Acupuncture, Dim-Mak, and Science
The following is an edited email correspondence.
What is your view on acupuncture? Do you have anything against it?
I have not done enough study on the topic to make a definitive verdict or to accept someone else's verdict. Right now I have a generally negative view toward it. One reason is that it is based on theories of "chi" flow and energy points in the body. Related to acupuncture is "dim-mak," which is based on the same theories but can be used to inflict injury, death, and other effects. Although exaggerated in the movies, it is an actual teaching in the martial arts.
The question brings to mind a broader issue that is relevant to all other related questions, and that is the standards by which Christians use to determine whether a given practice, exercise, or treatment is spiritually and morally acceptable. In what I have come across, it seems that Christians have a surprisingly accepting attitude toward acupuncture just because it is said that there is scientific data to support its effectiveness, so that one does not have to accept the chi theory (or other theories related to mysticism and false religion) to embrace the treatment itself.
However, if we have made science the standard by which we judge whether something is allowed by God, then our Christian identity has already suffered tremendous devastation. Since when is the approval of western medical science the standard by which Christians must operate? If this line of reasoning is permitted, then the floodgates are opened to almost all the practices that are either originally associated with false religions or that are in other ways spiritually dubious. These would include yoga, meditation, hypnosis, mind control, subliminal therapy, and all sorts of psychic and occult practices. Even necromancy is given a scientific explanation by some people who claim to possess this kind of data to support their view. In fact, it is precisely because Christians have accepted this line of reasoning that many churches today are centers for the occult. They would have been stoned to death under Moses.
One response is that the science connected with some of these things are really pseudo-science, so that science does not in fact justify all of them. However, even given the accepted standards of science, there is pseudo-science in every area of investigation, not to mention outright fraud in even the most serious areas of study. Refuting some claims does not refute all claims, especially when some of these scientists carry credentials that are just as legitimate as that of their critics, and work with the most reputable universities and institutions. Also, at least in my own research, many attempted refutations are based on the prior assumption that the theories and claims under investigation are impossible. Of course, one can always refute the scientific method and scientific reasoning themselves (as I do), so that the claims using such method and reasoning are refuted all at once. This puts science in its place and renders it impotent to make any pronouncement regarding the nature of reality. But here we are referring to disputes among scientists who do not doubt their own method and reasoning.
As a side note, we are not interested in destroying science, but we are interested in humbling it, and to put the discipline and its practitioners in their place. And in their place, they have no authority to make any pronouncement regarding the nature of reality. This authority belongs to divine revelation alone. This is not because we are fideists in the sense that we think faith and reason contradict each other, and that we must side with faith against reason. But it is because we are rationalists in the literal sense of the term (not the historical or popular sense), and we know that the biblical is also the rational. On the other hand, we must dismiss the idea that science represents rationality. In fact, we have repeatedly demonstrated that science is systematic irrationalism, committing the triple fallacy of empiricism, induction, and asserting the consequent. Therefore, it should be the last in line to make so-called rational objections to Christianity.
Moreover, even if we ignore the above for a moment, in this context it does not matter if a claim is supported by pseudo-science or "real" science, since our complaint is against the kind of thinking, so common among Christians, that uses science as the final standard, looking to it for permission on moral issues and to settle spiritual questions. So, the point is that just because western medical science claims that acupuncture might work does not automatically make it acceptable for Christians. In fact, it does almost nothing in bringing us closer to that conclusion.
Perhaps the common way of thinking is partly due to a self-centered bias — it is to think that whatever we are relying on must already be morally and biblically acceptable. Many professing believers not only trust science (human investigation and speculation — in other words, they trust themselves) more than revelation (God's pronouncements and disclosures), but they allow science to determine how they interpret revelation.
There are at least two reasons why so many are eager to reconcile faith and science. They suppose that science is the very picture of rationality and precision, but we have shown elsewhere that it is pervasively and exhaustively fallacious. Some suppose that the scientific method follows from the cultural mandate — but it does not. Just because there is a cultural mandate does not automatically mean that the scientific method follows from it, or that scientific investigation is the way to carry it out, or that the scientific method is rational, or that scientific theories and conclusions have anything to do with the true nature of reality. Again, this is the supreme arrogance of defining spiritual, moral, and rational perfection by our currently accepted beliefs and practices.
This is analogous to how many western believers think when it comes to politics and economics — that is, whatever is American must be Christian as well, so that we proceed to judge whether a theory of politics or economics is moral by whether it is American, which we assume to be Christian. It is also common for some western believers to read the Bible in such a manner, so that they tend to see democracy and capitalism, in the exact form that they are accustomed to, everywhere in Scripture. One example of this error is Grudem's Business for the Glory of God.
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