CPAP 1615 - Excerpt on the Naturalness of a Universal Consciousness

An excerpt from Chapter 4 of “Modern Chiropractic Principles,” by David
B. Koch, D.C., L.C.P., D.Ph.C.S., a textbook on chiropractic and meta-
therapeutic philosophy, currently in preparation.
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Such a consciousness would be natural : In discussing the assumption of a “universal
consciousness” as an inherent aspect of existence, it is inevitable that the question arises
whether or not this is necessarily a theological assumption; in other words, one which
concerns a belief in God, or in any way depends on or is related to a belief in God. On one
level it is an obvious question. If we uncritically accept the limitations of the epistemology of
“scientific materialism” (“If it can’t be measured, it is not available to inductive or empirical
reasoning.”), we can easily fall into the false impression that it is an obvious fact that the
“natural universe” must consist exclusively of matter and energy. However, if we do so, we
are actually guilty of codifying what is merely a limitation of our method of knowing
(epistemology) as a fundamental characteristic of the universe (metaphysics). We may choose
to believe that “If it can’t be measured, it doesn’t really exist .” But this is not a fact, and
cannot be a fact; it is and will remain only one of several possible assumptions available to us
on this question. So if you are an adherent of this form of uncritical “scientificism,” and are
allowing this “hidden assumption” to serve as your basic metaphysical doctrine, then you are,
in reality, an adherent of the philosophic doctrine of materialism , the belief that we can
somehow know that only matter and energy exist and that nothing which is “not physical”
exists .
Unfortunately, many people in the world today tend to operate either as “closet
materialists” (people who, even though they have considered the possibility that something may
exist beyond the strictly material universe of substance (matter and energy), they are only truly
intellectually comfortable thinking in strictly physical terms) or as “natural/ supernatural
segregationists” (they do believe that immaterial “things” exists, perhaps in the form of God, or
spirits, or astral bodies or ghosts, but that these things exist separate from and outside the laws,
processes and mechanisms of the “natural, physical universal,” and are thus “ super natural” to it).
Thus, when we posit the existence of an immaterial consciousness inherent to the existence of the
universe itself (and not external to it ), a “closet materialist” will try to “relegate the question” to a
religious issue, so that he/she can dismiss it as a question for “someone else’s faith” and therefore
of no concern. Similarly a “natural/supernatural segregationists” will automatically assume that
you must be talking about the concept of a separate, supernatural “thing” which is not a part of
the natural universe, but rather a part of, or another name for some part of, the “supernatural

pantheon” of beings and/or forces. But we can neither relegate the question of the naturalness of