Manson and Fifty Years
Now, back to the question, “How do you get from atoms to self-consciousness?” How do you get from the atomic chemistry in your brain to a mental thought—maybe even the thought about how fascinating this column is? If we are all just a conglomeration of atoms like the Darwinists, or the atheists, or even some of the Michaels of the world say we are, then from whence doest thou thoughts come?
States of self-consciousness are not our brains. The brain is a part of our body. It is made up of cells, which are made up of atoms. The brain and self-conscious states, or we can say the mind, are two different things.
Here is another thought: How do we explain things such as love, hate, hope, faith, and seeing the color red? These are abstract ideas. These are nonmaterial things. They are not made up of atoms. There is no love atom or faith atom. These are all nonphysical mental states. How can this be explained? Remember Michael, the Bible skeptic? How do you suppose Michael explains these things? How do you get from atoms in your brain chemistry to faith, hope, or love? There are so many questions. If we are all just a bunch of atoms, as most nonbelievers insist, how do you prosecute a person for a crime they committed 50 years ago? How do you keep a man in prison for life? Based on human physiology, the overwhelming majority of cells in your body are replaced at some particular frequency. Blood cells live about 90 days and are replaced with new blood cells. Skin cells are replaced about every 7 days, and bone cells are replaced every 10 years. Over a period of time, you end up with a substantially different body. When they convicted Charles Manson for murder in January of 1971, he was made up of particular atoms. But at the end of his life in November of 2017, some 40+ years later, there was not much left of the old Mason who committed the crime. The only thing about him that was physically the same person was the enamel in his teeth and some cells in the cerebral cortex. He was not even the same man; he was a substantially different man. Mason’s last words, by the way, were: “I am the most famous human being that ever lived.” The sad thing is, he was about to meet Jesus face to face— absolutely the most famous man who ever lived. Even so, in order to hold Manson accountable for a crime he committed 40 years ago, there must be a “unity of self over time.” But what is that? Interestingly, naturalists, materialists, or Darwinists have no way of explaining where self-consciousness comes from. They have no way of defining faith, hope, or love. They have no way of explaining why it is just for Manson to be held accountable even 40 years later. But theists, those people who believe there is a God, do have an explanation for these things; they do have a way to explain where self-consciousness comes from— mind/body dualism.
A few weeks ago, we mentioned the phrase coined by the philosopher René Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” What Descartes was trying to do was actually build an apologetic approach to the existence of God based on the mind. He deconstructed or reverse-engineered what constitutes a human being; he tore it all down to a foundational starting point. He said; All I can really be sure of is that I have the capacity to think. I don’t know if the body really exists or if it is a product of the mind. Does the mind invent the body? It sounds eerily like the movie The Matrix, where everyone is part of a computer program. But Descartes said I know the mind exists because I can think. From there, he reasoned that the mind and the body are two separate entities coexisting within each man. The separate mind—that is, the soul— and body is what we now call mind/body dualism. In other words, human beings are made up of a material body and an immaterial soul. This is exactly what Paul is talking about in Romans 7, where he describes the war that goes on between his body and his mind, or soul (see Rom 7:15-25). It is the mind/ body dualism within him that is at war with one another. It is the soul of man that houses self-consciousness; it is the immaterial soul that explains how “atoms think;” it is the soul that provides “unity of self over time.” This is also how it is, just that there are very few statutes of limitation for murder— there is a “unity of self over time.” Because of the immaterial, unchanging nature of the soul, a criminal can be prosecuted for a crime 50 years after the fact even though his body is no longer the same body that committed the crime. A good way to remember this is that “the body carries out crimes, but they are committed by the soul.”
But it is from within the soul that love, hate, hope, joy, and faith are found. And it is only your soul that knows “what it is like to be you.”
Please join us again next week as we continue pondering Friedrich Nietzsche’s question: Is God dead?
Gloria in excelsis Deo!
Ty B. Kerley, DMin., is an ordained minister who teaches Christian apologetics and relief preaches in Southern Oklahoma. Dr. Kerley and his wife, Vicki, are members of the Waurika church of Christ and live in Ardmore, OK. You can contact him at [email protected].
