Scientists say chemical reactions create electric circuits which cause various areas of the brain to send messages to the body etc. For a long time I have wondered how the soul (spiritual) influences or affects the physical if it does. Do our actions originate in our brain or does the soul in some fashion influence the brain. What follows is from a book by.
David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine, in his book Incognito.
Do we possess a soul that is separate from our physical biology---or are we simply an enormously complex biological network that mechanically produces our hopes, aspirations, dreams,desires, humor, and passions? The majority of people on the planet vote for the extra biological soul, while the majority of neuroscientists vote for the latter: an essence that is a natural property that emerges from a vast physical system, and nothing more besides. Do we know which answer is correct? Not with certainty.
Consider epilepsy. If an epileptic seizure is focused in a particular sweet spot in the temporal lobe, a person won’t have motor seizures, but instead something more subtle. The effect is something like a cognitive seizure, marked by changes of personality, hyper religiosity (an obsession with religion and a feeling of religious certainty) hypergraphia (extensive writing on a subject, usually about religion), the false sense of an external presence, and, often, the hearing of voices that are attributed to god. Some fraction of history’s prophets, martyrs, and leaders appear to have temporal lobe epilepsy.
Consider Joan of Arc, the sixteen-year-old-girl who managed to turn the tide of the Hundred Years War because she believed (and convinced the French soldiers) that she was hearing the voices of Saint Michael the archangel, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Margaret , and Saint Gabriel. As she described her experience, “When I was thirteen, I had a voice from God to help me to govern myself. The first time, I was terrified. The voice came to me about noon: it was summer, and I was in my father’s garden.” Later she reported, “Since God had commanded me to go, I must do it. And since God had commanded it, had I had a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers, and had I been a king’s daughter, I would have gone.” Although it’s impossible to retrospectively diagnose with certainty, her typical reports, increasing religiosity, and ongoing voices are certainly consistent with temporal lobe epilepsy.
Consider Noah, Abraham, Paul and others more current......
John Jenkins
865-803-8179 cell
Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Blogs: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/
http://alumcave.blogspot.com/
“Having spent considerable time with good people, I can understand why Jesus liked to be with tax collectors and reprobate sinners."
Mark Twain
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