My first 24 hours in Cleveland Ohio

This entry relates my personal experience during the first ~24 hours of my arrival in Cleveland, Ohio.  This happened in mid-August of 1983.  I believe it was August 13, 1983, but it might have been the following weekend.

 

First, a bit of background about this event.  I came to Cleveland to go to graduate school at Case Western Reserve University(CWRU).  I had a research position that started at the beginning of September.  For various reasons, I never visited the campus prior to coming out for the start of school.  I came in mid-August so I could find a place to live and get settled before classes started.  I was 22 years old, having just finished my bachelor's degree at the University of Iowa.

 

At that point in my life, I was a true country kid.  I grew up in rural Oregon in the middle of a 200-acre cow pasture.  Our nearest neighbor was a half mile away.  The nearest "big" town was a half hour’s drive away, and that was a town of about 100,000 (at the time).  Then I went to the U of Iowa, which is in Iowa City, Iowa, a town of about 50 to 60 thousand with corn fields all around.  So I’d never lived in a big city.  I was naïve you might say.  For example, I didn't understand the concept of a suburb.  I was confused as to what the "boundaries" of a city were.  I thought there was the city and then there was the country (what you would call "rural") and I didn't have any concept of anything in between.  I had never been further east in the US than Chicago and I didn't know a single person who lived within 1000 miles of Cleveland.  I was, truly, on my own!

 

I had worked over the summer of 1983 in northwest Washington (yes, the state) where I (literally) dug ditches for a retired guy.  All total, I had saved up $500 after paying for my bus trip to Cleveland.  I figured I could pay the first month’s rent, and make it through the first month until I got paid at the end of September.  I’d have just enough money to eat, and that was about all I needed (wasn't it??). 

 

I took the Greyhound bus to Cleveland from Oregon – that’s about 52 hours on the bus.  Ugh.  I arrived in Cleveland early in the morning at the Greyhound bus station.  The bus station is downtown – about E14th and St. Clair.  It must have been 5 or 6 in the morning and it was the weekend - Saturday I think.  I had looked at a map prior to coming to Cleveland, and I saw there was a bus called the “rapid” that you could take from downtown to near CWRU, so I planned on taking that to get to campus. 

 

I had two items of luggage.  One was a big box with my bicycle in it (partially disassembled) and the other was a large light blue suitcase.  When I arrived in Cleveland, I didn’t claim the bicycle from the bus – I figured I could come back and pick it up later (a common practice).  I took my light blue suitcase (no wheels in those days, just a handle) and started walking around downtown Cleveland, looking for the "rapid bus".  I didn’t know that the "Rapid" referred to Rapid Transit and was a train not a bus!  Who ever heard of riding a train to get around in a city?  Further, I also had no idea that the Rapid Station was underground in downtown Cleveland, and I never imagined that you had to go inside a building to find it.  I wondered around for a while, looking at the bus stop signs around Public Square (center of Cleveland), but I could never find where the "rapid" stopped.  I hate looking clueless so I tried not to look too much like I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going.  I’m sure I looked pretty funny and out of place:  a country kid carrying a light blue suitcase wandering around downtown Cleveland.  Fortunately for my foolish pride, it was about 6am on a weekend in downtown Cleveland in the early 80's: Cleveland was a ghost town.  I actually don't remember passing anyone on the sidewalk once I left the Greyhound station.

 

Eventually I gave up looking for the rapid.  I looked on my map and it seemed like it was a straight shot down Euclid to E107th to get to CWRU.  I figured that couldn’t be too hard to do, so I started walking down Euclid Avenue, carrying my light blue suitcase and trying to look like I knew what I was doing! 

 

In some of the information I had received from CWRU prior to coming from Cleveland, it said that "you shouldn’t walk around west of E107th alone".  I had dismissed that statement as being meaningless – what could that mean?  After all, Oregon is west of E107th.  I did think it was kind of odd that there were a lot of metal bars on the windows of the buildings I walked past.  The idea that there might be relatively unsafe areas of a city was a totally foreign concept to me.  However, by then the sun was shining and it was still early on a Saturday.  So, actually I never saw another person until I got to E100th or so.  Maybe people saw me and went the other way! 

 

My luggage got pretty heavy by the time I got to E107th.  And, oh...did I mention that I had no place to live?  I didn't see that as a problem, though, because in the information I had gotten from the university prior to coming, they said that you could pick up a list of apartments available in the area.  The list was available at the student center at CWRU (at the time it was called "Thwing Hall" and it was right next to Severance Hall on Euclid Avenue).  After about five miles of walking east on Euclid, I finally made it to Thwing Hall, walked in (still carrying my suitcase) and went in and picked up the nicely typed-up list of apartments.  I had accomplished my first goal!

 

Now remember, this is 1983.  There were no internet searches for apartment websites.  There were no cellphones.  I didn't know anyone I could ask to say "could I come in to your house and borrow your phone?"  There's only one option:  I went out to the pay phone on the corner outside the building and starting calling around for an apartment.  First call:  answering machine.  There goes one quarter.  Second call: “well, we’ve already rented out that apartment”.  There goes another quarter.  I was starting to realize that I hadn’t thought this through very well!  I started praying.  I was already anxious, but for the first time I realized that there was some chance that I might not be able to even find an apartment.  I had to find a place to sleep before the end of the day.  I couldn’t really afford to stay in a hotel – if I could even find one. 

 

The third person I called said “Yes, we have a few apartments available that are ready to be rented out”.  So I said “where are you located?”  Now...it had not entered my mind that nearly every single apartment on my list was not really within walking distance of CWRU!  Most students drove to school.  Or rode their bikes or took the bus.  At the U of Iowa, there wasn’t any place in the whole city that wasn’t within walking distance of the campus.  I just never imagined it would be that different. 

 

When I asked “Where are you?”, he asked me where I would be coming from.  I told him I was outside of Thwing Hall.  He said, “Well – if you look down Euclid and to your left, you’ll be looking at my building.”  I could see it from where I was standing!  As far as I know, this was the only apartment building that was right next to CWRU campus.  The only one.  The apartment building is actually closer to campus than the dorms were.  And it was the third one I called.  In fact, it was right across the street from the Biomedical Engineering department where I was going to be taking classes.  But I had no clue about any of that at the time.

 

I picked up my light blue suitcase and walked over to the apartment building.  The landlord showed me the apartment.  It had quite a bit of space.  The rent seemed pretty reasonable from what I could tell from the list I had.  The location seemed pretty good.  And, let’s face it, I was in no position to be picky!  So I said “I’ll take it”.  We sat down to sign the rental agreement.  He went through the details.  I was just glad to finally sit down.  As we were finalizing things, he said, “OK, I’ll need a half month’s rent for August, and then three times the rent for the deposit.” I was in shock.  He was asking me for over $900.  I’d never heard of a "deposit" before, let alone a deposit that amounted to three times the monthly rent!  I had $500 cash and I needed to eat for the next six weeks.  I had no credit cards.  The cash in my pocket was literally all I had (oh, and a nice light blue suitcase).  So...I said the only thing I could say: “Well, I don’t have that much money.” 

 

Instead of sending me on my way, the landlord seemed to take an interest in me.  He thought about it for a minute and then he said, “Well, maybe we can work something out.”  Then he asked me out of the blue “can you fix screens?”  I thought that was a funny question, but actually I had spent many days fixing screens for people back in Iowa.  I said “yes, I can do that.”  He said “Well, I just fired my janitor two days ago, and there are a few things that need to be fixed up before the students come in.  How would you like to work for me for a few weeks until I can hire another janitor?  If you do, then I’ll discount your rent, and I’ll let you pay your deposit spread out over a few months.”  I said “OK – that sounds good to me.”  He asked if I could start right then.  I asked him if it was possible to start the next day since I still needed to go back to the bus station to get the rest of my luggage.  He said “OK – you’ll start tomorrow.”  And so I signed the rental agreement and had a job.  As it turned out, the landlord was a train engineer and he was often gone for one to two weeks at a time.  He had to leave the day after I arrived and was gone for two weeks.  I had no way to contact him.  So, within 24 hours of arriving in Cleveland, I was the "person in charge" of an entire apartment building!

 

I can’t remember how I got back to the Greyhound bus station to get the box with my bicycle that day.  I think I walked back – I’m not sure - but at least I didn't have to bring my light blue suitcase with me!  I do remember that I took a cab from the Greyhound bus station back to CWRU with my bicycle in a box.  I don’t think I’d ever ridden in a cab before.  I heard you were supposed to tip them, but I had no idea how much – so I think I tipped him $20.  He seemed pretty happy!  I was just glad to have all my stuff in one spot.  By then it was the evening and starting to get dark.

 

And - oh - did I tell you that the place I rented was an unfurnished apartment?  I had a stove and a refrigerator – that’s it.  No chair.  No bed.  No table or desk.  Maybe that was a little oversight on my part, but really, I didn’t have much choice.  Like I said, I was in no position to be picky!  However, I was now the janitor of the whole apartment building, and that had two great advantages.  First, I had access to all the extra furniture and so on that people had left behind when they moved out - it was stored in the basement.  Second, I got to meet everyone in the building, and I soon developed a few friends through that job.

 

One of the janitor’s jobs was to show apartments.  My second day in Cleveland, people were coming by and I was showing them apartments!  One student came by with his parents to look at the apartments.  His parents said, “What’s the neighborhood like here?”  I had to say “I have no idea – I’ve only been here one day!”  I’m sure they thought that was strange.

 

My first day on the job, I was able to find a bed and a chair.  Then I helped one of the students move out – he was a dental student from Thailand, and he was going back home to Thailand and only taking a minimum of items from his apartment.  He was nice guy, and he gave me all his dishes and things like that, and he also gave me all his spices.  That was very helpful – and his spices made some great chili!  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to duplicate that chili!

 

Well, that was my first 24 hours in Cleveland!  In my opinion, I experienced supernatural provision.  In short, I experienced a miracle.  It is one of the reasons I believe that the universe consists of more than just physical material.  I'm convinced of it.  You may not agree and you may chalk this all up to foolishness and chance.  But as I’ve thought more about this situation in recent years, I’ve realized that my situation was really much worse than I knew at the time.  For example:

 

1.  I had a list of apartments that I got from the University.  I’m guessing maybe a list of a couple hundred probably.  And, as far as I can remember, the list was in random order.  I don’t remember them being organized by location or price or anything.  What are the odds that the only place I could contact was within walking distance and needed a janitor?

 

2.  It’s 1983.  No cell phones.  I didn’t know anyone anywhere in the area.  So the only phone I could use was a pay phone.  It was at an outside payphone.  Fortunately, it was a sunny day and wasn’t raining.  I had a few quarters, but not hundreds of quarters.  But what are the odds that I would have found a place before I ran out of quarters?

 

3.  I’m not sure exactly what time I started calling.  I remember that the Greyhound bus arrived in Cleveland somewhere around 5-6am (it was still dark).  I had to gather my luggage, wander around downtown a bit trying to find the rapid, and finally walk all the way down Euclid to CWRU.  So I’m guessing it was mid-morning by the time I started calling prospective apartments.  I probably couldn’t call later than 7 or 8pm and still walk to wherever the place would have been.  So I had less than ten hours to find a place to live.

 

4.  If I had had to walk into Cleveland Heights (where most of the apartments on the list would have been) to look at an apartment, and then I had not been able to get it, how would I have made the next phone call?  It would be hard to find a pay phone in a residential area like that.  So, really, I had one shot to get an apartment.

 

5.  I had $500 with me (in traveler’s checks).  And that was absolutely all I had.  I didn’t have a credit card.  I didn’t have a checking account.  My parents didn’t have additional money to give me.  And how was I going to call them anyway – I couldn’t really afford to make a long distance call on a pay phone.  My first paycheck from CWRU (as a graduate assistant) wasn’t going to arrive until the end of September – six weeks from when I arrived.  But I figured $500 was enough to pay for the first month’s rent and eat for six weeks.  Apartments at that time were probably a minimum $150 per month, most were probably in the $200-$300 per month range.  So, from that standpoint, I was fine.  What I never ever considered was the security deposit.  And I don’t know if there was really any way for me to anticipate that everyone in that area wanted three times the first month’s rent for a security deposit (because all the students would skip out over the summer and leave the landlords high and dry).  It was standard practice there.  So, my measly $500 wasn’t even close to enough to get an apartment.  Even at $150 rent, I would have needed $450 for the deposit and at least $200 for rent for August and September.  Interestingly, the fact that I wasn’t even close helped to some extent.  It wasn’t like I had any room to negotiate.  When I sat with the landlord to sign the rental agreement, and he asked for the deposit, all I could say was “I don’t have it”.  If the deposit had been smaller, but had drained my money, I would have paid it and then I wouldn’t have been able to eat until October.

 

6.  Something else to consider.  I had just ridden a bus from Eugene, OR to Cleveland, OH.  That’s a 2 ½ day bus ride.  So, I hadn’t had a shower in almost three days.  I had just walked 100 blocks in the middle of a typical August day, carrying my big light-blue suitcase.  Would you have rented to me??

 

Did this all happen by chance?  I'm convinced it did not.  Of course, if you're just reading this, you have no idea if I'm even telling the truth and, even if it is true, you consider the situation to be random chance.  "Luck" you would call it.  That's fine.  As I've discussed elsewhere in this blog, these events didn't happen to you.  They happened to me so that my belief would be strengthened.  You'll have to experience your own miracle!  I highly recommend it.

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!