I wonder if anyone has thought about the mind? As I read about near death experience where persons was in out of body experience, they seemed to know who they were and their surrounding without the help of a brain. As Dallas Willard said in his book, “God does not have a brain and He never missed it”. It will be interesting to hear from this forum what you think about the mind is. Is it part of our spirit that we will bring in the resurrection body? Is the body actually just a carrier of our mind?
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Having been around lots of people with strokes, traumatic brain injuries, and dementia through my career, there is little doubt the mind and the brain are inseparable in this earthly existence. Areas of damage can predictably affect personality and function. And deposits or cell death leading to various forms of dementia are physical causes of mental changes. It does lead to the question, in a resurrected body, which mind will you have, that of an 18 year old, or that of a 80 year old?
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While they are inseparable in this earthly existence, they are still two different entity with different functions.
Which also beg the question whether our mind (while growing in knowledge as we grow older) will also experience ageing like brain cells?
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He basically answered it but our minds are not magical or being sent wirelessly to us from another realm as if we are Bluetooth.
As already mentioned, we see diseases like Alzheimers affecting people. Where they change who they are because they seemingly lose access to memories that helped shape them. Same with traumatic injuries. We even see cases of medication having adverse psychological effects on people making they act differently than normal.
In my experience, when taking with people, something they don’t know much about often can be misunderstood. Sometimes this misunderstanding results in demonization where they go into freeze, fight or flight mode. Sometimes though the opposite happens and it gets heavily romanticized and sometimes when this happens something gets lifted up until it’s seemingly supernatural.
With minds that’s often what happens. People don’t really handstand the mechanics to how memories are formed, or how hallucinations work or how dreams happen. They have a gut feeling and instead of just realizing it’s just a thought they presume it’s either oppression from demonic entities or either it’s prophetic from god. “ the Holy Spirit led me to talk to her and we are soulmates”‘type of thing.
If the whole mind/soul/spirit thing interests you I suggest a few things.
One is looking at some of the theological discussions around this. I highly recommended Tim Mackie’s “The Bible Project” podcast.
These six episodes are a good primer on this.
The other part is just learning a bit more about how the brain potentially evolved.
This is a Wikipedia article that’s good to just read through. Check sources. Find rabbit holes to follow.
Evolution of the brain - Wikipedia.
This is how memories are formed.
How are memories formed? - Queensland Brain Institute - University of Queensland.
This is about dreams.
The Science Behind Dreaming | Scientific American.
It’s a lot but if you enjoy this then perhaps helpful.
“two different entity with different functions.”
What are those 2 entirely different functions? What evidence do you have of these different functions?
I would add to jpm that chemicals can change the “mind” in that they can change thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. Alcohol, THC, and hallucinogens come immediately to mind. However, there are other chemicals that are used as treatments for schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, etc. The mechanism of action on the brain is well documented.
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Christ took a wholistic approach to this question in Luke 10:27
“’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Clearly God created us such that they [mind, body and even soul] are inseparable.
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Hi Paul, thanks for replying. I am here not as an expert on the mind, but as a seeker of truth from those who know more than me and you seem to be an expert on this.
While we know pretty much the function and the physiology of the brain on which part of the brain that control emotion, memory, taste, etc, not much has been known about the mind. Of course when we are talking about the mind, we are not talking about material evidence per say as the brain.
As for example, there are people with down syndrome who have trouble controlling or expressing themselves as those who are not. Do they have the mind like normal people or the mind inside being limited by the damage on the brain?
When people experienced a traumatic brain injury, they change their behaviour completely to a totally different person. Is the mind locked up in that brain the same mind that was before the accident, but is not prevented from expressing as before because parts of the brain that controlled that function was damaged?
When we died and our physical brain is dead, do we still have the mind or we wander as a mindless spirit as we have no brain?
I pictured the mind as a human being in front of the computer or inside a robot or inside a car for that matter and even if Max Verstappen is behind the wheel and the car is the antique 1950 ford which can only go 50km/hr without power steering and with very low torque for that matter. Max will have no chance to win even against a beginner driver who drives a 21st century ford. If the person inside the car is the mind, then the car is the brain. Not sure if you catch my analysis on this point.
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Greetings! Can you elaborate?
Sorry–I see now that you gave an allegory.
It’s a good question and allegory. However, despite my being a Christian as well, I just don’t see any evidence of any mind outside the brain.
Thanks.
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this is certainly one of the most difficult things for me to reconcile. I can only do so by faith that God transforms our minds to a spiritual existence rather than physical at death, but that is a big jump for my little mind to fathom.
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you raise a significant question there JPM. Im no expert but this seems to be one of the great mysteries of Christendom.
For me all that i can do is try to make sense of little hints that we seem to obtain.
For example,
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When Lazarus was raised and the wrappings removed, the bible doesnt appear to tell us that any individuals who were present had any difficulty recognising him. I deduce from the absence of any such statement that he appeared exactly the same as those who knew him prior to his death visualised
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When Christ appeared to Mary out in front of his tomb on the Sunday morning, she thought he was a gardener. Now given Mary knew him as well as she did, i cannot reconcile that he looked the same by using the argument for example, that perhaps she just thought he was a lookalike and that the real Christ was still dead.
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With the exception of doubting Thomas, others who saw Jesus for the first time had no idea who he was. Even in Thomas case, Christ clearly showed the man his wounds first.
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If when we die our consciousness goes back to God in heaven, and at the second coming “we” are raised with heavenly bodies, it begs the question…if our consciousness “we” is already with God, who are the “we” being caught up in the air with those who are living at the Second Coming?
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Christ first says to his disciples in the story of Lazarus, “he is sleeping”. The disciples get confused and start to question whether or not Christ appreciates the gravity of the situation…that there is a corpse in the tomb. Christ then loses the sensitive angle and bluntly tells them, “the mans dead”!
If we consider the statements from Christ above…if the body is dead and the spirit is alive and gone back to God, how does one reconcile a “sleeping spirit” with angelic consciousness of the saved in heaven right now? I would argue this suggests the notion that in between death and final resurrection there is some kind of science fiction movie “stasis”…would that be sensible?
I have read biblical theology with supported referencing that goes either way on this doctrine. I think there is a logical problem with the notion that a conscious spirit goes back to God until the second coming.
So for me, yes the mind is part of the physical body.
Phil, I wonder if this would be a good time to ask for a medical practitioner’s explanation of clinical and biological death and if that might be of relevance here?
Also, what about brain dead patients who still have a heartbeat? My wifes late father was brain dead (at least he had no brain function in the frontal area where memories and stuff like that are found…I’m not sure what that means in this instance) and yet when they took him off the life support, he continued to breathe on his own for a few days. How does one reconcile that a persons body may actually still have a heart beat, but the frontal area where memories and personality stuff like that is gone? In my wife dads case, for those who believe when we die our soul goes back to heaven, where was my wife fathers soul/spirit/consciousness for those last few days off life support before his heart finally stopped beating? If the soul hasn’t gone anywhere yet, where is it in the meantime until the person is biologically dead? (Catholics might insert pergatory here…how could the authors of that doctrine have even known about brain death and clinical death hundreds of years ago?)
Perhaps there might be a simpler answer to this mystery. Our mind perhaps reside within our spirit instead of our brain.
Biblical data is pretty sketchy on this, but there were some interesting events that might support this answer.
1 Sam 28 told the story of how king Saul seek the audience of Samuel who died already thru the medium. Samuel appeared to Saul (not bodily, but in spirit) and talked to Saul and definitely had the mind to know Saul and the dilemma that Saul faced.
in Luke 16:19-31, Jesus told the story of the rich man and Lazarus. Apparently being tormented in hell (perhaps), the rich man recognised Lazarus and remembered all his brothers that were still alive.
Angels are spiritual beings who have the mind.
We humans are also spiritual being in a physical body. While our spiritual being is inseparable with our physical body when we are alive, but when our physical body died, could we assume that we are not just a mindless spirit without that physical brain, but are actually a sentient being who has a mind?
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A couple of corrections
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The spirit called up for king Saul wasnt Samuel…it was an evil spirit pretending to be Samuel. Satan can prophesy…just because he is evil doesnt mean he cannot make predictions and then fulfill those predictions by manipulating the future so they come true. Also, he knew king Saul had been forsaken by God and would therefore expose the Israelite army to a military disaster.
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Note that in the Hades example, Abraham and Lazurus (the beggar…i dont recall if he is the same one who was raised from the dead) were not on the side of the chasm where punishment was being enacted. If you read a little further on in Luke 16, you will note that the man “looking up” cries out for help. Abraham says, no one can cross from one side to the other even if they wanted to. The man asks Abraham to warn his brothers…clearly Abraham wasnt in Hades being punished for his unconfessed sins.
Anyway, little corrections aside i still like where you are going with this. Im also grateful to be directed to Luke 16 as Jesus makes some statements in that chapter that sent my brain into theological dissaray. Ive some serious study to do…so thank you for highlighting that.
You didn’t define “mind” and what it does separately from what the brain does. It’s clear from your example of Down syndrome that everything we can tell about “mind” is determined from what the brain does. That negates your claim that the mind has a different function from the brain.
“When people experienced a traumatic brain injury, they change their behaviour completely to a totally different person. Is the mind locked up in that brain the same mind that was before the accident”
Notice your “totally different person”. Isn’t the “mind” what the person is ? If who you are as a person is totally separate from the “mind”, then you have made “mind” a meaningless concept.
"When we died and our physical brain is dead, do we still have the mind "
Don’t all near death experiences say that they still know who they are as a person?
Your analogy still has Max making the turns, shifting the gears, braking in curves, and otherwise making decisions that determine what we see as the car’s behavior. All that is different is that “mind” has a higher “top speed” than the brain. IOW, your concept of “mind” has functions that overlap the functions of the brain and are visible. If we change Max Verstappen to you for a driver, we will see a difference, even if it is the same car, right?
Or maybe there is no “mind” and we have a self-driving car. The brain and mind, therefore, are the same thing.
You need to present some evidence that this “mind” exists separate from the brain.
Death is surprisingly hard to define. There is something actually pretty true when Miracle Max says in the The Princess Bride:
Miracle Max : Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.
Inigo Montoya : What’s that?
Miracle Max : Go through his clothes and look for loose change.
It turns out when you die, individual cells remain alive for some time. white blood cells may live for a few days, brain cells a few minutes, with many in between, allowing for organ transplants and such. As to clinical death from a practical standpoint, usually it is dependent on irreversible loss of higher cortical function. Sometimes it is obvious with physical injury or may require scans to see loss of function or blood flow, or EEGs to look for presence or absence of brain activity. And as you mentioned, there may be brain stem activity that remains enabling spontaneous breathing in the absence of higher brain activity. It is difficult in borderline cases of course, and those are the areas where hospice and palliative care counseling is valuable, as well as pastoral counseling.
So ultimately we die as an organism, not as individual cells. As souls perhaps.And Biblically speaking, perhaps that happens as we are still walking around
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Is a good read about Jewish purgatory.
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I know this passage is controversial and so against what we stand today and so I guess you have the right for an objection. However, I stand with the passage since though satan might make prediction, he could not make the prediction from that passage concerning the kingdom would be given to David and the life of Saul and his children would be with Samuel the day after. In addition to that, the author of the book who was inspired by God did not say that it was the evil spirit but Samuel.
perhaps I assumed it was clear that Abraham and Lazarus was on the other side.
And he was the same Lazarus since he was called by name.
Forgive me for not defining “mind” as I thought it should be clear for everyone. And yes, while we are alive, we are locked in our physical bodies as arranged by God. Our spirit inhabits our bodies though we can’t locate our spirit by dissecting our body. Our mind also inhabits our brain though we can’t see it thru dissecting the brain or thru scanning the brain with the latest X-ray scanner. So what you are saying is correct, our mind can only express ourselves thru our brain when we are alive. But the story will be different when our bodies are dead and our spirit is freed from the physical body.
Perhaps not different mind, but since the brain is damaged, the mind can only express itself thru that damaged brain.
precisely. If they experienced the so called “out of body” event, they recalled remembering that out of body experience seeing the doctors and nurses in the room and seeing their own bodies. Which means that they might still have the mind to remember without the help of the brain.
exactly.
Interesting analogy indeed. In this case, all self driving car should behave exactly the same way (if they are the same type). iPhone 16 just came out and millions of them are being shipped to customers around the world. The hardware and software running this phone is exactly the same and they should behave exactly the same way unless there is a malfunction in software or damaged in hardware. What can make these iPhone 16 behave in different way one from the other is the owner of the phone. We set alarm at different time. We arrange different home screen etc. it is the mind behind that give rise to these differences.
Conjoined twin share exactly the same Dna with each other. Basically they share the same brain contruct although two separate brains. And yet they gave rise to two separate minds.
2 same brains - 2 different minds.
It is clear from scripture the body is a vessel of the person. Paul calls the body (brain included) a tent. A person lives within a tent. So I would agree with the carrier idea.
Demonic possession is a interesting angle on this topic. In that case the bible suggests you can have multiple persons within one body. Those demonic persons can control that person’s body via brain?.
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That seems plausible, however we should note that the Lararus ajesus raised from the dead was the beother of Mary and Martha…we arent told he was a beggar and given Jesus visited mary and Martha in their home, perhaps Lazarus was a begger earlier in life?