Where do our thoughts come from? Experts of all stripes who view the world from a totally naturalistic viewpoint insist that every thought is a production of the brain – a physical organ. Those of us who believe in something beyond the brain know there’s more to the human mind than just meat, chemicals and electrical signals. I’ll take that statement one step further: the “meat”, the chemical interactions and the electrical signals are vital tools for our spirits to operate in a physical world.
As I’ve written before, the evolutionist attempts to convince believers that we worship a “God of the gaps”. That is, wherever scientific knowledge has not yet explained something, we Christians pounce upon the fact and assert that God must be at work in that phenomenon. This is not only condescending and intentionally insulting, it’s a denial of what the serious follower of Christ asserts. Instead, we are convinced that as God created the entirety of the cosmos – matter, time and space – every scientific principle and law which allows for the existence and employment of “meat”, chemicals and electrical interactions is also the creation of God. What we observe as “science” – I mean testable, observable science and not the evolutionist’s speculation – is the production of an incredible Mind. God is the Designer, the Creator, the Master scientist, and attempting to take it away from Him (which cannot be done) is theft and a willing denial of the glory He deserves.
DIFFERENT BUT NO DIVIDE. Given, then, that the brain itself is a creation of God just as the spirit is, it is perhaps a mistake to separate the two as though they were not related: they are. We humans may consist of body and spirit, but the entirety of our being is a “spiritual” creation. This is why our God requires holiness in the way we live. We can’t just think about God occasionally then go out and take our bodies into dark or questionable lifestyles. We can’t abuse our bodies with chemicals, with ungodly sexual expression, with overeating or with bad behaviour, and then think of ourselves as being followers of Christ, because our flesh is a vital and integral part of who we are. On that great Day of resurrection we will indeed be spirit, but we will be flesh also, just as Jesus Christ was and is, upon His resurrection. We will be raised in the flesh, therefore flesh is not inconsequential, and every creation of God is to be hallowed.
Paul the apostle drew attention to this in at least one of his letters. To those who thought that having sex with just anyone was acceptable, he wrote:
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
As Paul perfectly demonstrates in these verses above, flesh and spirit can work together for the good of our entire being. Enzymes will indeed tell us that we’re hungry and may even tell us what our bodies need to function, but our will can control what, where and when we eat, allowing us to get the better of our own needs or even our weaknesses if necessary. We can choose to fast: an example of the will overriding flesh.
God has blessed us with the incredible ability to think for ourselves, to have our own desires, likes and preferences, and even our own plans and ideas. However, He desires to see us use our choices wisely and in accordance with His will and His word. He has given us free-will for a reason. He is searching for the soul who will love Him. He wants us to use our free-will to please and glorify Him. Those who have intentionally opposed His will cannot please Him.
THINKING ABOUT THE MIND. I’ve been thinking about the mind and the brain in relation to the spirit from time to time over most of my Christian life. I came to the conclusion several years ago that our physical brain is an “interface” between matter and spirit, just as the hardware of a computer provides an invaluable interface between software and the user. My ideas became more focused recently when I came upon the testimony of a neurosurgeon who has become an outspoken proponent of the reality of the human spirit. He hasn’t answered all my questions by any means, but he’s definitely helped me understand a lot more than I knew. Of course, I couldn’t expect him to answer all my questions: only God knows us fully. God is like the engineer who designs and builds a car: he knows every part, what it does, and what it takes to make the car run smoothly, but he doesn’t have to impart all that knowledge to the driver in order for the car to be driven successfully.
Dr. Michael Egnor has performed thousands of operations on human brains. He’s also studied closely a lot of literature by researchers over the past many decades, and tells how this knowledge has helped convince him of the reality of the human spirit. The soul, says Dr. Egnor, is the totality of our living being. It’s the difference between a pile of meat and chemicals and a living person. I here summarize Dr. Egnor’s testimony as represented in one of the many YouTube videos you can find him on. I’m no scientist, so I do not have a complete and perhaps not a totally accurate understanding of his message.
LIMITATIONS OF THE BRAIN. The physical brain stores and controls “only” four things in our interaction with the world. They are movement, perception (sight, smell etc), emotion (fear, laughter etc) and memories. Of course, Egnor is omitting obvious workings of the brain such as growth, repair and resistance to disease via the immune system. I presume he assumes we know this is a given. He’s speaking of things done with the mind: things we believe we control consciously. By implication other workings of the mind come from the spirit, and this is the thrust of Dr. Egnor’s message.
Of all quality research involving the brain, says Dr. Egnor, the clear fact is that the brain does not control abstract thought. That is, nowhere in the physical brain can our thinking on such things as the following be located, controlled or tampered with by a surgeon: philosophy (and so belief) free-will, honesty, integrity, mathematics, logic and music.
Certain parts of the brain are “hard-wired” says the doctor: we speak intelligibly largely thanks to our grey matter, and this ability cam be impaired by brain damage. However, this isn’t to say that everything or even much of which crosses our lips comes from our physical brain. Our spirit can make use of our mouth in order to communicate a thought to the world.
ACCOUNTABILITY. How much of our thought process comes from our spirit? I can’t answer that, but I’m sure Dr. Egnor would have a pretty good answer. Of one thing we can be sure: Christ said that we will all give an account for every word we have spoken (Matthew 12:36). If our words were merely the product of brain waves – chemical reactions and electrical signals as in some machine or test-tube – God could not rightfully judge us for what we have uttered, since we would have no conscious control over our words. The fact that we do and that He can and will judge us speaks to the truth as found by the good doctor: our free-will and what we choose to think about, say and do are not products of a physical machine, but those of our conscious minds which are able to distinguish between truth and lies; justice and travesty; good and evil.
All living things have souls, says Dr. Egnor, including plants. I will have to apply my mind as to what that means in coming years. However, the human soul is a “spiritual soul”. It is designed to last forever. It is the part of us which will continue after our present body expires. As Paul wrote, “Absent from the body is present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). We who have put our trust and our love into Christ have the incredible promise of continuing life so that when we pass from this world we will pass directly into the presence of our beautiful Maker, where we will be for all eternity. This raises more questions about just what we will be like after that transition. What a wonderful thing it is to think about!
Currently as I read through Christian Scripture – the Bible – I’m looking for clues as to the makeup of our minds and the sources of our thoughts. In time I’ll share what I’ve discovered. Thank – you for reading. You may like to read the following posts of mine:
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 