Information Transmission between the Mind of God and the Mind of Man

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)                                                      

Waves in Our Brains

E. Stan Lennard, M.D., Sc.D.

In the fifth chapter of my book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story, I cited Mortimer Adler’s discussion of the mind’s relation to the material brain.  He stated that the intellectual mind is superior to matter and cannot be reduced to it.  It is an immaterial component of human nature.  He said, “The intellect cannot normally function without dependence on the activity of the brain, but the brain is not the physical organ of intellectual thought.” (1)  According to Adler human behavior consists of two substances, mind and physical brain, and the two interact with one another. 

Neural impulses are the same in electrochemical character.  They consist of action potentials transmitted across and through neural synaptic networks as spike trains with distinctive frequencies and amplitudes, as we shall see.  Neural structures are histologically and anatomically similar, or even identical.  Distinguishable concepts that reflect intellectual and cognitive processes cannot be embodied in matter that is so similar or identical!  The power of conceptual thought must be an immaterial energy,  and energy is expressed as waves.  We are aware that light and sound are transmitted by waves.  Likewise, waves are transmitted across synaptic clefts by quantum tunneling with specified frequencies,  amplitudes and trajectories.  Going further, it is now recognized that elementary particles at the atomic level, electromagnetism, gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces are . . . waves.  Even space consists of unique vibrational signatures!  In this and my subsequent blog I will discuss the flow of waves within and across our brains. 

One more point merits emphasis.  John C. Eccles maintained that the human mind is not causally closed to nonmaterial stimuli as claimed by materialists. The neural synapse is considered to be a frontier across which information flows in both directions. (2) The billions of interconnections between neurons and trillions of synapses in neural networks constitute an information processing system.  William A. Dembski has stated that matter itself is reducible to the information instantiated within its design, construction and function.  It is energy that causes information to undergo such dynamic transformations.  Energy is inferred from information and is called by Dembski the “causal glue.” (3)  Werner Gitt stated that information is a fundamental entity on equal footing with matter and energy. It is required for the start of any controlled process whether energy or matter.  Gitt identified the one prerequisite of information, that it must be in coded form. (4)  Information itself is preceded by the prime source of all information, a mind.  In John 1:1-3 it is said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.”

The electrochemical activity of neural networks translates into the riches of the human mind.  James Le Fanu presumed that there has to be a code within the patterns of the activity, ensuring that the firing of the visual cortex, for example, gives rise to the perception of trees and birds seen from one’s window. (5)  The neural code requires an intelligence to establish the rules of syntax, meaning and purpose, human or divine.  Anything with high information content must be interpreted by the intellect of a mind.  It is the immaterial mind that interacts cognitively with encoded information within the spike trains of neural synaptic networks.  It is a perceptual process by which linguistic neural codes are interpreted by a human mind with the unique capacity for expressing and understanding advanced language.

The application of increasingly sophisticated technologies to the study of the human mind has generated more understanding of waves that are transmitted through the brain.  Initial observation of brain waves was by electroencephalography which recorded waves transmitted across the skull with relatively poor resolution and no directional components.  Human brains can now be studied by electrocorticography (ECoG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging.  ECoG applies to direct studies of live neural tissues in responsive patients such as those undergoing neurosurgery for epilepsy.  Multiple monitors can be placed over larger surfaces of the brain itself to study the characteristics and routes of neural transmission.  In Part Two of this blog I will share what I have learned from more current neuroscience literature.  There is yet a dominant perspective that the human mind is not immaterial and can be reduced to the functional activities of the physical brain.  Much of the literature of neuroscience does not acknowledge the human mind with causal and cognitive power but equates the function of the brain to computation.  The mind is considered to be an epiphenomenon by some.  By reviewing points I make in my books in the paragraphs above I have provided an introduction that shows the merit of dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and the material brain and its neural networks.  I will soon post Part Two of this blog.  In the blog that follows, “Minds in Communion,” I will focus on the dualist interaction between the mind of Man and the Mind of God.

References

1.        Mortimer J. Adler, Intellect: Mind over Matter (New York: Collier Books, MacMillan Publishing Company, 1990)

2.       John C. Eccles, How the Self Controls Its Brain (Berlin, New York, London: Springer-Verlag, 1994)

3.       William A. Dembski, Being As Communion: A Metaphysics of Information (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2014)

4.       Werner Gitt, In the Beginning Was Information: A Scientist Explains the Incredible Design in Nature (Green Forest, Arizona: Master Books, 2007)

5.       James Le Fanu, Why Us? How the Self Controls Its Brain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2009)

in the following blog posts on my website i shall present a selected series that has dealt with the topic of information, specifically as it relates to its ultimate source, god. it is an anthology derived from excerpts i have posted from a number of authors and my personal comments. i pray this anthology will assist in correcting one’s perception of god as being too small.

in years past i moderated online courses offered by reasons to believe (reasons.org), a nondenominational, international ministry with which i worked in several capacities beginning in 1987. it was not uncommon during online discussions with some students to see that the perspective of god’s power and majesty was too small. it is difficult for mankind, as mere humans, to conceive of how immeasurably vast god’s creative and sustaining power is!

it is my intent to post blogs that speak to this issue, including among believing christians. it is my conviction that the topic of information, when better understood, can shed more light on the majesty and power of god. i shall post discussions that should be understood without the need for advanced educational experience, especially of a scientific, technical or mathematical nature.

I recommend reading the remainder of this book. i will point out that a minor difference will become apparent for those who may have read my books and previous blog posts. dr. egnor appears to conflate spirit and soul in mankind, both being immaterial and immortal. i distinguish between the two entities but agree that both are immaterial and immortal. dr. egnor and denyse o’leary, his coauthor, have written a book with a powerful, everlasting message. they have confirmed, as i have posited in my writings with compelling evidence, that dualist interactionism correctly describes the reality of bidirectional interaction between the immaterial mind of man, including the mind of god, and the material components of the brain, its synaptic networks. that god created man with this interactive reality reflects god’s intent to have a personal relationship with us.

i conclude this series of blog posts based on selected comments from dr. egnor’s book with the following excerpt:

“we cannot enter eternity justified by our own lives - i have not lived a single day that would make me proud before god. the immortality of my soul and the eternal consequences of my life mean that i need to be forgiven. i need to place my trust in someone who bore my sins, and i need to accept his grace. scripture, self-reflection, and science all point to this reality about us. we are embodied spirits [with souls] who need god’s love and forgiveness, now and in eternity.”

in chapter eight dr. egnor discusses the concept of free will that accrued from dr. wilder penfield’s vast surgical experience. I include excerpts:

“for over eleven hundred patients, penfield never once encountered a situation where he stimulated a patient’s brain and the patient believed that the mental and physical activity he stimulated had been freely willed by the patient himself. that is, penfield was never able to find a ‘will’ center in the brain that, when stimulated, evoked a patient’s sense of will. penfield inferred that this meant that the will does not come from the brain, but is a power of the immaterial mind, and by its immateriality, the will is free [and functions through probabilities. . . . free will is real and not wholly determined by brain activity. the will seems to have a separate existence, independent of the brain. that convinced penfield that free will is real.

“the will and the intellect are immaterial powers of the spiritual human soul. the will is not determined by matter [and cannot be reduced to the physical functions of the brain’s synaptic networks]. in fact, it cannot be determined by matter, because it is spiritual, not material. the will can move matter as a final cause, a purpose, just as the intellect moves matter as a formal cause, an idea. the natural goal of the human intellect is the pursuit of truth, and the natural goal of the human will is the pursuit of the good.

“we have the free capacity - the spiritual capacity - to choose good or evil. . . . we are free to make choices in our lives.”

dr. egnor expands on his comments about the human soul in chapter seven, and i include several:

“in the material world, energy is neither created nor destroyed. but it is often transformed from one state to another. in fact, nothing in this universe simply dissipates; it is always transformed. the immaterial world is similar. an immaterial reality like the human soul may be transformed into a different reality, but it cannot be simply annihilated. . . . apart from physical [interactive] behavior [with the neural synaptic networks of the brain] the soul does not actually have a location. . . . we have seen from neuroscience that the immaterial aspect of the human soul is a unity. it has no parts, so it cannot be split or multiplied. . . . but the soul is not composed, therefore not decomposable. it could die only by being annihilated as a whole. but this would be contrary to a basic law of the universe: that nothing simply and absolutely vanishes, just as nothing simply pops into existence with no cause. . . . the fact that abstract thought has no physical place and cannot be split is consistent with the human soul having some immaterial powers. . . . the mind appears to have an immaterial source, and again, we have no reason to think that such a source is mortal by nature.”

dr. egnor has identified above a cause for entities within the universe. we know from scripture that there is a first cause, the creator, god. that the mind of humans has an immaterial source, ultimately that source is god, who is eternal.

at the end of chapter six, dr. egnor makes the following comments concerning Nde’s:

“from a research perspective, we could say that the retrospective evidence for nde’s is massive. . . . it’s also significant that religious beliefs and previous knowledge do not necessarily predispose a person to a near-death experience. . . . there isn’t even a remotely plausible physical explanation for this phenomenon. . . . verified nde’s confirm that there is an immaterial aspect to the human person - call it mind or soul - that survives the death of the brain. . . . as bruce greyson has said, ‘far from leading us away from science and into superstition, nde research actually shows that by applying the methods of science to the nonphysical aspects of our world, we can describe reality much more accurately than if we limit our science to nothing but physical matter and energy. . . . near-death experiences catch the mind, the human soul, in the act of surviving the death of the brain. . . . we must demonstrate that the soul belongs to a class of things that are, by their very nature, immortal. there are, we will show, some pretty good reasons to think that the soul, unlike the body, not only does not die, but cannot die.”

in chapter five dr. egnor shares considerable detail about near-death experiences (nde), and i recommend this chapter to you. (i have also posted a number of earlier blogs dealing with this issue.) dr. egnor describes the experience of a patient named pam reynolds who had a dangerous, life threatening aneurism at the top of her basilar artery against her brainstem. during the surgical procedure to treat the aneurism she was converted into a brain dead state with no blood flow to her brain, all blood within the brain drained out, her body temperature cooled to 25 degrees fahrenheit, the heart stopped, and her brain waves ceased. by multiple criteria she was dead. during this state she had a successful removal of the aneurism and was carefully resuscitated to full life. the description of the experience she had while clinically dead is an interesting read on pages 84-93, and mirrors the Nde’s of so many others across the world.

“. . . pam reynold’s ‘brain death’ was deliberately planned and carried out under meticulously documented circumstances. it entailed knowledge, verified later, that she could only have had if her soul - the immortal part of her mind - functioned while her brain was dead. it is clear evidence that the mind can function quite independently of the brain.”

an important take-away from this description is that there is increasing evidence that physical death does not include death of the human spirit and soul. it is of vital importance that we address this eventuality, even reality, in our lives on earth with the acceptance that we physically die to live . . . eternally . . . and by god’s grace, in the presence of his son, jesus christ, whose holy spirit seeks to indwell us in a personal interactive communion both in the present life and that to come.

in chapter three dr. egnor shares that “the mind is not simply the physical activities of the brain, that it also has an independent existence. this is often called the dualist view.” (see my PRECEDING blog)

“IF THE MIND IS PARTLY THE PRODUCT OF THE MATERIAL FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN AND PARTLY THE PRODUCT OF SOMETHING THAT IS BEYOND NATURE, THEN:

1. THERE WILL BE SOME MENTAL PHENOMENA WITHOUT THE BRAIN FUNCTION.

2. AS BRAIN FUNCTION IS ALTERED, THE MIND WILL NOT NECESSARILY BE ALTERED.

3. IF THE BRAIN IS DAMAGED, THEN MENTAL FUNCTION WILL NOT NECESSARILY BE DAMAGED.

4. BRAIN DEVELOPMENT WILL NOT NECESSARILY CORRELATE WITH MENTAL DEVELOPMENT.

5. WE WILL NOT ALWAYS BE ABLE TO CORRELATE BRAIN ACTIVITY WITH MENTAL ACTIVITY - NO MATTER HOW WE CHOOSE TO LOOK AT IT. . . .

   THE MIND GENERALLY DEPENDS ON THE FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN. BUT IT CAN ALSO, AT TIMES, FUNCTION INDEPENDENTLY.”

as you read my blog posts you may be wondering “so what?” i am providing increasing compelling evidence for the nature of the human mind that makes it receptive to the mind of god/the holy spirit who is also immaterial and immortal. the human mind was created in the image of the mind of god. it cannot be reduced to the physical/material functions of the brain and its synaptic networks though it interacts with it, a process referred to as dualist interactionism.