HIPPOCRATEAN AND
CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN BUSHWORLD
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
The conflict between Science and western religion is now some 2,500 years old,
beginning in Greece when the first proto-democratic city-states were created by
men of reason, men who had rejected superstition, supernatural religion and
religious law. The Greeks had suffered through their own dark ages of absolute
legalism and had rejected the notion that law and punishment was the proper bottom
line for controlling human societies. Rather, they nourished reason, knowledgable decision-making and individual empowerment in
the interest of the whole. Made sense then, makes sense now. It is the
difference between teaching people how to think for themselves or simply
imposing some despotic version of religion onto them (all despotic versions of
religion, of course, have had to be imposed).
The conflict between Science and religion has actually been between two
mutually-exclusive approaches to comprehension, the empiricist approach (for
those who believe life can be comprehended by human cognitive efforts) and the
transcendentalist approach (for those who believe that life cannot be fully
comprehended without getting spooky).
Specifically, Science has always had a problem with Old Testament literalists,
i.e., fundamentalists (those on the first rung of fanaticism's ladder). Rather
than acquiesce on a single point, western religion has traditionally maintained
the conflict through sheer incorrigibility. It did take, for example, 500 years
before the JudeoRoman church acknowledged Galileo's
contributions and rendered an apology for having persecuted him in the interest
of nothing but maintaining despotic authority. Today, the Bush administration
exemplifies this incorrigibility with it's resistance to employing compassion
and knowledge in policy development, not when a religious rationalization can
be conjured up that supports their political agenda. In other words, the Bush
administration has no definable general policy. It defines the doctrines of its
agenda on the fly (or on the run).
There has, however, never been any conflict between Science and nascent
Christianity, never mind the traditional conflict between the biomedical
sciences and religion. Indeed, the values beneath Hippocratean
medical ethics and nascent Christian ethics are quite the same, being derived
in the same logical manner (via dialectic synthesis of value-laden
complementary opposites). Being able to recognize this simple truth, however,
requires that we look at both religion and Christianity through honest human
eyes, unhindered by loyalties to religion's supernatural past. So, now is the
time for the weak of heart and mind to take their leave. It's going to get
messy.
The conflict between biomedicine and religion has revolved almost entirely
around theological issues (issues from the realm of "why"). A
scientific theology provides values and criteria of belief, the latter item
being something that religious "theology" has never bothered to
consider, being largely faith based. In particular, it was religion's
vindictive notions about the causation of disease that wrankled
medical scientists from the get go. Hippocrates even wrote a book entitiled, "On The Sacred
Diseases" in which he ridiculed the notion that disease had some
connection to the gods.
In honest eyes, the causes of disease were entirely earthbound and subject to
human comprehension. Greek physicians, with unaided eye, were able to induce
(to make a logical, observation-based guess) the existence of earthly, material
causes of disease. Can't you just see the "miasmas" hovering over
that pile of dung? Next thing you know, in 1880, Robert Koch would prove the
Greek physicians correct when he observed cholera vibrios
staring back at him through his microscope.
Today we have virtually eradicated the epidemic infectious diseases that
characterized Koch and Pasteur's century. Damned clever induction those Greeks
had produced. And, wouldn't you know it, all in keeping with nascent Christian
philosophy. "For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed;
neither hid, that shall not be known."
Hippocrates noted that people with epilepsy would oftentimes cover their loss
of dignity during a siezure with the notion that they
had just been visited by the gods. And, of course, such epileptics were happy
to provide god's latest message to all who would listen. Hippocrates concluded
that this was nothing but the scientific nonsense it is. An epileptic siezure does not constitute a route to heavenly guidance.
Half a millennium later, a famous epileptic named Paul would write a few
letters to the Romans, and the Romans would listen. In the early 4th century,
Hippocrates was a dialectician. He did not look at the victims of disease with
conservative apathy, nor did he look at them with liberal sympathy. He looked
at them with knowledgable empathy, the dialectic
synthesis of these complimentary opposites. In other words, Hippocrates put
himself in the victim's place and then addressed the issues of causation and
course in earthbound terms so that he could do something about the situation in
earthbound terms. The notion that disease was a form of heavenly retribution
was repulsive, a notion of self-righteousness to the point of kicking people
when they are already down.
Hippocrates had no interest in Oriental ethics based in loyalty and unrelated
to knowledge nor did he have an interest in Occidental legalism based in
obedience and unrelated to knowledge, it not being possible to legislate morality. The instant Hippocrates derived his
ethical principles from a definable set of values and a definable knowledge base, it ceased to be an ethic and became an ethical
morality, the dialectic synthesis of Oriental ethics and Occidental legalism.
Now, forget everything you know about JudeoRoman
religion and just consider medical ethics as taught by Jesus himself. Here is
the way it went. "As Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from
his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man,
or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither
hath this man sinned, nor his parents."
Jesus literally saved this poor fellow from the devastation of thinking his
condition was due to some unspecified mortal sin. Considering how Jesus dealt
with the men of law who brought him an adultress, it
is immediately clear that Jesus was not only willing but quite able to
challenge the authority of both Mosaic Judaism and imperial Romanism, for their
legalistic absolutism, their vengeance-based notions of justice and their
preoccupation with mammon and the marketplace.
Jesus was a dialectian. In dealing with social
problems, he did not condemn those who had gone astray, nor did he condone
their behavior. He looked at the situation with an eye toward healing, the
dialectic synthesis of these complimentary opposites. In other words, Jesus put
himself in the "sinner's" (or victims) place and then addressed the
issue of causation and course in earthbound human terms so he could do something
about the situation in earthbound terms. The notion that self-righteous
criticism and violent punishment would rehabilitate anyone was just repulsive,
self-righteousness to the point of kicking people when they are already down.
Jesus had no interest in Oriental ethics based only in loyalty nor did he have
an interest in Occidental legalism based only in obedience. The instant he
derived his ethical principles from a definable set of values, rooted in human
honesty, it ceased to be an ethic and became an ethical morality, the dialectic
synthesis of Oriental ethics and Occidental legalism. In rejecting absolute
legalism, Christianity ceased to be a "religion" characterized by law
and become a living philosophy consistent with Science and Democracy. Recognizing
this was
Well, there you have it. The Hippocratean and
Christian ethos are one and the same in origin and practice, both derived from
dialectic human values which transcend western and eastern cultural extremes.
Now, we have to consider the really big question. How on earth could the JudeoRoman church have utterly missed or misinterpreted
these straight-forward examples of Christian ethics in action? To make matters
worse, JudeoRoman "theologians" have missed
these examples for nearly two millennia running. Explain please.
Do good Christians in
This utter ignorance and/or avoidance of nascent Christian ethics by JudeoRoman religion is likely more related to it's
virtually continuous involvement in justifying western despotic conquest, from
imperialism through colonialism and on to Bush's crony capitalism. In all three
cases, the New Testament ethos has been seen as irrelevant to the actual needs
of the despotic church-state looking for self-righteous justification. The
church's willingness to abide the notion that disease was the reward of sin was
matched equally, then, by its willingness to ignore the teachings of its own
Savior.
Do JudeoRomans not see that they have discredited
their Savior in all honest and thoughtful eyes? This subjugation of nascent
Christian values is even more ludicrous in light of Jesus's
own admonition that "No servant can serve two masters ... ye cannnot serve God and mammon." Perhaps no one in the
church has ever read the New Testament? Naw, couldn't be. Some one must have read it by now.
How do JudeoRoman "theologians" explain
this millennial oversight? This question is made even more awkward by the fact
that America's founders, a bunch of Deists, managed to make the distinction
between Christian values and religious values two centuries ago, seeing the KJV
of western scriptures as containing mutually-exclusive moralities. What's it gonna be today, Old Testament vengeance or New Testament
compassion? Dealer's choice.
In editing his personal Christian Bible (the TJV),
Now, forget everything you know about Science and just consider the
compassionate ethics of the medical scientist, Louis Pasteur. After
successfully identifying the microbial causes of several infectious diseases,
he was once asked if cures would every be found. Well,
of course, 50 years later the sulfa drugs would be discovered, but Pasteur
answered the question with "I never think of cures, I only think of
causes." Now, how could this physician be so unsympathetic to the plight
of victims needing a cure? Did he not understand the monetary rewards that come
from a medicine directed by market demand?
Thanks to Pasteur and his boundless empathy, we now understand that knowledge
of the causes of disease is required for cause-specific diagnoses and
cause-directed therapies, to leave palliative treatment of symptoms forever
behind. But knowledge of causes also provides for cause-directed preventive
interventions. This approach, pioneered by Pasteur, has had far more to do with
the eradication of epidemic infectious disease than therapeutic medicine and it
is the epitome of compassion. Any one can have sympathy with the victims of
disease. It is pure compassion to have empathy extended even to the healthy in
wanting to prevent them from getting sick in the first place. How
anti-capitalistic (think of all the medical bills that never got written) and
how thoroughly Christian (think of all the people who have been spared the
misery of disease).
The point is that Hippocratean ethics and Christian
ethics are aspects of a single ethos, always have been. Their values are
derived in precisely the same dialectic manner and the ethical principles
derived from those values are one and the same, to heal those in need, to do good and avoid harm in doing so. All the time that Science
has been in conflict with religion, both sides have missed the obvious, duking it out between atheistic
and theistic extremes, and missing dialectic middle human ground entirely.
But, the connection between Science and nascent Christianity goes even deeper
than that. The notion of individual rights goes back to
Even here, the notion of universal human rights can be traced directly back to
nascent Christian ethics. It only requires interpreting the words and actions
of Jesus with honest human eyes instead of JudeoRoman
Old Testament eyes (Christian Values and Human Rights, BushWatch,
June, 2003). It only requires that we think for ourselves.
How does awareness of dialectic values relate to the real world, to Bush's
unprovoked war on
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This essay is dedicated to my friend, Dr. George Gay, a family practitioner,
who requested
this essay because he knew there was a connection, there had to be a
connection.
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