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Faith1960
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This is too deep for me.
All I can say is that if a human being is born with little or no brain, s/he will die, not to mention that s/he would never have the ability to think even before death.
Moved: The brain is not the source of all thought and reason - the mind is.
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All I can say is that if a human being is born with little or no brain, s/he will die, not to mention that s/he would never have the ability to think even before death.
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CopticChristian
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It is impossible to prove that the brain is not the mind and the mind is not the brain.Okay, now I’m REALLY confused.
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Marybeloved
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Do the saints in heaven or purgatory or even the damned in hell think, remember, have awareness of their experiences? Well, you can be sure that their brains are rotten and completely gone. How then can we say that the brain is the mind? Here on earth the mind is paralysed without the brain but that does not make them identical. Our faith certainly contradicts the idea that they are.
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Faith1960
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I still don’t understand how, since it’s basic biology that thinking originates with the brain. Without the brain, one can do nothing. Correct?
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Marybeloved
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Similarly, without a body, here on Earth, your soul can do nothing- This says nothing about the existence of the soul. The intellect is a spiritual faculty that is actuated by physical organs- you can show how the physical body behaves when one thinks, is aware, wills etc. This says nothing about spiritual faculties that are not the subject of biological experiments, which the intellect and will are- Therefore “the origin” of the awareness or will, is not a subject of biology…
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1AugustSon7
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Impossible; otherwise, how can you believe in God? God is Spirit. The Divinity clearly has a mind and inelligence, but the Divinity by no means requires a brain organ. Mind can exist independent of matter; otherwise, when you pray to the saints, you are praying to mindless spirits, which would be pointless and no different than praying to an irrational beast, for example.
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CopticChristian
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BelovedMary,
I have never spoken with a saint in heaven or purgatory or convened with the damned. I am unable to say that I know if or what they think or whether they think or how that is accomplished. This is belief.
Your translation to what he have, a brain, and how we think, the mind is on this side of experience.
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Faith1960
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As human beings, all we think and do is controlled by our brains.
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Faith1960
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Can anyone please link me up to some good Christian sites that will explain all this in more detail?
meltzerboy
New member
I don’t think the way Muslims regard the Qur’an is so different from the way Jews regard the Torah: as G-d’s direct, personal Word, the Holy of Holies among the sacred Hebrew texts. The Torah must be dressed in royalty, one must face it when it is carried in the synagogue, and one cannot place other sacred texts on top of it.@ Trebor, I agree with Khalid about the Muslim relationship with the Qur’an. It’s not just inspired by God, not a mere “message” or “truth” from God- It’s God’s own direct, personal speech! Divine self-expression, unmediated by any creaturely agency! That’s Islamic regard of the Qur’an. I read once, don’t remember where, that the analogous object in Christianity of what the the Qur’an is in Islam, is NOT the Bible, but Christ! I personally would say that the Qur’an’s most perfect analogy in Christianity is the Eucharist in Catholicism. The only difference is a lack of explicit acknowledgment of what is taking place in Islam, stemming from their rigid inflexible idea of what monotheism ought to be.
So I agree that it is much more than an object of mere veneration- It’s the eternal uncreated speech of God! What would you do to God’s own personal unmediated speech if it came down to you other than offer Adoration? Imagine a voice that is God himself speaking personally to a creature! What else could be elicited if not adoration? Would you be able to separate your treatment of that voice that you know is God speaking from your treatment of God’s person? How would you do that?
I personally think that your view of equating Our Lady’s place within Apostolic Christianity with Muhammad’s place to Muslims is very accurate. That’s what exactly what I thought when I read Khalid’s description of how a Muslim sees Muhammad. It’s exactly how I see Our Blessed Lady. Human perfection, model of Christianity, an example to emulate, etc etc, and in addition to that more than the Muslim with Muhammad, I see her as a most powerful Advocate and protector, too!- As well as a Queen------Of Heaven! I still do not agree in any way, that I worship Our Lady, though she’s ever-present in my spiritual life and the first line of defense that I run to in times of real desperation. So I don’t think that this high regard is in itself proof of worship/latria/adoration.
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Marybeloved
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Do you believe it’s a perfect copy of a co-eternal word of God that exists with him in heaven- the Torah? Do you admit any influence of a human agency in it- such that it would be inspired word of God as opposed to the verbatim speech of God?
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Marybeloved
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Check out what these authors say in their book comparing the Jewish, Christian and Islamic scripture and explaining the difference. books.google.co.ke/books?id=XzYX0T-ZqTcC&pg=PA87&lpg=PA87&dq=torah+quran+comparison+%22verbatim%22&source=bl&ots=wMXFDXc8Hp&sig=-sIvADZ39zQWGoQLRcGJ-8nXgFg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-62dT_tBkcyzBpne8a4G&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=torah%20quran%20comparison%20%22verbatim%22&f=false
Interestingly, they also equate the Qur’an, not with the Torah or the Bible, but with the Eucharist!
The Qur’an is more than just the word/truth of God, they say- it’s the Muslim’s most direct personal experience of God himself! It’s “the presence” of God to the Muslim- Not the truths contained therein but the concrete words of the Qur’an themselves which are Divine speech. That is adoration, not veneration.
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Khalid
Guest
God is capable of thought, but he doesn’t have a brain.
(The original post in this thread was actually a reply in another thread that was moved by an administrator: it was not intended to stand on its own as a thread, or I would have formulated a better opening line. If I bother to take some time , my point was not to at any time, if I engendered a response, to have to invoke comparison to spiritual creatures or knowledge of faith; that mind is distinct from brain, I believe, can be demonstrated within the realm of natural philosophy.)
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CopticChristian
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Marybeloved
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But the mind is more than “thinking”- it’s being aware, knowing, consciousness of self and experiences- We don’t need to anthopormize to know that God, the angels and the saints do all these- it’s the operation of the intellect, and it’s our faith, too! We don’t pray to mindless beings who cannot be aware of us and our prayers to them.
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Khalid
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God thinks, and this is a fundamental doctrine of both natural and sacred theology. “In the beginning there was the Thought, and the Thought was with God…” Also see the conceptions of Plotinus, Aristotle, and Plato on God; everything is planned by God’s thought, which is all-knowing (omniscient), and carried out through his will, which is all-powerful (omnipotent). A non-thinking being could have no knowledge. To deny that God has either knowledge or will is to deny God himself, and to fall to pantheism.
That “mind” is an emergent property of matter is a (reductive/eliminative) materialist lie, which, since it is seems to be taught as gospel truth in America, many people believe: for an interesting, basic primer on the matter, I suggest Edward Feser’s Philosophy of Mind: A Beginner’s Guide. One can also look up on the internet various things as, “the hard problem of consciousness” and “qualia”.
When dealing with mind, the property, and not brain, the organ, one has transcended the limitations of empirical science and has crossed over in to the lofty heights of philosophy. Empirical science can not define nor explain the mind (despite the weak attempts of some reductive materialists to do just that, by defining all of human activity in the form of a series of electrical impulses and chemical reactions, making us soulless automata lacking anything kind of freedom, let alone freedom of the will; most talk about it in a dualistic manner, with the mind “supervening” on to the physical properties of the brain, yet remaining distinct, even if not quite defined what’s going on*): it is a question for philosophy alone. Biology and PET scans can study the brain, and see how it is related to thought or to the mind, but can not explain it.
This is as simple as saying, that if the brain is the mind, free-will is impossible, for obvious reasons - there is nothing to actualize “thought” in the brain beyond a causal chain that started at birth (truly, at the beginning of time); since that point, if brain is mind, each and every state of mind is necessary and sufficient as a cause to the next state of mind, ad infinitum. (Although some new-agers and even a few quantum physicists, eager to keep a Theistic foot from getting in the door, attempt to weave consciousness and wavefunction collapse together, while never asking the question, what causes the collapse if the “observer” is an automaton? Not to mention that the most widely-accepted interpretation of QM is deterministic, if I recall correctly *.)
I further recommend Aristotle’s work De Anima (and his Metaphysics) along with Plantinga’s God and Other Minds and Warrant and Proper Function. You must have a basic understanding of philosophy of mind, before you can even attempt to define “mind”, let alone reduce it to the brain, or proclaim it a separate and immaterial substance. For a more popular-level treatment, you can read the “Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism” (Plantinga) and the “Argument from Reason” (CS Lewis), as well as a detailed study of the ontological argument for God’s existence, which has some tangential relevance.
E.g. “Emergent” properties: the watchword of materialists and naturalists, for something that science doesn’t yet understand, but which they have faith (ironically) that empirical science will eventually figure it out.
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Faith1960
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Faith1960
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None of which is even remotely possible without a functioning brain.
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CopticChristian
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Holly3278
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Khalid, could you please tell me what is what that convinced you to leave Islam and convert to Catholicism?
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