GOD, COUNTRY, AND MEDICINE

- From the Theistic perspective



Nietzsche ist Tot!

-Herr Gott

(Nietzsche is Dead!

-God)

Saying found on a 3x5 file card hanging on the door of
18 North Edwards Hall belonging to Alan Myers '65
Princeton University 1963-1965


















ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

[To Freemasonry in general, and to all
my brothers past, present, and future,
this book is lovingly and reverently
dedicated. -RJI]

Q:- Why does a Jew always answer a question with
another question?

A:- Why shouldn't a Jew always answer a question
with another question?

Q:- Are there any bad questions, or the corollary,
are there any good answers? Or might the most
negative attribute which a question can possess be its very shyness to be asked?

To Somewhere
-Leonard E. Nathan

This is the road to Somewhere -
All feet and all hooves
That take it, and all wheels,
Set out for something rare:
The water's source, beauty's riches',
Or one truth in God's many names.
On the way, flies for companions,
The skin, like a separate beast, twitches,
And men brush their streaming eyes,
But see no better through the dust
That cartwheels turn up in a delirious
Riverbed of hot days.
Sometimes, its windows shut tight,
A royal car swerves by, destined
For the beggar's black ditch ahead.
The travellers pass it at midnight,
Emptied of purpose, and they don't care;
They've forgotten all but going, forgotten
The goods that set them forth; in truth,
Forgotten how to stop, but will somewhere.

(Seen in The New York Times many years ago)

WYSIWYG, (what you see is what you get).

-20th century framework of
expectations

The ineluctable modality of the visible.

-Stephen Dedalus pondering
Berkeleyan subjective
idealism in James Joyce's
Ulysses.

...but the Emperor is wearing no clothes!

-Little Boy from the
Fairy Tale "The Emperor's
New Clothes" by the
Brothers Grimm.

Starting at the Beginning

(Bereshit?)

The Pope dies and goes to Heaven. He is warmly greeted at The Pearly Gates by a most regal St. Peter, but then most unceremoniously requested to retreat to the back of the line. A beautiful and truly humble soul in the very shoes of the Fisherman, he meekly makes his way toward the about to be penultimate candidate already on line. No sooner does he arrive when, hark, here comes this pushy, flabby, rather obnoxious little fellow porting a golf club as a cane, while sporting a great flock of crazy white hair, a newly-pressed white smock, and a thick, rather muscular neck surrounded by nothing less than a stethoscope.. This little nuisance then has the almighty gall to force his way to the front of the line, nod to St. Peter, and then pass through without so much as a "please" or a "thankyou very much!" Needless to say the Pope's consternation proves difficult to circumscribe, and he races to confront the original fisherman whose shoes he has just so recently relinquished. "What the H--- is going on?", he blurts out (much to the mildly amused approbation of the queued crowd). "I don't mind waiting my turn. I mean, I was the Pope. That obviously no longer matters very much. Anyway, who was that nerdy, and if I must say, rather cheeky, little ding-dong who just pushed and shoved his way through here?"

"I beg your pardon," said St. Shimon the Rock, forever maintaining his stately, quiet sense of dignity, "but being a Pope DOES matter, and that nerdy, cheeky, little ding-dong was no ordinary, twerpy little ding-dong. That was God Almighty, Himself! He just enjoys playing Doctor every now and again!"

Ever since the early days of recorded history, and, in all likelihood from far before then, there has existed a certain mythical, and, yes, even mystical relationship between religion and medicine. Edmund D. Pellegrino, M.D., Director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, writes in his medical alumni bulletin:- "At least three things give medicine its special moral character: the human experience of illness, the kind of decision and action that healing requires, and the trust that healing entails" (-NYU Physician, p. 42, 1989). The African combination of preacher and doctor has been frequently and well-described in the personage of the venerable "witch-doctor". A prominent medical journal very recently published a double blind, placebo controlled study documenting the healing power of prayer (Randolph C. Byrd, M.D., Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population, Southern Medical Journal, Volume 81, pp.826-829, 1988). When I was in clinical practice, the majority of my patients who needed counseling were referred to priests and ministers (in lieu of psychologists and psychiatrists). Often enough, these same priests and ministers would have post-graduate training and degrees in psychology.

It will be my contention in these pages that medicine's current "fall from grace", if you will, is directly related to what I call the "separation between church and science." This has culminated in the witch-doctor's loss of his magical powers, and thereby, his sense of "priestliness". While the physician lived as an Essenic monk - a true Christian providing his herbs and incantations to all despite ability to pay [to the detriment of his own "quality of life"], he was loved and looked-up to as almost "godlike." "I solemnly pledge myself to consecrate my life to the service of humanity...."(The Declaration of Geneva, Adapted by the General Assembly of the World Medical Association at Geneva, Switzerland, September, 1948). Without his robes a robber be he? - Now, there is a question!

As a layman, a physician becomes heir to slings and arrows which have long been destined for ordinary mortals - including such debasities as litigation and social welfare. As monastics in the very sanctuary of life, itself, however, physicians maintain that aura of holiness that is unreachable by almost any other class of individuals in any society. For those who attempt to materially capitalize upon this position there awaits the humiliation of excommunication and the reassumption of mere mortality.

Additionally, I would like to develop the argument that just as our constitutional fathers have provided for the separation of church and state, so must it be necessary to provide for the separation of medicine and state, to the extent that medicine becomes realigned with religion and physicians reassume the role of clergy. Just as the preacher-congregant relationship is held sacred, sacrosanct, and inviolate, so must that of physician-patient be held to the same degree. By extension, this means more federalism for the central government, more peripheral autonomy for the states and local governments, and more individual freedom for our citizens. Finally, I would argue that (1) the United States is now in fact, and of right ought to be, a United Nations, (2) the world is ripe for some concept of confederation, (3) the Constitution of the United States of America [as interpreted before the Frankfurter-Stone era of "judicial restraint"] is by far the most successful blueprint ever designed for this purpose and (4) that no other countries would join us as states in our union without some security of extensive and sustained decentralization.

As can be seen, my agenda for these pages is far from humble. Therefore, to begin the attempt to accomplish the various tasks I have set before me, I must start somewhere. This, I am persuaded, should rest somewhere within the general realm of religion. Please try to bear with me as I navigate a rather treacherous path through some as yet untraveled darkness while trying most diligently to avoid confronting any thorny tenets with more than a mere modest minutium of momentum.

If you ask a historian, "What was the single greatest contribution of the Jewish people to our civilization?", the chances are very fairly good that he will implicate the concept of monotheism in some way. This preface will initially represent an attempt to shed some light upon the question:-

<<What has happened to the concept of God today?>>

But first, take heart and do not despair, for, alas, I shall not succumb to that ancient philosophical temptation to purvey some proof of God's existence! (For those of you interested in that subject c.f. Spinoza,B.de or St. Thomas Aquinas or Renee Descartes) Far be it from me to attempt to tricept that angle . Rather, what I hope to accomplish is to develop a concept of God such that the question of His Existence becomes trivial, and such that intelligent men everywhere might accept It as a groundwork for further understanding and development.

As an individual with no few roots in Judaism, I feel a certain amount of responsibility for the concept of a Universal Supreme Being, Invisible to our senses, yet Omnipresent and All-Powerful. Is this truly a concept which has relevance today and which could maintain itself no matter what future discoveries might reveal? If not, what kind of "gestalt" could we all agree upon that would allow us individual freedom of interpretation, nevertheless providing us with some sort of guidance and will to persevere.

My bias about Orthodox Judaism today is that to be considered a Jew, it is really not necessary at all to believe in God. The Orthodox do refer to Him outside of formal prayer as "HaShem"-"The Name"-as one is proscribed (in the Third Commandment) from ever taking The Name in vain. Nevertheless, a form of agnosticism or even atheism is not at all inconsistent with Orthodoxy in so far as the SOLE identifying feature of Orthodox Judaism is total observance of "HaLachah"-"The Way."
(HaLachah consists of the Rabbinical interpretations of the Biblical Commandments (Mitzvot) as outlined in the Talmud which, in Orthodox life, has the force of Law.)

As a matter of fact, even at the other end of the Jewish political/religious spectrum, Reconstructionist Judaism would have one maintain only the relevant modern aspects of Jewish religious life. Of them all, it espouses a concept of God which is the closest to my own.

Does an allegiance to HaLachah fulfill the covenant established between God and Abraham at Mount Moriah? Or is belief in Jesus sufficient to forgive man his sins and gain him admission to the celestial paradise above? Or does complete submission to Islaam ("The Path") allow the true believer divine peace? Does it matter what Jesus may have preached when he was here on earth, or does "The Way to The Father is through Me" contradict that? Faith or Works, one, both, neither, or additionally what else?

Suffice it to say at present, though, that if one
follows "Torah and Good Deeds" - then one satisfies his "Halachic" Jewish religious commitment - even if he is a complete atheist!

When I was in secondary school, one of my good friends
was an Irish lad of the Roman Catholic persuasion (or at least that was the inclination of his parents). This poor soul was very lost in his own attempt to reconcile religious orthodoxy with modern physics. It confirmed the relationship in my mind between metaphysics and metapsychoses. The Church dogma was based on absolute authority and a need to precisely distinguish Right from Wrong. However, the Atomic Age clearly "proved" the Einstein Theory of Relativity. Ergo, if all is indeed "relative", how can anything be "right" or "wrong"? And, indeed, if such is the case, how could it possibly matter what your behavior is like? Shades of Raskolnikov (c.f., Dostoevsky, F., Crime and Punishment), no? Of Dostoevsky and his incredible prescience, however, an entire chapter to follow.

If there really were a God, what kind of Force could he be to (1) on the one hand allow his children to be relieved of slavery by hardening Pharaoh's heart and then subjecting Pharaoh's house to death and disease and (2) on the other hand completely ignore his peoples' suffering from a holocaust the scale of which is still difficult to imagine?

So from the orthodox Jewish "it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you adhere", to the "born again" Christian "it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you believe" to the Islaamic "it doesn't matter what you do or what you believe as long as you submit to your fate" - the concept of "God" is today in mass disarray. Couple this with the inhumanity of the 20th Century, the metaphysics of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Einstein Theory of Relativity - and the concept of the Wizard of Oz begins to look infinitely more powerful and a helluvalot more appealing.

Is there, then, any place at all for the God concept in today's world? If you unswervingly believe not, stop reading. Otherwise, the major question I would like to pursue is how can that concept be defined and further refined to obtain more in the way of some sort of universal relevance?

The aim of these lectures is to demonstrate what is
intimated in their title, namely, the existence of a single
intellectual avenue forming both the road of science and
the ways to God. Science found its only viable birth within
a cultural matrix permeated by a firm conviction about the
mind's ability to find in the realm of things and persons a
pointer to their Creator. All great creative advances of
science have been made in terms of an epistemology germane
to that conviction....

The Road of Science and the Ways to God
-Stanley L. Jaki
(The Gifford Lectures 1974-75 and 1975-76)

Modern atomic physics has two "megacepts":-

1) Relativity
2) Quanta

Quantum theory is concerned with discontinuous leaps of energy states in "packets" rather than smooth transitions. This is somewhat analogous to the digital/analog dichotomy. Niels Bohr was able to take this theory to chemistry and tie the valences of atoms to the probability of electron energy levels. Heisenberg theorized that it would be impossible to exactly
determine the position of any given electron in space at any given point in time. This led Einstein to his famous quip:-

Does The Dear Lord then play dice with the universe?

Arguments between Bohr and Einstein really concerned the relevance of "thought experiments" versus the validity of experimental data where it would be impossible to eliminate the influence of the observer. If the Laws of Physics were inadequate to correctly predict physical events which were ordered only by "randomness" or "probability", how could one presume the existence of some "Unifying Force" in nature?
Is it coincidental that the Europe which produced these questions was only a decade away from National Socialism? Is it fair to assume that since humanly derived "Laws" were unable to predict events in nature, that these laws were,in fact, either totally comprehensive, or even if so, reinforcing of a totally nihilistic perspective?

Einstein did exit that boilerplate. He was a Jew who was
without any "religious" or "practicing" fervor. Nevertheless, he had a deep sense of "Over-riding Order" in the universe. Indeed, he is quoted as having told a group of mathematicians at my own alma mater : -

Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber
boshaft ist Er nicht! ("The Dear Lord is subtle,but he is not
malicious!")

The question remains, however, was my poor high-school crony (why does it not surprise me and, yes, almost amuse me to think that he has probably turned out to be a Catholic priest!) correct when he reasoned that there was no Right and Wrong in a world ruled by relativity? Let's think about that question some more. Is not the Theory of Relativity itself based solely upon a major Absolute, and that Absolute is the Unity of the speed of light independent of the velocity or acceleration of the observing frame of reference. This conceptualization made not an atheist of Einstein, but rather an agnostic who had a deep and abiding sense of the Divine Presence (c.f. Heb. Shchinah) in the cosmos.

This is how Dr. William P. Wilson, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center sees things:-

a problem that increasingly faces science in its search for truth....is the challenge of the theory of quantum mechanics to our cosmology. It has changed our mechanistic view of the universe, and caused physicists like Heisenberg, and neuroscientists like Eccles and Penfield to wonder if the universe is not something more than an accident. They have postulated that it is a great thought. Such views strongly suggest that the persons expressing them believe there is something above nature, that there is a supernatural realm, and that it is inhabited. Such assertions challenge determinism as a tenable base for our scientific endeavor. Jew and Christians believe that the primary inhabitant of the supernatural realm is the one who called himself the great I AM - Jehovah. ("Religion in Healing", Southern Medical Journal, loc. cit.)

Listen as well to Paul Tillich as he writes in The Holy -- Absolute and the Relative in Religion :-

"The larger concept of religion has appeared as the
dimension of ultimate reality in the different realms of
man's encounter with reality. It is, to use a metaphor, the
dimension of depth itself, the inexhaustible depth of being,
but it appeared indirectly in these realms. What was
experienced directly was knowledge, or the moral imperative,
or social justice, or aesthetic expressiveness; but the holy
was present in all these secular structures, although hidden
in them. For this is how one experiences the holy, through
secular structures. Religion in this basic and universal
sense I have called "being grasped by an ultimate concern."

If you may be convinced that there is a place for the
Almighty in the modern world, then read on as we attempt to do some more discovery.