A headline out of Bakersfield, Calif. comes as close to saying it all as nine words can: Christian pediatrician denies child service because parents are tattooed.

Although this performance unquestionably ranks sky-high on the Human Circus Factor^tm scale, there's nothing entertaining about it. It's sick in any applicable sense and poignantly underscores just how backward people can behave under the auspices of freedom.

There's a lengthy discussion about this at Pharyngula. Most of the comments center on parsing whether the doctor's behavior was ethical and reprehensible or unethical and reprehensible. (There's a hint in those two choices.) People have dutifully produced and pored over the American Medical Association Code of Ethics and how it applies; some have invoked the obligatory libertarian points about the doctor, Gary Merrill, being free to do whatever he wants given the parameters of the situation as described.

Here are the facts as they appear:

• A plainly ill child was sent to a specific doctor by her medical insurance carrier.
  
• The doctor refused to treat the child on the basis of his religious beliefs as they pertained to the child's mother, who had a tattoo.
  
• The same doctor has previously treated patients with tattoos, to say nothing of their relatives.
  
• Among people in no disagreement that the doctor is unfathomably backward, a hearty discussion of proper ethics ensues.

Many Christians would eagerly and unhappily point out that Merrill was in no way acting in accordance with prevailing Christian beliefs. They would probably agree that he was, by his own admission, concerned solely with operating a maximally profitable business whose bottom line was, in his view, potentially threatened by the presence in his office of a woman with three small artifical marks behind her ear. It would be difficult to accept were even a cosmetic surgeon to operate in such a capriciously evil manner. But a pediatrician?

The answer to the question "What would Jesus do?" is eminently clear to conscientious Christians. Let's take a step back, though, because that question, and the points in the preceding paragraph, miss the point: Is it ever ethical for people for people trained to help others to refuse that help based on a subjective and shoddy interpretation of what a historically absent superbeing might want?

The point is that it is utterly insane to even permit beliefs predicated on the supernatural into any discussion of ethics, period. Forget that Merrill professes Christianity in particular; forget that it's once again religion being put under the gun by a rigidly skeptical blogger. Even were Merrill's application of scripture found to be above reproach by fundamentalists, theologians, and laypersons alike, purporting to base conduct on whimsical, ineffable mythology is a stain on a society that itself purports to be humanistic and progressive. If people think that ethical standards were not violated in this instance, I defy those people to support any claim that we do not need to radically redefine them.

A moot but instructive thought experiment: A woman wearing a large cross around her neck happens upon a physican for a scheduled appointment for her infant, who is running a fever of 104 (that's 40 for those of you in progressive nations). The doctor tells her he thinks religion is stupid and points to a sign on the wall that says "Freethinkers only; this is America" and tells her to go elsewhere. In the past hour, he has treated a woman in Hindu garb and a man in a yarmulke, both of whom appeared affluent.

Do we imagine that this situation, upon its details reaching highly educated people, would devolve into little more than banter about whether good ethics were observed? If we rightfully presume that it certainly would not, then the "conversation" Sam Harris implores us as humans to initiate and rigorously maintain desperately needs to take place, beginning 2,000 years ago or more.

Some would recommend taking aim at the doctor's medical license, but that alone, even were it clearly warranted, would do nothing to solve the greater problem, and could likely worsen it. Enough continued discussion of this problem might.

If we are prepared to allow persistent fantasies conceived and promulgated by cave-dwellers and their descendants in spirit and theocratic politics into any concept of ethics, than we might as well fold up the entire tent we call advanced civilization and start anew from the muck and mire of our forebears. If it is reasonable to predicate so ostensibly valuable a term as "ethics" on the unknowable whims of malefic -- or for that matter, morally unimpeachable -- dictators who exist in doctrinal writings only, then we are obligated to excuse every Islamic suicide bomber who is surely acting just as ethically with every fatal tug of the ring in Tel-Aviv.

You say, "that's a strawman analogy," and I answer, "that's where it inevitably leads." History and a boundless wealth of current events paint you as a fifth-degree fool.

"Ethics" can be rewritten and as ostensibly objective principles are no less malleable than the DSM-IV criteria for various versions of "crazy." Humanism? That grasps something a little more unyielding and a lot more desirable, but one wonders how timeless a concept it, or anything, will prove to be, given the tenor of prevailing minds.