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    gro

    wing segment of the American economy.  Yet on one of the simplest

    measures of overall health--infant mortality--we ranked a dismal 2Oth.

    The babies of those nations that have not indulged in a medical

    spending spree actually are more likely to stay alive.49  Said Senator

    Lawton Chiles of Florida, "If your child was born in Singapore or Hong

    Kong, it would have a better chance of reaching the age of one than if it

    was born in the United States."50

    Over five hundred years ago, folks offered up the same kind of

    frantic financial sacrifice to their priests.  The result: until Henry VIII

    took it away, roughly a third of the land of England was in the hands

    of the church.  What's more, the income of the church in Henry's day

    was 300,000 pounds per year.  The revenue of the English government,

    on the other hand, was a mere 100,000.51  Outside the Western world,

    the power of holy men to pull in earthly goods like a supermagnet

    lasted much longer.  Before China's unconscionable invasion of Tibet in

    1950, priests ran the country and controlled an unbelievable percentage

    of the Himalayan nation's wealth.52  In America, television evangelists

    are resurrecting the priestly phenomenon, sucking in the dollars of be-

    lievers by the sackful.  But how do priests, scientists, and physicians

    manage to cement their power?

    The rise of Isaac Newton in the early 17OO's allows us to see one

    such power structure being crafted.  Newton established the absolute

    authority of science in the minds of western men by implying that he

    could see into the very forces of the cosmos.  With his mathematical

    theories, Newton accomplished something that had eluded all the wise

    men of his age: he explained the motions of the moon and planets.

    Newton's followers claimed that Sir Isaac had generated a

    method which would penetrate all of the workings of the universe.53

    When the Newtonian scheme successfully mastered the intricacies of

    the solar system, it seemed these enthusiasts must be right.  In reality,

    Newton's system predicted very little about the universe in which men

    actually lived.  It gave no explanation whatsoever for men's

    depressions and despairs, for their desires and their greed.  It could not

    predict or control war.  It was utterly baffled by the problem of how an

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