Mind-Control Take 2: Christian Apologetics and Ontological Relativism

(Oct. 16, 2009) — By directly manipulating the activity of individual neurons, scientists have given flies memories of a bad experience they never really had, according to a report in the October 16th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication.

Before looking at this subject a little more, perhaps I should remind readers of the interesting responses I received  the last time I brought up the subject of mind-control:

Amy – The crazy thing is that people could be mind controlled to ignore or forget these articles about mind control. My family is mind controlled, and no matter how much proof I have that I am being followed, that our house is being broken into, and that I am being assaulted with directed energy weapons, they quickly forget. If they realize it for a minute, then they turn into zombies and fall asleep within minutes, and their memories are erased. True story.

In all honesty, I’m still not sure whether this person is being completely sarcastic or not. I hope she is. If not, then the worldview being proposed is (generally referred to as) “radical skepticism,” or “ontological relativism” to be more fitting. In either case, all knowledge is impossible. Reality is not real (or at least cannot be known to be real). Everything is subject to change and subject to the ever changing mind of the knower (who, ironically, knows nothing at all). All is an illusion, and the goal of life is to seek out the reality that there is, in fact, no “reality” at all.

Of course, the great irony about folks who make these claims is their willingness to argue; for what is to argue about if it isn’t even real? If reality itself is shaped by the mind and consciousness of an individual person, are not arguments for ontological relativism that much more relative and unreliable? Of course they are. And this is the intellectual bankruptcy of many forms of Hinduism and eastern religions; they have not the capacity to substantiate the very rules of argumentation and logic that they use and simultaneously seek to destroy – all in attempt to uphold universal Oneness, uncompromisable unity, and the obliteration of distinction itself.

“Those crazies,” some of us say. Many in the West who are concerned with “facts” and being “logical” scoff at how literally billions of people are entrenched in some form of this ideology without seeing the point of false religions in the first place: the destruction of the value of truth. Notice, I did not say “the destruction of truth.” Too often, in my opinion, Christian apologists see the enemy as false teachings, when in fact, the real war is being waged against an attitude, a mindset, a frame of thought that devalues truth in the first place. Indeed, destroying the value of truth is far more effective than destroying truth itself, because no amount of persuasion, evidence, or argumentation will budge his or her worldview.

Back to the confused fly.

The report notes how “neuroscience for a long time depended primarily on recording neural activity and attempting to correlate it to perceptions, actions, and cognition. ‘It’s more powerful to seize control of the relevant brain circuits and produce these states directly,’ Miesenböck says.” For those who read the previous post regarding the Cyborg Beetle and Penfield, this sounds awfully familiar. That’s because this experiment essentially offers nothing new in regards to the possibility of human-mind control; thoughts can be manipulated. Only this time, the thoughts are past-tense (“memories”), and not present as in Penfield’s famous experiments. Granted, the imputation of memories and sensations in this case is more precise than previous experiments, but that is almost always the case with more simpler organisms like a fly. The case with the human brain – the most biologically complex structure in the known universe – is going to be much different.

But, what are “thoughts”? And, what exactly is the difference between a Christian neurophilosophy and a secular one? Is “information” material or immaterial?

Hold on to your pants. You won’t wanna miss this one…..