ateclaims which are made for how God’s creation works. That is what good science is about.
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Where New Age thinking and alternative medicine mesh is in the failure to have an objective standard upon which one can base, or measure, claims and theories. In New Age thinking there are no absolutes. The bottom line in the New Age is one’s subjective experience. A critical point which is overlooked by many Christians and New Age believers is that experience can be manipulated - by others, and even by one’s own desires.
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Critical evaluation, testing, questioning, replication of experiments, comparison with established, proven standards, responsibility, and accountability - the stuff of the scientific method - are not significant criteria for New Age medicine or “alternative” practices in general. The need for scientific validation is skirted with stories, anecdotal reports, testimonials, and unsubstantiated claims. These are offered, and uncritically received by participants, as evidence for success, safety and efficacy. Sometimes the claim is that a practice is “too far advanced” to be measured by the primitive methods we have today, or the request for validation is dismissed with “Science doesn’t know everything.”
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Making it even more difficult to verify claims, alternative practitioners keep lousy records - if they keep any at all. It is reasonable to expect that health care providers who urge clients to “take responsibility for their own health,” would themselves take responsibility for accurate client records, research, and documentation for what they are doing and why. Unfortunately, that is seldom the case with alternative medicine.
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Most alternative practitioners claim to offer safe, “natural” treatments for prevention and cure, to provide maintenance for optimal well being, while condemning the use of drugs (synthetic, not herbal) as poison. Many invoke the “holistic” approach saying that they are treating the body, mind and spirit. Some practitioners claim to use innovative but as yet unrecognized diagnostic and drug therapies which they say conventional medicine refuses to accept because people would become healthy sooner, thus depriving the “medical establishment” of income.
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The incredible variety of alternative practices available is limited only by the creativity of the human mind. Some of the common techniques are aromatherapy, Bach flower remedies, polarity therapy, various “electromagnetic” or computerized devices - Interro and Vega machines, zappers, and diodes - homeopathy, acupuncture, Touch for Health, Therapeutic Touch, iridology, kinesiology and muscle response testing, ear coning, palmistry, craniosacral adjustment, crystals, reflexology, aura reading, psychic readings, sweat lodges, pendulums, color therapy, ayurveda, naturopathy, some nutritional counseling and herbalism, energy balancing, some of the massage therapies, chelation, and the cancer “cures” - the Manner Seminar, Greek Cancer Cure, Gerson’s diet, Burzynski’s “antineoplastons,” - and the other treatments of assorted Mexican and European alternative clinics. Most have Christian promoters.
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