Deepak Chopra and our National Health

Derek Lowe, a chemist in the pharmaceutical field, writes this article against an op-ed piece by Deepak Chopra (among others) about how to handle our nation's health in the new Administration. Really, the article boils down to a fight for Western medicine against "holistic" medicine, but that's not wholly what I find fascinating.

Well, we don’t even know who the new FDA commissioner is going to be under the Obama administration, but people are already making their bid for a change in direction......My hopes for this piece were not high – Deepak Chopra, for one, I consider to be an absolute firehose of nonsense. Both he and Andrew Weil should be whacked with sticks every time they say the word "quantum".....

Our culture is always having fights about what worldview we should believe in. Note: I didn't say world religion, and our culture is confused on this point. Not all believe in a "religion," per se (and I don't want to hear any Christian blather about how Chrisitianity is a relationship and not a religion. It's both.), but everyone in the entire world has a worldview. We all have either explicit or implicit answers to the following questions: What do we believe about God (he's one God, he's many gods, he's in everything, there's no god at all, etc.)? What do we believe about humanity (inherently good, inherently bad, a little of both)? What do you think about the need for some kind of human liberation (no need at all, removal of sin, a higher consciousness, following a set of regulations, etc.)? So everyone has a worldview, and so here's what I liked about that article: it seems to be a fight of naturalism versus new age. Because Christianity was historically the dominant worldview in the West and presently a powerful voting bloc in this country, generally Christianity must take its lumps against both new age in the media (ie Oprah) and takes its lumps against naturalism at the University (ie Darwinian macro-evolution). I suppose I just appreciate it when the two are fighting one another. As for my take on medicine?

Science and empirical testing came out of the prominence of the Christian worldview. We believe the world is testable and repeatable, because it was made by a dependable God who cares about beauty. And we also believe humans are made in the image of God, and therefore capable of knowing more about the universe that we live in through science. But I also believe in miracles and God's intervention into the natural order. So, medicine must go hand in hand with an open view of the universe. Chemicals can heal and make us better, but so can God. They are not opposed, but rather they can work together. And I believe they do so more than we care to admit.