A Case for Homeopathy

Homeopathy is in an interesting position, because it is being hated, shunned or feared by very diverse groups of people. Here I would like to make a case for homeopathy and examine the causes of animosity towards it among these groups.

Homeopathy in its essence is spiritual science. For many people this may sound like a contradiction in terms, but it is not.

The spiritual aspect comes from the fact that homeopathic philosophy is based in vitalism, an idea that life is governed by some form of "energy", which controls all life's processes and maintains their smooth operation. In homeopathy this "energy" is termed Vital Force. Homeopaths believe that when the Vital Force is in balance, the person feels healthy. On the other hand, when it is disturbed in some way, the body's functioning becomes disordered and one feels the symptoms on the physical level. So, for example, when we get too much acid in the stomach and it causes some irritation and possibly even an ulcer, a drug can decrease the acidity of the stomach contents, but the underlying disturbance in the Vital Force is untouched by the drug. Therefore, the symptom comes back as soon as we stop the drug. The homeopathic answer is to treat the "energy" disturbance directly, and therefore get at the cause of the problem, rather than treating its effect. Homeopathic remedies have the power to do this.

One can view Vital Force as an interface between the soul and the physical body. The soul is a purely spiritual entity. It has some purpose for being in the physical world, and uses the physical body as a vehicle for carrying out this purpose. Vital Force serves as an interface between the spiritual soul and the physical body, enabling smooth functioning of a spiritual entity in the physical world.

Another way of looking at this system is to make an analogy with a computer. When a computer malfunctions, the problem could be in its hardware, but software issues are also as common. All sorts of software viruses, bugs, etc, can affect the computer functioning. A good technician must look at both sides of the equation to fix the machine. The same applies to the human body. The energy we talk about is probably something like the body's software, which can be "bugged". Homeopathic remedies then are the debugging programs, like Norton or MacAffee "anti-virus".

Homeopathy is also science, because it uses well worked out methodology and its effects are reproducible and can be tested with double-blind placebo controlled studies. A number of studies are presented here.

The least well understood aspect of homeopathic practice is its remedies. One can be made from any substance, as long as it went through the process of determining its effect called proving. Preparing homeopathic remedies involves serial dilutions and shaking of the product between dilutions. After several dilutions, the initial substance is essentially washed out and cannot be chemically detected in the final product. For instance, one of the lower potencies, 30c, is a serial dilution of 1 to 100 made thirty times, which yields a final product diluted 10⁶⁰ times from the initial substance (that's 10 with 60 zeros after it!). Of course, this is far beyond Avogadro's number of 6.0 x 10²³. Therefore, the chance of finding a single molecule of the initial substance in the final product is zero for all practical purposes. These preparations are referred to as submolecular.

30c is a low potency and homeopaths commonly use dilutions such as 1M (10^2,000), 10M (10^20,000), or 50M (10^100,000). While it makes no sense whatsoever in light of present day science, in practice, the higher the dilution, the stronger and longer lasting the effect. Multiple studies confirm the effect is real, but no scientific explanation of this effect exists to date.

The main sources of animosity towards homeopathy come from two distinct but seemingly diametrically opposed groups. On one end of the spectrum we have a peculiar group of ultra-religious Christians. On the other, the self-professed "scientific" bunch of quack-busters.

The ultra-religious Christians I mentioned fear homeopathy because it does not have a purely material explanation of its mechanism of action and its effects are very deep and touch the psyche. They are worried that the remedies may actually affect the soul. This is a no-no to them, so homeopathy could conceivably be from the devil. I have had many instances where I thought I could help a person with a homeopathic remedy, offered it free of charge, and was refused, because the patient had religious fear of the remedy. Quite a few of such cases have been children of these ultra-religious people with depressed immunity and getting colds and flues constantly. The parents were OK with antibiotics, steroids and other poison, which probably caused the depressed immunity in the first place, but would not allow me to cure their children with homeopathy. Seeing sick children, knowing you can help, but not being allowed to do so can be very frustrating to a healer.

The "scientific" quack-busters are ostensibly non-religious. They'll tell you they believe only in science. Many of them are rabidly anti-homeopathic and are militantly active on the internet doing their best to discredit homeopathy. These folks fall in two groups. Some of them are basically prostituting their name to certain anti-homeopathic business interests, such as pharmaceutical companies. Internet search can yield the names of such people. I have not been particularly interested in knowing exactly who they are, because their business affiliations are basically immaterial for my argument. The second group are avid atheists. These people are idealists who can't tolerate the lies they feel homeopaths are spreading in an effort to take advantage of the unsuspecting public and get rich from this. The atheists believe science has all the answers, and if something can't be explained by science, it must be quackery. Any evidence to the contrary is rejected outright, usually before any sort of a truly scientific evaluation. They can't even allow for the possibility that science has not developed to the stage when it could possibly explain the effect. The prostituting group acts exactly the same way (though for an entirely different reason), so the distinction is impossible and both groups must be considered as one. Since I am reluctant to accuse anybody of dishonesty without some very significant preponderance of evidence, I will treat this whole group as honest idealistic atheists.

One must realize that atheism is a religion just like any other. Because no conclusive proof of non-existence of god or "paranormal" phenomena is available, the atheist's conviction of their non-existence is based on pure belief/faith. Therefore, they are not particularly different from the ultra-religious, whose faith is just as strong, even if they believe in something quite opposite.

In dealing with both groups, it is usually quite worthless to bring up any sort of data. Their opinion is predetermined and they will try to manipulate the data to prove their point.

I've had numerous discussions with representatives of both groups. The Christians will usually try to avoid the conversation. This could be partly due to the fact that they are in general decent people and don't want to engage in any sort of open animosity with somebody they know they can't convert (basically, a hopelessly lost person on their way to eternal damnation). Another explanation for this reluctance to engage me in a debate could be related to the fact that most of my interaction with this group has been with my employees, who, understandably, can be reluctant to contradict their boss too much.

The atheists, on the other hand, have been keen to engage me in a debate. They have a certain haughty attitude about them. Undoubtedly, most of them thought I was an idiot for believing what I profess to be true, or a con-artist preying on unsuspecting public. In either case, they probably thought it would be easy to prove me wrong. However, in all cases their knowledge of research on the subject is extremely poor, and as soon as we get into debating particular studies, they realize their weakness and run with their tail between their legs. This happened with "Dr" Barret, who disappeared as soon as I offered a good study to debate publicly a few years ago. The same happened with Robert Carroll more recently. He is a retired philosophy professor from some community college and the publisher of "Skeptic's Dictionary" online. We did discuss an article, following which I presented my opinions of his opinions, and offered another article to discuss, but he won't reply anymore. It is hard to argue against real science. You can try to ridicule the opponent, but in a public forum this tactic always fails to prove a point for people who have the ability to differentiate the beef from the bull. You can see the account of my interactions with these two here

I am an agnostic. I believe only what I see, or for what I can find reasonable scientific or experiential proof. I don't follow any rigid system of thought which restricts your thinking, like any true fundamentalist religion does.

I am happy to debate data in any public forum. I am absolutely convinced that homeopathy works, and it is a proven scientific fact. There is experience of thousands of homeopaths and millions of patients world-wide, as well as scientific studies, to prove it. If you think you are a scientist, and feel I am wrong, let's look at the data and discuss it. However, beware, for if you are a religious maniac, like most of my denialist opponents in the past, people will see you for what you are. As a homeopath, I have been trained to detect delusional thinking in my patients, and I will so detect religious ideation in any debate opponent immediately. At this point I usually expose this issue and stop the debate because further debating leads nowhere.

I feel maniacal religion like this is disease. I define disease as anything that interferes with free expression of the soul. Maniacal religious ideation sets up barriers to clear perception and free expression, and puts one's mind in a box. It does not matter if this is a "Christian" box or an "atheist" box. They are the same. And there are many others.

All true spiritual philosophies teach that we are created in the image of God, which means we have freedom of choice in everything: action, expression, thought, creation, etc... To me, God is the essence of limitless freedom and possibility, the height we must strive to reach. Devil, on the other hand, is the essence of limitation. He does not want us to be free. He wants to make us afraid and hide in our box. He lies to us, and often we may think we hear God's words, when in fact it is the devil talking to us from the pulpit or from our subconscious. This is the essence of disease. No wonder these groups are against homeopathy. It can set people free, which would make the disease very unhappy. The poor suckers don't even realize their religion is from the devil!

I am sure I am making many enemies writing this. So be it. I hate disease. As a healer, I hurt when I can't heal somebody, make them physically healthy and happy, full of energy and ready to take on the world. When some diseased ideology seeks to prevent people from achieving this true perfection of health, I feel it is my duty to expose it. Let them come on and argue their case...

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