Bad science, good faith?

One of the books I'm reading at the moment is 'Bad Science' by Guardian columnist and medical doctor Ben Goldacre. It's an expose of the many ways in which science is misused in order to promote a whole range of health products, such as vitamin pills and specialist diets. However, he also has some interesting things to say about the benefits of homeopathy, which are not due (in his view) to the effectiveness of pills, but derive from the whole social context of treatment (chatting to a beauty therapist last night - as I had my weekly treatment - she also made the point that people often go away feeling a whole lot better, simply because they've had the chance to talk and to be cared for). There is also a fascinating chapter on the placebo effect.

Goldacre challenges simplistic interpretations of data - he says at one point that a T-shirt slogan for the book would be 'it's probably a bit more complicated than that'.

So why do we get taken in by all this stuff? There are a host of reasons, I reckon. For one, there is a multi-million pound industry with a product to sell, so if we can be persuaded that a pill or a potion can solve our problems, there is money to be made. Then there is widespread misunderstanding of what science is and how it works (two phrases which should always raise a number of questions are 'scientists say' and 'surveys show'). But a more interesting reason (to me, anyway) is that we belive these things because we want to - we live in an age of the 'quick fix'. Our culture is so heavily based on technology that we have come to assume and expect that all our problems can be solved technologically (whether that technology is a piece of equipment, a pill, or a set of techniques we can learn).

But to paraphrase Ben Goldacre 'it's almost certainly more complicated than that'.

The reason this interests me is that this kind of thinking is so much part of the cultural air we breathe that we come to see our faith in this way too. We expect to have our problems fixed, and perhaps feel angry and frustrated when they aren't. Perhaps we're constantly on the look-out for the latest thing, the 'key to ...' (fill in the blank). Been there, done that!

The opening sentence of Scott Peck's book 'The road less travelled' sets out what he sees as the key to dealing with life. The book begins with these three words: 'Life is difficult.' It will never be all that we want it to be. And there are no quick fixes. We do ourselves no favours if we refuse to face up to this.

But we do have a God who invites us to involve him in facing the challenges life brings - a God who offers us the possibility of discovering what life is all about and who we are. 'In all things, God works for the good of those who love him' - will we let him?