Is the Mind part of our physical body?

Faith & Science Conversation
41

Nor do I. I do say that our spirit (not spiritual body) exist at the same time with our physical bodies.

Romans 8:16
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

in this verse, Paul clearly stated that we have spirit (that is our spirit) that live in us and as believers, we do have the Holy Spirit also dwells in us.

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42

I personally believe, it is that spirit given to us that differentiate us from animals. it is that spirit that give rise to the mind capable of language and love. Our physical bodies might rise from evolution from lower species, but our spirit is what differentiate us from animals. Definitely not the work of ancient necromancer.

43

I go with the evidence. And I certainly have no need to invent some supernatural fantasy to separate us from the animals. Nevertheless I do think there is a difference.

The only objectively observable difference is language.

And by language I am referring to more than just communication – something with the representational capabilities to rival that of DNA and thus capable of being a medium for living organisms. And the living organism we have in the medium of human language is the mind. It is a living organism with its own needs and its own inheritance passed on to the next generation. The impact of this difference is actually quite incredible – not only in our ability to investigate the universe and understand it but to create entire worlds in books, movies and games for our amusement. In us God is a creator of creators.

It would be neat if their were other animals with language and a mind, but the evidence does not support this. We had hope that cetaceans might, but we overestimated their intelligence and while their communication is amazing, it is not a language with the representational capabilities to rival DNA. What they have is an ability communicate some of their sonar information to others of their kind, and thus maintain their communal cohesion in the vast 3d space of the ocean (where vision is too limited for the task).

Perhaps someday there will be animals with language and they then would be people just as much as we are.

And BTW morality is NOT the difference any more than some supernatural fantasy called a soul. All creatures which form community organization have some form of morality by necessity. Though without language and a mind it is of course somewhat different than what we have – no concept of right and wrong, but there are still standards of behavior for their social interactions (largely instinctual rather than conceptual).

44

I like the direction you’ve taken. Part of many NDEs is a whole life review, which seems to happen outside of time - one complete gestalt, if you will. And where you have caused harm or pain, there isn’t blame so much as you realizing the need to change something basic within you.

45

My writing was perhaps too vague. Anyhow, Greek psykhe means “the soul, mind, spirit, or invisible animating entity which occupies the physical body.” (definition copied from a net page).

I have forgotten most of what Plato himself wrote so I cannot refer directly to his teachings.
At least in some gnostic beliefs, the material world (including bodies) was created by a bad demi-god and was inherently bad. The pure, eternal ‘psykhe’ was a separate creation of a good god and trapped within the bad material body. Death released the ‘psykhe’ from the captivity.

In Septuagint (old Greek translation of the OT), the Hebrew word ‘nephesh’ (living entity, soul) is translated with the word ‘psykhe’. This may have affected the way how Greek-speaking Christians understood the texts of the OT. It is likely that the Greek cultural use and understanding of the word ‘psykhe’ became incorporated with the Hebrew use of the word ‘nephesh’, at least in locations that were not strongly connected to the original Hebrew thinking and culture.

Even within the Hebrew culture, there were varying understanding of the concept because the Alexandrian Jews tried to connect OT teachings with the current ‘best science’, Greek philosophy. Alexandria was one of the most important centers of platonism and the writings originating from Alexandria shows that those Jews had assimilated at least some teachings of Plato or his followers. The same is true for the first Christian writers that lived in Alexandria.

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46

My definition about body, soul and spirit.

Soul, is the unique character / personality.

Spirit, is the part that that allows us to communicate with the spiritual world, definitely meant for the communication with God only, anything else is not advisable.

Both reside in the body, likely in the brain.

And there are these mysterious verses from Paul -

Efez 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
Efez 2:5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved—
Efez 2:6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

As if a part of us is already in the heavenly places.

47

You might question whether I am making this too black and white.

Why can’t you have communication abilities which are in between?

I think the answer is yes and no… you can and yet…

We are talking about the difference between life and no life. Technically there is a spectrum because life ultimately does develop from non-life. But it is the property of life to to learn, grow, develop, and evolve. So once you have life it will become more over time. In the same way, once you have the beginnings of language where there is enough of a foundation for abstract representation then there will be new concept development. And this is on a greatly faster time scale than evolution because in this case there is the inheritance of acquired characteristics (i.e. concepts developed by individuals can be passed to the next generation).

It might help as we discover more details about the evolution of language in our species, because we know there was an interaction with biological evolution to enhance our use of language with brain and other physical developments.

48
  • How many minds can one body have?
  • How many bodies can one mind have?
  • It depends on how you define “one body” and “one mind”. The challenge, however, is that either definition demands a context.
  • The uninformed may think I’m being silly. The uninformed have probably never heard of Rabbi Benjamin D. Sommer, an American biblical scholar and Jewish theologian. He is a Professor of Bible at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
  • Rabbi Sommer is the author of The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel. This book examines conceptions of the divine in ancient Israel. Sommer argues that some biblical authors … believed that the deity Yhwh had multiple bodies that took manifold forms, while other … sources of the Pentateuch insisted that Yhwh has only one body. According to Sommer, the Bible records a debate between these two theological intuitions that continues in later Jewish sources. Sommer also argues that, contrary to what Jews and Christians today believe, no biblical (or rabbinic) authors believed in a non-corporeal deity. The book also contains a lengthy discussion of the nature of ancient Israelite monotheism,"
  • So Yhwh could have more than one body. But, in this world, one human being appears to have only one flesh and blood body: a sarx.
  • The uninformed would seem to be unaware of the American Psychiatric Association’s define mental disorder: What Is Dissociation?, commonly called–I believe–a Multiple Personality Disorder.
    • Never heard of it? Watch Apple+'s “The Crowded Room”, or read “The Minds of Billy Milligan”, or watch Netflix’s “Monsters In Me”.
    • In essence, one or more traumatic events in the life of one human being can fracture/split a single mind into more than one, all of whom occupy one sarx.
    • The ignorant would, IMO, be ill-advised to imagine that demonic possession and dissociation are part and parcel of each other. The challenge, I say, to confusing demonic possession and dissociated personality is this: a demon occupying a single individual must be named–as I understand it–in order to be exorcised. But, in a person with a multiple personality or undergoing dissociation, each of the personalities will identify itself freely and voluntarily, and even object to or ignore being called by the name of a different personality.

@marta

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49

What an interesting study that is. However, we do know from the bible that many different demons can occupy a single individual.

the question should be whether that single brain can hold different minds that do have access to the memory planted in that brain? Are those different minds reside in that brain or in the spirit of that person?

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50

Memories in one body’s brain can, according to Hypnotherapy professionals, can often, if not always, be brought out if, so I’ve heard and read, be restored if and only if the mental state during the original event can be revisited. However, it has been said that the original state can be "locked’ so to speak if the original experience was too traumatic or horrific. An individual’s “mind” can be enticed, tricked, seduced, persuaded to heal itself or protect itself, affecting physiological processes. That’s your subject to research.

  • “Spirit” is, IMO, a different matter. One needs to splice and dice the construct of “spirit” carefully, to determine the relation between spirit and emotions and memories.
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51

Depends on what you mean by naming. I am not an expert of exorcism but I have understood that you do not need to know the name or other details of the demon, you just need to know there is a demon in the person and command it to leave, in the name of Jesus (= with the authority of Jesus).

What is more important than naming the demon is what the possessed person wants. One person that has been involved in many exorcisms told that they do not drive demons out of persons that do not want to be free. The demon can just return to the person that welcomes it or rather, the sense of being special that the demon gives.

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52

This question also bears on the abortion debate. Given that a fertilised egg doesnt have a brain, is there a mind? The same applies to a foetus, even if it has a developing brain at some stage. The view that human life begins at conception is correct, even Bill Maher accepts that, but is that human life a ‘person’ without a brain or mind? Does that have a bearing on a possible soul?

Sorry, just questions and no answers!

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54

As Terry said, we try to avoid discussion on abortion due to the difficulty they bring, but will let the comment stand as it is since it is addressing the mind/ brain question. Should it change direction and discussion move off topic, will need to delete or redirect to a private discussion.

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55
  • Phil’s response notwithstanding, I personally am going to pass on a public response.
56

This is interesting. Since I personally believe the existence of a spirit in each person with the mind. I believe that even without the brain, a fertilised egg has a mind already. Perhaps that mind is still free from the brain limitation. Once the brain is form however and take the proper shape and function, then the mind starts functioning inside that brain. This is of course just my own interpretation of things.

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57

Ive heard that too from people experienced in dealing with the demonic - sometimes people they have tried to minister too dont actually want the demonic presence to leave for whatever reason.

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58
  • The notion of attempting to exorcise a demon from a human host who doesn’t want the demon to leave strikes me as very counterproductive, kind of like trying to force an addict to give up a habit that they don’t want to give up.
  • My question is, then, who the heck wants the exorcism to be done? The only folks I can imagine are family or friends of the possessed individual.
  • P.S. I can name resources for my understanding:
  • Now your turn, name yours.
  • P.S. By the way, you do realize the topic of demonic possession is not really the topic of this thread. The only reason that I brought it up was to emphasize that Dissociation Disorder (formerly called “Multiple Personality Disorder”) is not, I repeat: is not, the same thing or anything similar to demonic possession.
  • If I had said that Dissociation Disorder is nothing like a common cold or the chicken pox, you would be kind of silly trying to turn this thread into a discussion about colds or chicken pox.
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59

Yes, there is a real danger in trying to separate demon possession from some personality disorders. I am not a psychiatrist but have been told about the peculiar personality disorders you described. If someone suddenly talks with a different voice and in a manner that deviates from her/his ordinary way of speaking, that is not necessarily a sign that the person is possessed.

In the context of this thread, demon possession is an interesting phenomenon because it may reveal something about the mind, the presence of more than one mind in one body, and about the relative power of competing minds within one body.

Another aspect is why possessed persons do not always want to get rid of the demons?
I think your comparison to addicts may be true, at least in the early phases of the possession.
Based on what two released persons told about what it was like to be released, they told that what their senses showed and the whole perception of the world changed much. There was also a sense of dropping from someone special to someone very ordinary, and one told that her feelings felt dampened for several months after the release [her interpretation about that was that God was doing healing and redirecting work inside her during that period].
I could compare such stories to drug addicts who may continue the destructive habit even when the drugs are captivating and destroying their life.

Addictions are another case that reveals how vulnerable the mind can be for external impacts and signals.

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60

Good points.

I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
and
And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him, 15 said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he has seizures and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. 16 And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” 17 And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.”

It seems like human self destructive behavior in general is associated with evil and demons. Throwing a boy into the fire or water both suggest the enmity that the demon has toward the children of Eve. Also the demons sent into pigs immediately destroy the herd into the sea.

This is opposed to Christ who wants to give life and freedom now and eternal.

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61

Christ wants to give life and freedom, in that we agree.

The rest is a matter of interpretation. Blaming personified evil and demons for the self destructive behavior is an attempt to transfer the responsibility for our acts to others. Evil entities may affect the behavior of many persons but I believe that in most cases, we are fully capable to self-destructive behavior without any input from external evil entities.

The boy in the biblical narrative may simply have suffered from symptoms of some type of epilepsy. The narrative gives an impression that these symptoms may have been caused by an evil spirit but falling in the fire or water were probably some sort of epileptic seizures. The narrative does not stress the importance of evil spirits, it stresses the authority of Jesus even in situations where humans could not help, heal or release. Was it a physical condition, like epilepsy, or something caused by an evil spirit remains unclear, if we take into account the cultural way how people viewed and spoke about these kind of matters 2000 years ago.

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