Church claims blackcurrant juice cures cancer and HIV!
More evidence of the pernicious effects of religion
Firstly a big thank you to Jake Farr-Wharton of the Secular World Podcast for forwarding me this story. If you do not listen or subscribe to the Secular World Podcast I highly recommend it as it is the official podacast of the AAI to which we affiliate.
Apparently a church is claiming that a combination of olive oil, blackcurrant juice and prayer cures cancer and HIV. Not in some small town in the southern USA, not a tribal village in Uganda, but in … MANCHESTER! That’s right, a church in the UK promotes faith healing through small purple berries! Full Story in the Mail Online
Firstly this is a clear reason why an organization such as ours is needed in the UK; it does happen here too folks! This insanity may potentially cost lives.
Now the London-based pastor (why is it when I hear the word pastor my brain leaps to thoughts I won’t publish due to potential legal problems?), who lives in a £1.8 million home by the way, is making claims that are potential offences under the Cancer Act 1939.
Now some of his congregants have leapt to his defence (suprise surprise), stating they have abandoned thier cancer medication (I hope they return to it before it’s too late!) and in some cases been completely healed. To answer this I can think of no better way to round off this post with a quote from Tim Minchin’s song “Thank You God”:
This story of Sam’s has but a single explanation:
A surgical God who digs on magic operations
No, it couldn’t be mistaken attribution of causation
Born of a coincidental temporal correlation
Exacerbated by a general lack of education
Vis-a-vis physics in Sam’s parish congregation
And it couldn’t be that all these pious people are liars
It couldn’t be an artefact of confirmation bias
A product of groupthink,
A mass delusion,
An Emperor’s New Clothes-style fear of exclusionNo, it’s more likely to be an all-powerful magician
Than the misdiagnosis of the initial condition,
Or one of many cases of spontaneous remission,
Or a record-keeping glitch by the local physician
It’s even worst than I thought!
Any ideas about how we do something about this?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19656649
There are such events as spontaneous remission. These could possibly attributed to a radical change in (harmful) diet and lifestyle once diagnosed, or resting more, or getting more love ‘n’ hugs from loved ones – all can contribute to health.
What pisses me off is how religionists hijack an apparently unusual occurrence, proclaim it a miracle and jabber about how it proves the existence and benevolence of their god.