It's over now...

Wow, it's very close to the time when this journal needs to be handed in so I had better do that.
The last thing I want to mention is on stem cells... I have probably discarded hundreds of ova, completely unused and no chance of being fertilised; men, I know have billions of sperm that get discarded or die and get destroyed. Would it be such a crime to put haploid cells together for research into medicines and sciences that may save lives?
I heard the other day that Cristopher Reeve aka Superman died, he made it his life's work to advocate potential life saving research such as stem cell research. I wonder if anyone listened...

To abort or not to abort???

Naturally if you live in this society and especially if you study science or philosophy you will run into some debate and discussion over abortion. Indeed a debate for one of my classes involved this issue and someone who is often a visitor in my boyfriend's office, as I am also a regualr visitor there, brought up the issue and how he often aggrevates girls with his views (which I happen to think are interesting and quite reasonable). I found a simple yet informative site at

http://www.btinternet.com/~l.element/pi1118/pi2020abortion.htm

that has helped me gather some thoughts. I have no answers except that I think it's sometimes the least of all possible evils, it's not good but maybe it needs to be done.

One point I have found very interesting is that if it's okay to turn off a person's life support whne they have no brain activity and cannot survive on their own, why is it not okay (according to some people) to do the same for a baby who is completely depentdent on its mother and has no brain activity (which according to the above site, starts at six weeks)? These people seem to do an almost good job of covering this idea:

"Presbyterians Pro-Life is committed to protecting the right to life of every human being from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death."

but what is "natural death" is someone dead if their brain isn't working and there is no clear evidence of the 'soul' still being present?

As with anything, there are pros and cons - the arguments I tend to think of are that abortion may help to prevent those too irresponsible or emotionally unfit to have a baby, having one and possibly stop them giving a child a more difficult and sad life than need be. A con to abortion is that it may increase irresponibility among sexually active people.

"For you created my inmost being;
You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
Your eyes saw my unformed body."
Psalm 139

It could be argued that God knits us together, indeed he knows us and has known us before we even came into the world, so how could he ever lose us and if he so chooses will create us again - were we to be aborted by the woman who conceived us.

What makes a person? Ah, the eternal question... this is an interesting idea from the lecture (even though my thoughts are fairly liberal for a stereotypical christian - I'm not necessarily that though)

"One definition: A person is an entity whom God knows and relates to. Following the above Psalm, then, we are already persons in our mother’s womb."

also

"At the moment the sperm fertilizes the ovum, the 23 pairs of chromosomes are complete – the zygote has a unique genotype distinct from both parents, which will determine its sex, the colour of its skin, hair and eyes, its temperament and its intelligence.

Each human being begins as one cell. An adult has 30 million million cells. 45 generations of cell division are in between conception and adulthood and 41 of these occur before birth."

and again

"The Bible has much to say about God’s care for the defenceless."

It does seem like they are little people that need our love and care. Darn reason and emotion! Sometimes they work together and sometimes they are passionately against one another, in the abortion case they do both!

Don't these people read the bible?

Heh, I guess the subject of this post is a little harsh and generally people who do read the bible manage to come up with radically different interpretations of it. Is this because God's spirit is not working in us; do we not allow it to work in us; do we go looking for a certain thing and find it, whether it was supposed to be there or not; do we not ask for God's wisdom and understand and true meaning? Who knows?

These thoughts initially come to mind because of this week's lecture and Charles Birch:

"Birch sees the DNA molecule as having “internal relations”. He sees our own consciousness, the ability to reflect on the world around us, as having evolved. The evolutionist has a problem with conscious being evolving from non-conscious ones, but Birch removes that problem by suggesting that all matter has consciousness of a kind. “Things that feel are made of things that feel”. All things, ranging from electrons up to people, have some degree of responsiveness and freedom, freedom to affect their environment. So God’s love is extended to all creation."

I feel that the bible specifically says, or at least fairly conclusively implies that humans were made to be in relationship with God, that he made us his people and gave us dominion over the world under him. Not necessarily that it is only us that gets minds, but it is only us that is reallysubject to God's love. I suppose I am more with Francis Schaeffer on this one.

"Psalm 104:24: “O Lord how many are thy works! In wisdom thou hast made them all; the earth is full of thy possessions.” So our function is to use them and enjoy them, to wonder at their beauty and the intricacies of their design. But we do not own them. We are God’s stewards in His garden... It is not God who has done a lousy job (as the modernists said at the beginning) but we have done a lousy job in the way we have lived our lives and in the way we have cared for God’s world."

Amen to that.

Religion as natural

I found a very interesting and quite clever journal article while I was researching the essay. It's not from a refereed journal, which seems fairly obvious from the title of the journal. The reference for the article is

Boyer, P. (2004). Why is religion natural? The Skeptical Inquirer 28(2), 25-31.

Basically the ideas involved is that the common conception of atheists and those not sympathetic to religion have a belief that it is a suspension of unbelief referred to as "the sleep of reason". The writer doesn't adhere to this idea and argues that religion is very reasonable - not true - reasonable.

Evidence that Boyer suggests for this is that religious thoughts activate the same parts of the brain as non religious thoughts do; he also argues that certain capacities that we attribute as aspects of religion are evolutionary bi-products that promote our survival, an example is the food laws for Israel in the Bible and the Torah - these, Boyer considers to be created from the evolution of our natural intuition to avoid possible contaminants or pathogens. Boyer also writes that religious ritual stimulates the same attitudes, actions and brain areas as does OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). He concludes that religion is natural because it invades our intuitive cognition.

One has to admit - it's a very clever argument, the author does the whole thing almost in support of religion, never dissing it, but when you think about it afterwards it seems that religion may be natural but it is still silly. We are led to think, why should we attribute meanings to things - lets try and see them as they are - then we can add another few degrees of freedom to our scopes.

25 years of Neuroscience

I chose the neuroscience essay because it seemed interesting and I wanted to learn something about this field and its relationship with religion. I did learn things and I found it very interesting, unfortunately I don't think I really had a satisfactory 2000 words to say about it, it was okay, but a lot of what I read I couldn't tie in and there was one paper

(1996). Interfacing religion and the neurosciences: A review of twenty-five years of exploration and reflection. Zygon 31(4),545.

that I couldn't get my hands on. It sounded like something that would have been perfect for an overview and to receive more direction. I suppose it wasn't supposed to be. I'd still like to read it though.

Dualism

I studied these ideas in a philosophy course all of last semester - you'd think that I might want to do my essay on consciousness. Think again! After looking at about 15 philosophers what I saw was that people can be really self-indulgent and conceited to think that they alone can unravel the mysteries of life. I finished the course believing that no one yet has found the answer and that no one ever will. Why is this? Probably because of the nature of consciousness and the idea of self - we are different, even identical twins are different (which does suggest some level of not yet explained phenomena that we refer to as a soul), and so everyone's theories will be influenced by his own experience. Even Descartes who began his theories of mind matter and the machine that is the body being separate and the mind having a causal relationship on the body by doubting the existence of everything was influenced. He was influenced by religion, he never really denied the existence of some kind of maker; he always held onto the belief that even if nothing else existed he did, because he was there doubting things, which is a thinking action; thus "I think therefore I am." Many philosophers after him picked on these things saying either everything exists or everything doesn't. I'm not sure whether it was the scope of the course and the lecturers but it seemed we found more philosophers who said everything exists and is the same, like Jean Paul Satre and other existentialists and other schools of materialist thought.
In the end I wasn't convinced by any and I still thought Descartes made alot of good points despite the scrutiny his ideas have endured.

"This is probably the most difficult area of the course. Maybe I am saying this because my own views are in a state of flux and are continually being challenged. The scientific insights here are much newer and religions have not really properly come to grips with them – at least Christianity as a whole does not seem to have done so."

For me, being a christian, the bible is an important source for understanding the idea of a soul, or consciousness, and also what or how we may be when we are raised up on the final day. This verse has been one of encouragement and something to ponder - whatever its true meaning may be...

Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, "He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us"?

James 4:5

Neuroscience essay

Here I am thinking about this essay - due tomorrow (yes I am very disorganised and fairly unwise when it comes to big assignments and doing them last minute).

From lecture 11 - "Mind, Soul, Spirit and Consciousness", these are some of the questions that may be pertinent to my essay:

*Epiphenomenalism: The conscious mental life is a by-product of physical processes in the brain. - implies that psychology will reduce to neuroscience.
*Is there a genetic element influencing religious behaviour? Do identical twins end up with the same religious beliefs? The answer here seems to be that genetics is a factor but not the only factor.
*Particular regions of the brain are associated with particular cognitive tasks (PET studies show this). [PET = Positron Emission Tomography].

I think that the way to go is not to try to say what is right or not but to simply look at the studies that have been done, to outline their findings and to possibly conclude what seems to be likely and what effects this has on faith.

Would we even know?

"There is a problem with the idea of God “interfering with Nature” as God is the creator and upholder of Nature, it would seem that he is “interfering” with his own work. On the other hand, because it is his own work, he might be seen as free to change the laws of physics, his laws, when it suits him. The question is ‘Would he change the laws of physics?’"

I've been wondering, in terms of prayer and miracles, if God did do something - "interfere" with the world - would we know about? If he wanted to change the laws of physics would we realise? If somebody suffering from regret and grief prayed for God to change the past to alleviate their pain would he? If he did, surely he would take it right back so that no one knew about the change - groundhog day doesn't actually happen does it? No one relieves experiences. Maybe, because God is outside time and space but can work within it, he does do those things and we just don't realise. When we do see things we think are miracles then it's because God lets us see them.

I wonder if this perspective of things demeans the power and majesty, fatherhood and benevolence of God. If you agree with what Bob Russell (in lecture 10) says about everything being the direct act of God then for us to ask for change and it to occur, even when we don't realise it, it might be like God making a decision and then changing his mind because we ask him to. In a way - he is God, he may do whatever he likes - lucky he's benevolent.