Brain≠Mind 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

If you literally are your brain, like some say, what hope would there be for a girl born with only half of a brain? A brain surgeon in the video below told her parents that there was little hope for her. But twenty years later, she is a vibrant young woman, functioning normally.

The neurosurgeon was at that time a materialist, like so many. It's not that he made a conscious choice, but rather that worldview dominates in our culture and you just pick it up from school and media. Over his professional experience of doing 7,000 surgeries, he changed his mind.

He believes we have souls or immaterial minds, and that they use the brain. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson says, mapping of the brain shows that the brain does control movement, sensory perception, emotion, and memory. But no part of the brain has been shown to control abstract thought (like doing math or understanding history) or your free will.

Brain≠Mind

If someone denies the existence of God and everything supernatural, if he claims nothing exists but the natural world or universe, he or she is an atheist or materialist. Of course, that person must also believe that human beings have no immaterial soul.

One believer in this worldview is the well-known astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. He ably articulates the materialist opinion against a soul: "What I do know is, everything you are derives from electro-chemical synapses running in your brain." He also gives evidence for that view.

So, you're just your material, physical brain (image) which is located in your skull. He thinks that is everything you are including thoughts, feelings, decisions, etc.

Christians hold a different view, taken from the Bible. God Almighty created human beings with a likeness to himself, whose immaterial soul or spirit will live beyond the life of their physical, material bodies. 

Here's a good question: is there scientific evidence for the Chistian view? Yes.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Hopeful AI 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

So this author says AI will soon be smarter than us humans. That is still debated among the experts--but if true, then he's right that we will certainly have to lean on and develop the best parts of our human nature. 

Smartness has never been the only good thing about humans. It's good to know information and understand it, but as people created in the image of God, there's more.

• Having true friends and being one, having genuine relationships with other people, will never really be replaced by AI (though it can be faked).
• Creative thinking will never be replaced by AI, creative in the sense of creating new organizations, businesses, families, ideas (though some white-collar jobs will be replaced).
• Taking responsibility to build your own character virtues will never be replaced. Your experience of life will still be directly affected by your honesty, generosity, discipline, compassion, etc.

Materialists who believe nothing exists but physical reality may have to re-think their assumptions. Transcendent qualities like love and honor arise from outside the material world. 

These things arise from the immaterial spirit of a person (see Friday's post).

 

from The Free Press

Hopeful AI 1

So many experts in technology sound alarm bells about the danger of artificial intelligence (AI) to the future of humanity. Without a doubt, there are dangerous possibilities.

Other opinions, though, are out there. Naturally, CEO's of companies leading the way in AI are optimistic and enthusiastic. That would include Sam Altman and Larry Ellison. 

Altman's OpenAI has a vision for a beneficial role of AI in our future. They see AI elevating all humanity, functioning for our benefit. An AI user and an AI developer say, "This technology can usher in an age of flourishing the likes of which we have never seen."

 

But they also tell us to prepare for some disorientation as well, because "AI will change what it is to be human." They are certain that AI will exceed human intelligence by 2030 . . a mere five years away. So that means: we won't have intelligence supremacy anymore.

What should we do to prepare? More of what we are best at doing. We have value way beyond mere intelligence (see tomorrow's post).

 from The Free Press

(My image is Grok-generated)

(cont'd tomorrow)

Decisions & AI

Some say that artificial intelligence will get more intelligent than humans and then take over, that AI will spontaneously evolve consciousness and free will on its own. This idea is at home in the materialist view that there's no supernatural reality (matter only).

Some say that AI can never achieve human intelligence, but will continue to grow only in computing power. Human persons have a mind and soul that go beyond computation to consciousness and creativity. This idea is at home in the Christian view that we are created in the image of God, that we are more than our physical body and brain. 

This author thinks that people might stop thinking creatively and let AI make their decisions for them, like these pampered and docile humans seem to have done in the movie Wall-E:

Don't do that. Retain your God-given dignity, make your own decisions, think things through, and embrace your humanness with all its challenges.

from Discovery Institute

Don't skip it

We human beings look for the meaning of things; we want to understand and know the truth. The search for meaning is a feature built into our very nature by our Creator. 

But yes, it's possible as a human being to deny meaning and transcendence, to insist that there's nothing beyond the material. That's what atheism teaches.

Re-post from six years ago:

Atheists have a new billboard campaign for the season. Their theme is "Make Christmas great again. Skip church!"

So I wonder how this works. Was Christmas great in the past when God was no part of it? If we all skip church, will Christmas be great again? But there's never been a time when the season was empty of God. Since the beginning, its central core has been the birth of Jesus Christ on earth.

photo: mine

I'm glad if atheists can enjoy decorations and traditions. But the joy of Christmas would not last if God were taken out of the season. Eventually nothing would be left but cynical materialism.

There are lots of  cynics who don't have a merry celebration. The good will and beauty of Christmas are just cloying if there's no meaning in it. 

Enough 4

Follow-up to this post

There's a page for "myth of superabundance" on Wikipedia, but it doesn't refer to the book Super Abundance. It's not even the same concept. It's a myth saying that we will never run out any resource, no matter how reckless we are in using it--resources like trees, water, animal species, minerals. Nobody should be careless in the management of earth's resources.

What the book does say is that, over the ages, resources and solutions have kept pace with growing populations - and surpassed them. Instead of famine and lack, highly increased populations have food and enough resources for an elevated living standard.

As Steven Pinker says: “People . . depend on ideas—formulas, algorithms, knowledge—which allow stuff, useless by itself, to satisfy our wants. In this lucid and illuminating book, Tupy and Pooley lucidly use this insight to explain a fact that, surprisingly, surprises people: over the centuries, our increasing knowledge has made more stuff available to us.”

As Michael Shermer says: “In a tsunami of bad news . . emerges Superabundance, a data-fueled corrective to the doom and gloom the media daily heaps upon us. Tupy and Pooley have done the world a service with this fact-filled reminder of how good our lives are compared to ages past, and how much more human flourishing is in store if we unleash human innovation.”

from Super Abundance

Enough 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

His new book, Superabundance, is a counter-narrative to a commonly held impression:

"Generations of people have been taught that population growth makes resources scarcer. In 2021, for example, one widely publicized report argued, “The world's rapidly growing population is consuming the planet's natural resources at an alarming rate . . . the world currently needs 1.6 Earths to satisfy the demand for natural resources . . . [a figure that] could rise to 2 planets by 2030.” But is that true?"

Tupy and his co-author Gale Pooley analyzed centuries of the prices of goods, compared to how long people of the time had to work for them. They found that the abundance of resources - over history - grew faster than the population grew. On average, the human person produces more value than he/she consumes. Amazing, counterintuitive.

Why is this? Human ingenuity. It's true that unproductive people only consume (by choice or inability) but it's also true that many people are extremely productive. The Christian view of humanity says that our Creator designed us with the ability - if we're free - to creatively solve problems.

Water use 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Western cities in drought have figured out how to manage with less water use - amazingly less. 

Las Vegas NV has grown since 2002 by 800,000 residents. But at the same time, the city has adapted to the point that it takes care of all these people while actually decreasing the amount of water it uses by 26 billion gallons. 

photo

Phoenix AZ's population has doubled since 1980. But the amount of water they use to provide for the needs of all these people has not doubled along with it. On the contrary, water use has decreased by one-third.

Water usage in Albuquerque NM, San Diego CA, Denver CO, and Los Angeles CA is a similar story.

So the take-away is what, that everything will always get better and better? No. It's this: human beings are creative problem solvers. We have it in our nature. We received creativity from our Creator. What we use it for is up to us.

from Human Progress

Resources 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

2021 Re-post

So where people are free enough, they tend to use their God-given talents to build on the knowledge that came before in order to improve things, to create solutions.

But sometimes an individual laborer will stand out for more than the normal progress. A person of genius who also has opportunity and an amazing combination of talents will pop up, one in a million:

"There are many smart people in the world. Some, but not all, are also creative. And some of these, but not all, are highly energetic and ambitious in their goals. At the extreme, we have superstars in science, engineering, business and the arts who are one-in-a-million in developing valuable innovations. These people produce new ideas that millions of other people can use. This is a huge point: the benefits of the creative geniuses are enjoyed by the rest of us."

The world is able to produce much more food, for example, because of the work of Norman Borlaug. There's Alan Turing and Steven Jobs. You will think of more.

image

from Forbes

Resources

Labor Day is coming up next Monday in the U.S. Its purpose is to recognize the achievements of our nation's workers. 

We who labor are not only consumers, but creators of value. We take our planet's natural resources and apply our mental and physical work to them. We create things to satisfy the many needs and wants of society, our neighbors and families. 

2021 Re-post:

It's an idea that really needs to die out: that human beings are nothing more than mouths to feed, just consumers of resources. Not so. Human beings create material wealth when they're free to dream and solve problems.

In spite of being proven wrong, the idea comes up every now and then. If I may refer just once more to the Marvel movies . . Thanos killed half of all life in "Avengers: Infinity War" so that the other half could get all the universe's resources and live better. Bad and wrong on every count.

Media 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Historic Christian thought occupies a fraction of the space it used to in America's public life. Imagine how unlikely it would be today that public schools would excuse students two hours/week to attend catechism class at their church, as some of you remember from your childhood.

Take this article which I cited last week as a small example. It's a report by a reputable public resource (WebMd) on a study done by the University of Washington School of Medicine which predicts the peak of world population.

The study doesn't just report on world population. It issues warnings and recommends policies that come from secular values.

Historic Christian thought and policy tends to be based on the inherent sacred value of human life (Genesis 1:27) and therefore opposes abortion on demand. The UW study supports abortion on demand, with the warning "women's reproductive rights must not be compromised."

The study also warns that U.S. immigration rates may fall dangerously low, when the actual number of foreign-born persons living in the U.S. last year had climbed to 13.7%, almost triple the percentage that lived in the U.S. in 1970. It's a non-fact and a claim based on . . what, a political agenda or an ideological narrative?

image

(cont'd tomorrow)

Co-creators 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Like most of us, you have probably been amazed at the unexpected art forms people create which turn up on social media. Human beings can create art out of just about anything (ex: musical instruments out of junkyard trash). Creativity of different kinds is built into us, sort of a family trait from our Creator.

Whether it's a song, a drawing, or landscape design, or a movie, etc., we deeply respond to it when the artist embodies in his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty or Wisdom. His or her love of that wisdom or beauty is what drives it.

C. S. Lewis (in his fiction, The Great Divorce) describes the motivation of a painter: "When you painted on earth--at least in your earlier days--it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too."

from Deeper Magic: the Theology Behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis 

Special note: If C. S. Lewis interests you, plan to see a new movie that will be shown in some theaters about his life and journey from atheism to Christian faith on November 3. "The Most Reluctant Convert" was filmed in and around Oxford by a British director.

Co-creators 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

God was the first to create, the first artist and first builder. Our race takes after Him, and we create too. In fact, we take the material he provided in the natural world and do something with it to bless and serve our family and neighbors. 

"Someone who loves roses can develop new hybrids with different fragrances or colors. When they do this, they function as an image bearer of God, governing roses. Others govern wood; from a block of wood they can make something beautiful.

"This truth applies not only to the fine arts but to every creative work: an oil painting and a lesson plan, a musical composition and a clean toilet, a literary novel and a tidy home that refreshes a family, an exquisite sculpture and a successful surgery, a pencil sketch and a repaired vehicle, a verse of poetry and a new work process.

J.R.R.Tolkien, Christian and author of Lord of the Rings, says we are sub-creators, continuing and completing the creation of this world begun by The Creator.

from Darrow Miller and Friends

(cont'd tomorrow)

Co-creators 1

Human beings are creators. We imagine things that don't exist yet, and then bring them into the material world. 

We can do that because we were created by, and are like, the Creator himself:

"The Bible describes a God who creates order out of chaos, and sets creatures in it who are capable of understanding and appreciating its harmonies and beauties. When we work with our head and hands to create beautiful and useful things, we are fulfilling our calling as people made in the image of God."  Ruth Bancewicz

(cont'd tomorrow)

Innovation

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

So where people are free enough, they tend to use their God-given talents to build on the knowledge that came before in order to improve things.

But sometimes an individual will stand out for much more progress. A person of genius who also has opportunity and an amazing combination of talents will pop up, one in a million:

"There are many smart people in the world. Some, but not all, are also creative. And some of these, but not all, are highly energetic and ambitious in their goals. At the extreme, we have superstars in science, engineering, business and the arts who are one-in-a-million in developing valuable innovations. These people produce new ideas that millions of other people can use. This is a huge point: the benefits of the creative geniuses are enjoyed by the rest of us."

The world is able to produce much more food, for example, because of the work of Norman Borlaug. There's Alan Turing and Steven Jobs. You will think of more.

image

from Forbes

Ryan on CRT

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

In addition to his convictions and values, Ryan has a strong sense of who he is.

photo

"I’m half white and half black. My melanin doesn’t change my worth or my propensity to sin. Yet we live in a culture where we are told that our skin color confers upon us a status that is fixed, assigned by an elite class of humans . . who want us to see everything through the broken lens of “race”—a human construct that has only served to dehumanize us throughout history. As a person with brown skin, I reject my assigned “status” . . ."

He refuses the labels of "oppressed" and "oppressor" used by Critical Race Theory. He refuses the binary identity of guilt or privilege used by CRT: "I wholeheartedly disagree with it because of its dependence on deception and division."

As a Christian, Ryan knows that the sin of racism denies the value and dignity inherent in every human being of every race. We were created in the image of God.

from Christian Post

Mary Slessor 2

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Reports that those remote villages were unsafe were quite true. Male missionaries had been killed, but possibly a single woman would not be perceived as a threat. She learned the language and adopted many local customs and was allowed to live.

But she took a stand against other customs. Twins were considered the offspring of demons and  routinely abandoned to death. Women and slaves were killed at the death of the husband/owner so that they could continue to serve him in the afterlife. 

In the spirit of imago dei, she saved hundreds of lives. Against the advice of her agency, she adopted nine of those children as her own. She grew in the community's respect even to the point of settling disputes. When the British empire wanted to set up a court system, she became the first female magistrate in the empire.

"Mary was known for her disdain towards murder, but she always transformed the village through the love of God, not through force like the British. Mary protected Nigerian tribes from the British force and imperialism, by transforming their culture rather than abolishing it."

Creativity

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Like Michelangelo's chunk of marble, oil and sand had no value to people - until people applied their imagination, effort, resources, aesthetic sensibility, engineering, craftsmanship, cooperation, and problem-solving skills to them.  Then there was value. 

People create value/wealth for themselves and their community. They take the resources they have available and apply their non-material knowledge and talent. 

Author J.R.R. Tolkien says, ". . we make in our measure . . because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker."  J. R. R. TOLKIEN, On Fairy-Stories

So we are able to create . . because we are created . . by our Creator . . to be like Him.

Create wealth

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

We know art is creative.  But have you ever thought about the creation of wealth?  Wealth not just for one individual, but wealth as life-improvement spread throughout a community or nation of people.

"Think about oil for a minute.  For thousands of years, oil was a nuisance - an insoluble mess to be scrubbed from your feet if you were unlucky enough to step in it.  Then one day someone had the bright idea of burning it to provide energy.  Suddenly oil was a resource, not a nuisance.  Soon dark streets could be lit, homes heated, cars driven.  The oil hadn't changed.  But [human] ingenuity had made this formerly useless substance into something we call "black gold."  Can you imagine the world without it?

"Now let's examine sand.  Sand is everywhere.  Like oil, it's sometimes hard to get rid of!  A grain of sand by itself has no value.  But a man can take that grain and transform it into a silicon chip, and suddenly it has value.  Another man can then take that chip and impregnate it with data, making it worth even more.  And when someone else connects that chip to a computer, it is worth quite a lot.  Multibillion-dollar companies like Intel have been built on grains of sand.  The sand, of course, remains basically worthless.  It must wait for people to give it its value." (from Discipling Nations)

(cont'd tomorrow)