Statues and Statistics

             Among the dramatic events that happened in 2020 was the groundswell of support for removing statues of people deemed prejudiced against, primarily, Black Americans.  This groundswell arose from the demonstrations against the shooting of Black Americans by police officers - the "Black Lives Matter" demonstrations.  It was a tangible, and probably lasting, outcome of these demonstrations.

 

             I'm not sure if the toppling of statues really helped reduce the ongoing problem of prejudice against Black Americans or against minorities in general, but I do understand the desire to have some immediate tangible outcome of the movement.  Social change is very hard to accomplish, generally occurs slowly, and is often hard to measure.  Thus, when there is significant social angst and a great desire to "change things now," it is tempting to look for tangible (i.e. measurable), immediate impacts.  The removal of statues of people deemed prejudiced or demeaning to Black people met that criterion.  A crowd of people can band together and by sheer force of will and determination, topple a statue.  There is something invigorating about being part of a group that acts in unison with ropes and brute strength and accomplishes a task that, by all rights, should have required a crane and a bulldozer.  And, further, when you are all done, there is an empty base of the statue left, providing tangible evidence of what you accomplished.  You can point to this spot in the future and tell people that you were part of the group that removed the statue that used to be here, a statue of someone who stood for bigotry.

 

             This blog entry is not about the Black Lives Matter movement per se, but I want to focus on the problem of establishing a benchmark of human behavior that is inherent in the removal of statues.  Of course, the actions of a random group of angry people - the "mob mentality" - is not likely to result in a well-reasoned social act and, frankly, it's easy to pick on such actions after the fact.  In the heat of the moment, it seemed like a good idea.  I'm sure it felt exciting at the time.  But, in the aftermath, society as a whole is now left to grapple with the "benchmark problem."  The problem is, we can't address the benchmark problem without understanding human nature and without a little understanding of...statistics (!).

 

             The "Benchmark Problem" is this:  where do you draw the line?  What is the benchmark behavior that qualifies a human being to be memorialized in a statue?  As more and more statues were toppled, we were left with questions about whether statues of people like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln should be toppled.  Recently I heard that there was a movement to topple certain statues of Jesus (the white, non-middle-eastern-looking ones).  Once you start down that path, where do you stop?  That's the Benchmark Problem and it includes questions such as:

·        How comprehensive should you be in evaluating the life of a person to determine whether they should have a statue?

·        What key issues of an individual's life should be evaluated?

·        What are the criteria by which the individual's life should be evaluated?

·        What defines a 'good' person or a 'bad' person?

·        Should the prevailing social views of the time be taken into account when evaluating people who lived in the past?

·        What level of evidence is sufficient to establish an individual's good-ness or bad-ness?

             These are tough questions to answer and we certainly can't expect a mob to stop in the midst of their angst and carefully evaluate and think through these questions.  But the "social consciousness" that was aroused by these events continues on and allows the opportunity for more reasoned discourse.  Personally, I think this is a good thing and, at least for the remainder of this blog entry, I'd like to focus specifically on the Benchmark Problem.  Especially the issue of deciding whether someone is "good"...or at least good enough to warrant being enshrined in a statue.  And, though it may seem odd, I'd like to use some simple statistical principles to illustrate the problem.

 

           I'm going to start by suggesting that, in general, we human beings tend to view our society as being separable into three groups, as illustrated in Figure 1.  These three groups I called: 1) the really good people, 2) most people, and 3) the really bad people.  This diagram is just meant to illustrate the sense I have from listening to people talk and trying to understand the basic underpinning of their views.  To be honest, I don't know that most people would articulate the concept in something so concrete as a diagram like Figure 1.  I think it is an unstated and overlooked foundational belief.  In other words, I think most people don't necessarily know that this is really how they view society, but if you could peel back their beliefs and statements sufficiently, I think you would find this concept is a pretty foundational and strongly held belief. 

 

             The problem with the concept shown in Figure 1 is that it is certainly not true.  In every other human characteristic than can be measured in some way (I'm acknowledging that "goodness" is very hard to quantify and measure), human traits generally follow a Gaussian distribution, or the "bell-shaped curve", as shown in Figure 2.  I've shown examples of people's height, IQ score, and autism spectrum score.  The details are not important here, but what I'm focusing on is the general pattern of the curves.  They do not follow the distribution that would be implied with the scenario in Figure 1 (that graph would result in three distinct and fully separate peaks with no overlap between the groups).  Instead, there is one continuum with a big peak in the middle and outliers at both extremes.  There is every reason to believe that, regardless of the yardstick you use to measure "goodness", you're going to get the same kind of distribution.  There will be lots of people who fall in the middle and then there will be a continuous distribution of people with higher and lower scores, ultimately bounded by some maximum and minimum scores.

  

             I added the autism graphs because I thought they were particularly relevant to the point I want to make.  When I was younger, autism was a thing you either had or you didn't.  I assume it was based on the diagnosis of a health professional somewhere.  I'm sure they didn't always use scores and I'm sure there was plenty of subjectivity in that diagnosis.  But as the field progressed and as more measurement techniques and more data became available, the field of autism study realized that autism was not at all like Figure 1 but instead it was much more like every other human characteristic - more like Figure 2.  A diagnosis of something like Asperger's became more common as a "milder" form of autism.  And, eventually, everyone realized what was probably obvious from the beginning:  there's a whole "spectrum" of autism.  So, now we talk about "being on the spectrum" which, to some extent, still holds on to the Figure 1 idea that there are some people who are "on the spectrum" and some who are not.  This illustrates how hard it is for us to let go of the Figure 1 concept, but the fact is that everyone is "on the spectrum" of autism, just like everyone is "on the spectrum" of human height or IQ level.  Or...  "goodness" rating.

 

             The reality is that human goodness must follow a spectrum from awful to great.  It is like Figure 2, not Figure 1.  Which, of course, begs one of the biggest questions of all time:  where do you draw the line along this continuum and declare someone good?  We have to face the fact that there is no good answer to that question.  Any answer we give is going to be arbitrary.  There will be some people who are just barely below the "good" line and they will be virtually indistinguishable from those who are just above the "good" line and it won't be fair to separate them into "good" and "bad" categories.  It can never be fair.  Wherever the line is drawn, it is an entirely arbitrary "benchmark".  So, if the mob decides that how you treated minorities is the benchmark for deciding if you should be honored with a statue, while they ignore other character qualities, such as whether or not you were a womanizer, well, then, that's the arbitrary benchmark and down come the statues.  Abraham...you're out.  Martin and John...you get to stay.  Is that going to be fair?  No.  There is no way setting a benchmark anywhere along a continuum is going to be fair.

 

             Actually, there would be one fair way to decide on the benchmark for goodness:  a benchmark of "perfection" would work.  There is a demonstrably fundamental difference between perfection and everything else.  That criterion can work as a yes/no category.  We're you perfect?  You get a statue.  Not perfect?  No statue.  But that criterion fails when you consider the teaching of a majority of major religions ("all have sinned") and the commonly accepted view of just about everyone else ("nobody's perfect").  In fact, I would suggest that the real distribution of "goodness" for the human race is about what is shown in Figure 3.  You might think of it similarly to the distance human beings can swim compared to the distance needed to swim across the Pacific Ocean.  Perfection isn't a high bar - it's an impossible bar.  There should be no disputing that fundamental fact of human nature.  So, while perfection might be the best benchmark, it's kind of useless for determining who gets a statue or who doesn't.

             I'm going to finish by extending the Benchmark Problem to its logical conclusion.  A benchmark for goodness (or any other human quality) is a difficulty that pervades a lot of the decisions we have to make in society, not just selecting statues.  It affects how we view ourselves, how we view others, and ultimately how we view our place in the universe.  Even the meaning of life espoused by many religions (both spiritual and secular) seem to lean heavily toward the Figure 1 view of humanity.  In my opinion, this is a fundamental problem with most religious and secular concepts.  If these concepts have, at their core, some semblance of the Figure 1 view, then they are based on a false assumption.  Thus, if there is some stated or unstated performance level (i.e. benchmark) in order to obtain or achieve some positive goal (heaven, life success, etc.), then such a concept can never be fair.  Any such system will have to have some arbitrary dividing line and some people will barely achieve the goal and some barely miss it.  That is a much more significant problem than deciding who gets a statue and who doesn't. 

 

             It is the Benchmark Problem that was key in driving me to explore Christianity.  Christian teaching takes a unique (as far as I have found) approach to the Benchmark Problem because it uses the perfection benchmark as the foundation.  Christian teaching says that no one qualifies for heaven.  "All have sinned."  That fits with my observation of human nature (Figure 3).  No one is even close to perfect.  As I have discussed elsewhere, that's why I consider Christianity to be reasonable.  This does not, of course, prove that Christianityis true in its entirety.  For that you have to examine other aspects.  But any religious or secular view that is based on Figure 1 is, for me, a non-starter.

 

             I doubt we will ever really agree on a benchmark for who gets a statue and who doesn't.  But I do think that an honest, open discussion of the Benchmark Problem and our underlying concept of human nature is a good thing for all of us.

"Post-fact" Foolishness

             I came across a "Guest Blog" in Scientific American that fully exposes a certain utter foolishness about science and facts that I have been thinking about lately.  The blog is titled "I'm a Scientist, and I Don't Believe in Facts", written by Julia Shaw, December 16, 2016.  Dr. Shaw is (or was?) a Research Associate at University College London.  She has written a book called The Memory Illusion about how unreliable our memories really are.  Fair enough - my memory is terrible!  But, anyway, her blog is about how, as she says, "facts are so last-century."  Here are a few comments - condensed a bit from the blog:

 

"I’m a factual relativist. I abandoned the idea of facts and “the truth"... much like Santa Claus and unicorns, facts don’t actually exist."

 

"We think of a fact as an irrefutable truth. According to the Oxford dictionary, a fact is “a thing that is known or proved to be true.” And where does proof come from? Science?"

 

"...science [is] inherently self-critical and self-correcting. ... Scientists want to know more, always. And, lucky for them, there is always more to know."

 

"...let’s make it our job as a society to encourage each other to find replicable and falsifiable evidence to support our views, and to logically argue our positions. In the process, please stop saying “because, science” to justify your argument, and using “FACT” as a preface to your statements. These are just the grown-up versions of “because I said so.” "

 

             First, I think one point that she is making, which is that science doesn't deal in facts but rather probabilities (because everything is science is subject to testing and refutation), is something I basically agree with.  If you accept the concept that the critical aspect of scientific theories is that they must be falsifiable, then you can't ever achieve 100% certainty.  Something that is 100% certain is no longer falsifiable.  Of course, there are theories in science that have so much evidence that even skeptical scientists treat them as if they were certain.  But, if you cornered them, they'd admit that they are just "99.9% certain" of any particular theory.  If that was the only point that Dr. Shaw was trying to make, then that would be fine - boring but fine. 

             However, she does not stop with the simple principle that science is falsifiable.  Instead she makes statements such as "facts don't actually exist."  To me, that is embarrassingly sophomoric.  Yet another example of scientists thinking that, since they are trained in the "hard sciences", they are allowed to declare themselves experts in all things.  Philosophy?  History? Ethics?  Apparently a PhD in neuroscience qualifies you as an expert in all fields.  But, ok, that's really not that big of a deal.  We all do that.  I write a blog about things I shouldn't be qualified to write about.  But it's my personal blog.  This was published in Scientific American, as if it had some quality to it.  That's what is embarrassing, in my opinion.

             OK, so first let's quickly state and move past the obvious fundamental act of foolishness:  is she really claiming that the statement "facts don't actually exist" is a fact?  Really?  Let's move on, though.

             A second point to observe but move on from is how Dr. Shaw acts as if science is the only possible arbiter of anything worth knowing.  She asks the rhetorical question "...where does proof come from?"  I say rhetorical because she treats it as rhetorical and gives the "obvious" answer:  science.  She is essentially saying that, of course, everyone knows that the only place you'd turn to for proof of anything is science.  What else could there be?  Well...um...that is so shockingly bigoted that it is hard to know where to start!  There is more to human experience than just science.  Even scientists have lives that are lived outside of science, whether they admit it or not.  There are whole fields of study that just might have something to say about truth - like philosophy and sociology and ethics and so on.  And that's ignoring religion, which has a lot to say about truth.  Humans have all sorts of experiences, such as love and grief, joy and sorrow, irony and irony, that are not grounded in science.  Is it certain that truth is not to be found in those experiences?  Ask the poets and songwriters.  I guess it would be one thing if Dr. Shaw acknowledged that there might be other fields that would have something to say about truth, but then discuss the reasons she rejects them all.  But she does not do that.  She poses a rhetorical question with a single clear answer.  The audacity and pride and, frankly, complete blindness of scientists to think that science is the only real field of study, and that all other fields are irrelevant to any discussion on truth, is shocking.  Except that it is common.  Even non-scientists are taken in by it.  But...even this issue is not the main problem with this blog!

             The fundamental foolishness perpetrated in this blog is the main point:  there is no such thing as a fact.  There is no such thing as truth.  You can't know anything for certain. 

             She seems rather certain about that!

             It is reasonable to argue that statements about the natural world made in the realm of science might not be considered "facts" in the sense that, if everything in science must be falsifiable, then we can't know it with 100% certainty.  That's a very robot-like definition of facts.  But it's not unreasonable to consider that line of reasoning if the discussion is confined to science.  But I know lots of facts that sit outside of science.  And I know them with 100% certainty.  You do to.

             I will take one example of a fact I know:

 

             It is morally wrong to kill a one-year-old child just because you're tired of the child being around.

 

             I know this with 100% certainty.  It is a fact.  And it's not just a fact for me.  It is a fact for every human being that is living now, has lived in the past, or ever will live in the future.  It was a fact even for societies that practiced child sacrifice.  In fact, even if some society in the future passes a law saying it is "legal", it still remains a fact that it is morally wrong. 

             That's one fact.  So facts do exist.  There's a second fact!

             There are, of course, an infinite set of such statements.  Some we would all agree on (like the statement above, I hope!) and some we would disagree on.  But even with the statements we disagree on, we would all accept that our view is a fact, not an opinion.  Take abortion, for example.  We don't say to ourselves "there's probably a middle ground that we will figure out in the future."  No - to some, "abortion is wrong", is a fact.  To some, "abortion is a woman's right", is a fact.  Of course we call the other side's view an "opinion."  But we also say that their opinion is false.  But just because we disagree on something does not mean that there is not a morally right answer that is a fact.  Slavery was wrong and it doesn't matter if some in the past thought it was acceptable.  Even if a majority of people thought it was right, it does not change the fact that it was, and is, wrong to enslave other human beings against their will. 

             There are more facts that I know.  Justice is good.  Injustice is wrong.  It is wrong to make fun of someone because of their appearance.  It is good to try to help people in need.  Everything is not relative.  There are absolutes, and they are absolute truths in every sense of the word absolute.

             No, Dr. Shaw, facts are not at all like Santa Claus and unicorns.  Facts do exist.  We encounter them constantly in our everyday lives.  By the way, is the statement "unicorns do not exist" a fact?

             If you are such a relativist that you cannot bring yourself to admit that the statement about the immorality of killing a one-year-old is a fact, then just consider the corner you have painted yourself into.  Do you seriously believe that, sometime in the future, we might realize that it is actually fine to kill one-year-old children so they aren't a bother anymore?  If you find yourself defending such an indefensible position, I suggest re-thinking your life philosophy.  Somewhere you've gone off the tracks.  That's also a fact.

 

13. Does the flesh change at conversion?

Linkage:  This is part of the study "Scriptural View of the Body, Soul and Spirit".  You should read that Introduction first.

 

Quick Answer:  No - and that's what makes living the Christian life such a challenge!

 

Key Passage:

             Rom 7:18  "...in my <sarx> dwelleth no good thing."  If you believe, as I do, that Romans 7 is describing the Christian experience from the perspective of someone who is a Christian, then this passage is clear:  the flesh does not change at conversion.  It cannot change.  It is material.  Note that the "body" (i.e. <soma>) is not the same as "flesh" (<sarx>) - (see discussion here).  To be very specific on this point:  the molecules in the brain (or elsewhere in the body) are not changed at the point of conversion.  Conversion changes our whole "us", and changes our destiny, but we are much more than flesh.  The flesh is certainly impacted by our conversion because the flesh is impacted by our <psuche-pneuma>. 

             I Pet 2:11 "...abstain from sinful <sarkikos> desires, which wage war against your soul <psuche>."  Our flesh just pursues self-preservation and pleasure.  It is inherently selfish.  To live the Christian life, we must be selfless.  Thus it is a full out war.

 

Caveat:

             I Cor 6:13-20  Even if the flesh does not change, this does not mean that Christians can just ignore the flesh and say "oh well - that's just the flesh doing it."  We are responsible for our flesh and our flesh is part of us as long as we are alive as material human beings.  We cannot escape that.  Though Jesus taught us to see that the spiritual was of prime importance, He did not ignore the flesh or ever say it was of no account.  He just kept the flesh and the physical world in its rightful place.  This is why the practice of spiritual disciplines is useful.  These disciplines build habits into our flesh that allow us to live the Christian life easier. 

 

Related Scriptures and Thoughts:

             Phil 3:3  "...we worship God in the <pneuma>…no confidence in the <sarx>."  There is no confidence that the <sarx> can serve God. 

             I Thes 5:23  "I pray God your whole <pneuma> and <psuche> and <soma> be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."  Paul does not use <sarx> here, and if <soma> means "container of you" (see here), then this verse makes sense.

             Ro 2:29 "No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise is not from men, but from God."  This seems pretty clear that salvation affects the <psuche-pneuma> - the inward man.  The law is outward.  It has to do with the things the flesh does.  And if our flesh could keep the law, then we would have been justified through it.  But it does not and it cannot.  Only death releases us from the flesh - that is the only way to get rid of the body of death.

 

Discussion:

             From a scientific perspective, the point is this:  if you could have a measure of the status of all the molecules of the body of someone as they become a believer in Jesus Christ, you would not necessarily detect some instantaneous difference.  However, the mind is transformed - our perspective on everything is different - and thus the patterns of thinking in the mind are transformed.  There might be a difference in the pattern of neural firing in the brain of a Christian, but that is an effect that generally takes some time.

             The composition of the Christian brain or the Christian flesh is the same as the composition of the brain and flesh of any other person.  If we could measure the status of the <psuche-pneuma>, the story would be different and we would expect to see changes at, and beyond, conversion.  Further, we expect that changes in the <psuche-pneuma> should "work their way out" in our flesh and become evident over time.  Christians should live a transformed life.  Christians should not be using the flesh as an excuse for bad behavior.  Sin is still sin.  When Christians sin, it is a stain to the reputation of Christ and it should not happen. 

             I can imagine that, at some point in the future, scientists might discover neurons, or subcomponents of neurons, that appear to be influenced by some outside force.  But science will not consider this to be evidence of the soul because the soul is not material.  Instead, I think the hypothesis will be that the influence is due to something material, like electromagnetic waves.  This whole concept is explored in a lot more detail in my series on "Theory of the soul."

             My goal in this series of entries on the "Body, Soul, and Spirit" is to help Christians see where their beliefs begin and end, and where science begins and ends with respect to this topic.  In this case, the two areas do not mesh.  Christian belief rests heavily on the concept of a soul-spirit in every human being.  Conversion happens in the soul-spirit.  Science can only look and observe the material world, and thus will always only see the flesh.  The tools of science are not designed to detect anything non-material (i.e. spiritual).  If science ever claims that there is no soul, it is clearly out of bounds. 

Consciousness, Free Will, and the Orchestra

             In the world of science - neuroscience in particular - there is something called the "hard problem of consciousness."  I love that phrasing.  It's called a "hard problem" because we can't explain it and, frankly, if you've tried to read Roger Penrose's "Shadows of the Mind", you realize that we don't even know where to start.  There isn't really even a field of study in which to place consciousness.  Will it be answered from the field of biology?  Physics?  Metaphysics?  We don't even know if it belongs in the hard sciences or liberal arts.  It really is a hard problem!  In fact, we can't even come up with a good definition of consciousness, even though we all experience it.  Consciousness is defined as "awareness of existence."  Great.  What is "awareness"?  "Awareness" is defined as the "state of being conscious of something."  That's a textbook example of a circular definition.  We don't know how to define it and we don't know where to study it.  So, yes, consciousness really is a "hard problem"!

             However, to me, consciousness is just one side of the issue.  The other side is our ability to make decisions - what some of us would refer to as our "free will."  I have discussed free will in other entries, so I am not focusing on that here, except to say one thing:  compared to the problem of free will, consciousness is easy!!  Free will is an 11 on the Mohs scale.

             Just one more thing:  in my view, consciousness and free will are two aspects of the same thing.  Consciousness correlates to the "sensory" system and free will correlates to the "motor" system.  Consciousness is an input.  Free will is an output.  To go further, since I hypothesize that consciousness and free will reside in the "soul-spirit" (or the Greek "psuche-pneuma" - see here for general discussion), consciousness is the part of the soul-spirit that is acted upon by the physical brain (senses the brain's status) and free will is the part of the soul-spirit that acts upon the physical brain.

             I said all that to say this:  I'm proposing using the idea of an orchestra as an analogy to consider the mind/brain/soul/consciousness/free will problem.  With this analogy, I hope to show that consciousness and free will cannot be physical, material structures in the way we currently classify things as being material. 

             For starters in this analogy, let's correlate each musician in the orchestra with a neuron.  Of course there are a lot more neurons in the brain than musicians in an orchestra.  So you have to imagine a really huge orchestra and an incredible array of instruments.  Some instruments play very few notes - like specialized percussion instruments.  Other instruments are like violins - almost always playing.  But each musician is primarily responsible for their own instrument.  In the brain, neurons may have an effect on other neurons and multiple organs.  In a very loose way, each musician is affected by the musicians around them.  If they play faster or slower or so on, they can be influenced in a way that might affect their play.  Granted, it's not a perfect analogy:  orchestras lack "feedback loops" and "reflexes" and other features of the nervous system.  And a musician is, of course, much more complex than a single neuron and maybe each musician should be thought of as more of a network of neurons.  But, really, that's not the point of this analogy.

             As described so far, the orchestra can function pretty well - especially if it is composed of a group of well-trained musicians - and this is analogous to the brain.  The instruments are the neural signals - the action potentials of each neuron or the aggregate action potentials of each neural circuit.  The orchestra is a self-contained unit just like the brain is a self-contained unit.  If you have an instrument that measures sound alone, you will only measure the results of what each musician does - the sound that comes out of each instrument.  In the same way, if all you have are measures of neuronal activity - voltage or metabolic measures - then all you will see is the neural activity.  When we record brain activity, we are listening in on each musician or each section of musicians to hear the music they are playing.  By listening in on different areas of the brain, we hope to assemble the entire "score" that is being played.

 

             But there are two things missing:  one is obvious and you probably know what I'm going to say.  The other is even more obvious, so obvious that you might not think of it.  These two things are:  1) the Conductor and 2) the Listener - the audience.

             First, let's consider the Listener.  The Listener represents, in this analogy, the consciousness of the soul.  Of course you don't have to have any listeners for an orchestra to function.  But what is the point of an orchestra if no one is listening?  Actually, though, you do have to have at least one Listener:  the Conductor.  A deaf, blind, and insensate conductor would not be able to conduct.  Even if no one else is listening, at the very least the Conductor is listening.

             Note that only the Listener hears the whole orchestra (assuming they are in a room with good acoustics).  Each musician hears the musicians around them, and probably focuses in to certain sounds (like the percussion), but they really are not sitting back and listening to appreciate the music as a whole.  It is kind of hard for an individual musician to hear everything being played (especially since, as you recall, we are talking about a really really huge orchestra), and they naturally "tune out" some sounds in order to concentrate on what they are playing.  In general, they hear their own instrument and the instruments of those around them much more intensely than anything else.  Their attention is focused on what they have to play.  But the Listener is generally listening to the entire combined sound of the orchestra.  What the Listener hears is not just a single, combined output.  For example, the Listener doesn't just hear a homogenous sound that increases or decreases in volume alone.  No, the Listener hears a richness of many different components:  volume, pitch, harmonics, beat, etc.  The components - the instruments - are all there in what the Listener hears.  They hear the whole musical piece.

             The thing about our consciousness is that we are aware of the states of multiple neurons in our brain at the same instant in time and that awareness is updated with each passing instant in time.  At each successive moment, we are tracking the status of millions of neurons.  Usually, we are just listening to the entire orchestra, although we do have the ability to "tune out" portions of our sensory inputs and concentrate on a small part of what is happening around us.  The Listener also has memory and may have a memory of familiar passages in a musical piece.  The Listener can be moved to emotions through those passages of music.  These are all characteristics of our consciousness.  Again, the analogy is not perfect, but I think it can be instructive.

             The lack of a "Listener" in the physical brain is, to me, one of the major problems confronting the idea of consciousness as a physical entity that resides in the brain.  There is nothing that physically connects all of our neurons to a single, unified point - no "Organ of Listening."  Of course there are many neurons that have electrical connections to a huge number of other neurons throughout the brain.  But a single neuron does not contain signals that can fully represent the richness of the conscious sensations we feel.  A neuron, fundamentally, either outputs an action potential or it doesn't.  A neuron is simply binary in that manner.  Even if we allow for the variation in excitatory potentials as some kind of continuum over a range, we are still left with just a single value (voltage) that is, fundamentally, discrete and cannot provide anywhere near the richness of our conscious experience.  Our conscious experience is composed of the activity of many many neurons simultaneously.  But there is no physical anatomical structure that makes such a connection.  There is nothing physical in the brain that is like a recording array, picking up the electrical signals from a large ensemble of neurons and then displaying them on a screen to be appreciated in aggregate...or, related to our proposed analogy:  converting the neuronal spikes into sounds for someone to listen to.  There is nothing in the brain (physical) that is like a PET scan, which can show neural activity across the entire brain.  There is no "uber-neuron" that is simultaneously aware of all of the states of the other neurons in the brain.  Even if there were such a neuron, it could not maintain the richness of the input because all a neuron can experience is the summation of all inputs into a single voltage level.  The anatomy is clear.  We've dissected lots of brains to trace the anatomy and there is no "Listener" in the brain - at least no listener made of a material substance. 

             I think I need to diverge here and give another analogy:  numbers.  Consider a series of numbers:  say 6, 2, 55, 17, 8.  If you sum these numbers together you get 88.  Our consciousness experiences each number simultaneously and is, or can be, aware of each individual number.  A neuron only experiences a summation and thus any individual neuron can only be aware of the number 88.  These experiences are not the same.  A single "uber-neuron", no matter how connected, cannot be the seat of consciousness as we experience it.

             Now let's consider the Conductor in our analogy.  The Conductor represents the will of the soul.  The will of our soul is our intention to carry out decisions.  It is our free will.  It is our moral decision-making.  It is our conscience.  The conductor directs the entire orchestra, but does not play a single instrument and does not make a sound.  As a listener, you don't (at least not normally!) hear the conductor.  If you closed your eyes and listened, you would not know there is a conductor.  And yet, we afford the conductor a lot of credit for how the orchestra plays.  Of course, a lot of credit is based on what we imagine the conductor did during the practices for the performance.  But, in a good orchestra, each musician will be primarily focused in on the conductor even during the performance.  A good musician will not be affected by a sudden poor, off-beat, off-key note of the musician next to them - they will have a laser-focus on the conductor and will keep playing properly despite what is going on around them.

             However, despite the importance we place on the conductor, the orchestra can function without the conductor.  In fact, when well-trained, an observer (listener) might not know whether the conductor is there or not.  I hypothesize that this is very analogous to our brain function.  The neurons respond to inputs and create outputs via habits and learned responses and reflex loops and complicated networks and so on.  The brain can create all sorts of music without being told what to do.  It can run open-loop - i.e. apart from the soul...apart from the will...apart from the conscience.  I believe we were made to be tightly linked to our conscience just like the orchestra should be tightly linked to their conductor, but it surely is not always the case.  A musician may decide to play whatever they feel like playing and it might sound beautiful in isolation.  However, it is not what the conductor wants and is not what the listener is expecting to hear. 

             The point of this analogy is that the Conductor is not in control of an orchestra in the same way that a driver is in control of a car.  A lot can happen in an orchestra without the conductor being involved.  If this analogy is in any way correct, it explains why the "Conductor" or "soul" would very hard to detect.  If you listen to a piece of music, how can you tell if the conductor is there or not?  If the orchestra is well-trained, actually, even if it isn't...how do you know if a musician is focused in on the conductor or not - especially if you don't know what the conductor is wanting the musician to do?  By analogy, this is why it would be so hard to measure, in the physical world, the impact of the soul on the neurons in the brain.  How do you know when a neuron is "looking up at the conductor" for direction and when it is just playing its well-practiced music?  I suppose the best chance we have of detecting this effect would be during learning, but even then it would be very difficult.  Most learning is still primarily based on physical sensory inputs and feedback.  The soul probably has the biggest impact on moral learning, but that type of learning must be very subtle and rarely occurs in some concentrated training session. I don't know if it would ever be possible to directly measure this influence [see discussion here].

             With respect to the "Listener" part of the soul (i.e., what I say is analogous to consciousness):  you would never detect the existence of a Listener.  Ironically, the only way to try to detect such a thing is to be the Listener yourself.  But the Listener doesn't change the music.  So you may be conscious, but you could never measure the presence of the conscious "Listener" if you are just listening to the sounds of each musician or even if you make a scan of the whole brain.  The conscious soul...the "sensory" part...has no effect on the physical brain.  The Listener leaves no trace.  It would be like standing at a radio transmission tower and trying to figure out if anyone is listening to the radio station being broadcast.  How could you ever know?

             Finally, I just want to say one thing about brain damage and the soul.  Some argue that the fact that people's personality can change as a result of brain damage - a stroke or head injury or so on - is proof that the "soul" is not spiritual but rather is physical and resides in the material properties of the brain.  I hope that the orchestra analogy helps to understand how brain damage relates to the soul.  If a musician starts playing badly...or quits playing altogether...then the music will surely sound different.  But that has nothing to do with whether there is a conductor or a listener. We are listening (when we measure the brain or interact with a person) to the orchestra - we are not listening to the conductor.  Whether an orchestra is bad or good has nothing to do with the existence of a conductor.  The greatest conductor in the world, when conducting a group of fifth-graders who would rather be in recess, will produce music that will sound horrible.  That doesn't mean that the conductor doesn't exist or is bad.  Of course brain damage affects a person's personality and what they do.  But that does not negate the existence of their soul.

             No analogy is perfect of course, and one of the problems with my orchestra analogy is that it is kind of circular.  By that I mean that I am illustrating the mind-body problem by introducing a bunch of mind-bodies into the analogy.  The analogy includes musicians, conductors, and listeners, all of whom have their own minds and, presumably, their own souls.  We are using souls to illustrate souls, so does the analogy really help us?  All I can say is that the analogy has helped me to imagine how, and under what circumstances, the soul might be apparent and why it is so difficult to detect the activity of the soul.  Maybe it is not helpful for anyone else.  But the soul is not like anything we encounter in the physical, material world so it is hard to come up with an analogy of the soul that uses only material things.  Ultimately, the only thing like a soul is...another soul!

Creation: Miracle or Anomaly?

             It seems that Christians feel threatened by the theory of evolution along with the commonly lumped-together theories about the origins of the universe and the origins of life.  The reasoning seems to be that the Bible presents a particular story of creation and, if evolution is shown to be true, then it negates the Bible and undermines the Christian faith.  But this seems like a misguided approach and does not follow the general pattern of the Christian view of some other differences between science and faith.

             Even before science became known as science, there were key "naturalistic theories" that directly contradicted the very foundational beliefs of Christianity.  Here's one:  every person dies, and when they die, they decay into dust and they never ever come back to life!  They are gone.  Here's another one:  a human female who is a virgin can never become pregnant without being physically impregnated in some way!  It has never happened in the history of mankind and it will never happen.  These events are physical impossibilities.  In fact, these issues are so fundamental that they aren't usually explicitly taught - they are just assumed.

             Christians claim that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, died, and rose again after being dead for three days.  These claims are not just one set of a wide range of beliefs in the Christian religion.  They are not incidental to the Christian faith.  They are the central claims of the Christian faith.  These claims establish the divine nature of Jesus.  If someone rejects these claims then they cannot claim to be a Christian.  If these claims are false, Christianity is false.  These claims cannot be more fundamental and critical to Christians.

             And yet...Christians never try to attack the basic scientific claims regarding the impossibility of a virgin birth and the impossibility of rising from the dead.  Christians do not feel threatened when scientists, atheists, or anyone else, claim that these things cannot happen.  Christians are not up in arms, trying to get these principles taught in the science classes in public schools.  Why?  The answer is obvious to all:  the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus Christ are miracles.  They are supernatural events, not natural events.  In fact, the more it is shown and demonstrated that these events could never happen in a natural world, the stronger is the case for Christianity.  If these events could happen naturally, it would significantly weaken Christian faith.  It is actually important that these events be shown to be miracles - supernatural events - and not unusual but natural events.  Science is helpful to the Christian faith here because it can help to establish why these events are impossible in a purely natural world.

             Somehow, the Christian view of creation seems to have escaped classification as a miracle.  Why is that?  Actually, the basic concept of creation has been clearly demonstrated to be supernatural to some extent, based on the scientific demonstration that spontaneous generation does not occur in the natural world.  Of course, even Christians do not claim that creation is necessarily continuous to the present day.  Also, science has to uncomfortably backtrack on this issue a bit because obviously, at some point, some form of "spontaneous generation" did occur in history.  Science is stuck claiming that life only spontaneously appeared under some specific conditions in the past that have not been duplicated since.  I think it is hard for scientists not to refer to the spontaneous generation of life as a miracle - instead they have to say it is an "anomaly" - but that is not the main point here. 

             I think the reason that creation isn't typically lumped in with other miracles is that the creation of the universe by an all-powerful God does seem like a logical possible explanation of how the natural world came into being.  It is one of many possible explanations, of course, and one that science tries to avoid.  However, because it could be considered logical or rational, it seems like Christians kind of adopted the sense that the creation story of Genesis was a rational natural explanation of creation.  Unlike miracles, which depend on being classified as supernatural, and thus are never threatened by natural proofs that they could not happen, but are rather strengthened by such proofs, the Christian view of creation seems to have been placed in the "natural occurrence" category.   I think Christians liked the fact that the existence of the natural world seemed to "prove" that a Creator God must exist.  The idea was comforting.  The idea is, in fact, rational.  But that does not mean that it is natural. 

             Here's my suggested view:  Creation of the universe, starting with nothing and wrapping up the work in six days, is a miracle.  It is a supernatural event.  It might correlate well with some natural observations, but that does not negate the fact that the creation story in Genesis is, at it's very core, a description of a truly miraculous event.  In fact, the idea that God created in six days what scientists claim the natural universe would take 5 trillion days to create establishes the immeasurable creative power of God.  What God did in creation is definitely not natural!  It is a Class A-1 miracle!

             Some may be uncomfortable calling creation a miracle because they are vested in the idea that Genesis relates real human history and worry that "relegating" creation to the category of a miracle somehow negates the "realness" of it.  They worry that it somehow makes it less of an account of history and more of a fable or myth.  But that is not at all what is meant by creation being a miracle.  The four gospels are clearly meant to relate real human history, yet it is within the gospels that we find the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Recognizing an event as a miracle does not negate its historical nature.  A miracle is something that should not have ever happened based on the principles of the natural world, but did actually happen.  A fable is something that never happened but maybe could have.  The virgin birth is a miracle.  The resurrection is a miracle.  And creation is a miracle.

             Maybe, in some odd way, it would have been nice if, as science delved further and further into the age of the universe, they would have kept honing in closer and closer to exactly 6,024 years for the age of the earth and then found that the "void" was exactly two days older.  Such a finding would have "proven Christianity beyond a reasonable doubt."  But, of course, there was never a reason to think that that was going to happen.  There are plenty of ways that God could use to prove his existence beyond a reasonable doubt.  He does not avail Himself of any of them.  He leaves room for doubt.  He leaves room for choice.  He leaves room for belief.  It makes us uncomfortable as Christians because belief can be so hard sometimes.  We think it would be so easy if the belief part of Christianity was done away with.  We want to see, not believe.  We want to see the nail marks in His hands and thrust our hand into His side.  That would make everything so easy, we think!  But it is not to be so.  Not yet anyway.

             I strongly encourage Christians to see creation for what it is and was always meant to be:  a miracle.  Stop degrading this miraculous event by trying to force fit it into a naturalistic explanation.  Instead, celebrate every time science makes the idea of creation harder and harder to imagine.  All that does is demonstrate, in more and more certain terms, the omnipotence of our Creator God.  Revel in that fact that your God, the God you believe in, was born of a virgin and rose from the dead...and created the universe out of nothing, apparently in one trillionth the time it should have taken!  And He still cares about you.  That is a miracle!

19. Do animals (non-human) have souls? Do animals have spirits?

Linkage:  This is part of the study "Scriptural View of the Body, Soul and Spirit".  You should read that Introduction first.

 

Quick Answer:  No.

 

Key Scriptures:

             None really.  I looked through all 95 instances of the word <psuche> as used in the NT.  94 of the uses clearly refer to the soul of human beings.  For example, see my note on I Pet 3:20 below.  The 95^th use, found in Rev 8:9, is discussed in the Related Scriptures section and cannot be used to confidently claim that animals have souls.  Beyond that, I did not find any indication that animals have <psuche>.

             In addition, I could not find anything that references an animal having a <pneuma>.  Jesus did send the evil spirits into a herd of swine, but that is clearly presented as an unusual (miraculous) event.  Scripture is about the spiritual realm and is always about humans, not animals. 

             I Pet 3:20  “a few…eight <psuche> were saved by water” – speaking about the people saved on Noah’s ark.  Here, the human souls are clearly counted even though there were numerous animals of all kinds saved on the ark.  This verse seems to clearly distinguish the human <psuche> from the life of all of the other animals that were saved after the flood.  This is an example of how the whole tenor of scripture assumes that human beings are the only creatures with a <psuche-pneuma>.  Only humans can sin.  Jesus died only for humans.

 

Caveat:

             I thought this might be a simple question and not that important.  As it turns out, it is both difficult to answer and has broader implications on Christian beliefs than I initially imagined.  I gave a "quick answer" of no, but it may warrant further study.

 

Related Scriptures and Thoughts:

             Rev 8:9…the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had <psuche>, died.  Given that there is no other verse that references animals having souls, it is important to make sure that there is only one logical interpretation to this verse if we're going to claim that this verse means that animals have souls (or, more specifically, that fish have souls!).  However, there are at least three logical interpretations of this verse: 

1) The term "creatures" refers to animals (non-humans) and <psuche> means "soul" in the unique sense, thus implying that animals - at least sea creatures - have souls. 

2) The term "creatures" is referring to humans.

3) The term <psuche> is referring to life in general, not the "soul" in the unique sense.

 

             With respect to option #2, note first that the point of the verse is not to talk about souls;  it is talking about death and destruction in the end times.  It could be that the "creatures in the sea with <psuche>" were all "human creatures".  Especially since it seems like the word “in” could be “on”.  At any given moment, there must be a lot of human beings in or on (mostly on) the sea.  Yes, it would seem weird for John to use the word "creature" (Greek: ktisma) to mean just humans, but not completely out of the question.  That word is only used four times in the NT.  The other use of the term in Revelation, Rev. 5:13, speaks of all creatures praising God.  Even there the word could be referring to humans only, though it would seem like an odd word choice.  I think the general interpretation of the word is that it means "every created thing", but that would also include non-living things like rocks, and certainly rocks don't have souls.  But, regardless, some words are used in an unusual way in Revelation, so I don't think we can completely eliminate this option as a possible interpretation.

             I think the most likely explanation is that the word <psuche> is meant to convey the idea of "life" and not in specific reference to a soul (option #3).  The verse could be thus interpreted as saying that "things living in the sea were destroyed", which is consistent with the context of the verse.  As I have discussed elsewhere, there is some fuzziness about how terms like <psuche> and <soma> and <sarx> are used in the NT.  The question is whether the word <psuche> is used elsewhere in the NT to clearly refer to the idea of "life" rather than "soul."  I found at least one instance where this is the case:  Luke 12:22.

             Luke 12:22 shows that <psuche> is used to mean life – even physical life – in some cases.  “Take no thought for your <psuche>, what ye shall eat…”  Jesus is referring to worrying about finding physical food, so the "eating" is physical eating, which is necessary to sustain physical life.  Physical eating doesn't sustain the soul.  Therefore, at least in this verse, the term <psuche> is used to mean physical life.  I think that the term <psuche> is being used in the same manner in Rev 8:9. 

 

Discussion:

             My conclusion is that non-human animals do not have a supernatural soul.  Animals have <zoe> life, which is a physical life, but not a spiritual life.  They are not responsible for their own actions.  The presence of the <psuche-pneuma> is a distinguishing factor in human beings when compared to all other creatures in the universe.

             I'm sorry to all you dog and cat lovers out there!  However, a lack of a soul does not mean that there won't be dogs in heaven.  With respect to that issue, scripture is completely silent.  But if you need dogs or cats or butterflies in heaven in order for it to really be heaven, then I'm sure they'll be there.

             If animals did have souls, then this would present significant complications.  First, where would you draw the line as to which animals - or living things - have souls.  Most people I know, if they tend to think animals have souls, think of dogs and cats, but not frogs and bats.  And certainly not spiders and cockroaches.  Or grass and mold.  But where would you draw the line for "soul-possession"?  There is certainly nothing in scripture to guide such a dividing line.  Actually there is:  the dividing line is between humans and all other creatures of any sort.  Humans are unique, and one of the distinguishing characteristics...or maybe the fundamental distinguishing characteristic...is that humans have souls and no other creatures have souls.

             Is there room in Christianity to believe that animals sin?  It seems that the whole tenor of scripture is that only humans can sin, but I can't think of a passage that is explicit about that.  Only Adam and Eve are described as eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  The implication is that Adam and Eve were the only ones to eat from that tree.  Any attribution of moral responsibility to any creature other than humans is outside of scripture.

             What about animals showing emotions?  Certainly we tend to attribute to our pets a lot of "human emotions".  My working hypothesis is this:  if animals only have <sarx> and <zoe>, then any attribute an animal might exhibit must be the <sarx> in action, not the result of a <psuche-pneuma>.  Given this hypothesis, it seems clear that there are many emotions that span both <sarx> and <psuche-pneuma> and it is very difficult to tell when, in humans, they have crossed the line from a purely <sarx> (physical) response to one that is now driven by the <psuche-pneuma>.  Anger is a good example.  Certainly animals get angry.  Humans get angry.  Jesus got angry.  God gets angry.  We are told that not all anger is sin.  "Be angry and do not sin."  No animal sins by being angry.  In the case of anger, there is also a morally-right anger - we call it "righteous anger".  We know righteous anger exists because God can be described as angry.  Thus, it can be instructive to consider the emotions that animals show, because that can help us understand where our emotions can be purely "fleshly" and where they might be more spiritual (or moral) in nature.  If there is a moral component to an emotion, it becomes uniquely human.  If there is a type of anger that is sinful (there is), then that is a type of anger that is unique to humans.  Sexual immorality is another example.  Animals never commit sexual immorality, but humans do.  But for humans, sex has a moral component that can be good or bad.

             I think that Christians have to be careful about ascribing human traits to their pets.  In general these attributions are harmless and there is no deep meaning intended.  But we have to make sure we keep God's eternal priorities in our minds if we are to live according to Christian principles.  The eternal spiritual state of each human being is an eternal priority for God.  The eternal state of any other created being is not an eternal priority.  We should not mix those things up in our own lives.

9. Are human beings alive because their soul is in their body, and when their soul departs their body, then they are dead?

Linkage:  This is part of the study "Scriptural View of the Body, Soul and Spirit".  You should read that Introduction first.

 

Quick Answer:  I don't think so - not when referring to physical life and physical death.

 

Key Scriptures:

             I Pet 4:16  Death is in the <sarx>, life is in the <pneuma>.  If life is only in the <pneuma>, then how can animals be alive?  How can plants be alive if life is only in the spirit?  This argues for another term that would describe life in a more earthly, material sense.  I believe that term is <zoe> and its derivatives. 

             I Cor 15:45 describes a "<zao> <psuche>" or "living soul".  Based on the phrasing, it seems that the <zao> is describing a condition of the <psuche>.  Given this, it would seem that there is a difference between "life" or "living" and the soul.  I think plants and animals could be <zao>, but without a soul.  I think the soul is unique to humans, but I don’t think living is unique to humans.

             James 5:20  James talks about saving a <psuche> from death – so souls can die.  But I think that means the eternal “state” of the soul, not physical death.  A dead soul means a soul destined to hell.  I don’t think it necessarily means a soul without physical life.

             James 2:26 “…the <soma> without the <pneuma> is dead…”  At death, the spirit is separated from the body.  But whenever spiritual death is under consideration, it is more about the state of the <psuche-pneuma>.  It is either in the state of death - eternal punishment - or life - eternal life.  I wouldn't say that this verse says that physical death is the <pneuma> departing from your body.  That does happen, but that is not what makes us physically dead.   

 

Caveat:

             In general, it seems that when your physical body dies, the soul departs at the same time.  But physical death is, I think, the loss of <zoe>.  The two events are simultaneous.  But dogs and frogs die, and that is not because their soul departs.  I would say that, for humans, the physical death of the body releases the soul.  The departure of our soul is a consequence of our physical death.

 

Related Scriptures and Thoughts:

             Matt 22:32  God is not God of the <nekros>, but of the living <zao>.  Further evidence, I would say, that <nekros> is referring to physical death of the <sarx> that results in the decay of the <sarx>.  At some point dust really does return to dust.  All memory and evidence of the physical life of any single individual is eventually lost.  Then it is just matter.  God is not God of that.  Of course, He is the God of the universe.  But to be the God of Abraham is not to be the God of dust, or the God of someone that was in the past.  God is in the moment.  To say that God was the God of Abraham doesn’t make sense.  God doesn’t live in the past.  Jesus uses this to show that there is a resurrection of the dead.

             John 5:24-25  Jesus seems to use <Thanatos> and <nekros> interchangeably.  He also uses <zoe> in the first verse and <zao> in the second.  I don’t know if there is a significance to that.  “the <nekros> shall hear the voice of the Son of God:  and they that hear shall live.”  If this was referring to physical death of our <sarx>, this wouldn’t make sense.  Those dead can’t hear.  I think Jesus has to be referring to the “spiritually dead”.  In fact, we are all spiritually dead before we believe.

 

Discussion:

             To summarize this topic with respect to a Christian view of the science related to living, I suggest the following:

             <Zoe> and similar Greek terms refer to "life" in the way that we used to (a century ago) refer to a "life force" - whatever it is that makes living things alive.  Human beings, animals, plants, etc. are "alive" because they have <zoe>.  This "lifeforce" could be material, could be spiritual, could be a combination of both.  My feeling is that there is a good chance that it is purely material and part of the natural world.  It could be the natural outcome of biochemistry in action.  This is in contrast to "eternal life", which is fundamentally spiritual in nature.  [Note though that sometimes the word "eternal" isn't added to "life" in the Greek NT - you have to deduce that the reference is to eternal life from the context.] 

             The key issue with respect to science - biology and neuroscience in particular - is that I would leave open entirely the possibility that science will find that the "lifeforce" is a material thing; a natural phenomenon that can be explained by laws of physics and chemistry.    This would not negate Christian beliefs or go against scripture, as far as I can see.  Thus, Christians should not have irrational fears or angst about such scientific discoveries, either now or in the future.  In fact, Christians ought to be quite interested in the whole concept and in any discoveries made through scientific exploration.

             By the way, I really think scientists ought to be more humble when you consider that, of all the most fundamental things we can observe in the universe, "life" is certainly the most interesting.  It has been studied by scientists from before there was science.  And yet - and yet - there still is no good explanation of what life really is.  There's no embarrassment in that - life is unique and complex - but it certainly ought to be humbling!

             <Psuche>, on the other hand, is certainly spiritual.  Or, more properly, <psuche> is a link between the spiritual and the material.  The complete <psuche-pneuma> of the human being is never going to be discovered by natural science.  I suppose it might be possible to discover evidence of the action of the <psuche-pneuma> on the material but, as I have discussed elsewhere, such an experiment is difficult to define and is certainly outside the current realm of what is feasible.  The spiritual nature of the <psuche-pneuma> is a fundamental Christian doctrine.  Thus, when science claims that human beings are purely material, that does go directly against Christian beliefs.  Such a claim also goes beyond the bounds of science.  Therefore:  Christians should oppose this concept and scientists should not make this claim - they have no basis to do so.  There is no room for compromise on this issue.

             When scripture talks about "life" with respect to the <psuche-pneuma>, I think it is generally talking about eternal life and is maybe more easily understood as the "eternal state" of the person.  A human being who is destined to hell is "dead" even though they may be physically (<zoe>) alive.  When we are "made alive" as Christians, it is a change of eternal destiny.  We were, as real human beings with a body, soul, and spirit, always destined to "last" forever.  But lasting forever and being eternally alive are not the same thing.