If we don’t allow certain practices from some religions, why do we allow dangerous practices from other religions? Various religious practices are privileged over others. Some are allowed to practice dangerous behaviours, such as snake handling and faith healing. Some of these trends have been appropriated by non-religious groups. According to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, as of June 2015, 48 states allow for a religious exemption from mandatory vaccinations. These laws are somewhat different in their scope of what constitutes a religious belief. This is partially what lead to the narrowing of the religious exemption laws in California earlier this year. The law was written broadly so that anyone who, regardless of declared religious status, disagreed with vaccination would be allowed to forgo vaccinating their children. In a similar vein, 39 states have on the books religious exemptions from receiving medical care wherein parents could not be charged with abuse or neglect if their child suffered illness or injury and received no medical treatment.

Part of the answer lies in the mistrust of modern medicine. It is of my own opinion that a particular religion, Christian Science, developed in response to the atrocity that passed for medicine in the late 1800s. Christian Scientists believe that illness is not real and thus doctors and medicine are absolutely useless. Medicine has come a long way since the late 1800s, however. We have antibiotics, anesthetic, and vaccinations now. Regardless, medical science denial continues. It has been incorporated into secular systems of denial, as found in the anti-vaccination, holistic, and alternative medicine paradigms.

You can see science and medicine deniers all the time. I recently read about a mother whose young daughter had strep throat. She posted a question to an holistic group on the internet about how to handle it because, at four years old, she did not want to subject her daughter to much more doctors and “poisonous” medication. Strep throat is generally easily treatable. This mother had taken her daughter to the doctor to confirm the diagnosis, yet she refused the treatment that was advised. Instead, she turned to the “general public” for advice. The responses ranged from “chicken soup” to “colloidal silver” to be sprayed down the child’s throat. This was a not a Christian Science group or family. Instead, she is part of a cultural group that mistrusts medicine enough that they will seek only “natural alternatives” to medicine driven by empiricism. One of the most controversial groups within this cultural niche is the anti-vaccination group. The anti-vaccination group uses so-called skepticism to back up their practice because it is not an actual religious belief that informs their actions. They hide behind a poorly understood conception of skepticism to make the claim that vaccines do more harm than good. While I will not go into the details of that here, I will say that this is likely the case because they actually have a poor understanding of science.

Many of the responses provided their anecdotal testimony or hearsay of a wide variety of non-medical treatments working. Strep throat will probably resolve on it’s own, but not without unnecessary suffering especially given the medical technology we have today. These are individuals who are claiming that since they provide “evidence”, they must be using science to determine the truth-value of these curative claims. In other words, they are going with, “because this worked for me this one time with that one cold, it must work on all cases and it’s scientific because I saw it with my own eyes and understand how this works.” Coincidentally, the method of testimony is one of the driving tactics used by the Christian Science church to demonstrate the success of prayer over medical interventions, in all cases.

However, this is not how science works. This is how fear and confirmation bias and self-limiting conditions work. This is the sort of testimony that leads to outbreaks of disease that can be prevented. Why do these particular people think they are correct, though? I think part of that answer lies in the poor scientific understanding the American people have. Our national grades in science proficiency are not so great. One need only look at the latest science poll results to see that in the United States, faith trumps fact more often than is safe.

In a society where freedom of religion is major priority, how are we to handle such a situation, especially if those religious beliefs entail a complete and total refute of science? Well, part of living in a society, as an individual who is part of a whole, is compromise. Isaiah Berlin, a 20th century British Philosopher, claimed that we are not free to be irrational. If you want to live in society, you must perform your due diligence and be responsible to the other people in your society. You should not be allowed to reap the rewards of living in a cooperative society if you are not going to be responsible for yourself. In this way, people who do not vaccinate their children should not receive the benefit of public schooling where children are together for many hours a day in high risk areas for spreading illness. Christian Science children are kept home during times of outbreak even without government say so. Science and basic health are taught (or used to be taught) in classrooms across the nation. Somewhere along the line we got confused and decided that opinion and gut feeling meant more than fact and objectivity. Part of being a responsible member of society is learning how to be in a society and cooperate with others. This means learning to care for yourself. We have science and medicine for a reason. They are amazing tools that help us remain healthy. We should use these tools more often.