I wanted to start a medical blog today but then I realized how closely religion, law and medicine are linked. It's interesting to note that these three areas are where the priest-craft of governments tend to control.
The issue I wanted to address in my medical blog was the validity of human testimony in finding truth. This is so closely tied to law that I felt it probably more appropriately goes here.
Testimony is so valid a path to truth that God gave us three testaments. The old (revealed by prophetic revelation), the new (revealed by the living Word of God), and creation (made by the will of God). Within creation is both the scientific testimony of nature, and the temporal testimony of man, another creation of God, which we call His-tory.
Without history the collective power of man would be crippled through time. Each generation would start from scratch and no progress could be made. When one learns history, one must decide which stories to believe because all history is biased by the testator. It is thus in the multitude of historical testimonies that truth of the past is established and then can be used to build upon for future testimony. If men follow a false testament, they decline rather than prosper.
The testimony of men is validated in the word of God:
Deutronomy 19:15: One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sins: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.The AMA and the FDA do not accept direct human testimony as a path to finding medical truth. This type of evidence is called anecdotal and is considered unadmissible in any medical research. This is because of the placebo effect - ie: faith healing.
The current medical establishment's thinking is derived from humanism, the worship of man as a god. This is done via that veil of human reason which is the collective image used to worship himself.
God calls man to not worship idols. An Idol is anything created that is held in esteem as equal to the creator. When a man makes an idol, either physical or mental, and worship's it (ie gives it the respect due to the final authority - the creator) he is really worshiping himself or a false God such as the laws of nature. Man is never to worship any created thing, only the creator.
When the AMA rejects direct human testimony as valid evidence of medical truth, it rejects the evidence of the supernatural which can only be discovered by personal experience or by human testimony.
This is the consistent pattern of humanism, whether it be in science, medicine or law. Humanistic reason demands the scholastic approval of a system of evidence based on proven techniques of reason applied to the material world only. Thus medical research requires double-blind studies to be accepted as truth while the testimonies of individuals, no matter how many, are considered invalid.
This scholastic approach to truth holds the collective approval and the scientific method above any evidence of the supernatural.
To suppress anecdotal evidence rejects both history and the biblical testaments because the testimony of others is the only way we can see this evidence unless we experience the supernatural personally.
I am not saying that the witness of a single individual is valid. Nor am I saying that the opinion of the majority is valid. Humanism accepts both of these as determinators of truth which neither is. For Example, when an emperor declares himself God, this is humanism using the witness of a single powerful individual as the measure of truth. The same happens when a majority votes for an unqualified candidate for office and nullifies the law by mass opinion.
On the other hand, the testimony of two or three witnesses is a valid source of evidence if they agree and are not bearing false witness.
The opinion of a majority is too tainted by the intimidation of mob thinking. (Notice that a majority is greater than 3 as soon as the group size reaches the magic number 7). It is the same influence that causes winners to win elections over properly qualified candidates that do not enjoy the support of the media, the establishment or some other idol of the majority thinking.
Double-blind studies and other techniques of the scientific method are not being rejected here. It is their status of exclusivity over personal testimony that I object to. When only these types of evidence are accepted, over time, via peer review and publication, they begin to establish a testimony of truth that can deviate from the whole truth because the exclusion of the supernatural. The scientific method of peer-review can also be adversely affected by funding and other influences of majority-rule thinking that can over time lead to gross error being propagated as absolute truth.
Thus today we find most people initially using alopathic approaches to curing diseases that result in horrible statistics of failure. This is preferred by most people over the naturopathic approaches because it is perceived that the majority support the alopathic approach. This perception is created by the institutionalized nature of peer-review and scientific processes that mistakenly accept only mechanistic approaches to reality. Meanwhile the true testimony of thousands of people cured by means not approved by the FDA ring in the blog-sphere.
I believe we are close to a revolution in thought. One that will leave the humanistic rationalists in the dust.