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Is God Dead?
The German philosopher Karl Marx famously said religion was “the opium for the masses.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud, along with a host of other notable thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were in adamant agreement. In fact, most materialists (those who believe there is nothing but material, non-spiritual things in the world) consider the Christian idea of a human soul enjoying eternal life after death as nothing more than a coping mechanism to soothe the cruel reality of our death and destruction.
Without a soul, according to materialists, human beings are nothing more than physical processes made up of simple atoms that are animated by the laws of nature. This view has become increasingly popular as the complex function of the brain becomes better understood. The ardent atheistic scientist Daniel Dennett suggests, “This idea of immaterial souls . . . has outlived its credibility.” It is rather straightforward for the materialist: when we die, our brains die, and that is the end of the story. Kaput!
Christians, however, consider the soul as that thing that animates and energizes the body and is the seat of all human emotions, volitions, introspections, thoughts, and beliefs. In a word, the soul is that thing that makes you, you. Philosopher J. P. Moreland cuts directly to it, saying, “I am a soul, and I have a body.” It is that thing that gives continuity to a sameness of personhood throughout an individual’s life so that the twenty-year-old person is the same human being as the eighty-year-old person.
While the physical body changes many times and in many ways throughout life, the soul gives unity to the totality of a person’s existence, what is termed personhood. This is an important concept that has significant implications. For example, it is only because there is continuity of personhood that an individual can be held accountable for a wrong committed in time past, and justice can exist. And that continuity is only possible if human dualism is true—one body plus one soul equals one person.
Quite simply, these two worldviews collide around the central question: do human beings possess a spiritual soul? Sharon Dirckx, in an interview with author Lee Strobel, put it this way: “As a neuroscientist, I’ve measured the electrical activity of people’s brains, but I can’t measure their experience in the same way. I can’t measure what’s in their minds. I can’t measure what it’s actually like to be you. Why not? Because the brain alone is not enough to explain the mind.”
That is the core distinction. Dirckx goes on to say that human “consciousness—the mind, the soul—is beyond the physical workings of the brain.” This is obviously true. Neuroscientists have discovered that as many as twenty percent of patients in a vegetative state are, in fact, fully conscious of the external world, although they never respond to any stimuli. Further, it has been widely observed that some patients with severe brain damage from cancer or disease exhibit keen consciousness and fine lucidity during episodes shortly before death—a phenomenon scientists identify as terminal lucidity. Dircks says consciousness goes beyond our physical brain and nervous system. It can’t just be boiled down to brain activity. We are more than our brains.”
Within the scientific community, it is widely assumed that the complexity and capacity of the human brain, whatever it may be, is the product of evolutionary processes over millions of years, from the brain of the amoeba to the full self-consciousness of human beings. I remember as an undergraduate, my human anatomy professor, Dr. Moore, was consumed with researching “What constitutes a thought.”
At the time, I thought it an incredibly interesting question and wondered how in the world he was going to determine that. As an avowed materialist, I am certain he never succeeded in finding a coherent answer because his approach had to begin and end with the smallest building blocks—atoms. I am trying to say that the central issue with Dr. Moore’s research, as an evolutionist, was that he could not then, nor can scientists today, explain how inanimate atoms can evolve into the human mind capable of thought. I ask the question once more: “How do simple atoms evolve in such a way to facilitate a description of the color red, or the fragrance of a rose?” After all, according to materialists, if our brains and our minds are the same thing, then when the physical brain dies, consciousness dies with it.
But that is not what the evidence from Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) tells us. Just the opposite, in fact. Time and again, people who were clinically dead, then resuscitated, report vibrant experiences, all the while their brains are clinically flat and dead. The evidence strongly suggests that human beings are indeed dualistic— composed of physical bodies made of atoms, and a nonphysical mind (soul). As the evidence mounts, join us again next week as we begin to investigate End of Life Experiences in search of the answer to the 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].
