In my books I share that Werner Gitt defined information as “a fundamental entity on equal footing with matter and energy,” though often disregarded in academic discourse. He has identified five components of information that include structure (syntax), meaning (semantics), and purpose. A fourth is the transmission of information from a sender with the expectation of a response, or intended action, in the recipient who must have the capacity to interpret the information received. Finally, the fifth component refers to the intentional selection of information to be transmitted from an essentially infinite resource so that information selected is with a small probability. The selective process consists of a statistical or probabilistic component that gives it specification.

I cited these comments of William A. Dembski in my book, Nerve Endings of the Soul: Interaction Between the Mind of God and the Mind of Man Through Neural Synaptic Networks:

“For causal, energetic relationships in information transfers to be inferred, the first thing that must be established is an information relationship. One can then establish how energy relates to that relationship. If it cannot be justified that the energy is material, then it must be nonmaterial. But the point I wish to repeat and emphasize is that, as with matter, energy is logically downstream from information. The first thing we always confront is information, and only then do we try to explain it in terms of energy. Energy is inferred from information, not vice versa.”

information has been mentioned several times in the blog posts to date. i want to offer a comment about information and its specification for assistance in understanding going forward.

consider that the source of ALL INFORMATION IS THE MIND OF GOD, THE CREATOR, THE FIRST CAUSE. THIS MEANS THAT ALL POSSIBILITIES FOR GOD’S CREATION WERE STATISTICALLY INFINITE, OR PROBABLE. BUT, GOD CREATED SPECIFIC ENTITIES, SUCH AS HUMAN BEINGS, WILLOW TREES, WOLVES, ROSES, GOLD, OXYGEN, LIGHT WAVES, PLANETS, STARS, EVER EXPANDING COSMOS AND ITS GALAXIES, ETC. BY HIS SPIRITUAL ENERGY INFORMATION FROM HIS MIND WAS ACTUALIZED INTO EACH CREATED ENTITY WITH DESIGN, STRUCTURE, PURPOSE AND MEANING. THIS IS SPECIFICATION WITH STATISTICALLY SMALL PROBABILITIES. SPECIFIC ENTITIES WERE CREATED, BOTH IMMATERIAL AND MATERIAL. AS WE CONSIDER THAT WHICH HAS BEEN CREATED AROUND US AND BEYOND WE FIND OURSELVES REALIZING JUST HOW MAJESTIC, POWERFUL, AND LOVING IS GOD! AS MERE HUMANS IT IS SO EASY FOR OUR CONCEPT OF GOD TO BE TOO SMALL.

Neural Codes and Information

Because human beings are uniquely gifted to express and understand language, neural codes transmit linguistic information (as does the genetic code) with small probabilities defining specification. The information has structure, meaning and purpose. The intention of the immaterial mind of a sender transmits information to a recipient, whether that be the mind of a person or muscles of a limb with an intended action, or result.

Information, a Fundamental Entity

John C. Lennox refers to information as a fundamental entity. Information and intelligence are fundamental to the existence of the universe and life. Lennox states that “Word” in the 4th Gospel is Logos. It is a word used by Stoic philosophers for the rational principle behind the universe. It was given additional meaning by Christians, who used it to describe the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. “Word” conveys notions of command, meaning, code and communication, thus it conveys information as well as the creative power needed to realize that which is specified by the information. The Word is therefore more fundamental than mass and energy. Mass and energy belong to the category of the created, but the Word does not. Lennox identifies a basic characteristic of information, that it is invisible and immaterial. Carriers of information may be material, but information itself is not material. Since information encodes on something physical the carriers of information are subject to the laws of physics, but information itself is not a physical entity.

Thoughts of the Mind of a Sender

The thoughts of the mind of a sender formulated as specified information are transmitted to the mind of a recipient by means of words within a medium (neural synaptic networks) with structure (linguistic neural code), meaning, and purpose with the expectation to stimulate action in the recipient. The codes are interpreted by the cognitive mind learned in a lifetime of experience and archived in memory and are to be understood by both the sender and the recipient.

Communion with the Holy Spirit

It is important to understand that to be led by the Spirit it is necessary to communicate with Him, to have “spiritual ears.” It is through the Holy Spirit that Man has communion and communication with God. The spirit of Man comes in contact with and unites with the Holy Spirit as one. The Holy Spirit is divine, and the fallen human spirit is not, but the two are united as one so that the repentant human spirit is reborn to new life in Jesus Christ. The new spirit is none other than God’s indwelling Spirit Who will enable God’s people to follow His decrees. It is the presence of God Himself. The Holy Spirit is in you/us.

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.”