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Liked It “This is a new book written by neuroscientist Mario Beauregard with the assistance of journalist Denyse O’Leary. It takes the nonmaterialist position that the mind and brain are distinct. It explains at considerable length the very reasonable flaws with materialism as a philosophy of science. The...” see full review » see other reviews » |
Didn’t Like It “This was a tiresome book, but I soldiered through. It attempts to answer the question, "Did God create the brain or did the brain create God?" I agreed with the conclusion (God created the brain) but did not think it followed from the process taken.” see full review » see other reviews » |
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“This was a tiresome book, but I soldiered through. It attempts to answer the question, "Did God create the brain or did the brain create God?" I agreed with the conclusion (God created the brain) but did not think it followed from the process taken.”
Laurel H wrote this review Saturday, July 18 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“A lot of this book is pretty out there. I didn't take the time to see how good the science they quoted really was. They brought up 2 good points though.
Neome Vet wrote this review Sunday, April 19 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
1 - Is the brain sense spiritual reality or does it create spiritual reality?
2 - It is not fair to discount scientific results just because you believe they cannot be true - the scientific process is meant to be rigorous and unbiased”“This is a new book written by neuroscientist Mario Beauregard with the assistance of journalist Denyse O’Leary. It takes the nonmaterialist position that the mind and brain are distinct. It explains at considerable length the very reasonable flaws with materialism as a philosophy of science. The book delves into a wide range of issues from phobias and placebos to brain patterns during deep spiritual states.
Lance - Author of "Ask James One" wrote this review Monday, May 12 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Before discussing particulars, I would like to say I found the book very enlightening in a number of ways. For one, I’ve never held any interest in psychology. This was in part because I didn’t understand it, but in greater part because I frankly never believed anyone else did either. I can see now there is practical value in knowing the mind and brain are distinct and I can also see there’s practical applications for using this kind of knowledge as the basis for effective mental and physical health treatments. Science can no more prove there is God than it can prove there is not God. Even so, the author makes excellent arguments for logically concluding there is more to man than evolved biology. Although this sounds intuitive, it is highly counter-culture to the established materialistic scientific community, particularly to theoreticians in biology and chemistry fields.
Materialism vs. Nonmaterialism
Materialism is the belief that all that exists is physical. This belief rejects the existence of a nonmaterial reality. In other words, materialism refuses to accept the possibility of God or any spiritual realm. Materialists believe the human brain and human mind are the same thing. They say free will is an illusion, religion is concocted as an evolutionary coping mechanism, and spirituality is a hoax or otherwise a defect of some part of the brain.
Nonmaterialism is the belief that reality consists of more than physical matter. As it applies to neurology, it is the belief that the mind is distinct from the brain. The mind is immaterial and exists in conjunction with, but not as an actual part of the brain. Nonmaterialism accepts the possibility of an absolute and transcendent intelligence which I would call God.
Perhaps the simplest allegory is that of a television. The materialist believes the program originates within the TV and that the TV, generating the program, puts it on the screen. The nonmaterialist believes the signal containing the program originates outside the TV and that the TV merely converts the immaterial signal to a physical presentation on the screen. As it relates to humans, the materialist believes we are only what is encoded in our biology. The nonmaterialist believes the mind is the immaterial signal and the brain is the mechanism that translates the immaterial to material (and vice-versa).
Another allegory is a book. The materialist believes the book is the storyteller. The nonmaterialist sees that the book contains words, but the story told by the book came from an external intelligent author. The nonmaterialist thus recognizes the mind is distinct from biology.
Proving the distinction is a bit more involved, but is worth the effort for a number of reasons.
Why do materialist beliefs persist?
The answer to this question will of course depend on your point of view. Of course the materialist will persistently say that they are correct and will deny any evidence to the contrary. Materialism explains the existence of everything apart from a Creator. By eliminating any higher and absolute authority, man elevates himself to the place of highest development. Moral absolutes become irrelevant. When we are reduced to purely biological matter, we are excused from sin by denying sin exists. “Bad” behavior is the result of errant or under-evolved genes. The materialist is allowed to believe in human superiority. The result is freedom to pursue any desire, however grand or debase, without consequence beyond the immediate threats or rewards of society.
Materialism & Evolution
Materialism is the basis for evolutionary theory. Evolution, in its pure materialistic form, is purely atheistic. If all that exists is material, God cannot exist because God is not made of material stuff. Matter either always existed or there was a Big Bang to start things off. Either way, here on our planet we just got lucky enough though chance to have evolved as we have.
Some evolutionists state that Darwin’s theory only proposes development of life, not its origin. Such as these simply don’t follow the theory backward to realize the totality of its implication. Those who do follow it fully are required to accept evolutionary cosmology as the real starting point.
Nonmaterialism & Evolution
“Theistic evolutionists” are those who believe God developed life to its current status through the process of evolution. They are a peculiar group who are constrained to believe in a limited nonmaterial reality. Although this group constitutes a significant fraction of Western society, they compromise revelation from the nonmaterial God with logical arguments and supposed evidence put forward by the atheist materialists.
The author of The Spiritual Brain states plainly that he believes evolution to be fact. At the same time he also states he is a nonmaterialist who believes mind and brain are unique. He goes on to say he believes in an Absolute Mind and claims to have had a personal spiritual experience with this Absolute Mind. His belief in the spiritual realm is the basis of his nonmaterialism and the driving force behind pursuit of neurological science from a nonmaterialistic point of view.
My Opinion
The style of the book is slow at times and somewhat difficult due to the technical language necessary to the discussion. It is an excellent book to learn from, but not the kind of book you curl up to read for pleasure. I like that the author uses many quotes, probably more of which from those of the opposite opinion from his own. For example, he frequently quotes Richard Dawkins and Bertrand Russell as well as important from phychology, neurology, and other scientific disciplines. The book is highly contemporary, but does not ignore the history of his discipline which has led to the current state of affairs.
I would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the arguments of materialism and nonmaterialism, particularly as they apply to human consciousness and the relationship between mind and brain.
Chapter 1 “Toward Spiritual Neuroscience”
Materialism and Evolution have so completely permeated the elite scientific community the realm of mental study is based today on the general belief that the mind and brain are one in the same. These people believe the brain created God, not the other way around. They believe the mind can be reduced to complex neurochemistry. They wonder why the general population doesn’t believe as they do.
Free Will. Materialism says we are entirely governed by the laws of cause and effect. Our behavior must therefore be the result of brain activity programmed by genomes. We cannot have free will because pure material biology cannot explain conscious choice.
Altruism. This is a behavior of self-sacrifice for people other than self and kin. It is often (though not always) associated with spiritual beliefs. Altruism cannot be explained satisfactorily in materialist terms except as a brain defect.
Evolutionary Psychology. This is a form of psychology which is largely untestable and unfalsifiable. In other words, it is more of a philosophy than a science. This branch seeks to explain our nature by relationship to our supposed animal forerunners and contemporary friends.
Ape Similarities. Not much of value can be learned by the similarities between man and ape. Far more can be told by the difference. Depending on how you do the math our DNA is 92 to 99% similar, yet we are obviously distinct. There are insurmountable differences in our genes as well as our behavior and thinking. Dogs are better companions for us than chimpanzees.
AI. Science Fiction writers love to make up stories about computers so advanced they become “self-aware.” The presumption is that if you can create a computer powerful enough to rival the human brain it can become conscious. While computers are designed to make logical decisions, those decisions are based on programming created by an intelligent human. Even the most sophisticated computers merely carry out algorithms. Consider the most powerful chess-playing computer, IBM’s Deep Blue, that won against champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. Then, in 2003, Kasparov tied against the vastly more powerful Deep Junior with the highly enhanced X3dFritz program. The wonder isn’t that the computer did so well against a human, but that the human ever won against it at all. The computer can calculate at least 1 million times more possible moves per second. So how did Kasparov even tie? He wanted to beat it. He considers only the best strategies and he understood his opponent was only a machine. The machine’s intelligence is merely the product of its designer’s intelligence. Just as its designers learn to build a better algorith, the champion was also learning how to effectively play against a supercomputer.
Spiritual Nature in a Purposeless Universe. If the materialists are correct, there’s no logical reason for a spiritual nature to exist. A purely material universe is void of greater mind, thus there’s nothing for a “spiritual nature” to tap into. This means human spiritual nature must be a hoax, a flaw in our evolutionary development, or it must be some sort of mechanism for survival of our species.
Materialism is assumptive rather than evidentiary. Materialism is a monistic philosophy. It assumes everything is made of fundamentally one substance, namely matter. Richard Dawkins refers to nature as a blind watchmaker. This is just a philosophical answer to try and explain away what cannot be apprehended in pure materialist philosophy.
Classical and Quantum Physics. Materialism relies heavily on classical physics. Quantum physics reveals there’s more to the universe than classical physics can explain. Materialism requires all events to have material cause. In quantum physics, however, reality is also composed of various force fields. This reality of forces do not obey conventional physical laws. For example, classical physics says two things cannot occupy the same space. At the quantum level, however, fields of force occupy the same space as each other and matter. It is interesting to note that there are more Christian believers in the field of quantum physics than biology or psychology.
Light: Wave or Particle? Light has characteristics of waves and of particles. Whether you treat it as one or the other depends on the application. Why should it be so challenging to comprehend the mind and brain as unique, yet related and cofunctional in a living human soul? The brain appears to function as a substrate interface between the material body and the nonmaterial mind.
RSME (Religious/Spiritual/Mystical Experience). The author of The Spiritual Brain breaks down nonmaterial experiences into three main categories for the purpose of the book. “R” is the religious component. “R” represents the behavior leading to or resulting from spiritual and/or religious experience. “S” is the spiritual aspect. This experience involves nonmaterial mental contact with an Absolute Mind (ie God). These experiences are often life changing, remembered for life, and involve ineffable sensations of love and peace, but include thought as well as emotion. “M” means mystical. Mystical experiences make up most other forms of “higher plain” nonmaterial experience such as feeling disconnected or dissociated from the body, telepathy, telekinesis, and so forth. Mystic experiences are transcendent to the physical world.
Chapter 2 “Is There a God Program?”
This chapter examines the materialist notion that some part of our biologic brain composes a circuit or module evolved for the purpose of causing belief in God.
Man Made God: “If the brain evolved by natural selection…religious beliefs must have arisen by the same mechanism.” - Edward Wilson. “Wouldn’t the fact that all human cultures, no matter how isolated, have believed in the existence of a spiritual realm suggest that such a perception must constitute an inherent characteristic of our species, that is, a genetically inherited trait?” – Matthew Alper.
Matthew Alper Suggests Religion is Genetic. The supposition that religion is genetically inherited is pure speculation and not based on any scientific test (see quote above). Alper suggests fear of death drove natural selection of religion as a mechanism to deal with it. While atheists like to suppose this, evidence suggests life after death is assumed by most cultures, regardless of the religious perception of eternity. Alper also suggests appeals to divinity are a way of seeking to extend life and increase fertility. While is may be true of some religions, by no means is this universal.
Dean Hamer suggests God is in our genetic code. He essentially says we have a certain gene that makes some people predisposed to religious/spiritual/mystical experiences (RSMEs). The evidence is incomplete and unverifiable. It seems highly unlikely for several reasons. For one, genes work in groups to form traits. For another, the nonmaterial nature of RSMEs make little sense in the hard programming of genetic code. Studies of twins, for example, find stark differences as well as amazing similarities between twins. RSMEs are seldom similar in twins.
Chapter 3 “Does the God Module Exist”
This chapter expands from genetic code of the previous to a look at the brain as a biological system. The question is whether God can be reduced to a biological framework. You might as well ask whether man created God. Jonah Goldberg said, “Science is wonderful at explaining what science is wonderful at explaining, but beyond that it tends to look for its car keys where the light is good.” This pithy comment aptly describes the way philosophy extends the valid range of science into the invalid hope of making itself superior in areas where it is not.
Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. Attempts have been made to tie the part of the brain affected by epilepsy with spiritualism. Materialists like to point to epilepsy and certain character traits of certain diagnosed individuals to justify belief in a purely biological explanation. They go so far as to suggest a certain personality type is associated with epilepsy. Evidence suggests this is nonsense.
Chapter 4 “The God Helmet”
This chapter deals with efforts to induce a mystic experience by exposing the brain to controlled weak magnetic fields. This chapter made for amusing reading, but there’s little point in going very deep into its content. The creator of the God Helmet, Dr. Michael Persinger, has largely been ignored in the scientific community in spite of his popularity with pop-science journalists. His work was essentially discredited by independent double-blind testing in 2003. The hope of finding out God is no more than a neurological artifact of a brain exposed to external magnetic force fields has been dashed.
Chapter 5 “Are the Mind and Brain Identical?”
The brain contains 100 billion cells. Each cell is linked by synapses to as many as 100,000 others. The synapses between cells are awash in hormones and neurotransmitters that modulate the transmission of signals and the synapses constantly form and dissolve, weaken and strengthen in response to new experiences. This chapter finally addresses the major question as the foundation of the division in neuroscience. Is the mind the same as the brain, or is it only interface through the brain?
Neuroplasticity. It was long believed neurons were fixed by adulthood. It is now known that adults can “rewire” their brains. Neuroplasticity explains peculiarities like phantom limbs (thinking a hand is there that’s been amputated). If the mind were purely biological it would stand to reason amputees would not “feel” their missing parts. Reor”
“ Brainiac Alert! No, I don’t mean that this is only for the smartest among us—I mean that the thoughts in this book will really get in your head and stay with you! We’ve all wondered at some point whether or not there really is a God. And while we’ve debated the point for centuries, few if any have sought to prove it or dispute it as provocatively as the authors of this book have. Using studies in neuroscience which distinguish the brain activity of those actively engaged in prayer versus other kinds of brain activity measured while a person is in a highly emotional, delusional or hallucinagenic state, Beauregard and O’Leary make a convincing case for the existence of God. This book is not only for people of faith, it’s for the secularist too as you’ll be facinated by both the philosophical and empirical journey the authors take even if you don’t agree with their conclusions!”
hope i wrote this review Wednesday, April 9 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
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