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Neurosciences
It is a common assumption that the contemporary sciences of the mind conflict with Christian claims about the nature of the human person. However, although there may be conflict between these two, the prevalent impression that the neuroscientific findings unquestionably confute Christian claims about human nature seems in part at least to be the result of the greater publicity often enjoyed by strongly reductionist interpretations of neuroscience, of which Francis Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (1994) is a prominent recent example,[1] and common misunderstanding of the religious position on human nature.
On the basis of the observable constant neurological correlations of consciousness (NCCs) Crick has argued that we are 'nothing but our neurons', which would imply a denial of personhood and free will. Eliminative materialism such as Crick espouses denies the very existence of consciousness, and (like epiphenomenalism, a closely related position) denies human freedom since it rules out mental causality.
However, despite a widespread assumption that religious belief about personhood assumes dualism (i.e., the person is the soul, which is essentially distinct from body), Biblical scholars and theologians have for many decades insisted on the holistic picture of the human person as the most biblical one. Strongly reductionist analyses such as Crick's tend to rely on setting up classical dualism (generally assumed to be the natural religious option) and strong reductionism as the only alternatives in the mind-body debate. But not all neuroscientists interpret the implications of their data in the way Crick does, and equally distinguished scientists have interpreted the same data in radically different ways which are compatible with religious views of the person.
Crick makes a philosophical leap of faith from the observation that there are constant neurological correlates of humans' conscious states to the position that neurological (brain) states and conscious states are identical. This is a leap many of his colleagues refuse to make. At the other extreme to Crick, neuroscientist John Eccles has advocated a strong dualist view, while the positions of neuroscientists Sperry and MacKay belong between these two extremes.[2] Steven Rose, although himself secular in outlook, has also refused strong reductionism of the sort neuroscientists like Crick endorse.[3] Both dualist, and more preferably for most modern believers, nonreductive materialist positions are compatible with religious views of the person. Christian and nonreligious contributors to these debates have insisted, against authors like Crick, that the range of accounts of human nature offered up by scientists and philosophers of mind as consistent with the neuroscientific data is wider than generally believed. They also state that these accounts do not uniformly deny human personhood and free will. Murphy, Brown and Malony, in Whatever Happened to the Soul? (1998) argue for some form of nonreductive physicalism as the position which is most consistent both with modern Christian claims about the human person and with the contemporary sciences of the mind.[4]
The issue of free will is a difficult one but not one which need present insuperable problems for faith. Eccles has defended genuine mental causality (and therefore free will), and others have appealed to a compatibilist conception of free will as a means of reconciling neurological determinism and subjective freedom. In addition, theistic determinism is a defensible theological position for some, although religious believers generally regard human freedom as a bedrock theistic assumption the denial of which is not consonant with religious belief.
It is further objected that religious claims about the ultimate destiny of human persons are incompatible with theories of human nature allegedly implied by the neuroscientific data. This is a complex issue, since there is some hesitation within theology about whether some modified form of dualism is a legitimate way of thinking about the continuity of the person between physical death and resurrection, or whether the theological conception of 'total death' (Ganztod) and a corresponding stress on the hope of resurrection as a new creation is more appropriate. In both cases, however, there is no necessary inconsistency with religious belief; if dualism (in something like the form John Eccles has defended) is the case, then the soul's survival of death is possible; if some kind of nonreductive physicalism is the case (as defended by a host of neuroscientists, and as seems more consistent with Abrahamic teachings concerning the human person), this by no means rules out the traditional teaching of bodily resurrection along the lines of 'total death' as defended by theologians such as Barth and Jungel. In any case, on the traditional assumption that God is omnipotent He can reassemble human beings at will, or keep their persons in existence in a way we cannot imagine (whether one accepts dualism or nonreductive materialism). Issues about the impossibility of the mind surviving apart from the body thus have no direct purchase on the truth or otherwise of theological claims about ultimate human destiny, since everything hangs not on whether minds can exist separately from bodies but rather on whether there is a God who has the power to completely resurrect persons.
This leaves the question of religious experience. The case is often made that because we now have a better idea about the neurophysiological correlates of religious experience this thereby explains away religious experience as something other than what it is claimed to be by believers. However, it has been pointed out by various neuroscientists, both believers and nonbelievers, and interpreters of the neuroscientific findings, that reductive explanations of religious experience which claim to explain religious experience away commit the common fallacy of believing that because an alleged religious experience is mediated via the brain it is therefore 'nothing but' a product of the brain. But on the assumption that the person (as the Abrahamic religions teach) is a mind-body unity, it is to be expected that God would work through brain pathways in causing a religious experience in a person; as has often been pointed out, what would be strange is if there were no neurological correlates to religious experiences.
References
eds. Whatever
Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human
Nature. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998.
The Astonishing Hypothesis. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1994.
Brains, Machines and Persons. Grand Rapids, Michigan:
William B. Eerdmans, 1980.
The Self and Its Brain. London ;
New York Routledge,, 1990.
Against Biological Determinism. London: Allison & Busby,
1982.
Not in Our
Genes : Biology, Ideology and Human Nature, Pelican Books.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
Science and Moral Priority : Merging Mind, Brain, and Human
Values. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983.
Footnotes
[1]↑ Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1994).
[2]↑ See, for example, Karl Raimund Popper and John C. Eccles, The Self and
Its Brain (London ; New York Routledge,: 1990).; Roger Sperry, Science and
Moral Priority : Merging Mind, Brain, and Human Values (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1983).; Donald M. MacKay, Brains, Machines and Persons (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1980).
[3]↑ See, for example, Steven P. R. Rose, Against Biological Determinism
(London: Allison & Busby, 1982).; Steven P. R. Rose, Leon J. Kamin, and
Richard C. Lewontin, Not in Our Genes : Biology, Ideology and Human Nature,
Pelican Books (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984).
[4]↑ Warran S. Brown, Nancey Murphy, and H. Newton Malony, eds., Whatever
Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998).