have seen lizardmen disguised as human beings and who are secretly ruling the world but I don’t see why their personal accounts of it should be viewed as equal to a peer reviewed study.
Because that’s the point of medical trials – to find out what works and what doesn’t.
Everything that has been tested and found to work is what we like to call “medicine”. Everything which doesn’t work is called “bullshit”.
Spidey says:
Once again you cannot equate a faith based argument with a medical one. And frankly i find your comparison of faith based beliefs with lizardmen distasteful George.
Science cannot prove or disprove faith. Thats where your argument falls down. Also, science is not always right and should never be assumed as such. To do so is arrogance in the extreme and belittles the faith of millions of people like me. Thats illiberal
Douglas McLellan says:
The problem is not faith. The problem is that there is a danger of people seeing faith healing as a viable alternative to medical intervention. Now, every medical intervention in the UK has had to go through extensive tests to show what happens to a person during that intervention. Therefore, when a person is offered that treatment, there is a high degree of certainty of what will happen.
There is no degree of certainty about what will happen with faith healing. Furthermore, any claim that faith healing will work on an individual who sees that poster cannot, fairly, cite a single example of a previous person healed by faith as a comparison. The reason for this is based on what faith is. It would be easy to find a devout person who claimed that their faith healed them. But would God heal a rapist that had not been caught, had not been punished and not feel remorseful of the same aliment that the faithful person had been cured of?
Proper actual studies have shown no effect of healing by prayer and an actual drop in health by those who knew they were being prayed for – vhttp://web.med.harvard.edu/sites/RELEASES/html/3_31STEP.html
There is also the issue of the vulnerable who fervently believe in the message of God when it is given to them: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14406818
If a church leader wants to stand in front of a congregation and lead prayers for an ill person, then thats up to them. If a religious family wants to do likewise for a friend or relative, then fine.
But to offer an alternative to medicine as a viable healing route is both wrong and dangerous which is why it should be banned.
Spidey says:
As i mentioned to you on twitter this morning before blocking you for being rude, you cannot prove any of that any more than i can prove that Santa Claus exists. You are forgetting the fundamental part of the issue here in that religion is based on faith. Faith is not quantifiable by a medical study. Faith is not measurable by Harvard or any other institution that seeks to debunk what millions of people have followed for thousands of years.
The two things cannot be compared as they are incomparable. When we challenge the rights of religious people to exercise their right to free speech we set a dangerous and illiberal precendent. For some faith IS a viable alternative to medicine if they choose it. Its about the right of the individual to make their own decisions. Thats also what being liberal is about. Any liberal who forgets that should take a long hard look at the themselves.
As I also stated earlier. Had this been done to a muslim there would have been uproar (rightly). However it seems that in this day and age, christians (and according to the last census thats 70% of the UK population btw) are fair game. I can never condone that.
Douglas McLellan says:
I wasnt being rude. You were losing the debate. I have to be honest and say I wouldn’t care which religion sought to act in this way, I would be critical of it for doing so. Just as I speak to the Witnesses when they knock on my door I attend local Mosque opendays to speak to them about their faith. Don’t get all persecuted.
Although I have yet to see a non-Christian faith advertise faith healing sessions they have prayers as part of their worship and some of the prayers are about those friends and family that are sick. That is part of their faith.
And thats the issue here. I am not attacking your interpretation of your faith (not every Christian I know believes in faith healing). I am defending those are ill from a potentially fatal intervention.There is a leader of a church of your faith who told people that God had healed them. They died. People need protection from that type of religious abuse.
Spidey says:
I want losing the debate in the slightest and cant on earth think why you would even think that frankly. I’d also point out that I havent actually come out and said that i believe faith healing personally. I believe in the power of prayer and that is a very different thing entirely. However, I DO suport the right of religious people to speak freely about what they believe in without fear of censorship from those who seek to remove religion from society altogether.
George Potter says:
Spidey there is plenty of proof that prayer does not have any beneficial effect. Here’s one example looking at 10 years of research:
http://rsw.sagepub.com/content/17/2/174.abstract
Prayer has been proven to perform no better than placebo. To make medical claims in adverts the standard is that the product has to significantly outperform placebo.
“Give me one piece of proof that says prayer cannot heal and I will take your point.”
So there you are. One example.
And please, don’t assume that just because I disagree with you that I’m in the anti-religion camp.
I believe in God, albeit a different one to yours. But I also am sane enough to grasp the fact that there is no more proof for prayer healing people than there is for lizard men running the world.
Science cannot prove or disprove faith. But what it can do is prove or disprove specific claims. And the claim that prayer heals cannot be proven and therefore falls below the requirements for the universal ASA regulations that apply to all adverts. Unless you can actively prove a claim then you can’t advertise it. Simple.
And, for the record, there is nothing illiberal about belittling faith. In any case, that’s not what I’m doing. I’m just belittling the small group of illiterates who think they should be exempt from the rules that apply to everyone else simply because their particular sacred text tells them that they should. Incidentally, do you think claims in the Qu’ran, the Satanic Bible, the Torah and the writings of druids also be allowed to be presented as fact in adverts simply because some people believe in them?
In any event, if we want to operate purely on the basis of what religion tells us is true then you, as a woman, according to your own bible, should be denied the right to vote, be treated as a chattel by your husband and should be forced to marry someone who rapes you on pain of being stoned to death.
Spidey says:
It still not proof. Its also worth pointing out that the very study you quote is by the medical profession so again i point you to the vested interest point.
I am perfectly sane and resent the implication that I am not simply because i dare to believe that faith and prayer can have a positive impact on someone who is ill. Science can not disprove specific claims especially with regards to prayer. Faith is not quantifiable by science as by its very nature it is outside of the scope of investigation.
There is everything illiberal about allowing people of faith to publicise the works of their church. It suppresses religious freedom. And yes, info portrayed as fact in the Qu’ran can be portrayed as fact by their religions if that is what they believe! Thats the beauty of faith! We don’t get to disagree just because we don’t believe it, thats the fact of it.
Paul Wright says:
I’d read the ASA’s ruling at http://asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications/2012/2/Healing-on-the-Streets_Bath/SHP_ADJ_158433.aspx
This does not call Christians names or claim that science has disproved faith healing. The mere fact that these claims were “faith based” doesn’t mean they weren’t medical claims: the ads mentioned specific diseases which could be cured, for example. The ASA said that there was no evidence other than anecdotes, and therefore that the ads were misleading, because anecdotes are not good evidence for medical claims. This is the same standard they apply to any other medical claim: it’s up to the advertisers to give evidence that it works, not up to the ASA to show it doesn’t (though in fact, studies show that prayer doesn’t work for helping heart patients, at least).
The ASA’s code protects people from dubious medical claims. It’s a good thing that advertisers cannot say “Use Snake Oil! It cures cancer!” without evidence that it does, and the same applies to “Try prayer!” It’s good for advertising to be truthful so that people don’t waste their time and money, independently of whether people might give up conventional treatments for cancer, say. But there certainly are people who get odd ideas about alternative treatments and do give up on medicine, and these people have sometimes been influenced by religious ideas: the Kara Neumann case is a particularly tragic example.
Spidey says:
No one can deny that there is a small minority of people using faith to peddle falsehoods, This happens in all faiths not just christianity. My issue here, as i said is that we cannot stifle religious freedom. There is no hard fast scientific prof that prayer does not work and it is not for disbelievers to say that something should be banned. Challenge it yes, but ban it now.
You cannot quantify faith with medicine as the two are entirely different.
Jennie says:
I want you to explain to me in clear terms what is illiberal about asking Christians to stick to the same rules as everyone else? The advert in question wasn’t making a faith based argument, it was making a medical argument. People DIE when this sort of thing is allowed to happen. What is Christian about advocating that?
Spidey says:
It wasn’t making a medical argument. It was making a faith based statement. The two are very different. If it was a religious medical centre making the claim then perhaps there would be a point. But it wasn’t. We are talking about churches and church groups offering faith healing. a very different thing.
Please dont go all hyperbolic and claim people start dying. There are a tiny number of people who suffer as a result of faith healing compared to the number who benefit from it both spiritually and mentally. If you seriously think that any christian group is advocating killing anyone, then i think you have read a different version to christianity to the one that i am more than familiar with. And thats a shame. We aren’t all two headed monsters living in Waco you know.
Jennie says:
Hyperbole?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14406818
I think not.
Actual people have actually died when churches intervene to use faith healing instead of medicine. Which is what this particular church in the ASA row was trying to do. I don’t want to stop any Christians from praying for healing if they want to, I just want to stop them telling people it’s a more effective treatment for AIDA than drugs. Because it’s not.
Spidey says:
Yes, hyperbole. One incidence cannot be taken as a fact of complicity or guilt for every religion in the land.
The ASA cannot regulate faith its as simple as that. As Stephen Tall pointed out this afternoon, the posters did no such thing and the reaction from people screaming that ‘people have died as a result of this kind of stuff’ is exactly what I said it us. Hyperbole and hysteria.
Don’t tar all christians with the same brush
Paul Wright says:
You haven’t explained why the ASA should exempt faith healing from their rules on medical claims, other than by saying “It’s different”. If I start a religion which claims that God revealed to me the ingredients of a potion which can cure cancer, and I advertise this, should I be immune from the ASA’s regulations because I’m making a statement of my faith? What about if it’s some holy water I’ve blessed with my special ritual? Perhaps only Christian claims which should be exempt?
People do start dying or being less healthy when they rely on faith healing, though this HOTS group did say that people should still go to their doctor. The ASA felt that because they made claims about specific conditions, they could still risk people with those conditions (or with symptoms) thinking they’d been healed and not consulting doctors.
Many of your responses seem to be to things your opponents aren’t saying (i.e. that Christians advocate killing people, Christians are all weirdos, science has disproved faith healing (I said it has, the ASA doesn’t say that)). These are what are called Straw Man arguments: if you say your opponents hold a ridiculous position they don’t actually hold and attack that, it’s generally regarded as cheating.
Spidey says:
It’s obvious you’ve not read what people have been saying then. Anyway.
You simply cannot ask the ASA to regulate on something it and, no one else for that matter, can prove, or deny as it is a matter of faith. To do so is stifling religious freedom.
George Potter says:
Spidey, you asked me for one concrete example and I gave you one.
You then shifted the goal posts to claim that the fact that because it was by scientists (e.g. people trained in following the scientific method to prove something works or not).
So this shows how close-minded and blinkered you are being on two different counts.
The first is that the study I linked to is a meta-study looking at dozens of different studies – many of which were funded by religious organisations or individuals seeking to actively prove that prayer works. So therefore if there was a vested interest it was a vested interest in supporting your argument, not disproving it. And, on top of that, if prayer healing could be proved to work then the scientists who discovered and proved it would stand to make an absolute fortune. Which just goes to disprove even further the assertion that there’s a vested interest.
On top of that, you can look at their data yourself. You can see how they performed the studies. If you can see a flaw in the study which shows bias then you might have an argument. But you can’t.
Moving on to the second way in which you are being blinkered, the simple fact that you’ve moved the goalpost to exclude any evidence by scientists or doctors means that you’ve excluded any independent third party from being able attempt to prove or disprove it.
Which means that the only way you can prove or disprove that prayer heals is by anecdote – and anecdotes are worthless in terms of proof as they can easily be falsified. For example, people claim that they have seen lizard men masquerading as police officers. People claim that the sugar pills they sell have cured cancer. People claim that vibrating crystals will have cured rheumatism.
But you can’t prove any of those statements based on anecdotes – because, and this is the shocking bit, people LIE, or MAKE THINGS UP, or MISINTERPRET WHAT HAS HAPPENED.
So basically what you’re saying is this:
“I believe that prayer heals. Some people claim it doesn’t and claim to have proved it doesn’t but those people are wrong and can’t be trusted. The reason they are wrong and can’t be trusted is because I say so. So since I believe this to be true, I should be allowed to make adverts saying it is true. Some people say that only medical claims that can be proved should be allowed to be made in adverts but these people ignore the fact that I am certain that prayer heals and have a story from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend that proves it. If you disagree with me and say that that isn’t enough proof for me to be allowed to make an advert then you are illiberal and discriminating against me.”
That’s the argument you’re making. It’s the argument of the level that a child would make.
On the basis of your argument I could say that my urine heals people if they drink it and make an advert saying the same thing. Scientists and doctors might say I’m wrong but they’re just biased against what I *know* to be true.
And, even if my claim isn’t true, it doesn’t matter because drinking urine doesn’t hurt people (it’s a sterile liquid).
Which actually makes it better than the claim that prayer heals because the claim that prayer heals has led to numerous deaths:
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2012/03/27/this-is-why-the-mps-letter-on-prayer-healing-is-so-dangerous/
No doubt you’ll try and find some way to say that I’m being offensive (by the way “this offends me” is not the same as “this is offensive”) or that I’m missing the point.
But the fact is that you asked me for one specific example proving that prayer doesn’t work. I provided you with one, verifiable, open and transparent, example and then you moved the goalposts.
Now answer me the following two questions please:
1) What does moving the goal posts say about your willingness to engage in reasoned debate?
2) What kind of proof would you accept to prove that prayer cannot be proved to work? (Because proving that something actively works is the standard you need for adverts).
Spidey says:
Ok, I’ll keep this brief.
1. Its not a concrete example. Its an example made by the medical profession which has a vested interest in disproving religion.
2. I am not closed minded or blinkered. I have a faith and you cannot shake it by trying shove flawed scientific arguments down my throat
3. Scientist cannot and never will be able to confirm or deny faith healing/prayer works because they can’t. Its faith not science, two very different things
4. Medical science has no place in a debate about faith. The same rules simply do not apply.
5. People can claim all they like, if they believe in something it is not for the rest of society to say they are wrong. That is censorship
In answer to your particular questions:
1) What does moving the goal posts say about your willingness to engage in reasoned debate?
If by moving the goal posts you mean my pointing out the startling inaccuracies in what you have said, along with your clear religious intolerance, then I am happy to be branded as such. The problem with your brand of atheism is that you prefer an aggressive stance to get your point across and forceful language. That won’t work with me.
2) What kind of proof would you accept to prove that prayer cannot be proved to work? (Because proving that something actively works is the standard you need for adverts).
As a person of faith there is NO proof that you can give me (or anyone else) that prayer does not work. That is the long and short of it. That doesn’t make me closed and narrow minded. That makes me a christian. Deal with it. I suspect that is your problem in this and not mine!
George Potter says:
Thanks for admitting that when you asked me to provide one example you were already determined to ignore any and all answers. And if you can’t see how that is close minded then you really are ignorant.
FYI, I am not an atheist. Far from it. You have no idea what I believe in.
Oh, just one last thing. When you say:
“trying shove flawed scientific arguments down my throat”
I can’t help but laugh. I know you won’t get it but I’m sure that most people will see the irony in that when this whole debate has been about a minority of Christians insisting they have the right to shove flawed, spiritual based, medical claims down the throats of everyone else.
What you’re after here is special treatment for religious groups. Saying you’re not more special than no one else is not intolerance.
So grow up and accept it.
Spidey says:
And now that you have resorted to petty name calling I shan’t respond to any more comments.
You simply don’t get that when you have a faith, you cannot be swayed by arguments designed to change your mind, not broaden it.
Minority of christians? In the last census 70% of people in the UK said that they were ‘christian’ of some kind. I suggest to you that you are in the minority here.
I don’t want social treatment at all, I want respect for my faith. Telling me to grow up says you are the one who is flawed not I.
George Potter says:
Let me be clear, when I say a minority of Christians I mean that out of the Christians in this country, only a minority are extreme and ridiculous enough to think that they should be exempt from the advertising regulations which apply to everyone else.
Most Christians, however, don’t think they should receive special treatment. And it is people like you who tarnish their name by association. And that’s without getting into how ludicrous the idea is that God personally intervenes to heal select people (allegedly saving Muamba while ignoring the plenty of others who die while people are praying for them) and yet can’t be bothered to do anything about something like HIV or tuberculosis.
Still, if you want to believe that then good for you. Just don’t demand special treatment because of it and certainly don’t steal liberal language to try and paint people who disagree with you as bigoted freedom haters. Persecution is being nailed to a cross and left there to die in the hot sun. It is not being denied the right to make medical claims without first providing proof that they are true.
Spidey says:
I’ll keep telling you this until you get it into your head. I appreciate that you might not have the capacity to abosrd such information but I will try for the sake of fairness.
1. I am not in the minority.
2. I am neither ridiculous or extreme.
3. Prayer is a fundamental part of Christianity and all christians believe in its power.
4. Advertising regulations do not apply to matters of faith (in this case particularly as no ‘medical’ service is being offerred. I remind you again, no one was offerring a medical service. It is a prayer offering and therefore the claim by you and others that the ASA is right is factually incorrect before you even start. Faith and prayer are not governed by the same rules as medical practitioners. To do so is the sanctioning of religious freedoms and illiberal.
5. Christians don’t want special treatment. We do however want to be able to practice and spread the message of our faith freely without censorship
6. God has the power to heal and save all people.
7. No one ever claimed that Muamba was directly saved by the power of prayer and its disingenuous of you to suggest they did.
8. Have you ever considered that those diseases you mention are here for a purpose. Perhaps our challenge is to use the intelligence that God gave us to find a cure. Perhaps that is His plan for us instead of saving everyone single handedly. God gives us the tools for the job, we dont expect him to do all the work for us you know!
9. I’m not stealing any liberal language but your agressive tone and stance has been clear from the start. I however, remain calm and strong in my faith. Who is angry here me or you? I know it is not me despite what impression you may have formed of me from others on the LD grapevine.
10. I am happy and confident that my faith will see me through in living my life in a good and honest way. I have the tools I need to do this from my faith. Attacking me and branding me a lunatic will do nothing to change that and only furthers my resolve that I am right and strong in my faith. I am sorry for you that you feel that you need to attack the faith in this way.
Paul Wright says:
You simply cannot ask the ASA to regulate on something it and, no one else for that matter, can prove, or deny as it is a matter of faith.
This does seem to mean you think that my divinely-inspired healing potion or holy water which cures cancer would be OK to advertise as long as I said it was a matter of faith. In that case, I’m glad that the ASA disagrees.
I’m a bit curious about these beliefs you apparently have: that if something is a matter of faith, it doesn’t require evidence, and that religious claims can neither be proved nor disproved. I don’t see any reason why either of things would be true, given normal standards of proof (what I mean is that we can rarely be absolutely sure about anything, but this doesn’t stop us having good reasons for believing things we’re not absolutely sure of).
Have you come across the Biblical story of Elijah and the priests of Baal (Baal being a rival god in the Old Testament)? Elijah does an experiment and shows that God can do things which Baal can’t. Do you suppose that, if the story were true, it would wrong to deny the claims of the priests of Baal and to accept the claims of Elijah? Or is it wrong to deny the Baal worshippers’ faith?
This argument comes from an essay called Religion’s claim to be non-disproveable, which is worth reading, I think: faith claims are as provable or disprovable as any others, as far as I can tell.
Spidey says:
Your missing the point again as I’ve clearly stated. Faith and science are two different Things and one cannot quantify the other.
The advert was not a medical one it was a church on. Healers on the Streets advocate praying for people who are sick and acknowledge the power of prayer – a strong thing for many Christians.
This is the thin end of the wedge. If atheists and secularists had their way all religious advertising would be banned and that, however you want to portray it is illiberal.
I draw your attention to Tim Farrons piece on LDV which substantiates my point in a more articulate way than I could ever write. I stand firmly beside Tim Farron on this.
Richard Morris says:
Hi Spidey
I have a bit of a different take on all this. The ASA isn’t trying to teach Doctors and Christians differently. It’s trying to teach Christians and atheists the same. As I’ve explained here… http://aviewfromhamcommon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/row-ive-been-trying-to-stay-out-of-and.html
Spidey says:
Thanks for the comments Richard. I only wish that others were seeing it this way. As you can see from the comments I have had here that has not been the case. So far I have been called nearly every anti christian name under the sun simply because I am a person of faith.