We are souls with a body; not the
other way around, says Christian apologist J.P Moreland in his YouTube
interview about Neuroscience and the Soul.1
If you are a thinking Christian, it
is essential to understand the conflict between science and religion with
respect to the existence of the soul and the findings of modern science.
Why?
If
neuroscience proves that soul does not exist, then it’s quite possible that Historic
Christianity would be on shaky ground. The assault on the existence of the soul
is both from outside Christianity and from within.
In the year 2009, cognitive
neuroscientist Martha J. Farah and Nancey Murphy, a Professor of Christian
Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary published their letter entitled Neuroscience and the Soul in the journal
Science (Vol. 323. no. 5918, p. 1168).
The crux of their letter is to emphasize that neuroscience is slowly yet surely
advancing in disputing the existence of the soul. Here’s their letter:2
Neuroscience and the Soul
Science and
religion have had a long relationship, by turns collegial and adversarial. In
the 17th century Galileo ran afoul of the Church's geocentrism, and in the 19th
century Darwin challenged the biblical account of creation. The breaches that
open at such times often close again, as religions determine that the doctrine
in question is not an essential part of faith. This is precisely what happened
with geocentrism and, outside of certain American fundamentalist Christian
sects, evolution.
A new
challenge to the science-religion relationship is currently at hand. We hope
that, with careful consideration by scientists and theologians, it will not
become the latest front in what some have called the "culture war"
between science and religion. The challenge comes from neuroscience and
concerns our understanding of human nature.
Most religions
endorse the idea of a soul (or spirit) that is distinct from the physical body.
Yet as neuroscience advances, it increasingly seems that all aspects of a
person can be explained by the functioning of a material system. This first
became clear in the realms of motor control and perception (1, 2). Yet, models
of perceptual and motor capacities such as color vision and gait do not
directly threaten the idea of the soul. You can still believe in what Gilbert
Ryle called "the ghost in the machine" (3) and simply conclude that
color vision and gait are features of the machine rather than the ghost.
However, as
neuroscience begins to reveal the mechanisms underlying personality, love,
morality, and spirituality, the idea of a ghost in the machine becomes
strained. Brain imaging indicates that all of these traits have physical
correlates in brain function. Furthermore, pharmacologic influences on these
traits, as well as the effects of localized stimulation or damage, demonstrate
that the brain processes in question are not mere correlates but are the
physical bases of these central aspects of our personhood. If these aspects of
the person are all features of the machine, why have a ghost at all?
By raising
questions like this, it seems likely that neuroscience will pose a far more
fundamental challenge than evolutionary biology to many religions. Predictably,
then, some theologians and even neuroscientists are resisting the implications
of modern cognitive and affective neuroscience. "Nonmaterialist
neuroscience" has joined "intelligent design" as an alternative
interpretation of scientific data (4). This work is counterproductive, however,
in that it ignores what most scholars of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures
now understand about biblical views of human nature. These views were
physicalist, and body-soul dualism entered Christian thought around a century
after Jesus' day (5, 6).
To be sure,
dualism is intuitively compelling. Yet science often requires us to reject
otherwise plausible beliefs in the face of evidence to the contrary. A full
understanding of why Earth orbits the Sun (as a consequence of the way the
solar system was formed) took another century after Galileo's time to develop.
It may take even longer to understand why certain material systems give rise to
consciousness. In the meantime, just as Galileo's view of Earth in the heavens
did not render our world any less precious or beautiful, neither does the
physicalism of neuroscience detract from the value or meaning of human life.
What
is the classic Christian understanding of the soul?
J.P Moreland offers a fundamental explanation:
The Bible teaches that our soul leaves the body when we die and enters an
intermediate state between death and final resurrection. During the final
resurrection, we will receive a glorified body to be reembodied again.3
In the same video, he explains why Christians should be concerned about
this topic:
(1) Over the last two decades or so,
some neuroscientists are striving to do away with the concept of the soul.
(2) They argue that we are not anything
more than our brain. They contend that our consciousness is generated by the
brain and that consciousness resides in the brain.
(3) But a classic Christian
understanding would be that the consciousness resides in the soul and with a
deep integration and causal connection with the brain.
(4) Hence, Christians should be
concerned about the soul’s existence so
to be able to interpret the modern findings of neuroscience and integrate it
with classic Christian doctrine and theology.
The
existence of the soul is significant to the credibility of the classic
Christian understanding of the gospel and our belief in life after death. Moreover,
if the soul exists, it would largely undermine the Darwinian concept of
evolution because an atheist should explain how the human mind came into existence from matter, says Moreland:4
Neuroscience
and the soul is very, very important to the Christian Church for two reasons.
First of all, Gallup polls have indicated that there has been a steady loss of
belief in life after death as there has been an increase in the belief that
we’re our brains. The idea that many people have, and sensibly enough, is that
if you’re a brain and your brain dies, that’s the end of you. If there is a soul, this means that there
is more to us than our brains and it tends to lend support to the idea that
there’s life after death.
The
neuro-scientific findings, if they do, in fact, undermine belief in the soul,
it has, for many people, undermined the belief in life after death and made the
gospel sort of pointless. What is the point of the gospel if this life is all
there is? The second reason that this is important is because it appears that
the Bible teaches that there’s a soul and if we are to revise the Bible’s
teachings in this area, under the pressure of neuroscience, what’s next? It’s
important to ask the question has science undermined traditional Biblical
teaching?
There is
actually another reason why this matters to the average person. Darwin
admitted, when he came up with his Theory of Evolution, that it could not
explain the origin of mind. That what his theory could do was to explain the
origin of animal bodies and brains, but it couldn’t explain the origin of mind.
And so Darwin was a materialist and argued that his theory should be understood
as promoting a materialist view of living things, that living things are
strictly brains and central nervous systems.
If, on the
other hand, there’s reason to think that consciousness and the soul aren’t
physical, that provides reasons for thinking that there are limits to Darwinian
explanation in that there is need for a god to create the soul and to create
consciousness, so this lends support to a theistic view of the world. The soul
has been historically been understood as an immaterial substance that contains
consciousness and animates the body or makes the body enlivened. The problem for the atheist is to explain
how you could get mind from matter.
If you start
with the Big Bang and the history of the universe is a history where matter
simply rearranges to form increasingly larger or more complicated chunks of
matter, for many thinkers, what you’re gonna end up with are rearranged chunks
of matter. There will be no account for how you could get mind coming into
existence. The Christian theist doesn’t have that problem because for the
Christian believer in God, the fundamental reality is not particles or matter,
it’s a conscious soul, God himself.
If the
universe begins with a soul or a spirit that’s conscious, there is no
difficulty in explaining where this comes from because it’s part of your
fundamental reality. But if you say instead of in the beginning was the logos,
in the beginning were the particles, then you have a difficulty accounting for
where consciousness and soul or self come from.
This is Part 1 of a two-part
series on Neuroscience & Soul, which
has dealt with the question, “Why should Christians be concerned about the
existence of the soul?”
Part 2 will answer the question,
“Can science disprove the existence of the soul?”
Endnotes:
1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxlYKqmE7o0
2https://science.sciencemag.org/content/323/5918/1168.1
3https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxlYKqmE7o0
4https://cct.biola.edu/neuroscience-and-the-soul-j-p-moreland/
Websites last
accessed on 22nd July 2019.
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