Does neuroscience disprove God? Northwestern professor responds

A professor of philosophy has tackled neuroscientific objections to miracles, visions and the existence of God.

Brad Sickler, associate professor of philosophy and program director for the Master of Arts in theological studies at the University of Northwestern, looked at how some researchers have tried to use neuroscience to explain away religious experiences.

“Some attempt to create experiences that feel to the subject like an encounter with a divine or supernatural being by manipulating the brain through physical or chemical means,” wrote Sickler in a piece titled “Is God All in the Brain? Weighing Objections from Neuroscience” published by the popular theology website DesiringGod.org.

“A notorious example of this is Robert Persinger’s ‘God helmet.’ In this experiment, a snowmobile helmet fitted with solenoids is placed on the subject’s head, exposing the brain to low-level magnetic fields.”

Sickler noted that because the sensations experienced in the Persinger experiment were “similar to encounters with divine persons reported in religious traditions," many people concluded "that such reported encounters are due to nothing more than unusual configurations of brain states. No god is needed.”

“It is widely agreed that there is no ‘God spot’ in the brain, but there is broad consensus among some skeptical neuroscientists that there must be something about the brain that accounts for religiosity. God is all in the brain, they say,” continued Sickler.

However, Sickler stressed that there should be no concern among Christians, noting that there were obvious contrasts between the Persinger experiment and “the experiences recorded in Scripture [that] are nothing like those studied in the lab.”

“Nothing produced under controlled conditions resembles them, and there is simply no indication that experiences like them can be manufactured,” he wrote.

“Neuroscience’s studies of religious experiences shed little or no light on them at all, and have certainly done nothing to subvert their genuineness.”

Persinger, a neuroscientist at the Laurentian University in Ontario, Canada, conducted experiments in the 1980s aimed at stimulating spiritual experiences in the brain by using magnetic fields.

In 2004, Pehr Granqvist of Uppsala University led a group of Swedish researchers in a double-blind version of the Persinger study, in which neither the experimenters nor the participants knew who was getting the magnetic fields in their helmets.

As a result, according to a report by Nature, the Swedish researchers found no connection between the magnetic fields and religious experiences, appearing to refute Persinger.

“[Without the double-blind protocol] people in the experimental group who are highly suggestible would pick up on cues from the experimenter and they would be more likely to have these types of experiences,” stated Granqvist, as reported by Nature in December 2004.

For his part, Persinger told Nature at the time that he disputed the results of the Swedish study, saying that they failed to properly replicate his research.

No, grasshopper, the Universe is more like 5.45 x 10^107 years old. The CotU said “Let there be light” about 15 billion years ago. 6000 years ago He set up the Garden of Eden and created Adam and made Eve to start the Salvation Plan portion of His Word.

This is the Universal Theory of Everything: There is a Creator of the Universe (CotU) who is outside the Universe and created the Universe, from nothing, for a specific purpose. As we will see, He told us that his purpose was to create a Universe of Beings, like himself, with whom He could interact and who could decide to believe in Him and follow His commandments or not. He wrote this all down in the “God dimensions” of the Universe and projected a holographic representation of that Plan, i.e., The Word of God, into the Hebrew Bible for us to discover along the ages, but most of all, for us to discover now.

The part of the Plan that we find ourselves in is the “Salvation Plan” and it is near the end of the “middle” of the story. Those of His creatures who believed in Him, and follow His commandments, will go on to a new world where He would live directly with us and where we all will determine future events together. It has taken many cycles of time to get to this point. The current cycle began 6000 years ago, and we are about to enter the last 1000 years before the transition to the new Universe.

Up until now, this sounds more like theology than science. However, a Universal Theory of Everything must include theology, or it is not a universal theory of everything. In this case, the “theology” becomes science when it can be explained rationally based on observations of current reality. We will find that the hidden descriptions and markers in the Bible match what certain scientists and mathematicians have recently discovered, from deductions based on observation of the Universe, about how He did it. The explanation starts from nothing, and provides us with a map explaining, as much as it is possible for us to understand, every step of the way from the beginning to the here and now.

Understanding a concept or communicating it to someone else cannot really be done by simply describing the finished concept or thing, but by communicating a series of rules, steps on how the object of the concept is made. All of mathematics is communicated through a series of rules. I can still hear my 10th Grade Geometry teacher encouraging us to make the rules of Euclidean Geometry our own by saying, “You must know your rules!” George Spencer-Brown made the point so completely in the Notes to Chapter 2 of Laws, that I am just going to put it here.

It may be helpful at this stage to realize that the primary form
of mathematical communication is not description, but injunction.
In this respect it is comparable with practical art forms
like cookery, in which the taste of a cake, although literally
indescribable, can be conveyed to a reader in the form of a set
of injunctions called a recipe. Music is a similar art form,
the composer does not even attempt to describe the set of
sounds he has in mind, much less the set of feelings occasioned
through them, but writes down a set of commands which, if
they are obeyed by the reader, can result in a reproduction, to
the reader, of the composer’s original experience.

The CotU has written down in the Holy Scriptures, a series of commands which, if they are obeyed by an individual person, can result in that person experiencing the fullness of the part that person was intended to play in the story of the Universe.

This is a summary of how the CotU did it: He started by drawing or engraving the First Distinction on the “deep”, i.e. nothingness. A distinction is a boundary (a form) that separates “inside” from “outside.” He created the concept of a “mark” to identify forms as “marked” or “unmarked” thus forming the basis for binary codes. He created the concept of a “name” for a form, and for assigning a “value” to that name. He created the concept of “intent”. From that He created the concept of the “intent to cross” a distinction from inside to outside, or outside to inside. This is the concept of the “cross” that figures so significantly in the Salvation Plan.

Mathematically, making successive, sequential, and nested distinctions, each with its own purpose, He created three types of numbers: real integers, “imaginary” integers, and “complementary” integers. From these He developed the arithmetic and algebra of numbers, the concept of “communication” including the “signal” and “filters” that modify “signals.” Inherent with this was the creation of “memory” and invocation of a “state” by “calling”. All of these put together led to the creation of “finite state machines” with a programmed “function”. Applying a finite state machine to a memory/program tape results in a computer, i.e. a Turing Machine, that has been proven to be able to compute anything that can be computed. We now know how all of mathematics and computer science was created. But what about the physical world of objects, and events to which the mathematics and computer science were applied to form the Physical Universe?

Physically, creating the First Distinction meant creating the first quantum of area (called a metron) in the Universe and each subsequent, purposeful distinction increased the size of the Universe and decreased the size of the metron. By calculating the current size of the metron, and the size of the observed Universe, we can derive an equation for the Universe at “time”=0. The equation is a seventh order equation with three positive roots, three negative roots, and a complex root. Using the positive roots, we will see that the Universe began as three concentric spheres with radii 72.874 inches, 20.945 inches, and 19.646 inches, some 5.45 x 10107 years ago. These fundamental lengths seem to correspond to the length units in the Bible: the rod, the sacred cubit, and the profane cubit.

The metrons within each of the three spheres divided and folded into a mesh or lattice. As the metrons got smaller the spheres got bigger. One could say that they form the heavens and the earth, with the earth being the smallest sphere which is all filled in today.

During all but the past 15 billion years, or so, the metronic lattice of the “earth” was too course to contain light or matter, i.e. it was “void” and “dark”. Sometime around 15 billion years ago, the size of the metron got small enough so that light could exist, and after that the various forms of matter appeared. This happened across the expanse of the Universe in little “firecrackers” of light and matter creation that we measure as the “glow” after the “Big Bang”. There was no Big Bang, no infinities, no faster-than-light inflation phase, just a phase transition like water condensing out of steam or ice out of water.
All of this happened because the CotU intended it to happen and set the boundary conditions to make it happen. There are no accidents, the end was determined from the beginning. What randomness there is in the Universe is the pseudo-randomness of a uniform random number generator. Given the same seed (starting) value it will produce the same sequence of numbers every time. However, statistical analysis will show that no one number is more likely than any other number.

What, exactly, did the CotU intend His creation to be? The best analogy that I can conceive is that He wanted to write a “story”, then to produce and direct that story into a movie. Finally, in the end, the CotU intends to live in the movie He has created with those of His creatures that He finds worthy. What comes after that will have to wait for the sequel!

This book is directed to those who think of themselves as rational human beings who revere “Science,” but do not yet believe in the Holy Scriptures as a literal representation of the universe and our place in it. It is also designed as a comfort to those who do believe in the Holy Scriptures but are constantly attacked as naive about science by those who do not. Now you can tell them, “Yes! It is all true!”

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