43 Sermon Illustrations on Mind

Philosopher-scientists say the mind is an illusion. The brain is a machine. we have no selves, no souls. How do they know? Well, it's just a matter of faith.

For most of us, consciousness defines our specialness; it's what sets us apart from the lower orders. As recently as 20 years ago, the idea of consciousness looked hopelessly old hat, but the advent of new scanning technology, with the promise of “seeing” thoughts in action, has prompted a fresh examination of mind theories. For centuries, the consciousness argument was waged mainly between materialists and dualists. Dualists (Descartes) saw the mind and body as separate entities. Materialists see the mind as only so many interacting neurons. The mind is nothing more than the brain. Materialists are divided over whether consciousness can be fully explained (one day) or whether it will always remain somewhat mysterious.

[see also #2566]

Sermon on Psalm 42.

1. Psalmist hungers for a God who is not there.

2. He lets go of his feelings.

3. He uses his mind to remember God.

a. Past experiences of worship.

b. Past personal experiences.

4. He comes together in faith.

5. Application to Jesus and cross.

Why do conscious beings know so little about consciousness?

Possibly the most challenging and pervasive source of problems in the whole of philosophy. Our own consciousness seems to be the most basic fact confronting us, yet it is almost impossible to say what consciousness is.

So begins the entry on consciousness in “The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy,” by Simon Blackburn (Oxford University Press, 1994). Few would dispute the author’s judgment that the nature of consciousness is a particularly daunting puzzle. It is also, however, a puzzle that a number of thinkers in a variety of disciplines claim to have solved — in principle, at least. There is no scholarly consensus here, and some prominent skeptics — Jerry Fodor and Colin McGinn, for example — have suggested that the problem of consciousness is by its very nature unlikely ever to be solved. Still, the problem is attracting an extraordinary amount of attention.

The surge of interest in consciousness has been driven in part by develop- ments in two areas: neuroscience and computational models of the mind. Claims based on advances in these areas tend to set the agenda for consciousness studies — even in the case of thinkers who reject many of those claims (Roger Penrose and John Searle, for example). Two new books suggest the range of current attempts to establish the physical basis for human consciousness and underline the significance of that search.

“Shadows of the Mind” is a sequel to “The Emperor’s New Mind.” In part 1, “Why We Need New Physics to Understand the Mind,” Penrose argues as he did in the first volume that human mathematical understanding is inherently noncomputational, meaning that it could not, in principle, be simulated in its completeness by a computer. In part 2, “What New Physics We Need to Understand the Mind,” he speculates about the possibilities for developing a scientific understanding of consciousness, an understanding he argues is impossible in terms of current science.

The entirety of part 1 is really an extended development of a single argu- ment, based on the famous mathematical result known as Godel’s Theorem. Godel’s Theorem asserts that every sufficiently complex, consistent, math- ematical system is “incomplete” in the following sense: There is a true statement (the “Godel sentence”) that cannot be proved within the system, yet the sentence in question can be shown to be true, by the special methods devised by Godel himself.

This shows, according to Penrose, that human mathematical understanding cannot be represented by such a formal system. For the system cannot prove that its own Godel sentence is true, whereas the human mathematician, using mathematical insight, can prove this. Thus the human can do something the system itself is unable to perform. Of course, the point is not that mathematical understanding is unique in being noncomputational; rather, all true understanding is said to be noncomputational, but the rigorous nature of mathematical thought is what makes it possible to prove this conclusively in the area of mathematics.

Is Penrose right about this? I have no doubt that human understanding is noncomputational, but does Penrose succeed in proving it? His argument is complex and deserves a more thorough evaluation than is possible in this review. It seems to me, however, that at best what he has proved is the following: If human mathematical reasoning can be captured in a computational system, then the system is one no human being can grasp. (A human mathematician cannot prove her own Godel sentence.)

This result, if accepted, might be somewhat discouraging to those pursuing the goal of “artificial intelligence.” If they are unable to grasp the “human computational system” in its completeness, they will also be unable to construct an artificial system that possesses all the mathematical capabilities of human beings. It is not clear, however, that those who favor a computational theory of the mind need find the result unacceptable; it follows (if I am right about this) that Penrose has not proved that human consciousness is noncomputational.

In the second part of the book, Penrose takes the reader on an impressive tour of contemporary physics, arriving at the conclusion that no currently known physical theory can account for the noncomputational nature of the mind. Yet he insists that he does want a physical explanation of the basis of consciousness, and so he speculates about where in physics and biology such an explanation might be found.

Perhaps most significant is Penrose’s recognition that, if consciousness is something that in the end has a physical explanation, the physics involved — the account of the nature of what we call “matter” — must be considerably different from physics as we know it at present.

Paul Churchland, professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, agrees with Penrose in seeking the physical basis of human mentality, but in most other respects their books stand in contrast. Penrose argues at length that human consciousness is noncomputational; according to Churchland, on the other hand, it is computational through and through — though admittedly in a different sense of “computational” than Penrose has primarily in mind.

Penrose argues that existing science offers no adequate basis for under- standing the nature of consciousness and proceeds to probe the outer limits and unsolved problems of science in search of such a basis. Churchland, in contrast, seems quite satisfied with current science, so far as foundational understanding is concerned, and invites the reader to share his excitement in exploring the various dimensions of contemporary “cognitive science.”

“How does the brain work? How does it sustain a thinking, feeling, dreaming self? How does it sustain a self-conscious person? New results from neuroscience and recent work with artificial neural networks together suggest a unified set of answers to these questions.” The first part of the book, entitled “The Little Computer that Could: The Biological Brain,” aims to “make those scientific developments available, in a lucid and pictorial form, to the general reading public.” The developments are indeed impressive and should prove fascinating to readers irrespective of their previous theoretical orientation.

The substance of the first part of the book lies in information about the brain gleaned from neuroscience and reports on the successes that have been achieved in simulating brain function on artificial “neural networks.” A key idea here is that of parallel distributed processing (pdp), in which one pattern is transformed into another by “passing it through a large configuration of synaptic connections.” This is a different style of computing than the more familiar serial processing found in conventional computers, in which a computer performs specified logical operations one at a time according to a predetermined sequence (the “program”). Neural networks are not “programmed” to perform their tasks; rather, they “learn” to perform them by being “trained” on a set of examples and gradually adjusting the “weights” of the “synaptic connections” between the artificial “neurons” in the computer. An interesting feature of this process is that a neural net can develop impressive abilities (such as the ability to recognize particular faces from a set on which it has been trained) without human beings having any detailed understanding of the processing involved.

Neural nets have been remarkably successful on many tasks, especially the sorts of tasks, such as perceptual recognition, that have proved intractable for traditional computers using linear processing. A neural net designed and trained to translate English-language text into spoken phonemes (thus enabling a computer to “read aloud”) achieved in a fairly brief period a proficiency comparable to that of a commercial “linear” program that took several man-years of programmer time to prepare. Other neural nets have developed proficiency for stereoscopic vision and the recognition of human facial expressions, among many other examples. There is, furthermore, considerable evidence that the methods used by the neural nets approximate those employed by the brain itself in solving similar problems. At a minimum, pdp using neural nets is much more similar to actual brain function than is traditional linear processing.

The second part of Churchland’s book, entitled “Exploring the Consequences: Philosophical, Scientific, Social, and Personal,” is where the controversial issues are fully joined.Perhaps the most important chapter here is chapter 8, “The Puzzle of Consciousness.” Unfortunately, this is also the most disappointing chapter in the book.

A central aim of the chapter is to refute the claim of philosophers such as Thomas Nagel, Frank Jackson, and John Searle that the qualitative nature of conscious experience is something that cannot be explained in terms of physical science. In a famous article, Nagel asks “What is it like to be a bat?” His point is that there must indeed be “something it is like to be” a bat; we don’t seriously doubt that bats do have subjective conscious experiences. But just what it is like to be a bat is quite unknown to humans; we lack a particular sort of sensory experience — the capacity to locate objects in our environment by bouncing sound waves off them — that is crucial for bats. Furthermore — and this is the essential point — no amount of scientific knowledge concerning the structure and function of a bat’s brain can tell us what it is like to be one.

Churchland’s answer to this argument contains serious misstatements about the philosophers he is criticizing. He implies, wrongly, that Nagel and Jackson are Cartesian dualists. And he criticizes Searle, in a thoroughly patronizing way, for adhering to a doctrine Searle himself explicitly repudiates, namely, the “infallibility of introspection … [which] has by now been so thoroughly discredited that it is plain curious to find a philosopher of Searle’s prominence still clinging to it.” Curious indeed — especially since Searle doesn’t!

More important, however, Churchland’s answer to the argument simply misses the point. He agrees that we have a particular way of knowing our own conscious experiences that we do not have in the case of other creatures, such as bats, or even for other human beings.

“Each individual gets information about the moving tapestry of his own sensory activity via a specific set of neuronal pathways that only he has.” But, he says, the fact that one has a way of knowing one’s own conscious states that is unique to oneself in no way shows that what is known in this way is different from what someone else knows by the ordinary methods of third-person observation. After all, each of us has a special way of knowing — through the proprioceptive system — about the positions of our own limbs, but this does not imply that the object of knowledge is different for oneself than it is for others.

This, of course, is true, but it misses the point. Nagel’s point — and Jackson’s, and Searle’s — is that the experiential quality of the conscious experience lies beyond the reach of physical science, something that obviously is not true of the positioning of one’s limbs. It seems to me that Nagel, Jackson, and Searle are just right about this, and this fact, while not necessarily fatal to materialism, is one with which materialistic philosophers like Churchland have to deal. Churchland, however, manages to ignore it.

And in the next chapter, “Could an Electronic Machine Be Conscious?,” he contends that a computer that functions in the same way as a brain could in principle be built using pdp and neural nets, and that such a computer, just because it functions this way, would be a conscious machine. There is no need to go looking, with Penrose, on the murky frontiers of science for the basis of consciousness; all we need is the right combination of copper wires and silicon chips, and your “friendly neighborhood robot” becomes a reality.

There is much, much more in the book that invites discussion. Churchland rejects — apparently with good reason — Noam Chomsky’s contention that the human brain contains a special “language organ,” hard-wired with the rules of universal grammar. And he criticizes Daniel Dennett’s theory of consciousness, on the grounds that Dennett has not properly appreciated the advantages of pdp over traditional serial processing.

Readers of BOOKS & CULTURE may be especially interested in Churchland’s attitude toward religion. In a word, it is dismissive; the most significant thing he says about religion is that religious ethics, because of its traditionalism, keeps us from learning from our mistakes and making moral progress.Presumably Churchland is delighted that the lessened influence of religion at present has opened the way for a much greater latitude in moral experimentation.

As has been noted, the one thing Penrose and Churchland conspicuously agree on is the need to find the physical basis of human consciousness. This could be a mistake — but then again, perhaps not. There is a large amount of evidence, some of it described by Churchland, that the functioning of the human mind is highly dependent, in very specific ways, on the functioning of the brain and nervous system. Mind-body dualists, who think the mind or soul is not fundamentally dependent on the brain, owe us a plausible account of these functional dependencies — an account that, so far as I know, is not yet forthcoming.

On the other hand, the view that the mind is somehow produced or generated by the brain is not in conflict with any essential Christian doctrine, including the belief in eternal life. It may be that we need to take more seriously than has generally been done the truth that we are created from the dust of the earth.

Beyond this point of agreement, Penrose and Churchland diverge radically. Penrose’s speculations, though in no way conclusive, should on the whole be welcome to Christian thinkers: he recognizes the profoundly mysterious nature of mind and consciousness and eschews simplistic, reductive solutions. Churchland, on the other hand, is reductivist to a degree that even many philosophical naturalists find implausible; he actually thinks we will eventually replace our present ways of talking about the mind, in terms of beliefs, desires, intentions, and the like, with talk in the language of neuroscience. (This is his “eliminative materialism.”)

At present, leadership in the philosophy of mind is largely, if not exclusively, in the hands of naturalists and materialists. There is need and, I believe, also a genuine opportunity for serious, constructive work by Christian philosophers in this vital field of philosophy. An excellent (and extremely readable) book on the subject written from a Christian standpoint is Charles Taliaferro’s “Consciousness and the Mind of God” (Cambridge University Press, 1994); let us hope it will be followed by many more.

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“Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness.” By Roger Penrose, Oxford University Press 457 pp.; $25 “The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain.” By Paul M. Churchland, MIT Press 329 pp.; $29.95

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Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./BOOKS AND CULTURE Review — bcjan96bccurrmrj6B1020614v

#3903

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“We would be deluding ourselves if we thought that evangelical thinking in our day has progressed very far.”

In February 1993, Mark Noll spoke these words at his induction as Wheaton College’s McManis Professor of Christian Thought. In a talk entitled “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,” he decried the anti-intellectualism he saw in modern evangelical life. As his ideas gained greater exposure with Christianity Today’s publishing of his address (Oct. 25, 1993, p. 28) and the 1994 release of his book with the same title, a debate spread through the Christian community: Was the evangelical mind really in such bad shape?

Other evangelical scholars added to the discussion. Alister McGrath, theology professor at Oxford University, presented a more optimistic outlook in EVANGELICALISM & THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY (InterVarsity; excerpted, Christianity Today, June 19, 1995). Fuller Theological Seminary president Richard Mouw urged Christian intellectuals to learn from popular religion in Consulting the Faithful (Eerdmans; excerpted, ct, July 18, 1994). Dallas Theological Seminary’s Darrell Bock, a New Testament professor, promoted a fresh outlook on a theological tradition in his book PROGRESSIVE DISPENSATIONALISM (Victor/Bridgepoint, coauthored with Craig Blaising; summarized in Christianity Today, Sept. 12, 1994).

This spring Christianity Today brought these four together for a three-hour discussion on the state of the evangelical mind. What follows is their lively and wide-ranging discussion.

I. The state of the evangelical mind

How would each of you characterize the current state of the evangelical mind?

Noll: I am most concerned about the widening gap between the evangelical populace and the evangelical academy. Every popular forum I have attended that has discussed The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind has been dominated by the most rigid kind of six-day creationism. I’m not sure where this is coming from, and I do not know exactly what it means. But I think its elevation to the status of dogma is crippling to the Scriptures and demeaning to the Christian tradition.

I feel the same way about Christian politics, which in the United States is in a degenerately low state. Any positive insights the academics have drawn from the Scriptures to think about the body politic have simply been lost in the great engines of media that are prostituting Christian values.

On the other hand, in the Anglo-American world, evangelical Bible work is very good. Although an undertow of fundamentalist overreaction remains, the situation has never been better. The kind of work that Darrell Bock and his colleagues at Dallas are doing is an indication of a new sophistication that combines fidelity to orthodox tradition with real savvy in using modern scholarship.

Theologically, the situation is worse but therefore better. It is worse because there is more confusion, but better because people are re-examining some important basic matters. Personally, I do not like the direction of Clark Pinnock’s THE OPENNESS OF GOD (InterVarsity), for example, since it seems too much like process theology. But I’m glad that it was published, because it puts some important matters on the table and is getting solid rather than knee-jerk responses.

In other parts of the academic world, evangelicals are doing solid Christian thinking, especially in philosophy. There is also good work beginning in psychology, sociology, and economics.

So while good things have been happening, the effort needed to develop the evangelical mind is huge. And we’ve just begun to realize the dimensions of the task.

Mouw: I agree that there is an evangelical mind that is misfunctioning. But I also think that there’s an evangelical mind that is functioning well, albeit not always in a uniquely evangelical way. Then again, who says that a good Christian mind has to be a uniquely evangelical mind at every point?

And if the evangelical mind is in bad shape, so is the mainline Protestant mind, the Roman Catholic mind, and the Eastern Orthodox mind. But frankly, I believe we have the best intellectual networking going on anywhere. Evangelical political scientists get together. Evangelical sociologists get together. Evangelical literati get together; evangelical philosophers, evangelical economists. We have official organizations, workshops, conferences, symposia, publications, and e-mail networks. There’s nothing like it in any other part of the Christian world. I can’t imagine a better place to be an intellectual right now than in evangelicalism.

McGrath: I would characterize evangelicalism as an “emerging” movement: from a period where its primary concern was numerical strength to this current period focused on intellectual and spiritual maturing. I would not have expected an evangelical mind to exist at this point, in light of the movement’s recent history. In the past, we were worried about surviving and maintaining our distinctive identity. But that period of our history is behind us.

Evangelicals now feel sufficiently confident to confront the issues Mark has raised in his book. They are aware that there is a culture waiting to be addressed, and that evangelicalism has the resources to do it. We have yet to achieve anything like what our forebears did back in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. But I see very hopeful signs for the future, particularly amongst younger evangelicals.

Bock: I wouldn’t say the evangelical mind is emerging as much as it’s re- emerging. The church was bleeding at the beginning of this century in the face of modernism, and it had to withdraw, retreat, and rebuild itself, almost from scratch. As a result, the church had little energy to do reflective, calm, deep thinking. When a body is in trauma, its first priority is to save itself.

If I can change metaphors, the evangelical movement is like a teenager coming of age in which she is now facing major decisions about adulthood. So the question is this: Now that we have the potential for recovery, how do we move on from here? Mark stepped in at this point and said, “Let’s take a courageous road to full recovery.” He gave us a good warning about the kinds of decisions we should be making. On the other hand, we should never forget that the evangelical church emerged out of a bloody battle with modernism. We should be grateful to our forebears.

Mouw: And it was a battle in which we lost academic institutions. How many times have different evangelical groups said, “They’ve taken away my college, my seminary”? So if we have become protective of our academic institutions in a way that has restricted the academic enterprise, we need to remember the real and painful historical experiences that catalyzed the defense-building.

Noll: What took place at the end of the nineteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth century was indeed a drastic time that required drastic remedies. Although I think the remedies were extreme and ended up in unwise excesses, they were basically good reactions. I have one qualification to add, however: our institutions were not only taken away. I think, in part, they were given away.

Also, I do not see anti-intellectualism only as a problem. Some parts of the Christian faith have to be anti-intellectual. All orthodox Christian movements possess a foundational place for faith that is not grounded on rationality (though neither is it antirational). The problem is much more the misfunctioning of minds: bad thinking rather than no thinking.

How and when did the “bad thinking” begin?

Noll: The time between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was one of crisis for the church. Supernaturalism was under attack. The Bible was under attack. The role of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life was under attack. And groups within the broad evangelical stream did the right thing in defending the Bible as the written Word of God, the reality of the supernatural, and the real work of the Holy Spirit.

So the Holiness, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal movements were all foundationally good, but they went astray. And they did so in terms of the life of the mind by seeing their efforts as a replacement rather than a balancing act. Supernaturalism replaced nature. The work of the Holy Spirit replaced the work of the mind. Trust in the Bible replaced an openness to instruction from the world as a whole. These extremes have left behind the anti-intellectual legacy, which may be in process of being overcome.

What I would appeal for now is the development of an ability to let ancient Christian traditions provide norms for the more recent traditions- fundamentalist, Pentecostal, Holiness movements. We need to have a dialogue across the centuries so that the foundationally solid and instinctively sound aspects of those reactionary movements can be magnified and the excesses trimmed away.

What is at stake in this debate?

Noll: There are some important pragmatic matters at stake: being able to hold your head up high as a self-identified Christian in certain venues-in the academic world, in the arts, in modern media. But those matters are not nearly so important as honoring God, the Creator and Redeemer.

God made the world. God entered the world in the person of Jesus Christ. And God through the Holy Spirit redeems the world. These fundamental Christian realities should push the church to take very seriously the study of what God has made possible: the natural world, the world of human institutions, aesthetics, et cetera. I think fundamentally this is a theological problem. But I realize that other people are not as Puddleglumish or Eeyorish about these matters as I am.

Mouw: We all agree that there is an element of scandal here. But I think it’s important to understand the legitimate reasons why evangelicals have been suspicious of the mind. Evangelicals are the heirs to a tradition that has had great, necessary moments expressing bold suspicion toward the mind. One, for example, was in the seventeenth century, when the pietists reacted against rationalistic orthodoxy. They wanted more than a religion of the head; they wanted a religion of the heart. Another occurred when evangelical Christians took a stand against the Enlightenment mindset that viewed human consciousness as the highest standard of truth. These were two glorious moments.

But anti-intellectualism developed when people moved from a legitimate suspicion of a rationalism-whether it was an orthodox or heterodox rationalism-to an illegitimate rejection of the intellectual life as such.

And to clarify-and I think Mark glosses over this a little bit-fundamentalism is actually a highly intellectual approach with its very strong emphasis on assenting to truth. It is not so much against the mind as it is against the academic mind or the mindset of the academy, which is an important distinction to make.

McGrath: I know it’s historically nave to put your finger on a single episode, but I think the Scopes trial signaled a change in the fundamentalists’ outlook on learning institutions. Universities and colleges no longer were seen as inherently Christian, no longer signified sound learning, and actually displayed an anti-Christian bent.

This is the central issue of the state of the evangelical mind. The word academy no longer means “scholarly, informed, having access to wisdom.” Some modern universities instead seem to posit agendas that are often anti- Christian. Fundamentalists saw this process happen but did not know what to do about it. They knew academic excellence must have a place in evangelicalism. So the founding of evangelical institutions and seminaries became part of the long process of reconstructing an evangelical mind.

Mark does a good job of depicting how fundamentalists realized they had a big problem on their hands, and what they did in response. But looking back, what else could they have done? It’s very easy for us to be wise in hindsight.

II. Inerrancy

How has this distrust of the academy influenced the way evangelicals deal with and formulate our doctrines of Scripture?

Noll: First of all, I do not think there is any future for Christian thinking from people who do not have an implicit, thorough trust in the truthfulness of the Bible. What was glorious about the fundamentalist, Pentecostal, and Holiness movements was their seriousness about the Bible. But as evangelicals were attacked in their view of Scripture, they began to pull away from classic holistic understandings of the Bible toward sectarian, particularistic understandings of the Bible.

The new cruxes often became matters such as the interpretation of Genesis, Isaiah, Daniel, and Revelation or the authorship of Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and other Pauline epistles. Although these are reasonably important questions, they are not the fundamental issues of the Bible. The fundamental issue of the Bible seems to me to be what John addresses in chapter 20, verse 31: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.”

Without the defensive work of the previous generation on the Scriptures, we would be lost. In this way, critics like myself show themselves to be smaller people than some of the supposedly narrow-minded people we criticize. But by the same token, what we need now is a more vigorous, better rounded, more organic, more classically Christian use of the Scriptures. We do not need to solve details of problems that are mostly extrinsic to the biblical authors themselves. Instead, we need to concentrate on what the Bible focuses on, namely, the history of redemption culminating in Jesus Christ.

Bock: The church needs to develop a prioritized theology that concentrates on and emphasizes the things that Scripture does. And the questions that Scripture covers in less detail, we should give less attention to as well.

Even though we are redeemed, we still have fallen minds. We still make judgments that are sometimes wrong, so we need to do our theology with humility. And if we emphasize what Scripture emphasizes, we are going to have a better chance of getting it right than if we pick areas of interest to us just because they’re fascinating.

McGrath: The British scholar David Bebbington makes a point that the Cross seems to have no central place for most American evangelical theologians this century and asks, “Why not?” The answer is that American evangelicalism has become reactive. It has had to defend its own understanding of theological authorities and methods, emphasizing the authority and inerrancy of Scripture. But as a result, American evangelicals rarely hear what Scripture actually says. They have defended the authority of Scripture using words that have been coined for this particular strategy, which are not themselves biblical.

I hope that as American evangelicalism regains its confidence, it constructs theologies that deal with what Scripture says rather than concentrating on why Scripture has its authority.

Bock: I’m torn because, on the one hand, I identify with the concerns that the text be taken for what the text is doing and what it presents. But in the back of my head there’s a little whisper reminding me that the bleeding church we were talking about went through a nightmare because other people made certain kinds of wrong and destructive decisions about what Scripture was doing that created the problem.

So we walk a tightrope of asserting the authority of Scripture without making interpretations that deny what we’re asserting. But this is part of having a good mind, being able to sense when you have to tread carefully, gently, and circumspectly.

We’re all aware of detailed passages with two or three interpretive alternatives, where the decisions between them are tough, and no options are totally clean in terms of what they offer us. And yet, to give some description of the Bible’s trustworthiness without asserting Scripture’s fundamental truthfulness leaves us in a no-man’s land in the midst of that circumspection.

Mouw: The emphasis on inerrancy has been helpful in that, however we spell out what we mean by the word, we have guarded the message character of Scripture as precious-in a way we do not find in other communities and traditions. But I think, for all of the problems of the past in terms of evangelical biblical scholarship, we’re really in pretty good shape right now.

When Darrell writes about progressive dispensationalism, he says there’s an emerging commonality to an evangelical hermeneutic. Nobody is talking about the chaos of evangelical studies at this point.Part of the reason why we’re not in chaos is that we never entirely accepted the critical approach in the first place. It was no big surprise for us that biblical scholarship is guided by presuppositions.

So we can be a little more relaxed and more constructive today because we do not have to deconstruct our own past projects. Maybe God, in his providence, used our defensive, isolated, biblical scholarship to preserve an integrity that allows us calmly to pursue issues that are being loudly dissected in other places of biblical scholarship.

To push the point a little further, inerrancy has played a critical role in evangelicalism’s recent history. The claim that someone is “soft on inerrancy” is a significant and potentially threatening criticism. What does this say about the problem we’re discussing?

McGrath: I believe in the trustworthiness and sufficiency of Scripture, and that’s where all evangelicals are, really. But the problem is that we move in situations where these beliefs come under threat, and then we have to erect additional fences to safeguard these tenets. And these fences are, in effect, temporary structures to safeguard us against the threat that is here today and gone tomorrow. For understandable reasons, the fences have come to be seen as being at least as important as the truth they’re meant to safeguard.

We cannot ignore history. We cannot ignore situations that have resulted in this need to safeguard beliefs that once would have been taken as indisputable by all Christians. We’ve got to respect the past. But the situation has changed, and now we’ve got to make sure that we defend what once did not need to be defended. I’d still like to maintain the emphasis that what we are defending [the content of Scripture] is actually far more important than the means of defense we bring.

III. Evangelical populism

Noll: In complex situations such as inerrancy questions, we can discern an academic evangelical response and a populist evangelical response. In the academic area, there is not much of a problem. But on the popular side, we see something different: the translation of academic issues into litmus tests and, therefore, the promotion of nonthinking in order to cut out a cancer or to handle a desperate situation. It’s at this level that we do the most damage to Christian thinking: an issue that requires some discrimination, some complexity of thought, is handled like a political football. The measure of success becomes not clarity of thought and the ability to discriminate between levels of discourse, but whipping up a crowd using political maneuvering. So the person with the best political skills will appear to win the theological battle when, in fact, the real issues are simply being obscured.

Aren’t you using the words academic and popular to mean “mature” and “immature,” because the debates you are referring to took place at scholarly gatherings?

Noll: It’s more complicated than that. What you’ve just called immaturity, which I would call populism, is precisely the force that sustains the U.S. evangelical movement in a way it is not sustained in Europe, Britain, and is barely sustained in Canada.

So there are Christians who are immature intellectually but who are dedicated evangelistically, and very savvy in media and politicking. They may cause problems in intellectual arenas, but in other areas of life, they are necessary and a delight.

Mouw: In America, there is a populist, anti-intellectual Christian remnant that feeds on overstatement, rhetorical overkill, prooftexting, and sloganeering, which grows out of distorted, grassroots pietism. I’m a pietist, so I do not mean to be trashing pietism. But this is a distinctly spiritual issue, the lack of humility, of self-criticism, of a “Search me, O Lord, and try my thoughts” attitude among the populace.

Bock: There is another, insidious element to this issue. The character of our populist theological debates mirrors the lack of civility our culture-at- large has at carrying on substantive debate. If you ask, “Where can I find reasoned discourse today?” you might not get an answer. Frankly, this is what scares me more than anything else. We need to create in the church a sense of value and integrity so that we can conduct our debates in ways different from the world.

What can we value in evangelical populism?

Noll: There’s much, much to be valued. If American evangelicalism has something to offer to the world, it is the virtues of Christian fellowship. The theme of “the people of God” is a critical biblical theme. The people of God are terrific at knowing when the gospel is being violated. But for the purposes of what we’re talking about today, the Bible does not say the people of God are to be the ones that decide most intellectual questions.

American evangelicalism is wonderful in that it has no boundaries. The terrific fellowship, helpfulness, and lack of concern for authority and place have all positively affected Christianity in this country. But American evangelicals often function like an engine run amuck when it comes to intellectual questions. And this explains why, generally speaking, there are fewer active believers in Britain than in America but much better Christian thinking. We have the virtues of our vices and the vices of our virtues.

18 HOLES IN HIS MIND

Major James Nesmeth had a dream of improving his golf game - and he developed

a unique method of achieving his goal. Until he devised this method, he was

just your average weekend golfer, shooting in mid- to low-nineties. Then,

for seven years, he completely quit the game. Never touched a club. Never

set foot on a fairway.

Ironically, it was during this seven-year break from the game that Major

Nesmeth came up with his amazingly effective technique for improving his game

- a technique we can all learn from. In fact, the first time he set foot on

a golf course after his hiatus from the game, he shot an astonishing 74! He

had cut 20 strokes off his average without having swung a golf club in seven

years! Unbelievable. Not only that, but his physical condition had actually

deteriorated during those seven years.

What was Major Nesmeth's secret? Visualization. You see, Major Nesmeth had

spent those seven years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. During those

seven years, he was imprisoned in a cage that was approximately four and one-

half feet high and five feet long.

During almost the entire time he was imprisoned, he saw no one, talked to no

one and experienced no physical activity. During the first few months he did

virtually nothing but hope and pray for his release. Then he realized he had

to find some way to occupy his mind or he would lose his sanity and probably

his life. That's when he learned to visualize.

In his mind, he selected his favorite golf course and started playing golf.

Every day, he played a full 18 holes at the imaginary country club of his

dreams. He experienced everything to the last detail. He saw himself

dressed in his golfing clothes. He smelled the fragrance of the trees and

the freshly trimmed grass. He experienced different weather conditions -

windy spring days, overcast winter days, and sunny summer mornings. In his

imagination, every detail of the tee, the individual blades of grass, the

trees, the singing birds, the scampering squirrels and the lay of the course

became totally real.

He felt the grip of the club in his hands. He instructed himself as he

practiced smoothing out his down-swing and the follow-through on his shot.

Then he watched the ball arc down the exact center of the fairway, bounce a

couple of times and roll to the exact spot he had selected, all in his mind.

In the real world, he was in no hurry. He had no place to go. So in his

mind he took every step on his way to the ball, just as if he were physically

on the course. It took him just as long in imaginary time to play 18 holes

as it would have taken in reality. Not a detail was omitted. Not once did

he ever miss a shot, never a hook or a slice, never a missed putt.

Seven days a week. Four hours a day. Eighteen holes. Seven years. Twenty

strokes off. Shot a 74.

=================================

Author Unknown, from A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Copyright

1995 by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen

*

"Real happiness is not dependent on external things. The pond is fed from within. The kind of happiness that stays with you is the happiness that springs from inward thoughts and emotions. You must cultivate your mind if you wish to achieve enduring happiness. You must furnish your mind with interesting thoughts and ideas. For an empty mind seeks pleasure as a substitute for happiness."

-- William Lyons Phelps, paraphrased by Lillian Eichler Watson

Thought Distortions:

1. All-or-nothing thinking: You look at things in absolute, black-and white

categories.

2 .Overgeneralization: You view a negative event as a never-ending pattern

of defeat.

3 .Mental Filter: You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives.

4. Discounting Positives: You insist that your accomplishments or positive

qualities don't count.

5. Jumping to conclusions: You conclude things are bad without any definite

evidence.

a. Mind reading: You assume that people are reacting negatively to you.

b. Fortune-telling: You predict that things will turn out badly.

1. Magnification or minimization: You blow things way out of proportion or

you shrink their importance.

2. Emotional Reasoning: You reason from how you feel: "I feel like an

idiot, so I must be on."

3. "Should" statements: You criticize yourself or other people with

"shoulds," "shouldn'ts," "musts," "oughts," and "have-tos."

4. Labeling: Instead of saying, "I made a mistake," you tell yourself, "I'm

a jerk" or "a loser."

5. Blame: You blame yourself for something you weren't entirely responsible

for: or you blame other people and overlook ways that you contributed to a

problem.

A commonality among different forms of slavery is the psychological manipulation they all involve. The widely held conception of a slave is someone in chains who would escape if given half a chance or who simply does not know better. But this view is naive. In my experience, slaves often know that their enslavement is illegal. Force, violence and psychological coercion have convinced them to accept it. When slaves begin to accept their role and identify with their master, constant physical bondage becomes unnecessary. They come to perceive their situation not as a deliberate action taken to harm them in particular but as part of the normal, if regrettable, scheme of things. Some slaves in Thailand are even allowed to visit their families during holidays, for they always came back.

A similar psychology operates in a different form of slavery, one that involves domestic servants that African and Asian diplomats and business executives have brought with them to Europe and North America. As an employee of the "Committee against Modern Slavery," Cristina Talens worked for several years to free and rehabilitate domestic slaves who had been brought to Paris. She told me that liberating the body was much easier than freeing the mind:

In spite of the violence, and the living and working conditions,

people in slavery have their own mental integrity and their own

mechanisms for surviving. Some may actually like different

aspects of their life, perhaps the security or their understanding

of the order of things. When you disrupt this order, suddenly

everything is confused. Some of the women who were freed have

attempted suicide. It is easy to assume that this happened because

of the abuse they had lived through. But for some of these women,

slavery had been the major psychological building block in their

lives. When that was destroyed, the meaning of their life was like

a bit of paper crushed up and thrown away. They were told: "No,

this is not the way it is supposed to be. Start all over again."

It was as though their life had no meaning.

Human-rights worker Vivek Pandit of the Vidhayak Sansad organization in India has been liberating bonded laborers for more than 20 years. He is adamant that real liberation takes place in the mind, that physical freedom isn't enough. Conversely, mental freedom can bring about physical freedom.

*

Recent experiments have been made in which people were fitted

with special prismatic glasses. These devices greatly distort

the vision so that straight lines appeared to be curved, and

sharp outlines seemed fringed with color. Within just a few

days, however, the unnatural shapes, tinted edges, and inverted

landscapes gradually disappeared, and the world began to be

normal again, even though they still wore their optical

fittings. The brain was finally able to overcome the false data

that came through the prismatic lenses. This adaptability in

the physical realm is indeed a blessing. In the area of the

spiritual, however, the human mind does not function very well.

In fact, man is a sinner whose deepest imaginations are evil,

and his thought life produces a world of illusions. He thinks

of himself as pure when in reality he is guilty before God.

You have immediate access to the most powerful tool in existence. A tool that can create anything you want. A tool that is only limited by your limited use of it. This tool is priceless, not even a billion dollars can purchase you one. However, each of us has one because it came as standard equipment. Oh, there's one catch: It didn't come with an owner's manual; thus, we have to figure out how to use it all on our own. Even if you never figure out how to use it, it is always working. That's right, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of every year. It can work for you or it can work against you, whichever you choose. Unfortunately, most people never figure out how to use it; thus, it usually works against them by default. In fact, at least 97% of our population never seems to come close to figuring out how to use this powerful tool to their advantage, and as a result they usually lead lives of quiet desperation as Henry David Thoreau would say. They always settle for less, and that's exactly what they get. They spent their entire lives suffering and being miserable when all the while they had in their possession a tool that could have granted them anything they desired. What is this tool?

This tool is your Mind. Your mind is the most incredible and powerful tool in the Universe, and yet most people know little or nothing at all about it. It is time for you to learn how this tool works and use it to your advantage.

THE CREATION MODEL:

Everyone seems to want to know the "secret" to success. The problem, however, is that most people are looking for success on the outside when - as you and I know - success starts on the inside. Most people want to change their conditions but they don't want to change themselves. They want to change their circumstances but they don't want to change what got them in those circumstances.

It is of critical importance that we understand that we must change the Cause of our conditions and circumstances in order for them to change. At least, in order for them to change on a long-term basis. And the Cause of all of our circumstances is our thoughts. Once we change our thoughts, we will automatically change our circumstances. The only way to change our thoughts is by reprogramming ourselves. You have been programmed to think the way you think and that programming has gotten you what you now have. Is that good news? If not, then you can now feel excited because you have the power to change it. Day by Day, Drip by Drip, Inch by Inch, you can start flooding your mind with empowering messages that can start you on the life-long process of positive transformation. We will give you an analogy so you will get a better idea of how this works, but for now let's take a general look at what is called the Creation Model...

The Creation Model is simply a more detailed look at how Thoughts become Things or how Causes become Effects. Every effect or result you get in life has a cause. In other words there are no coincidences, there are only cause and effect. Let's take a look at the relationship between cause & effect.

THOUGHTS: Your thoughts are the causes of all your effects. Therefore you can trace all of your results you've gotten in life to a particular thought or set of thoughts you have entertained in your mind for a period of time. When you are born, your brain is similar to that of a blank tape with the record button constantly on. So everything you hear or experience after birth - and many say while still in your mother's womb - is recorded in your brain. We call this recording of information programming. The programming you receive come from many sources: Your parents, parent's friends, the media, church, school, relatives, teachers, and anyone or anything that comes in contact with you. You are constantly being programmed until you learn how to program yourself and even then others are programming you if you allow them to do so. The thing to understand is that most of the programming we receive while growing up is self-limiting and self-defeating. Most of it doesn't even make plain everyday common sense. Some of programming or thoughts that we receive from others become beliefs.

BELIEFS: A belief is nothing more than a batch of similar thoughts. The more of any particular thoughts you have, the stronger the belief will be. A strong belief increases your conviction level regarding the issue pertaining to the belief. The pictorial representational form of a belief is called your self-image. Your attitudes are formed from your beliefs.

ATTITUDES: An attitude is simply a way of leaning towards a particular person, place, thing, issue, idea or concept. If you are leaning towards a particular issue, you are said to have a positive attitude towards that issue. If you are leaning away from an issue you are said to have a negative attitude towards that issue. From our attitudes we develop certain feelings.

FEELINGS: Our feelings are a physiological or an emotional response our body has when any person, place, thing, issue, idea or concept is presented to us. Of course this feeling will be a result of the attitude we have toward whatever we have been presented with. These feelings that we develop will help determine the actions we take.

ACTIONS: Our actions are what we physically do at any given time in any given situation. These actions will mainly be determined by how we feel about what it is we are presented with. The actions we take will determine our results.

RESULTS: We can call the results we get the effect. When we get a result due from a given set of actions we take. It is either the result we want or the result we don't want. If it is the result we want, great, we usually keep doing what we were doing to get that result. If it is a result we don't want most people figure they need to change their actions - which is true. However, this will only result in a short-term change because in order to make change lasting and long term we need to change the cause and now you know that the cause is the thought.

Changing your thought will cause a chain reaction that will enable you to more naturally take the necessary actions to get the results you want out of life. This is so important, yet most people do not understand it. Now hopefully you see why it is necessary for you to reprogram yourself. This is the only way for you to create lasting change with less tension, anxiety, and frustration.

This is not intended to be a full blown detailed course in psychology, but this information is so important to your that we want to give you an analogy to help drive it home.

When you were born imagine your brain being as pure as a clear glass of spring water. Now imagine every time you heard or saw something negative it was equivalent to someone putting a drop of Red Dye in the glass of spring water. Think about that for a moment. Every time you are told "No" or "You can't do that" a Red Drop is going into your glass. Every time you turn on the TV and see an act of violence or crime you are receiving Red Drops. Every time you read the newspaper and find out about the latest catastrophes you are receiving Red Drops. Every time you associate with people who blames and complains you are receiving Red Drops.

Most people have received so many Red Drops over the years that they have developed self-defeating and self-limiting beliefs and attitudes without even realizing it. The secret is in reversing the process. Unfortunately you can't just dump out the glass with all of the Red Dye. Instead you have to dilute it with clear drops of fresh spring water. The key word is drops. In other words you can't just pour a whole gallon of spring water in at one time - you have to place one drop of spring water at a time in an effort to dilute the Red Dye.

Understand that your glass will never be as pure and clean as it was when you were first born. The good news, however, is that you can dilute the Red Dye enough to accomplish all the dreams you have and more. The key to this is for you to consciously - from here on - minimize the amount of Red Dye that goes in your glass and maximize the amount of clear drops that goes in. You need to deliberately take full advantage of the resources you have at your disposal.

*

"The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors; that which it loves, and also that which it fears; it reaches the height of its cherished aspirations; it falls to the level of its unchastened desires. Every thought-seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own furtive of opportunity and circumstance. Good thoughts bear good fruit; bad thought, bad fruit."

-- James Allen

Have you ever walked into a room and couldn't remember what you went there for? Have you ever grasped the hand of a potential client and then when the handshake broke, the name seemed to disappear from your memory? Or have you ever left a prospect and as you drove away remembered a key point that you should have shared with them?

Of course you have...we all have. However, I have some great news for you. Your memory is nowhere near as bad as you may think it is. Recently, I was a guest at a radio station in Waco. The disc jockey wrote a 50-digit number on a sheet of paper and told his listening audience and then played a three-minute song for his audience.

As the listeners enjoyed the song I memorized the 50-digit number. When the song was over we went back live on the air and I handed him the paper. I then proceeded to say the number forwards and then I said it backwards. The disc jockey looked at me in utter disbelief and stunned he said, 'Ron...you are incredible!’ I looked him straight in the eye and replied, 'You know...you are right!’ I said, 'Jay, the greatest computer ever created does not come from Dell or Gateway. The greatest computer ever created does not sit on the assembly line of a computer factory. Instead, you and I are the greatest computers ever created. And yes...you are right. I am incredible...but so are you.'

The human memory has the ability to hear a 100 digit number or more once and then repeat it forwards and backwards, it has the ability to memorize a Shakespearean play word for word or memorize the statistics of every baseball player for the last 100 years, and the human memory has the capability to meet 100 people in 20 minutes and recall every single name!

Now, the question is, are you doing these things? If not, the reason is simply that you have not been trained to. Two thousand years ago a Greek named Simonedes developed a memory method called 'Loci'. With this method, Simonedes numbered locations in his home. He started in the doorway and then logically proceeded around his home. He reviewed these items so many times mentally that if you asked him what was number 25 then he could instantly tell you what piece of furniture that number corresponded to.

These 25 objects were actually mental files for Simonedes. Then if he had a list of items he wanted to recall he would place them mentally on these objects in his home. Let's say that you are a professional who wants to give a speech without notes. Simply turn the key points into pictures and then file them to your 'house files'. When you are called upon to speak simply mentally walk through the house and give your talk without notes.

For example, recently I gave a one-hour keynote in Atlanta at a home builders conference. I wrote my speech out the night before. The first thing I wanted to do was talk about the book, 'How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ So I visualized the book on my front door and then mentally walked through my house and gave the one-hour talk without notes! That can work for you as well. Anything that you want to recall simply turn it into a picture, place it on your house files and get ready to be amazed! YOU are the greatest computer ever created!

I find it remarkable in the New Testament that so much spiritual warfare revolves around the mind.

“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:3-5).

Notice that it says, “Every lofty thing raised up against the KNOWLEDGE of God.” It isn't exalting itself against God Himself. Don't you find that interesting? Satan doesn't seem care if you believe in God. But he does care if you believe rightly about God. For if you believe in the one true God and in Jesus Christ whom He has sent, then you have the power and the knowledge aiding you with the Holy Spirit. One of the Holy Spirit's primary roles is to guide us into truth (John 16:13-15). And with Him there is more power than all Hell could generate.

But Satan tempts us to mental laziness, distracts us from reflecting on the wonderful thoughts God has called us to think about Him and like Him. Satan also distorts insights about ourselves, our defects of character, and the image of God we bear. If we succumb to him, he puts us in a place of spiritual defeat.

This is important to understand. This is not about one-time temptations. This is about strengthening a part of our souls that is vital to being a whole human person. Most of the vices we deal with from day to day have to do with the beliefs we hold. Satan doesn't force us to make sinful choices. But he does a devilish job of making us doubt God's character and over-emphasize the importance of our desires. Satan's strategy is plain: to get humans to avoid true thoughts of God and true thoughts about humanity's problem and ultimate purpose. This is the temptation Satan gave Jesus (Matt 4, Luke 4), and it is the temptation he gives us.

Jesus knows this. He places a high importance on not only loving God with all of our heart, soul, and strength, but also with our mind. If this component is left neglected, we will not find spiritual success in our walk toward God's divine purposes.

That said, let me add that the apologetic enterprise of evangelism in the New Testament goes hand in hand with spiritual formation. It is not only to give answers to others to believe in the truth of Jesus Christ, but also to build a stronger defense against spiritual wickedness in high places. Apologetics is just as much for the maturing Christian as it is for helping the non-Christian see Christ clearly.

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a graduate from UC Berkeley who recently came to Christ. During the last two years of her search for truth, she was told by many Christians, “You think too much. Don't make it so complicated. Just believe.” But this is exactly what she had a hard time with. She believed that if God did exist and that if He made her, that He would give evidence to satisfy her God-given mind. Satan's warfare tried to thwart her from appropriately understanding God. But after a long search, and in spite of many discouraging words about her intellectual quest from Christians and non-Christians alike, she bowed her knee to Christ. A few months later she attended a talk I gave on loving God with our minds and she said it was extremely affirming. Now she wants to formally study apologetics, philosophy, and theology, to help others who struggled as she did. She wants to love God with her whole person. She wants to have the right knowledge of God and KNOW she has the right knowledge of God. And, now, because she engaged God with her mind, her spiritual growth has been exponentially climbing.

I share that as a testimony that without a hungry mind for God, our spiritual lives, however good we may find them to be, will be dramatically stunted. We need to have appropriate knowledge of the God we are worshiping and how we fit into his grand design. It is no secret. It just takes diligent work. David said that understanding is better than gold. He was right. Seeking after God, our whole lives long, is a hunt well worth the reward.

__________

Copyright © 2004 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

For a long time now, secularists have been trying to come up with reasons why people believe in God. If you take a strictly naturalistic view of the world, after all, it can be pretty difficult to understand how anyone would put their faith in an invisible supernatural being. And yet, generation after generation continues to hold to do just that. It's a question that has puzzled and fascinated some of the most prominent minds of our time.

Now there's an intriguing new explanation for religious faith. Paul Bloom, a Yale professor of psychology and linguistics, argues in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY that belief in God is a biological accident.

Basically, Bloom's theory goes like this: Human beings are naturally dualistic. Studies show that from a very young age, we can tell the difference between the physical world and the psychological world. That is, we understand that rocks and trees do not have thoughts and feelings, but that humans do. Our brains use one system to understand the physical world, and another to understand the psychological world.

As Bloom sees it, “Both these systems are biological adaptations that give human beings a badly needed head start in dealing with objects and people. But these systems go awry in two important ways that are the foundations of religion. First, we perceive the world of objects as essentially separate from the world of minds, making it possible for us to envision soulless bodies and bodiless souls.” And Bloom continues, “This helps explain why we believe in gods and an afterlife. Second, as we will see, our system of social understanding overshoots, inferring goals and desires where none exist. This makes us animists and creationists.”

In other words, we humans look at inanimate objects and tend to see evidence of design and purpose in them -- evidence that Bloom says just isn't there. Essentially, we are using the wrong part of our brain to interpret them. And we make the same mistake when we assume that human bodies have souls that live on after death. Because we have powers of reasoning, thinking, and feeling, we naturally tend to think of ourselves as something more than just bodies. But, Bloom says, it is all the result of a mistaken way of thinking -- as I said, he calls it a biological accident.

Well, all this may impress some scholars, but I think there are a few big holes in his argument. For example, I would submit to Professor Bloom that even if human brains have a tendency to infer design, that is not evidence that design does not exist. Maybe we infer it because it is so. It would be a biological accident only if you accept Bloom's premise that the universe is a closed system with no possibility of supernatural intervention. And Bloom, like many scientists, does not attempt to prove this very important point -- he just takes it for granted, just like evolutionists do, which makes science hostage to their philosophy.

So Bloom's scientific studies, carefully conducted as they seem to be, prove only what he wants them to prove if one starts from a materialist point of view -- the same materialist point of view that has tried and failed to disprove religion for so many years. When it comes to tempting “new” theories to explain away religion, it looks like there really is nothing new under the sun after all.

________

Copyright (c) 2006 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

In a research at Katie Melua, scientists have discovered that taxi drivers have actually grown more grey matter in the area of the brain associated with memory because of all the knowledge they keep in their heads. They believe that this part of the brain, the mid-posterior hippocampus, is where black-cab drivers store a mental map of London, including up to 25,000 street names and the location of all the major tourist attractions. The research is the first to show that the brains of adults can grow in response to specialist use. It has been known that areas of children’s brains can grow when they learn music or a language.

In the study, researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL’s Institute of Neurology carried out scans on the brains of 35 cabbies and bus drivers, all men. The results of the scans show that the mid-posterior hippocampus of all the cabbies was bigger and that they had more grey matter than the bus drivers. The one big difference between the two is that bus drivers stick to routes, while cabbies have to learn the layout of streets and the locations of thousands of places of interest to get an operating license.

________

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2081652.ece

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #11424]

One of the tragic casualties of our age has been that of the contemplative life -- a life that thinks, thinks things through, and more particularly, thinks God’s thoughts after Him. A person sitting at his desk and staring out the window would never be assumed to be working. No! Thinking is not equated with work. Yet, had Newton under his tree, or Archimedes in his bathtub, bought into that prejudice, some natural laws would still be up in the air, or buried under an immovable rock. Pascal’s PENSEES, or “Thoughts,” a work that has inspired millions, would have never been penned.

What is even more destructive is the assumption that silence is inimical to life. The radio in the car, Muzak in the elevator, and the symphony entertaining callers “on hold” add up as grave impediments to personal reflection. In effect, the mind is denied the privilege of living with itself even briefly, and is crowded with outside impulses to cope with aloneness. Aldous Huxley’s indictment, “Most of one’s life... is one prolonged effort to prevent thinking,” seems frightfully true. The price paid for this scenario has been devastating. As T. S. Eliot observed:

Where is the life we have lost in the living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries

bring us farther from God and nearer to dust.

Is there a remedy? May I make some suggestions for personal and corporate benefit? Nothing ranks higher for mental discipline than a planned and systematic study of God’s Word, from whence life’s parameters and values are planted in the mind. Paul, who loved his books and parchments, affirmed the priority of Scripture: “Do not go beyond what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6). And Psalm 119 promises that God’s statutes keep us from being double-minded.

The church as a whole, and the pulpit in particular, must challenge the mind of this generation. The average young person today actually surrenders the intellect to the world, presuming Christianity to be bereft of it. Many a pulpit has succumbed to the lie that anything intellectual cannot be spiritual or exciting.

Thankfully there are exceptions. When living in England, our family attended a church pastored by Roy Clements, one of the finest preachers in the western world. Every Sunday at two morning services he preached a one-hour sermon to a packed auditorium. Cambridge, being rife with skepticism, demanded a meticulous defense of each sermon text.

I mention this to say one thing. When we were leaving Cambridge, our youngest child, who was nine years old, declared the preaching of Roy Clements to be one of his fondest memories. Even as a little boy he had learned that when the mind is rightly approached, it filters down to the heart. The matter I share here has far-reaching implications. We do a disservice to our youth by not crediting them with the capacity to think. We cannot leave this uncorrected.

The Bible places supreme value in the thought life. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he,” Solomon wrote. Jesus asserted that sin’s gravity lay in the IDEA itself, not just the act. Paul admonished the church at Philippi to have the MIND of Christ, and to the same people he wrote: “Whatever is true, whatever is pure... if there be any virtue... think on these things” (Philippians 4:8). The follower of Christ must demonstrate to the world what it is not just to think, but to think justly. Thus, in the words of aging David to his son Solomon: “[A]cknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever” (1 Chronicles 28:9).

Let us serve the God of creation with both hearts and minds. After all, it is not that I think, therefore, I am, but rather, the Great I Am has asked us to think, and therefore, we must.

________

Copyright © 2006 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Lotsa people wear green on St. Patrick’s Day. But Henry Cope of Brighton, England, took it a bit too far.

Not only was every item of Henry’s clothing green, but so was his house, his stove, his furniture, his walking stick, and his carriage. He ate nothing but green food, and he even painted his horse green!

Ol’ Hank was so into green, the people of Brighton thought he’d gone overboard. So they had him committed to an insane asylum for the rest of his life.

Maybe Hank shoulda moved to Greenland!

Suppose you could plant an idea in someone else’s mind -- and make them think it was their own.

That’s the premise of “Inception” (PG-13) one of the most interesting summer blockbusters of recent years. The sci-fi movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Dom Cobb, a mental thief-for-hire who specializes in “extraction” of ideas from people’s brains via their dreams. When a high-powered corporate chief offers him an irresistible payoff to do the reverse -- to sneak an idea into a competitor’s mind -- Cobb organizes an elite team of dream commandos and springs into action. Lots of cool special effects ensue.

But the film isn’t just another collection of digital gimmicks. It raises serious questions about the nature of reality. Are there different levels of reality, or different realities altogether, in our minds? Are they so “real” that we can become trapped in them? If consciousness and reality are malleable, what about truth? These questions have been asked for ages by mystics, theologians and philosophers -- not to mention computer gamers.

Postmodernism questions the existence of all absolutes. So “Inception” plays to popular culture’s ambivalent relationship with truth. My beef with the movie, however, is its suggestion that planting an idea in someone’s mind is more difficult than removing one. In the real world, the opposite is true.

Getting an idea, especially a false one, out of some folks’ minds is almost impossible. Ignorance often plays a role. But plenty of well-informed people don’t let facts interfere with their views, as several recent studies confirm. One such study, by University of California researcher Jonas Kaplan, analyzed the centers of the brain that stimulate emotion. He found that people tend to form political opinions first, then invest all their mental and emotional energy “making themselves feel good about their decision” -- regardless of the conflicting data presented to them.

Two Stony Brook (N.Y.) University scholars discovered that highly educated people are even less open than others to new facts that challenge their existing perceptions. Their factual knowledge in some areas “makes it nearly impossible to correct [other areas] on which they’re totally wrong,” according to an article on the findings in The Boston Globe.

You can see this phenomenon demonstrated daily (and loudly) by TV talking heads, political bloggers and the like. You probably see it around your kitchen table or the office water cooler.

Planting an idea in someone’s mind, on the other hand, is relatively easy -- for good or ill. Good parents and teachers use methods as old as Socrates to encourage young people to “discover” the right answers for themselves. Advertisers convince people every day that they can’t live without things they don’t even need. Propagandists and gossips entice people into believing lies by constant repetition.

The unsurpassed master of mental manipulation has been at it for a very long time. He convinced Adam and Eve that they didn’t need to heed God’s tiresome commands, that they could become “like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Humankind’s long history of self-deception and self-destruction began with an insidious idea planted in our minds: If we can be like God, we can be God. Then we don’t need to obey or worship Him. As a practical matter, He no longer exists.

The devil plants plenty of bad ideas, but this might be the worst: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1a). A lot of really smart people believe that one. If there is no God, the saying goes, all things are permissible -- murder, genocide, you name it. Recent history gives many blood-soaked examples of godlessness as state policy.

Sin, the process of rebellion against God and worship of self, is an act of the will. But it begins in the mind. Only one idea is more powerful: the Gospel.

That an all-powerful God would enter our reality, live among us, die at our hands and rise again -- all to express His love and mercy to those who rejected Him -- is the most revolutionary idea in history. If it is believed, if it is accepted and acted upon, it changes everything. God uses it to renew our darkened minds so we can worship Him in spirit and truth. Then we can transmit this great idea to others, which is the mission of the church in the world.

Plant the Gospel idea in a few minds -- and see what happens.

The “biggest mystery left to science” is the fact that you are listening to this broadcast. Well actually, it’s that you’re aware that you’re listening to this broadcast.

You see science can explain or at least believes it can explain a great many things. But consciousness has it stumped. We can describe the brain in ever-increasing detail. We have a pretty good idea about which parts of the brain control certain actions and even emotions.

But what about the so-called “mind/brain” distinction? It’s just as mysterious today as it was when philosopher Rene Descartes wrote, “I think, therefore I am” some four centuries ago.

This mystery and what to make of it was the subject of a recent public radio series entitled “Mind and Brain.”

The mystery lies in the fact that, as one guest put it, this “wet gushy stuff” with the “consistency of mashed potatoes” in our skulls is an integral part of “us”: of our thoughts, our feelings, our hopes, and desires.

As was clearly evident on the program, the culture we live in is, in large measure, shaped and governed by a materialist worldview. That worldview holds that the only “real” things are matter and energy and that everything we observe is the product of the interaction between matter and energy.

That “everything” includes our awareness that we are the ones doing the observing. But as the philosopher David Chalmers said, “materialism doesn’t have the resources to fully explain consciousness.”

Instead of acknowledging the inadequacy – or, as the program called it, “limits” – of the materialistic worldview, three of the program’s guests, militant atheists all, tried to play down the problem.

Daniel Dennett, author of “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea,” insisted that there was no mystery at all. When challenged by the host, he argued that, within 15 to 20 years, we would be able to “read” people’s dreams while they slept. Right.

When the host challenged that assertion, all that Dennett could say was “hang on to your hat.”

Richard Dawkins, who penned, among other things, “The God Delusion,” admitted that we may never solve the mystery of consciousness, but added “What on earth makes you think that religion will?”

And Sam Harris would not rule out the possibility that consciousness survived death. That’s right, one of the world’s most famous atheists allowed for the possibility of life after death. He just thinks that the “idea that the brain can die and a soul that still speaks English and recognizes Granny is going to float away into the afterlife” is “profoundly implausible.”

Well perhaps it is. But what is equally implausible is that the materialism that reduces consciousness to chemistry and electrical impulses can tell us anything worthwhile about the human condition.

As award-winning writer and Christian Marilynne Robinson explained in her book “Absence of Mind,” a “central tenet” of this materialistic worldview is “that we do not know our own minds, our own motives, our own desires.” Only “well-qualified others” know them.

Thus, materialistic neuroscience explains away “experience and testimony of the individual mind,” and substitutes a story that more neatly fits the materialist paradigm.

Except that it doesn’t fit. And people are noticing this, and are pushing back against junk neuroscience and even the worldview that produced it.

Which is a very good thing. I’m sure the wet gushy stuff inside your head would agree.

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Copyright (c) 2013 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

There’s a question raised by the HBO series “Westworld.” It’s a question I’ll try to answer.

In late April 2018, the long-awaited — at least by its fans — second season of “Westworld” began on HBO.

Since most of us don’t subscribe to HBO, a little background is in order. The show is loosely based on a 1973 film about an amusement park where robots, which are called “hosts” in the HBO series, enable visitors to act out their darkest fantasies in a setting free from judgment or real-world consequences.

In both the older film and the newer television series, things go very wrong. The “hosts” — that is, the robots–increasingly resist being mistreated by the guests, and they revolt.

Now let me be clear. This HBO show is incredibly violent, and full of nudity. I’m not suggesting you watch. In fact, don’t. But you can still join in on an interesting and worthwhile discussion the show has sparked. It’s among the most basic of human questions: Why should we be good?

Producers of “Westworld” want viewers to feel sympathy and even anger for the robots when the park’s guests “kill” or otherwise brutalize them, even though the hosts aren’t really “dead” and all memories of what is done to them are erased. Still, viewers know something’s wrong with the whole arrangement. The question is – what? Or as a recent New York Times article asked: “What’s Wrong with Cruelty to Robots?”

The authors of the article, psychologist Paul Bloom and new atheist Sam Harris, attempt to answer the question. They say that what makes it wrong is that the hosts possess consciousness, and with consciousness comes the capacity for suffering.

Now without getting too far into the show’s weeds, only one robot exhibits traits that might suggest consciousness. Or it may even be an extremely sophisticated bit of programming, a kind of artificial intelligence with human features.

So then Bloom and Harris make two additional claims: first, that few “philosophers and scientists” doubt that “consciousness emerges from the material world,” and second, that “the creation of conscious machines is possible.” To put it politely, they’re talking out of their hat. There’s no shortage of scientists, much less philosophers, who doubt that very much.

Their backup argument is that even if the hosts don’t possess consciousness, they mimic us so well that it’s “irresistible to see this creature as a person ... regardless of what its creators told you about how it was built.”

But human experience tells us that this is no shield against cruelty. The ancient Romans had an expression, homo homini lupus est, “man is a wolf to his fellow man.” We have no trouble preying on people we know possess consciousness. So what would stop us from doing so to a machine that we know doesn’t?

The answer is suggested by the owner of the park. While he doesn’t believe in an all-knowing God who judges our actions, he knows that many of his guests do, which restrains their actions outside the park. So the guests “wanted a place hidden from God; a place they could sin in peace.”

Now of course, no such place exists in the world. Nothing is “hidden from God.” Ask Jonah. Or David, who himself asked in Psalm 139, “Where can I flee from your presence?” The answer — nowhere.

Ultimately, the only answer to “Why be good?” is that all of human existence is lived, to use another Latin phrase, “Coram Deo,” which means “in the presence of God.”

And we should also consider how God made us. C. S. Lewis pointed out in Mere Christianity, “every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses, into something a little different than it was before ... all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature.”

In other words, acting with cruelty, no matter who or what is on the receiving end, makes us more fit for Hell than for Heaven.

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RESOURCES

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, HarperOne

It’s Westworld. What’s Wrong With Cruelty to Robots?, by Paul Bloom and Sam Harris, New York Times, April 23, 2018,

Most Popular Theories of Consciousness Are Worse Than Wrong, by Mario Anzuoni, The Atlantic, March 9, 2016,

I find it remarkable in the New Testament that so much spiritual warfare revolves around the mind.

“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:3-5).

Notice that it says, “Every lofty thing raised up against the KNOWLEDGE of God.” It isn't exalting itself against God Himself. Don't you find that interesting? Satan doesn't seem care if you believe in God. But he does care if you believe rightly about God. For if you believe in the one true God and in Jesus Christ whom He has sent, then you have the power and the knowledge aiding you with the Holy Spirit. One of the Holy Spirit's primary roles is to guide us into truth (John 16:13-15). And with Him there is more power than all Hell could generate.

But Satan tempts us to mental laziness, distracts us from reflecting on the wonderful thoughts God has called us to think about Him and like Him. Satan also distorts insights about ourselves, our defects of character, and the image of God we bear. If we succumb to him, he puts us in a place of spiritual defeat.

This is important to understand. This is not about one-time temptations. This is about strengthening a part of our souls that is vital to being a whole human person. Most of the vices we deal with from day to day have to do with the beliefs we hold. Satan doesn't force us to make sinful choices. But he does a devilish job of making us doubt God's character and over-emphasize the importance of our desires. Satan's strategy is plain: to get humans to avoid true thoughts of God and true thoughts about humanity's problem and ultimate purpose. This is the temptation Satan gave Jesus (Matt 4, Luke 4), and it is the temptation he gives us.

Jesus knows this. He places a high importance on not only loving God with all of our heart, soul, and strength, but also with our mind. If this component is left neglected, we will not find spiritual success in our walk toward God's divine purposes.

That said, let me add that the apologetic enterprise of evangelism in the New Testament goes hand in hand with spiritual formation. It is not only to give answers to others to believe in the truth of Jesus Christ, but also to build a stronger defense against spiritual wickedness in high places. Apologetics is just as much for the maturing Christian as it is for helping the non-Christian see Christ clearly.

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a graduate from UC Berkeley who recently came to Christ. During the last two years of her search for truth, she was told by many Christians, “You think too much. Don't make it so complicated. Just believe.” But this is exactly what she had a hard time with. She believed that if God did exist and that if He made her, that He would give evidence to satisfy her God-given mind. Satan's warfare tried to thwart her from appropriately understanding God. But after a long search, and in spite of many discouraging words about her intellectual quest from Christians and non-Christians alike, she bowed her knee to Christ. A few months later she attended a talk I gave on loving God with our minds and she said it was extremely affirming. Now she wants to formally study apologetics, philosophy, and theology, to help others who struggled as she did. She wants to love God with her whole person. She wants to have the right knowledge of God and KNOW she has the right knowledge of God. And, now, because she engaged God with her mind, her spiritual growth has been exponentially climbing.

I share that as a testimony that without a hungry mind for God, our spiritual lives, however good we may find them to be, will be dramatically stunted. We need to have appropriate knowledge of the God we are worshiping and how we fit into his grand design. It is no secret. It just takes diligent work. David said that understanding is better than gold. He was right. Seeking after God, our whole lives long, is a hunt well worth the reward.

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Copyright © 2004 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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