GOD AND THE BRAIN
I’m aware that some scientists and philosophers believe that consciousness, not matter, is ultimate reality – while believing that a biblical God is completely unnecessary for explaining the Universe. The problem here is that an image by definition requires an observer – a fact which should cause every student of mind to weigh in on what the Bible actually teaches about God; for the design of the brain makes sense only if we are in fact created in the image of a transcendent Observer – thereby giving us the capacity for thwarting our own nonexistence in a manner analogous to the way God sustains the physical Universe. The central nugget is that we must, exactly as the Bible proclaims, “live and move and have our being in God”[i] if consciousness and its dependence upon an image is to be explained. Every image needs a surround (or, a “bubble of awareness”), and if we are to remain conscious every surround needs an image. To paraphrase a quote from the famous psychologist Koffka, “Mere ground would be equivalent to no consciousness at all.”[ii]
Beyond this rather self-evident insight, readers – by the time they finish reading this book – will hopefully glimpse something far more extraordinary – that in a personal, God-centered universe the fusion between an image and its surrounding field of awareness is thermodynamically indistinguishable from the interface between order and disorder – something possible only if God, not matter, is fundamental. Think about this for a moment. When we perceive an image, we are restraining a universal tendency toward increasing disorder. In other words, an image is not epiphenomenal to what is going on in the brain. It is the interface! Further, as readers of Journey will discover, the relationship between order and disorder is exactly equivalent to the relationship between past and future – proving, incidentally, that eternity is the habitat of God.[iii]
If, at this point, there are readers who insist there is a way to get around the need for a biblical God, they are in for a surprise – tightly linked to the fact that the weight- and heat-regulating centers of the brain, known respectfully as the ponderostatic and thermoregulatory nuclei of the “limbic brain,” are found smack dab in the middle of the brain, right next to the center which initiates the movement needed for creating and sustaining an image! The presence of this image thwarts a process that would otherwise result in the weightless, energy-less infinitude of nonexistence. Again, in the image of God – who similarly sustains the physical Universe!
A further intriguing insight (and a hint as to what is to come) comes from neuroscience; namely, that every image “out there” has a neurological connection to, and is actually a projection of the procreative organs of the body “down below” – thereby assuring that the body mass as a whole (to which every image is also fused) will be sustained in the long term, generation by generation.
However, everything makes sense only if the transcendent self – and equivalently the finite body – are forever tending (implicitly in the absence of an image), toward nonexistence. In a nutshell there is, prior to the successful creation or sustaining of an anticipated state (an image), a tiny gap between the actual body mass and what, in the incipient absence of this image, is an impending state of weightlessness. This weightless state is “anticipated” in the qualified sense of a tendency toward. In a personal, God-centered Universe “anticipation” and a tendency toward turn out to be one and the same! At any point in time the anticipatory mismatch or “gap” between what is actual and what is anticipated is probabilistic – which means that in the incipient absence of a finite image as anticipated the probability accelerates that the body mass will become disordered, and eventually if the absence persists, weightless (i.e., nonexistent). The reader will see that this tendency is bound to the energy-regulating design of the limbic brain – and is inseparable from what we call sentience or “feeling” – much as our body would feel heavier in an elevator that is accelerating upward. “Feeling” is not epiphenomenal to brain activity, as a materialist would suspect. Rather, being fused with a finite image, it is, in a God-centered Universe, literally the interface between order and disorder – and, more explicitly, the very process of creating order (as readers will eventually see, by the way an image minimizes an expectancy gap, a related tendency toward increasing disorder and, equivalently, regressive, energy-releasing disparity between the anticipated and actual body mass.
The laws of physics depend similarly upon a tiny gap between an anticipated and actual (current) state – the image. Equivalently, every awareness bubble is dependent upon this gap. This gap continually contrasts the transcendent self with infinity and, which is the same, its potential nonexistence. This gap requires the light of God[iv] – as the ultimate means by which an image and the surrounding self are illuminated as “conscious.” This illumination (not too bright or too dim) depends upon one’s success at slowing the Second Law with such success being exactly equal to the optimization of a contrast between the finite and the infinite and/or the efficacy of sustaining an optimal expectancy gap. The logic is flawless assuming that God, not matter, is fundamental.
One quick thought. If at this early stage everything seems a little too esoteric or deep to follow, just do your best to follow the gist – repetition is very likely going to clear everything up. It is very, very difficult to adjust our thinking to a completely new paradigm and the full implications of a personal, God-centered Universe where matter is not fundamental. We’re not just talking about the importance of God, but a Universe in which he is all in all – the core reality in whom we actually exist. God is not way “out there” somewhere, but is omnipresent – so much more fundamental than mere matter that words fail.
It is encouraging that scientists and mathematicians, despite their choice to exclude God by proclamation, are increasingly referring to an “anthropic principle” in attempting to explain the origin and meaning of the universe – a term that, despite its pleasant ring, is just another way to avoid giving glory to God – exactly as the Bible forewarns.[v] The very idea that naturalistic science is a logical superlative to God is a mere assumption – the fabrication of embittered minds as you will see in the blog postings.
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