E. Stan Lennard, M.D., Sc.D.
In my second book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story, I cited Christoph Lameter who stated in his doctoral dissertation, “God can effectively communicate with humans by direct stimulation of neurons in the human brain generating images and memories. God is able to communicate with humans in a direct way.” (1) In his book, Being As Communion, William A. Dembski presented a scheme adapted from Claude Shannon that serves as a template for information transmission between the Mind of God and the mind of Man by means of the indwelling of the human spirit by the personal Holy Spirit. (2) I am presenting the scheme in this blog as a foundation for subsequent blogs that will address how this interaction may occur drawing from current studies from the neurosciences. In this scheme the identification of the Sender, or Information Source, is the Mind of God, and the Recipient, or Receiver, is the mind of Man. God intended it as an intimate, personal communion of love.
Information Source (Mind of God) generates a
Message (the Word – specified information, the Word also being Jesus Christ) that is given to a
Transmitter (Holy Spirit) that directs a
Signal with meaning and purpose to the
Receiver (mind of Man) in the form of
Spike patterns of action potentials transmitted through the
Destination, the neural synaptic networks as
Linguistic codes in various manifestations (dreams, visions, perceived words, intuition, discernment) interpreted by the
Receiver, or recipient, the immaterial, cognitive mind of Man
Noise in the communication channel reflects the distorting or blocking effects by evil, sin or focus on self on the
Message of the Information Source
Effective error correction of the distorted or blocked Message is provided by the
Word, the life and teachings of Jesus Christ through the Bible and through the conscience given by the Transmitter, the indwelling Holy Spirit, who gives discernment of God’s general revelation
It is my hope that the evidence presented in my two books that is derived from Scripture, neuroscience, quantum mechanics and information theory for dualist interaction between the Holy Spirit and the soul of Man through the human spirit and neural synaptic networks is compelling. In subsequent blogs I will explain how the interaction may occur drawing upon concordance between science and theology..
References
1. Christoph Lameter, Divine Action in the Framework of Scientific Knowledge: from Quantum Behavior to Divine Action, A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the School of Theology at Fuller Seminary in candidacy for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Apologetics and Philosophy, Newark, CA. (October 20, 2000)
2. William A. Dembski, Being As Communion: A Metaphysics of Information (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2014)