The Science of the Soul: Mind vs Brain - FAS2609

SPEAKER A Are humans just matter and energy, or are we something more? Today we're using information science to answer this question. Because you can create information through thinking, writing, and speaking, you must have a non-material component. Werner Gitz shows why materialism fails scientifically and what this means for human dignity and eternal life. Welcome to Faith Science, I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Joining me to discuss this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome to the program. SPEAKER B Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER A Dr. John has written a book, The Big Argument: Does God Exist? In today's program, we'll be drawing on some insights from this book. So, Dr. John, how does your ability to create information, such as through your thoughts, words, ideas, etc., how does this prove that you're more than just a physical body of atoms? SPEAKER B Yes, well, that's a very important question, obviously. And it's one perhaps we don't often think about. But some years ago, I forget the name of the chap, he won the Nobel Prize for Physiology. And in a talk that he was giving, he said, one of the things that amazes me most is how with my mind I can move my little finger. And what he was getting at is this, that our mind and our thoughts are non-material. And yet those non-material thoughts can influence voltages in our brain, that can influence nerves, that can influence muscles, and hence we move our little fingers. Now this is a real hot topic with regard to philosophers because some have to argue if we have no mind, if our mind is non-material, if we have no mind, no such thing as free will, that we are just programmed, then at, you know, a certain particular time and such, I was programmed to move my little finger and to think those thoughts, you know? But really when we think about that, it's a bit ridiculous. But that's the extreme position if we say there's no such thing as a non-material entity that is within us, which is our free will or our mind, our ability to make choices and decisions. Now, the reasons why philosophers have to go down this other path, if they are advoused to a materialistic or naturalistic worldview is that again, everything is involved with just atoms and molecules and energy. And therefore that has to explain everything, has to explain our ability to think. But really when we think about it, our thoughts are something that don't have a material component. For example, You can take your brain and when you're dead, hopefully, though it can be cut out and it can be weighed, right? Or you could squash it into a measuring cylinder and measure its volume. But you can't do that with your thoughts. You can't weigh your thoughts. Your thoughts are non-material. In one of the earlier programs, we talked about information. And information always is stored on some material substance, right? So the information, when we wrote in the sand, that information was actually stored in the sand, but it could be obliterated. We moved the sand, the information was gone because it's non-material. But it's always stored on a material substance. You know, it might be in a book, it might be on a computer hard drive, this sort of thing. So the information is non-material, but it's stored on a material entity. And this is where people get confused. Our mind has our thoughts, right? And our will, which are non-material, but they're stored on the material entity of our brain. And that's the important distinction to understand, that while a lot of people think, yeah, our brain is a physical entity and it's got the neurons, the gray matter sort of thing in there, and all the other bits and pieces, blood vessels and all that, all the different sections of the brain that do the different bits and so forth. And there's this material entity that is made up of atoms, molecules, matter. Does involve the energy. We burn, you know, a couple of watts, whatever it is, of energy that we produce in our brain. But that's different to our thoughts. You know, the little boy that's in me How he thinks, how, you know, and being creative, this sort of thing, making these choices, who we are, our mind, our thoughts. These are the non-material. And it's out of these thoughts that we become creative. We can write a new poem describing someone we love, or we can write a story about a scene or an adventure, make a new vase, make a new machine, this sort of thing. SPEAKER A Interesting. So it's quite clear that we have, because of the attributes that we know so well in our own lives, that we have this non-material side that is more over and above the physical aspect of who we are. Yes, very much so. That's very nice to have that clear distinction because, as you say, people can get confused where do you draw the line between those two areas. SPEAKER B And that links us to areas like love, passion, concern. These sort of feelings and emotions that we have. SPEAKER A [Speaker] Yes, yes. So if it's quite clear, especially when we have the idea of the information science, the thoughts about non-material versus material and that kind of thing, if materialism per se that says we are just matter and energy, if that is easily scientifically refuted, by say information theory, what are the practical implications of that? SPEAKER B Well, I think one of the important areas is in secular education, we focus on materialism. And to me, this is depriving young people of the evidence we have for the existence of a supernatural creator. And we have a lot of evidence for a supernatural creator. In that we have this amazing genetic code that again, informs cells to produce all the amazing situation that we have around us, the amazing environment that we live in, the solar system, the universe, all the amazing structures that we observe. And also, there's evidence our minds, right, which are non-material, seem to be tuned to be able to interpret and understand these, our environment and this sort of thing. And it's interesting that some of the greatest discoveries, and the ones that have really led to the massive breakthroughs in, that have led to modern technology, ones where we understand the laws of physics and the laws of nature, have essentially come from people who believed in a creator God. You know, like Newton and Pascal and, Maxwell, Clarke, and so forth. James Clarke Maxwell, rather. These people, because they believed that there was a creator, God, and that there was order, there was structure, and they discovered the mathematical laws and so forth, and that these followed laws, and hence the laws of chemistry and so forth that followed on from these things. So there's, Evidence from what we observe in nature that there must be a superior mind that put all this together. And it must be non-material because we have a material universe, right? Whoever created and designed that must be outside that. Yes. They had to be outside that to set up the laws that govern the universe. Planetary motion, strong and weak force, force of gravity, nuclear, strong and weak nuclear force, the gravitational force, and so forth. They're all— it had to be outside this system. So a spiritual system. And it's interesting that the Bible account of a God fits this. And I think one of the things that has evolved from this materialistic worldview is that the Christian God is just like the gods of Zeus or the gods of animated culture, cultures that followed animism and believed that the tree was a god or a bird was a god or so forth. Well, Christians had another God. The Christian God is a creator God that is outside that system, that set the system up, that is non-material. And one of the things that fascinate me is that the Bible indicates that we communicate with that God through our mind. Which is also non-material. SPEAKER A Yes, interesting. Very interesting connection that, you know, we live in a material world, as you say, but there is so much, so many non-material things within, embedded in that material world, that point to the fact that there must be a non-material entity, intelligent, powerful, that has put that all together. Yes. Um, which is so interesting. So Another question while we're in this vein of thought, why must God be spirit and how does that affect how we relate to him? SPEAKER B Yeah, sure. So, you know, as I've said, if God is spirit, he's non-material, then the only way we are likely to interact with him is through our minds, through a non-material entity. And that fits, you know, very well with the Bible. Now, one of the issues that comes out of this is the Christian claim that Jesus was God. And this is, I think, the bottom line that really irks a lot of people, that, you know, how can Jesus be God? And I think this brings us into a different line of evidence. And this brings us into the line of historical evidence that many people perhaps aren't aware of. So if we look, say, So for example, very few people question our general knowledge about the history of Rome. And yet much of that comes from a single writing of Tacitus, a Roman historian who wrote 15 or 16 volumes of the history of Rome in about the first century, first or second century. But the oldest manuscript that we have dates to the 800s. So it was 700 years after it was written, right? And no one questions it. When it comes to the Christian account of Jesus, and there's a couple of things. So Jesus was a person who lived, who was killed, definitely killed. There was historical records that he was killed, professionally killed by Roman soldiers on a cross, speared with a spear, plus, so definitely dead, dead. That was resurrected, came to life, taught to people afterwards, and then was translated, that angels came and took him to heaven. Now, this seems like— to the modern mind, this seems like a far-fetched story. But the thing was, it was witnessed by a multitude of people who then testified, giving their own lives for this, but also wrote it down. And preserved it. A number of accounts were written down that were preserved. And parts of those accounts were preserved as inscriptions. They were on tiles. They were just physically kept in other forms as well as being written down and preserved on parchments and copied and so forth. We have an enormous number of these copies that date back to the 1st and 2nd century that are still in existence. And then copies that are made from those subsequently, and they all concur. So we— and so what we have is we have a situation that was observed by hundreds of people. The resurrection of the translation was observed by a dozen people, a couple of dozen people that then was so— because this was a phenomenon that they'd never seen before that was so different that they testified to that, even though they said, "Well, you must be wrong. You're gonna lose your life," sort of thing. They gave their life saying, "No, this is true." So we have this powerful evidence, not only of the healing miracles that Jesus performed, healing the blind, the crippled, and deaf, and so forth, but his own resurrection that was observed and accounted for at the time historically. And it changed our calendar. It changed, you know, secular historians acknowledge that. —And this is a very important fundamental. This is a major historical fact where we have massive documentation, more documentation than for many other historical figures, most other historical figures, and yet it's not really taught in that concept to our young people in our education system today. And this is a result of this insistence of materialism and not recognizing that there is a spiritual existence and that Jesus was part of that spiritual existence. SPEAKER A Yeah, he had that connection with God that was, you know, the non-material, but he was also a human being on this earth, wasn't he? And so, yeah, if you deny that evidence, you miss out on that connection with God. SPEAKER B He was a powerful example of more than just our mind. He was a powerful example of the non-material God being manifest in a material form. SPEAKER A Amazing. Incredible. Absolutely incredible. Yeah. Wow. Thank you for sharing those thoughts and bringing that connection in about Jesus and the reality of his existence on this earth, linking in with this discussion about material versus non-material and how we really need to acknowledge both for what they are and the relation with each other. And what that means for our lives. So thank you so much for sharing today, Dr. John. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your stories and thoughts in the comments. Your journey could inspire someone else who's searching for answers.