I don't believe that firings of the brain, complex as they may be, can account for life. And since we are made in the image of God and God breathed life into us (breath and spirit are the same word in Hebrew), according to the Bible, then yes, I believe that our minds are something more along the lines of spirits.
"I don’t believe that firings of the brain, complex as they may be, can account for life."
Who said anything about accounting for life? Our brain is just one of many organs that help us sustain life. Our
complex firings happen to be evolution. Many living organisms live without brains. All uni-cellular, small multi-cellular (I mean, just a group of cells, small.) or plants, all live without brains.
Our brain happens to be more complex than other animals who do in fact have brains as well. This is probably your rational that we are somehow special, and that an omnipotent, omniscient God, actually cares about us! Out of all the things he has created and destroyed, out of all the things in the universe for him to play with, and amuse himself with, he actually gives a damn. This all powerful God implants himself into some poor girl, almost gets her stoned, makes her carry a baby and travel all the way to Bethlehem, and give birth in a building full of animal feces, just to have the poor bloke go through torture and ultimately die at a young age so that we can be clear of our sins!
From an inside perspective, this seems like a perfectly legitimate story despite its improbability, it's needlessness to happen, and it's cruelty to every party involved in the shenanigan. And this is supposed to be the NEW testament. The one without all the violence, and the God that hates you because you are descended from a woman who ate a fruit and exposed a LIE that the God of the Old Testament had made. (If you eat this fruit, you will die in 1 day.)
But none of this even matters, because our “complex” firings are much, much simpler than that of a supreme being. The grander, and more complex life is, the more improbable that your God is.
Our brain slowly evolved over millions of years, those who had gained “bad” brains had died off, and those with brains that “worked” continued to reproduce. Eventually, these brain-evolved animals came to land. (Or vice-versa, as in whales.) From there, they split off into many groups, and now we fast forward to primates.
Eventually, a group of primates (or two actually, that I know of.) evolved brains that we ourselves would consider “complex” although, this does not me that the brain of a rat is “simple”.
During this process of millions of years of evolution, our planet faced a barrage of life-ending threats. Comets, climate change, water temperature change, air change, etc. But we are here, and we know this stuff happened. (Or at least a rough outline of how it happened.)
It seems extremely improbable, that all of this happened. So improbable that you wonder why someone would believe in it? Are there any, simpler alternatives?
Yes, on the outside. However, these alternatives are more complex than say, our eye evolving over millions of years. The alternative we are looking at is, creationism. Creationism is very simple on the surface. An omnipotent, omniscient God, created man, and all the animals within a short period of time.
Creationism doesn’t include things like, ice ages, comet impacts, nor fossils of animals found in rocks older than 6000 years old. (Which is how old creationists believe the earth to be.)
Intelligent Design, is simply creationism, but they tried to take a more scientific approach. Instead of “the designer” (They mean God.) creating everything at once, “the designer” created a species of animals, and then as time went on, he created another species of animals, then another, and another, etc.
Besides the fact that Creationism completely rules out an changes in animals (evolution), it is still wrong because humans are at the center of this story. Humans got the special treatment from God, humans were the species that God communicated too. Humans were created in his image!
It is painfully obvious that a story written by humans, about the creation of the world, would be centered around humans. Because we are so special! And our chimpanzee counterparts, who we share 99% of our DNA with, aren’t special at all.
It is most likely, that the humans who wrote Genesis had no idea about other primates, or even other human species, such as Neanderthals, who died out. This is most likely why, they thought that this God, gave such special attention to humans.
Intelligent Design tries to be more scientific. However, besides the fact the it completely ignores evolution, it is more improbable than evolution, although its goal is to be simpler!
Intelligent Design, requires a designer, but where did the designer come from? If we ignore, evolution, then the designer either A) Poofed into existence or B) Was designed.
A designer, so complex as the be able to make the inner workings of DNA, the cell, neurological functions, suns, moons, galaxy’s, etc. is extremely improbable, especially if we add the idea that he just poofed into existence. If we entertain the idea, that although very improbable, it is possible for something to poof into existence, it is even more improbable that the thing that came about from the “poofing” was an omnipotent, omniscient being who went around creating everything in the world, and still cares about a small group of beings. And this hypothesis is supposed to be more probable than the theory of evolution. Ha!
Now, let’s touch on evolution shortly. The simple truth is this: Evolution happens. We have seen it happen, many times, in just the past 15 years. Evolution is not disputed among scientists at all, anymore. Especially after almost every group of science needs evolution to get to where it is today.
The most ironic thing though, is that creationists often say that the gene is so improbable and complex, that evolution couldn’t have created it; however, the gene theory was what solidified evolution.
When the study of genetics first came about, people thought that it would overturn evolution. In fact, it did nothing but support it 100%. One-Hundred percent.
You see, we are unimportant beings in the universe, who happened to have a “smart” brain. We are not special, nor does the fact that we have such “complex” brains make us special.
There is no God that cares about us, out of everything in the universe, there are no spirits that inhabit our body, and there are no heavenly places of existence. We are here, and we are alone. G’day.
