Medicine
The healing arts reveal the body's remarkable resilience, the mystery of consciousness in health, and the moral imperative to care—pointing toward a cosmos where healing is possible and compassion is fitting.
The Mind-Body Connection
Medicine increasingly recognizes that mental states affect physical health in ways that challenge reductionism. The placebo effect, psychoneuroimmunology, and the health benefits of meaning all point toward mind-body integration.
If consciousness were merely epiphenomenal—a byproduct with no causal power—these effects would be inexplicable. But mind does affect matter. Belief changes physiology. This is precisely what theism predicts: mind is fundamental, not derivative.
- The Placebo Effect: Belief and expectation produce measurable physiological changes—pain relief, immune modulation, even Parkinson's symptom improvement. Mind affects matter in clinically significant ways.
- Psychoneuroimmunology: Stress, emotion, and social connection directly influence immune function. Loneliness increases inflammation; meditation reduces it. The mind-body connection is bidirectional.
- Meaning and Health: Purpose, hope, and spiritual practice correlate with better health outcomes—lower mortality, faster recovery, better immune function. Viktor Frankl was right: meaning matters.
- The Nocebo Effect: Negative expectations produce negative outcomes. Patients told a procedure will hurt experience more pain. The mind's power extends to harm as well as healing.
The Ethics of Care
Medicine embodies moral commitments that transcend mere biology. The Hippocratic tradition, the concept of human dignity, and the drive to relieve suffering all presuppose objective moral truths.
The Divine Algorithm's orientation toward the greatest good finds expression in medicine's core commitment: to heal, to comfort, to care. This is not merely cultural convention but recognition of objective moral reality—that suffering matters, that persons have worth, that compassion is fitting.
- The Hippocratic Tradition: The ancient commitment to 'first, do no harm' reflects objective moral obligations. Medicine has always recognized duties that transcend self-interest.
- Human Dignity: Medical ethics presupposes the intrinsic worth of every patient—regardless of utility, productivity, or social status. This is a theistic insight: persons are ends, not means.
- Compassion: The drive to relieve suffering reflects moral intuitions that naturalism struggles to explain. Why should we care about others' pain? Because suffering is objectively bad and persons objectively matter.
- The Healer's Vocation: Medicine as calling, not merely career. The sense that healing is sacred work reflects intuitions about the meaning of care that point beyond materialism.