An Introduction to Christian Neurophilosophy: Introduction

In line with the distinctive principles of RealApologetics.org, I’d like to present to you my original thoughts concerning Neurophilosophy. I understand the subject is not a very common one in theological or apologetic circles. However, I do believe it is and will become a far more important topic (and more threatening one) than Intelligent Design, Darwinism etc. in the next two decades. As Phillip E. Johnson pointed out years ago in Darwin on Trial, Darwinism isn’t near as threatening as the worldview behind it: naturalism. The same is true for neurophilosophy; the worldviews functioning behind the debates are almost always a war of ideas. And Christians have always had two options: hide and wait until the enemy knocks on your door, or, wake up early and load your gun. Let culture transform you, or transform culture.

Jesus did the latter, and encouraged everyone else to do the same. That, friends – an informed offensive – is real apologetics.

What’s at stake is the dignity of God’s image-bearers, and ultimately the truth about what it means to be a human being. Decisions in Congress regarding euthanasia, gay-marriage, and medical/biological technology are all made on the basis of a worldview that says what a human being is and why they exist. That being the case, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, and theological anthropology is an increasingly important subject to be informed about. A biblical worldview has a lot to say about neurophilosophy and the nature of human existence. And without such a worldview, the world of developing technology will pose a serious threat to the cause of Christ, to the church, and to the health of society as a whole.

As with so many battle fields, the primary villain in the neurophilosophy and neuroscience controversy is naturalistic and reductionistic materialism. Naturalistic and reductionistic materialism is a worldview that stands in complete opposition to biblical Christianity. It (generally) asserts that everything can be explained in terms of physical interaction. It denies the spiritual realm, the non-material realities/entities of God, logic, information, and the mind. While the God-breathed Scriptures teach a multi-dimensional universe, naturalistic materialism reduces reality down to only one dimension: the visible, physical, and observable dimension. Clearly, the friend of this godless worldview is empiricism, which says knowledge can only come through sensory observation.

Thus, by reducing down all human experience to physical interaction, naturalist scientists can explain away virtually everything Christians believe. Angels, demons, God, logic, the mind, and information are either social conventions, linguistic conventions, or physical matter that can be changed whenever humans have the power to do so. If they aren’t those things, then they aren’t real. They aren’t what Scripture says they are. There is nothing transcendent of the physical universe. Therefore, Christians are out of the loop. And as such, they have no place in genuine “scholarship.”

Naturalistic materialism can be manifested in multiple ways in academia and in the battlefield of ideas. Two more popular approaches are that of biological/genetic reductionism and psychological/social reductionism. The former explains everything in terms of biology and genetics. You are the way you are, you think the way you think, you exist the way you exist, and life’s purposes are defined purely by and because of the DNA and protein structures of your body. Genes determine all. The latter explains everything in terms of environmental or social/cultural conditioning. You are the way you are, you think the way you think, you exist the way you exist, and life’s purposes are defined purely by and because of what society/parents/family has told you and made you. For as often as sociologists  and psychologists point out the problems of Western culture, they ironically conform to it by strongly asserting that “you are a product.” A product of your social construct, plausibility structure, parenting, and as such experiences life entirely apart from any knowable objective standards for life, role, and even worldview.

Both of these manifestations of naturalistic materialism dominate the academic world. The university, and yes, even the private Christian college, is a seething factory that pumps out countless secular feminists, cultural relativists, skeptics and agnostics. More unfortunately, is that this results in Christians forming worldviews that destroy their own core beliefs. The essential foundations of Christian theology, the authority of Scripture, the objective nature of various avenues of ethics (such as gender) become quickly relativized and dismissed before a counter-argument can even be made.

Such is the case in the subject of neurophilosophy; the subject is dominated by everything but a biblical worldview. In fact, there exists no systematic publications on the subject of neurophilosophy from a non-Darwinian, non-materialistic naturalistic, non-libertarian freewillist perspective. What is needed, then, is obvious: a biblical and Reformed neurophilosophy.

In conclusion, everyone has a choice to make as to how we will approach this subject of neurophilosophy as well as the subject of human knowledge: 1) autonomously and “neutrally” gain knowledge through empirical science, and then interpret religion and the Bible through that lens. Or, submit our hearts first and foremost to the Creator and His Word, and then interpret science in light of that revelation. Learn about the creature first on our own and learn about God second, or learn about God first with God’s help and learn about the creature second.

I argue, as should every Christian, that we should follow the latter model. For if human beings are made in the likeness and image of God – which distinctively sets us apart from other creatures in the realm of creation – then the only way a human will understand why they exist as they do (biologically, socially, psychologically, etc.) is if they look at the original picture – the Creator. If we are like God, and that’s what makes us human, then we have to learn about God before learning about ourselves. Theology proper is vitally important – not merely for spiritual matters – but for our entire epistemology, our entire way of thinking. What we think and know about God determines what we think and know about ourselves. If we get the original wrong, we’ll get the image wrong.

Having laid these central stones as the foundation for a Christian neurophilosophy, we must then briefly define what are “thoughts,” or at least what they are not.

But I’ll save that for next time.