Where's the Person?

Medical school has been underway now for well over 2 months. It's not an easy endeavor. Becoming a doctor is a lot like trying to become a scientist, spiritual mentor, trusted adviser, and universal problem-solver all at once. Any one of those, if you seek to do it well, would fill up to overflowing the capacity of one lifetime. And here I am in medical school trying to master them all at once and as quickly as possible.

Now this would be slightly more feasible if the teachers nurtured you only on that sweet milk of truth that is found in Christ. But when attending a secular institution, or even a Christian one for that matter, you cannot expect that the classroom will be sterilized of all falsehood before you arrive. Not at all. We live and move in a world of competing ideologies. And in the marketplace of ideas, a brutal capitalism reigns in the exchanges that take place, the market filled with cheap products, clever and constant advertising, and prices that demand your very soul. Everyone wants you and no one wants you. You are only opportunity for another advertisement, an potential proselyte for a secular intelligentsia to play out their academic hypotheses in the real world. But there is one stand though where you can come and buy without price; the price of a life has already been paid - freedom purchased.

In the arena of medical and science education we are told that we have migrated up through the ranks of atomic and molecular diversity to the tyrannical position of the human being. Being more suitable to our ever changing environs, we have managed to "outwit, outplay, outlast" the other chemical bags of competition. There are many weapons one could choose to assault this fundamental tenant of Neodarwinism (and yes, neodarwinists are fundamentalists). But is it not the rose, lightly tossed onto the pinnacle, that causes the whole heap to tumble?

Where is my rose you may ask? I can tell you exactly where it is: table 7 in the Gross Anatomy Lab on the campus of USC School of Medicine. I know that to you it may not sound like you would find a rose in such a place. And perhaps you're right. In fact, I concede. You are right. The rose is not there. That which once housed a rose lies on table 7.

You see, my cadaver lies on table 7. And in all of my dissecting (the cutting, the sawing, the pulling and digging), I have yet to find the person inside of my cadaver. Do you doubt that she is a person? So do I. But I do not doubt that she was a person. And if evolutionary biology buttresses its own dogma, then she is no less a person now than she was before she ended up on table 7. So where is the person inside the shell that lies on table 7? I could go through all that we have done to her, presenting to you each of her varied pieces and saying, "Nope, not here," but such a method is highly unnecessary.

Inside a human life resides a flower of beauty that eclipses the grace and splendor of any rose. Though this beauty may become very marred - indeed, very ugly - it is still present to some degree in the very presence of life itself. Life is beautiful. And the more I meditate on the kaleidoscope of living color that whirls and swirls around us every day, the more I am struck by how beauty defies materialistic reductionism.

For instance, why is my eye blue? I can hear the over-eager student of molecular biology now. "Your eye is blue because of a complex combination of genetic alleles that you received from you parents, which, upon their transcription and translation, produce specific proteins that give pigment to your eye so as to protect your retina from harmful rays of light. These alleles were produced over time through a series of genetic mutations in your ancestors, leading you to have the proteins that cause blue eye color." But that's not the question I asked. That explains how my eye is blue. It doesn't explain why. Why is my eye blue? If the matter is simply one of protection from rays that could damage my eyesight, then there are many colors that would do, and any one color would satisfy the requirement for the entire human race. Cue the classic answer of evolutionary biology: "Your blue eyes - as opposed to your eyes being brown, green, or any other color - enhance your possibility of attracting a good mate, which leads to the potential for offspring and the opportunity of your genes propagating through time." Now I understand! It all makes sense. Not really. I know that my wife does appreciate my eyes, but they had very little to do with our initial attraction to one another, and through the difficult times in our dating relationship I can hardly see her sitting at home saying, "But I must marry him! He has blue eyes! I couldn't marry a man if he didn't have blue eyes. I mean, it would be even better if he was named Earnest, but marry someone without blue eyes? I simply couldn't!"

My question remains unanswered. Why? Because in evolution everything has to have some pragmatic value. There is no place for simple beauty. Beauty is always seen as a means to some other end, almost always that of successful reproduction. But how does the beauty of a tree enhance its possibilities for reproduction? Bees talking amongst themselves: "Hey guys. Listen. I found this tree with some pretty hot flowers, some shimmery bark, and a nice color of leaf. How about we head over there, cross-pollinate it, and propagate its genome? You guys in? Good. Let's go!" In effect, beauty becomes the sex-slave of evolution, and so it is degraded.

Back to table 7. The corpse lying there is not what she once was. She lacks her former beauty, not only physically so but metaphysically so. There is a spiritual part that is the whole part of her, and it is missing. The beauty of life and personhood is gone from her. If it was still present, then to treat her the way we do would put us in the same room with Mao and Stalin. Evolution ignores personhood and beauty. In fact, it detests them, especially personhood. It comes up with empty words and concepts, such as "emergent properties," in order to force this rebel of personhood into the ranks of mindless natural selection. But the voice of truth is not so easily smothered.

Neodarwinism fails here. What then succeeds?

---to be continued---