The President is fond of using the ‘F’ word. I’m not talking about Family or Fundamentalism. I’m talking about Faith. It’s so much softer and vaguer, so much more soothing to talk about ‘faith-based programs.’ If we called them what they are, religion-based programs, we’d all wake up. ‘Which religion?’ we would ask. ‘Are my tax dollars going to the Church of the Terminally Self-Satisfied?’ What about us atheists? Can we get tax money for our lack of faith? Why not? And all of us who follow the one true religion, do we have to subsidize heretics? Is that fair?

But ‘faith’ has such a sweet and relaxing sound. It kind of blurs everything and puts brain cells to sleep. If we are good Americans in the Bush years, we will stay narcotized except when it’s time to go shopping. I look forward to a Great Awakening soon. Here’s a story that screams like a three a.m. smoke alarm that something needs to change.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Although 11 year-old Madeline Kara Neumann suffered from a type of diabetes, the young Wisconsin girl’s condition was readily treatable by conventional medicine. Her parents, however, describing themselves as people of deep religious faith, opted instead to rely solely upon their prayers to God that she would be healed.

Sadly, Madeline died late last month from what an autopsy concluded was diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition characterized by inadequate insulin levels in the blood.

The questions raised by Madeline’s needless death have been asked countless times before after similar reliance on prayer alone produced similarly tragic results.

Another story on the net today…

Carl Worthington, 28, and Raylene Worthington, 25, pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of manslaughter and criminal mistreatment. They are alleged to have prayed for their 15-month-old daughter’s recovery from bacterial bronchial pneumonia and a blood infection, according to The Oregonian newspaper. Ava Worthington died March 2 at home from conditions that could have been treated with antibiotics, according to a deputy state medical examiner.

And a tragic and notorious case regarding a religious cult several years ago in Attleboro, Massachusetts.

Witnesses began appearing in front of a Bristol County grand jury last week with prosecutors hoping to prove that Robidoux’s extended following refused to nourish 18-month-old Samuel Robidoux before he died, and buried the boy alongside his stillborn cousin, Jeremiah Corneau, during an October vigil to Maine.

The point is that faith can be a bad thing when it causes people to close their eyes to reality. It’s not good to say, ‘I have faith’ as you walk off a cliff or neglect your child. With all the flaws in modern medicine, it would be a much worse system if people just took it on faith that their doctor was always right. Children would be worse off if parents weren’t skeptical and questioning and vigilant in their children’s best interest. But medicine is supposed to be evidence-based, not faith-based. That’s why it’s always changing as new information becomes available.

Faith that persists when the ground crumbles under your feet and all reasonable people turn back is not a good thing. It’s not right to ‘stay the course’ when you are on the wrong course. We have been operating on faith-based politics for too long. The language of idealism, whether it’s democracy, freedom, or faith, appeals to the heart, but we have a brain too, and we are responsible for using it.