Bill Moore's Commentary:
Why should a Medical Scientist
Care about God?
DISCLAIMER:
The discussion that follows is offered
in the spirit of free, academic discussion.
Some of my friends and colleagues consider
the following questions and assertions blasphemous,
although I hope not obscene.
If this sort of talk offends you,
PLEASE STOP READING NOW.
In my view, you can never prove or disprove
the existence of God.
God is, as the quantum-mechanics
physicists are fond of saying, NON-OBSERVABLE.
(I am not saying that God's works,
if you believe in God, are not observable.)
To Einstein is attributed the statement:
Der Herrgott wuerfelt nicht.
(The Lord God does not play dice.)
Actually, Einstein's religious conviction
that God was deterministic
got Einstein into a lot of trouble
near the end of his career,
when he essentially could not make sense of
the probabilistic arguments in physics [ref. 1].
Since God is non-observable,
there is no scientific argument
that you can make, assuming the existence of God,
that cannot equally well be made without
the existence of God.
Since there is no indisputable proof for the
the existence of God,
why should medical scientists need religion anyway?
In my mind, the interest in religion
arises from three issues of paramount
importance in medical science:
TRUTH, MORALITY, and COMMUNITY VALUES.
I became interested in truth when
I studied mathematics and statistics.
Statistics is my favorite area of mathematics,
and in my opinion, the area of mathematics
with the most application to biomedical science,
which has always been my favorite.
Some statistical theory is devoted to ESTIMATION,
i.e., finding the size and variation in a statistical process.
(Example: the average serum potassium in normal
versus Addisonian patients.)
However, the rest of statistical theory
is devoted to HYPOTHESIS TESTING.
A hypothesis test asks questions of the form:
what are the chances that measurement X is a fair test
for the presence of disease Y?
Philosophically at the heart of this test
is the ontological assumption that there IS a disease Y.
This IS-ness is variously called TRUTH,
MOTHER NATURE, REALITY, GOD, or (to Prof. Jerzy Neyman,
an eminent Polish statistician with a streak of mischief),
THE DEVIL. The need to have a baseline of reality,
truth, or whatever, does not disappear when you
study the mathematical basis of statistics.
It is always there.
I became interested in morality
when I trained as a physician,
and I faced some of the issues
of rationing medical services.
We all face these issues:
essentially, the demand for medical services,
unchecked by economic constraints, is infinite.
Is there ever a justification for providing
care to a person who cannot afford it,
even relatively cheap care that would greatly improve that person's life?
(Example: antibiotics to a person
with a simple pneumococcal pneumonia.)
Yes, of course.
Conversely, is there ever a justification
for NOT providing care to a person who CAN afford it?
(Example: heroic resuscitation
in a congenital anencephalic newborn
with a rich parent.)
Again, yes. Such a resuscitation inevitably
consumes societal resources,
and cannot ultimately benefit the patient.
These are easy examples.
We get into a serious discussion,
with actual consequences for real patients,
when we discuss borderline cases.
We must all face such borderline cases.
Religion, and a belief in God,
provide a justification for such behavior,
although I freely admit, not the ONLY possible justification.
So, at the bottom of it,
religion is a mental shorthand
for rationalizing an interest
in truth, morality, and community values.
Religion also has the advantage that nearly everyone
spends some effort thinking about religion.
Religion is thus a sort of world language
about truth and morality,
where nearly everyone can contribute to the discussion.
Truth and morality are such important issues
in medicine that they cannot be abandoned
to a few scientific dictators and bureaucrats.
This is also the beauty of the Internet:
nearly everyone can contribute to the discussion.
REFERENCES.
1. Changeux JP, Connes A.
Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics.
[Originally in French.]
Translated by: M. B. DeBevoise.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1995.
Last Updated: October 10, 1999.