That link should be to here. Or you can just scroll up. (And I have no idea why this article is available for free at the Philip K. Dick web site, but it was originally published in Nature Neuroscience.)
Like Tris, I have no qualms — absolutely positively no qualms — about science and its (non)relation to faith, other than that it annoys me that some scientists will acknowledge no faith in their own axioms, a brain dinger if ever there was one.
The problem here, and the reason we’re talking past each other, repeating the same things over and over, is our different interpretations of the same data. Consider this:
With respect to spiritual matters, like morality (but not ethics), any and all speculation about the brain is irrelevant. God’s salavation is not for the brain, but for the spirit. The universe and all its atoms, including those that comprise brains, are amoral.
Asking these questions about damaged brains healed and good brains damaged and their perceived relation to morality is like asking about damaged eyes healed and good eyes damaged and their perceived relation to color. Green is green despite whether your eyes can discern it from red. Goodness is goodness despite whether your brain can discern it from evil. Now, science can describe green and red, but it yields useless descriptions of morality, just as faith can describe God, but it yields useless descriptions of color. Like Mando JO said, God Himself must decide on matters of morality. After all, He defines it. What is moral is what is God. As Jesus said when He gave us His moral imperative, “Be perfect.”
Likewise, noting a change in subjective experience when a person is lobotomized is equally a red herring. Every objective determination you can make about a lobotomized person is morally irrelevant. He can’t talk anymore? So what? He changed the word “Jesus” to the word “Zeus”? So what? He behaves really weird now and he didn’t before? So what? You have not even touched his own internal spiritual struggles. His spirit might still hold exactly the qualities and attributes of morality that it did before, but now his behavior, and its associated ethics, has changed. Even if you could read his thought waves and translate them into something objectively observable, like a graph of some kind, you still know nothing about his own perception of what he is thinking about. For example, you might show a guy a picture of a naked man and, measuring his galvanic skin response, you might declare proof of his homosexuality. But have you found out whether he is good or evil? No! Have you even found out his perceptions of homosexuality? No! You don’t even know whether he is delighted or disgusted with himself, but only that his penis has engorged and his palms have gotten sweaty. To determine his perception, you must ask him and trust his faithful response, and then correlate his subjective answer with your objective observation.
This is the way in which the spirit is bound to the brain. The brain processes amoral experiences that the spirit interprets morally. Even God Himself does not judge these. As Tris said, judgement is not waiting for you, Love is. God allows you to judge yourself. When you see Him, what will be your moral response, delight or disgust? Those who are delighted will go toward Him; those who are disgusted will go away. As Jesus said, “This is the judgement… Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
Morality has nothing, nothing, nothing at all to do with the brain. Moral choices are not made by the brain. Moral perception is not processed by the brain. What the brain processes is just like the rest of the universe, utterly amoral.
I understand what you are saying completely, and I agree that the data does not prove or disprove the existence of any deity. However, you have completely sidestepped the question that I asked, other than just asserting that the brain can’t be responsible for moral thought. I would appreciate if you addressed the evidence presented. If the brain is not involved in moral reasoning, then why do changes to the brain affect moral reasoning in the ways indicated in the study cited?
Specifically, the study states that individuals with adult onset prefrontal cortex damage have impaired behavior, but able to pass cognitive tests showing a comprehension and understanding of correct moral reasoning. This could lead one to believe that the reasoning is indeed taking place “somewhere else” (though that somewhere else could be another region of the brain). However, in cases where the damage occured at a young age, behavior is impaired and the subjects are unable to pass the same cognitive tests. This seems to indicate that the younger patients never developed the facility for moral reasoning.
My foot is not involved in my ability to understand speech, so breaking it cannot have any affect on this ability.I would think that if the brain was not involved in moral reasoning, it would be impossible to make such changes by damaging the brain.
I think you might have missed where I said this:
According to my interpretations of Jesus’ teachings, behavior and morality are not necessarily related. The same exact behavior can be either moral or immoral. A slap by a sadist is moral if he is slapping a consenting masochist, but immoral if he is slapping an unwilling victim.
As I said before, a man with a perfectly healthy brain who walks quietly past a hungry vagrant is behaving immorally, though ethically, he might be doing nothing wrong.
I thought we might be dealing with an equivocation, and so I attempted to straighten it out.
Libertarian wrote:
There’s no reason for us to accept this distinction you’re trying to draw here, and it’s not clear that it gets you anywhere either. Morality is the status of an action on the spectrum of right to wrong, and ethics is discipline of thinking about morality.
Furthermore, in a Christian context, you cannot separate the actions of the person from the intentions of the spirit for exactly the same reason that a strong spirit/body distinction has been rejected repeatedly throughout the history of Christianity. The Christian tradition holds that it was necessary for our salvation that Jesus be both fully divine and fully human, and that having all the frailties of being human, he nonetheless willingly accepted the sacrificial role.
Imagine Jesus in the garden, waiting to die for our sins rather than running for his own life. Suddenly, through some bizzare circumstances, he gets a railroad spike stuck in his head, and he says, “Fuck all these sinners. I’m leaving.”
Does God say, “That’s alright, his spirit meant to get sacrificed, and the flesh is just atoms; it’s all the same”?
That’s why Christian thinkers have long held that the flesh does matter, because God wouldn’t have made Jesus flesh if it didn’t. Jesus chose, of his own free human will, to suffer and die on the rhood. To reject the flesh as a moral agent is to undermine the Christian religion at the fulcrum in order to take pressure off of the beam.
Of course you don’t have to accept my distinction. I’m not asking you to. I’m just explaining why I hold the opinions I hold. If you were to explain to me why you believe whatever you believe, I wouldn’t presume to tell you your beliefs are wrong or even specious. Your consciousness is closed to me. I can never experience it. You have your own moral journey that I know nothing about. I don’t begrudge your disagreement with me.
Nor am I concerned with the vast history of incessant Nicene battles among those who have held power over Christendom. They’re entitled to their own opinions, too. I don’t believe in their Trinity either; I believe in an Infinity. I’m not still waiting for the Second Coming of Christ; I believe He has come back already. And probably most significant, I don’t buy their canonization of scripture necessarily. My personal favorite is John, though I do consult the other gospels. With very rare exceptions, I do not consult Paul (although I Corinthians 13 is a veritable masterpiece).
What I do share in common with them, I hope, is my acceptance of Jesus as my God. I worship Him and adore Him. I love that He loves me, and I know that He knows me. He is the First Word.
I believe that, ontologically, spirit is not experienced by physical senses, except indirectly, and is not physical in nature, but hyperphysical and infinitely dimensional, and is our essence. I don’t believe it is some sort of wraith that clings to us like an aura. It is a limitless essence that is tied to us via our subjective consciousness. It isn’t defined spatially. There are no location coordinates. It is not a function of x, where x is our bodies. It is an identity, like A = A. It is within us in the same sense that the inside of a cup is within a cup, not in the sense that a tea bag is within a cup. We are ablatively separate, not genitively derived. Recall Jesus saying that the Kingdom of God is within you. The use of that word for “within” (“entos”, Strongs 1722) is found in only one other place in the New Testament, namely, in Matthew 23, where He blasts the religion politicians for cleaning only the outside of the cup and not what is “entos”, or “within” it.
If this all makes me a heretic, then so be it. But in my heresy, I love God with all my heart, and I am ineffibly thankful for and undeserving of His boundless love, forgiveness, and grace. I could be entirely wrong about everything I have postulated here, and frankly, I don’t care whether I’m right or not. Whether my own experience has or has not deceived me, His love for me is undiminished.
Okay? [pausing… breathing…] Tris says I am too passionate. He’s probably right. God go with you, Johnny Angel.
Libertarian wrote:
Gosh, when you say you don’t speak for all Christians, you ain’t just fanning the breeze.
Earlier, you admonished against equivocation. So I can assume you know it when you see it, and know that it’s a problem. You acknowledge that your views are highly unorthodox, so that when you say that you are a Christian, you know that you mean something different by that than what Revtim meant in the OP, and in fact what most people who call themselves Christian mean by the term, and what most people reading will assume the term means.
So, with that in mind, do you have an answer to the original question:
How do Christians reconcile behavioral changes from brain injuries and disease?
…where a Christian is defined as a person who upholds at least the Nicene orthodoxy and the authority of scripture?
The problem with this explanation of the source of moral reasoning is that it does not explain the findings of the study cited. Specifically, it does not explain why those afflicted with damage to that region of the brain as a young child do poorly on cognitive tests of moral reasoning but those afflicted as adults do much better, some performing as if there were nothing wrong with them at all. If that region in fact is used for moral reasoning, then this phenomenon could be explained by the fact that those afflicted with adult onset prefrontal cortex damage developed moral reasoning normally during childhood and adolescence, and retained memory of that, while those afflicted as children did not.
Unless I am missing something (and I may be, which is why I posed it as a question) your dualist model does nothing to explain this.
With all due respect, it seems reasonable to call a man who worships Christ as his God a Christian. Perhaps those others could call themselves Nicists.
[stunned stare…]
I don’t mean to hit you over the head with a pan or anything, but please, sir or madam, I don’t know how else to impress upon you the very point that is the central theme of almost every response I have given to this. Forgive this emphasis, but I do not accept the notion that “moral reasoning” takes place in the brain. Not only that, but I think “moral reasoning” is practically an oxymoron. Morality comes from a metaphysical state, Love.
Once again, an action in isolation cannot be discerned with respect to its morality. Only in the context of a moral decision made by the spirit can an action be anything but amoral. No, I don’t have a cite, other than my own subjective experience and the interpretations of Jesus’ teachings, Whom I consider to be a Morality Expert, that I have given here.
If you want to talk about behavior alone, driven as it is by the brain’s reasoning processes and motor decisions, then all you end up with is a codification of behavior, a sort of Ten Commandments type list of dos and don’ts, which have never sufficed as categorical imperatives, a point which I think Immanuel Kant compellingly proved. That’s not what morality is to me. That doesn’t help one iota toward Jesus’ moral imperative of “Be Perfect”. It isn’t always necessarily morally bad to steal. It isn’t always necessarily morally bad even to murder.
Haven’t you seen Sling Blade???
[stunned stare]
Are you going to sit there and tell us that no one has ever, in all of history, decided what is moral and what is not?? That people don’t learn (or are taught) what is supposed to be good and what is not? That it comes naturally to us? Does it come naturally to all or just some of us? If not all, why not?
I’d also like to read your evidence that people have spirits. Can you do it without quoting Scripture?
(If I read any more of your honey-sweet “God is Love” assertions, I think I’m going to lapse into a diabetic coma. And I’m not even diabetic!)
Johnny Angel wrote:
To suffer and die on the WHAT?!?!!
Libertarian wrote:
You want to take the name Christian' for your own beliefs and let the rest of the 2000-year old tradition to rename itself? Lots of luck. No, I think the burden of renaming must fall to you. How does Jesus Groupie’ sound?
The fact still remains that you differ with the shared beliefs of the Christian tradition on matters that are germane to this discussion, so that calling yourself a Christian in this context is equivocation. It’s also not getting this discussion anywhere, because you are defending Christianity against this conundrum by casting away what most Christians consider its fundamental tenents. Okay, we’ve established that the case of Phineas Gage is not an issue in your heretical sect, but Christianity as a whole still has a problem to wrestle with.
Perhaps you would argue that in light of conundrums raised by the mind/body problem, all Christians should convert to your non Nicene, non scriptura, non Pauline, Manichean Christianity. You’ll have to ask them to throw away Grace, by the way, because Grace was bought with the blood of the lamb, which was nothing but atoms. Forget about Original Sin – we are not the sons and daughters of Eve, we are born of the meaningless Atom. Forget about omnibenevolence, too. If we aren’t suffering because of original sin, we’re suffering for no reason. Free Will? If suffering is meaningless, then we don’t need Free Will to justify it. The virgin birth? Nothing holy about a woman having a baby – it’s just plumbing. Faith? Your soul’s got it, and your body’s got no use for it. Communion? If you’re not eating the actual spirit of Christ, you aren’t eating Christ at all. Sacraments, the Covenent? Nah, just pick and choose. Add up the score, it turns out that the solution to the Phineas Gage problem is not to be a Christian in anything but the reverence of one `Jesus Christ,’ whatever the hell one of those is. I’m not saying you believe any of this, I’m just saying that these are issues that your stated beliefs raise with the Christian tradition.
The arguments you are giving put you at odds with most Christians at least as much as with the scientific materialists, which is not entirely suprising from someone who monikers himself `Libertarian.’ You are treading the proverbial Third Way. Okay by me. But it means that your solution is really just obliquely criticizing Christian orthodoxy, and I think you would do better to directly criticize Christian orthodoxy in another thread.
So, here let’s stick to discussing the physical causes of mental states and the implications they have for beliefs of mainstream, traditional Christians, of which you are not one.
tracer wrote:
The crux of the matter is that they rued the day they crossed Jesus.
Yes, I recognize that you have an alternate view as to how moral decisions are made. I stated as much. What I have asked, and what you have avoided doing repeatedly, is that you use your model of reality to explain the results of the study which I cited. Simply repeating that you have an alternative explanation does nothing to show how that explanation squares with the empirical evidence.
Actually, no, so I have no idea why it is relevant here.
A rood (I’ve never seen it spelled rhood, but its archaic anyway so who knows) is a crucifix.
And lets not forget John Singleton’s film saga of the gentiles who were crucified with Jesus, “Goyz N The Rhood”.
Ah gimme a break, I’m tired.
Anyway, I’m gonna have to agree that Lib’s replys, although interesting, are not relevent to the questions at hand. I would like to know how people in mainstream Christianity, who at the very least believe that Jesus was/is the son of God and that that belief is a necessary condition of salvation, think of these situations.
I think the first part of the question was answered well early on. A Christian who loses their belief from injury/disease clearly did not lose it via free will, and will be forgiven.
I think the second part remains unanswered, though. Suppose someone of non-Christian belief changes their religion and belief system to Christianity as a direct result of brain injury or disease. If they are held blameless for losing their Christian faith as a result of brain injury, then are they denied “credit” for GAINING the faith via brain injury?
Suppose a hyper-religious sect takes control of the world, and forces everyone to be Christian via surgical techniques. We can call this sect “Republicans.” Kidding! But seriously, would these people who were forced to undergo “Christoplastys” be elegible for salvation? I doubt it; I see no free will. I feel the same is true for one who became Christian via brain disease; also no free will. So standard Christian dogma, as I understand it (and I’m sure I will be corrected if I’m wrong) would consider these people denied salvation.
Okay, I can take being reject by the priests and the elders, and carry on — no problem.
I suppose it’s okay for Jab, who is closer to the “mainstream Christians” than I am, to stay. But the thread owner, Revtim, has disinvited me specifically. Further participation by me, after this acknowledgement, would be trespass. Thanks, Revtim, for letting me stay for a bit. It is one of my favorite subjects and was partly instrumental in forming my beliefs the way they stand.
Lib, you aren’t exactly “disinvited”, you are welcome to share your views on how you think mainstream Christians might feel about the issue. It’s just that how you analyze the situation with your personal belief system that is irrelevent, just as my personal take is irrelevent as well since I’m not a Christian (mainstream or otherwise).
It is my understanding that those who sin or commit sinful actions due to injuries or conditions of the brain that change them from their normal personality, even if temporary, and have no control over such actions are considered innocent. It is the person who commits such acts knowing that he or she could have turned away but did not, is with sin. Technically, such a person can be forgiven if he or she honestly repents and prays for forgiveness.
Even then, a person caught up in human weakness and unable to control him or herself might just be forgiven because God understands that we are human and are flawed, as far as I know, depending, I guess, upon the action. Deliberate murder probably would not be but stealing food for hunger might be. I think, someone told me once that stealing food to survive, without committing harm, with no other options, is acceptable.
Special exceptions are made for those suffering forms of mental illness because it can make them do things they normally would not do. I’ve had a running argument over suicides with various preachers for years because no one in their right mind would do that, yet most ministers consider suicide a sin. Some churches refuse to bury suicides in hallowed ground and I think the Catholics will not perform certain final rites over a suicide victim. Many preachers consider suicide murder.
I don’t. I also do not agree with insurance companies not paying off on suicides because anyone killing themselves can fall under the category of mental illness and insurance pays for mental problems.
Children, I think, are forgiven until they reach that point in life that they suddenly are aware that they are responsible for their own actions. This comes to each of us at a different time in childhood. It’s kind of a mental ‘snap’ and our perception of ourselves and what we do changes.
Did anyone see last night’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit? Richard Thomas played a serial killer who killed four people before he was caught. He faced the death penalty until a medical exam showed that he suffered from advanced syphillis that partially destroyed his brain, specifically the moral center. He was instead sentenced to a state hospital until he was fit to stand trial. However, because of his syphillis, it was virtually impossible that he would ever be fit for trial. He was, essentially, given a life sentence.
They did not speculate on whether he’d go to Heaven or Hell upon his death.