The Necessity of Atheism

by David Marshall Brooks

In all primitive societies, priest, magician, and medicine man were one and the same; and medicine remained stationary until it could divorce itself completely from religion. Primitive medicine, then, springs from folklore, legends, credulity, and superstitions; the same forces that give rise to all forms of religious beliefs.

Huxley has stated, "Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed," and from the earliest of times those men who had a scientific trend of mind realized this, however vaguely, and have attempted to divorce science from religion. The science of medicine has been divorced from superstition, but its twin brother religion lies as firmly bogged in the mire of superstition today as it did in the days of the incantations of the first theologist, the "shaman." And it is due to this close association of religion and medicine that ideas of the greatest scientific moment have been throttled at birth or veered into a blind alley through some current theological lunacy. Medicine has advanced through its disassociation with supernaturalism, while religion still remains the last refuge of human savagery.

And so it had been that throughout those long, sterile, and barbarous ages primitive man ascribed all diseases either to the wrath of God, or the malice of an Evil Being. With the rise of the Greek philosophers, the human mind for the first time began to throw off the fogs of superstition. In Greece, 500 years before Christ, Hippocrates developed scientific thought and laid the foundations of medical science upon observation, experience, and reason. Under his guidance, medicine for the first time was separated from religion. He relieved the gods of the responsibility for disease and placed it squarely upon the shoulders of man. His findings were passed on to the School of Alexandria, and there medical science was further developed. At this stage of history all advances stopped, and for the following reason:

With the coming of Christianity this science, as well as all others, was stultified. A retrogression took place to the ideation of the most primitive of men, namely, the conception of physical disease as the result of the wrath of God, or the malice of Satan, or by a combination of both. The Old Testament attributes such diseases as the leprosy of Miriam and Uzziah, the boils of Job, the dysentery of Jehoram, the withered hand of Jeroboam, the fatal illness of Asa, and many other ills, to the wrath of God, or the malice of Satan. The New Testament furnishes such examples as the woman "bound by Satan," the rebuke of the fever, the casting out of the devil which was dumb, the healing of persons whom "the devil oftimes casteth into the fire," and various other episodes. Christian theology then evolved theories of miraculous methods of cure, based upon modes of appeasing the divine anger, or of thwarting satanic malice. The curing of disease by the casting out of devils, by prayers, were the means of relief from sickness recognized and commanded by the Bible. Thus Christianity perverted the beginning of a science of medicine to a system of attempted cure of disease by fraud.

The treatment of disease descended to the cures found in holy and healing wells, pools, and streams; in miracles and the efficacy that was to be found in the relics of saints. Instead of reliance upon observation, experience, and thought, attention was directed toward supernatural agencies. In contrast to the Greek physicians who were attempting to lay a scientific foundation, we have the Christian idea prevailing that the water in which a single hair of a saint had been dipped was to be used as a purgative; water in which St. Remy's ring had been dipped cured lunacy; oil of a lamp burning before the tomb of St. Gall cured tumors; wine in which the bones of a saint had been dipped cured fevers; St. Valentine cured epilepsy; St. Christopher cured throat disease; St. Eutropius, dropsy; St. Ovid, deafness; St. Vitus, St. Anthony, and a multitude of other saints, the maladies which bear their names.

"In the year 1585, in the town of Embrun, France, the male generative organ of St. Foutin was greatly revered. A jar was placed beneath his emblem to catch the wine with which it was generally anointed; the wine was left to sour, and then it was known as the 'Holy Vinegar.' The women drank it in order to be blessed with children." (Joseph Lewis, "Voltaire.")

Enormous revenues flowed into various monasteries and churches in all parts of Europe from relics noted for their healing powers. The ecclesiastics perceived that the physician would interfere with these revenues and gifts of the shrines, and deemed it the will of God to persecute and condemn physicians. St. Ambrose declared, "The precepts of medicine are contrary to celestial science, watching and prayer." St. Augustine declared, "All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to these demons, chiefly do they torment fresh baptized Christians, yea, even the guiltless, new-born babe." Gregory of Nazianzus declared that bodily pains are provoked by demons, and that medicines are useless, but that they are often cured by the laying on of consecrated hands. St. Niles and St. Gregory of Tours gave examples to show the sinfulness of resorting to medicine instead of trusting to the intercession of saints.

Even as late as 1517, Pope Leo X, for a consideration, issued tickets bearing a cross and the following inscription, "This cross measured forty times makes the height of Christ in His humanity. He who kisses it is preserved for seven days from falling sickness, apoplexy, and sudden death."

The Council of Le Mons, in 1248, forbade monks to engage in surgery. At the beginning of the twelfth century, the Council of Rheims forbade monks to study medicine; and shortly after the middle of the twelfth century, Pope Alexander III forbade monks to study or practice medicine. In the thirteenth century, the Dominican Order forbade all ecclesiastics to have any connection with medicine; and when we remember that the policy of the Church had made it impossible for any learned man to enter any other profession, the only resource left for a scholar was the Church; so effectively did the Church kill all scientific endeavors.

The Reformation made no sudden change in the sacred theory of medicine. The Church of England accepted the doctrine of "royal touch," and in a prayer book of that period is found a service provided for that occasion which states that "They (the kings), shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover."