Arely Hernandez - Three-year-old victim of religious/superstitious beliefs and actions.
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Beliefs are very important because they are very powerful. They are powerful because they determine what our actions are. Our actions impact not only ourselves, but often they impact other people and the world itself.
If our beliefs are based upon reason, our actions will be rational and more than likely they will be helpful and beneficial to ourselves and to others and to the world in general. An example of this would be a parent who wants to provide a home and food for their children. They rationally know that to provide for their children they need to work in order to get money which enables them to pay for a home and food for their child or children. Their innate God-given reason makes this clear to them. If they decide not to follow their reason and do not work, they will harm themselves and their children by not being able to provide the necessities of life for themselves and their children.
Likewise, if a parent decides to suppress their gift from God of innate reason, or if they are not aware that God gave them their reason, and they decide to believe in irrational ideas and beliefs that are found in the "holy" books of the various "revealed" religions, such as the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible, the Quran or the Book of Mormon, they will accept as true dangerous falsehoods promoted by those irrational "holy" books.
A tragically sad case in point is a Christian Bible-believing mother who is a Pentecostal Christian, Claudia Elisa Hernandez. She belongs to the Pentecostal church Iglesia Evangelica Apostoles y Profetas in San Jose, California. Her three-year-old daughter, Arely Naomi Proctor Hernandez (pictured above) would occasionally wake up in the night crying or screaming. Because her mother was a woman of faith, and not of God-given reason, her beliefs were grounded in the irrational and nonsensical Christian Bible. The Christian Bible teaches believers that Satan, demons and evil spirits are very real. This irrational Bible-based belief caused the little girl's mother to believe a reason for her daughter waking up in the middle of the night crying or screaming could be that the little girl was possessed by Satan or an evil spirit. The Christian Bible, which Hernandez incorrectly believes is the Word of God, teaches that to get rid of evil spirits, demons, etc., an exorcism is necessary. After all, the Christian Bible claims Jesus himself performed exorcisms to rid people of demons. With these irrational Bible-based beliefs in mind, Hernandez took Arely to their Pentecostal church, where the little girl's grandfather is the leading pastor, for an exorcism. As this article points out, "... Arely's mother and uncle drove her to the church. The girl's mother, uncle, and grandfather held Arely down by her neck, torso, and legs for several hours. They attempted to make her vomit by sticking fingers and hands down her throat." Arely died from this superstitious Bible-based exorcism.
Arely is not the only innocent and helpless child to be killed because of irrational religious beliefs of their parents, beliefs that were acted upon. We have a page up on deism.com about this preventable threat against and danger to children through exorcisms and the preventable threat and deadly danger to children through faith healing. Add to religious beliefs about demons and evil spirits, the religious belief in healing through faith and prayer and it become obvious that Thomas Paine was correct when he wrote in The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition:
"Nonsense ought to be treated as nonsense, wherever it be found; and had this been done in the rational manner it ought to be done, instead of intimating and mincing the matter, as has been too much the case, the nonsense and false doctrine of the Bible, with all the aid that priestcraft can give, could never have stood their ground against the divine reason that God has given to man."
Our minds are like computers. If you put garbage/nonsense in, you get garbage/nonsense out. Deism can correct this deadly problem because it promotes and is based upon our gift from The Supreme Intelligence/God of innate reason. Once people appreciate their innate reason, they will use it. Once they use it, they and their children will be safe from nonsensical beliefs in demons, exorcisms and faith healing. It's up to us, as Deists, to spread Deism to as many people as possible so that we leave the fear-based superstitions of the "revealed" religions in the past, and move on to create a reason and progress based world for everyone.
