Chapter 24: Mind
Our minds are our windows on the world. Our understanding of faith centers in our minds and our responses in faith are grounded in our emotions and faith concepts. Our minds are where we are aware of what we believe, of our beliefs, and examine and modify our beliefs and actions.
Mind puzzled and spurred poets and philosophers for centuries, and challenges scientists trying to explain how our brains work, how we make decisions, and how to develop artificial intelligence. Their research helped Facebook learn more about how each of us makes decisions than most of our friends. Our minds are certainly part of how we are made in the image of God and others (“Let us make man/humans in our image.”).
Scientists thought they could understand our minds a few decades ago, but the development of AI and exploration of how our brains use algorithms (mathematical formulas to make decisions) raised the possibility that we will never understand mind. For more on this read Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari.
Ken Wilbur in his book, A Brief History of Everything, raises the question of who or what can have consciousness or perspective. We cannot know what other people or animals or objects or even atoms, molecules or planets perceive, if they perceive.
Western scientists for a long time claimed most animals did not feel pain or have creative thoughts or imagination like people, but researchers have proven most of their assumptions wrong. We do not know if objects think or perceive the environment, but we do know that many flowers can hear the buzzing of insects and will sweeten their nectar when they hear buzzing.
Many trees and other plants know when they are being eaten by insects and can send chemical messages warning nearby plants they are under attack, and they can drain important nutrients from their leaves for storage in their roots.
Some philosophers and scientists speculate that mind existed before the brain and pulled evolution forward to provide the brain as a means for sensory input and for action. Some speculate that what we learn about reality is influenced by what our minds believe about reality. That is, our minds in some way can shape reality, at least as far as we perceive reality.
There are interesting stories about our other brains, the brain for the heart and the brain for our digestive system (the enteric brain). One story relates about a child who received another child's heart through a transplant. A little later that child had a clear dream showing a man killing that child. The police were able to use the description from that dream to identify and convict that man. I do not have the source for this story.
I read a science fiction centered on the concept of the creator spirit living in darkness until we developed a mind capable of connecting with that creator, providing the creator with the means to see creation. In a similar vein, Ken Wilbur speculated that the creator spirit was limited in capacity for spiritual evolution until we came along. The relationship between spirit and humans allows both to evolve spiritually, whatever that means.
I speculate that the nothingness sought by Buddhists might be the result of eliminating everything standing between our sense of identity and the mind of creator.
My purpose for this book was to provide an overview of many concepts related to faith with explanations helpful to understanding terms and concepts along with a shallow survey of the diversity of beliefs and ideas in society related to those concepts. It was to be one of many possible places to begin finding answers to faith-related questions and an invitation for the reader to reflect on what faith means to them and their lives. And all of this plays out in our minds, and, perhaps, in a universal mind.
Our minds are our windows on the world. Our understanding of faith centers in our minds and our responses in faith are grounded in our emotions and faith concepts. Our minds are where we are aware of what we believe, of our beliefs, and examine and modify our beliefs and actions.
Mind puzzled and spurred poets and philosophers for centuries, and challenges scientists trying to explain how our brains work, how we make decisions, and how to develop artificial intelligence. Their research helped Facebook learn more about how each of us makes decisions than most of our friends. Our minds are certainly part of how we are made in the image of God and others (“Let us make man/humans in our image.”).
Scientists thought they could understand our minds a few decades ago, but the development of AI and exploration of how our brains use algorithms (mathematical formulas to make decisions) raised the possibility that we will never understand mind. For more on this read Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari.
Ken Wilbur in his book, A Brief History of Everything, raises the question of who or what can have consciousness or perspective. We cannot know what other people or animals or objects or even atoms, molecules or planets perceive, if they perceive.
Western scientists for a long time claimed most animals did not feel pain or have creative thoughts or imagination like people, but researchers have proven most of their assumptions wrong. We do not know if objects think or perceive the environment, but we do know that many flowers can hear the buzzing of insects and will sweeten their nectar when they hear buzzing.
Many trees and other plants know when they are being eaten by insects and can send chemical messages warning nearby plants they are under attack, and they can drain important nutrients from their leaves for storage in their roots.
Some philosophers and scientists speculate that mind existed before the brain and pulled evolution forward to provide the brain as a means for sensory input and for action. Some speculate that what we learn about reality is influenced by what our minds believe about reality. That is, our minds in some way can shape reality, at least as far as we perceive reality.
There are interesting stories about our other brains, the brain for the heart and the brain for our digestive system (the enteric brain). One story relates about a child who received another child's heart through a transplant. A little later that child had a clear dream showing a man killing that child. The police were able to use the description from that dream to identify and convict that man. I do not have the source for this story.
I read a science fiction centered on the concept of the creator spirit living in darkness until we developed a mind capable of connecting with that creator, providing the creator with the means to see creation. In a similar vein, Ken Wilbur speculated that the creator spirit was limited in capacity for spiritual evolution until we came along. The relationship between spirit and humans allows both to evolve spiritually, whatever that means.
I speculate that the nothingness sought by Buddhists might be the result of eliminating everything standing between our sense of identity and the mind of creator.
My purpose for this book was to provide an overview of many concepts related to faith with explanations helpful to understanding terms and concepts along with a shallow survey of the diversity of beliefs and ideas in society related to those concepts. It was to be one of many possible places to begin finding answers to faith-related questions and an invitation for the reader to reflect on what faith means to them and their lives. And all of this plays out in our minds, and, perhaps, in a universal mind.
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