Nerve Endings of the Soul: Interaction Between the Mind of God and the Mind of Man Through Neural Synaptic Networks

By E. Stan Lennard M.D. Sc.D.

It is a common belief that personal communion from the Holy Spirit to mankind ceased at the closure of the canon of scripture. The information presented in this book shows that interaction between the Holy Spirit and the mind of man enabled by the human spirit is bidirectional and continues in our time. Evidence presented from theological and scientific resources confirms the duality of the immaterial mind and the physical brain of man and substantiates the personal interaction between the Holy Spirit and the mind of human beings. The model for study is the neural synaptic network, incorporating the microsite hypothesis of Sir John C. Eccles. Dualist interaction has been substantiated by contemporary theologians and investigators in the neurosciences and information theory, building on advances in quantum wave theory.

A hypothesis is offered by this author for a mechanism for dualist interaction involving probabilistic quantum tunneling across synaptic clefts. Transmission of specified information with meaning and purpose occurs within neural codes in spike trains of action potentials in synaptic networks. Through a lifetime of learning archived in memory, the mind of humans interprets neural codes enabled by the unique capacity for language. Communication from the Holy Spirit, as sender, to human minds, as recipients, draws upon current understandings of information and communication theory. The trigger for initiating spike trains as codes is postulated as an immaterial energy source by which the Holy Spirit communicates with the mind of man.

Evidence presented in this book provides a compelling rationale for the reality of bidirectional communication with the living, personal Holy Spirit in our time. That Jesus Christ indwells those who accept his truth as a personal, living spirit is confirmation of the promise in John 14:1521. Interaction with God by his atoning grace through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit gives receptive mankind comfort and counsel today to his glory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973614326

E. Stan Lennard M.D. Sc.D.

Doctor E. Stan Lennard is a retired general surgeon and certified Christian apologist. His Doctor of Medicine degree was awarded at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas in 1968, and he received a Doctor of Science in Surgery degree through the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine, defending his thesis in 1976. The first half of his career was at the University of Washington in Seattle where he completed his Chief Surgical Residency in 1977 and joined the fulltime academic faculty with a subspecialty in surgical infectious disease. He entered fulltime private practice at Evergreen Healthcare in Kirkland, Washington in 1987 and retired from clinical practice in 2001. Since his retirement he has continued his affiliation since 1987 with the international, interdenominational Reasons To Believe ministry. He served on the Board of Directors for four and a half years, for four serving as its Chairman. For eleven years he served as an online instructor with Reasons Institute, the educational arm of the ministry, while conducting research that has extended over 18 years. Articles from his research have been posted on the ministrys website, and this book summarizes his research findings. Now fully retired he will resume his lifelong hobby of art, now focusing on oil painting. He is married with two grown children.

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Copyright © 2018 E. Stan Lennard, M.D., Sc.D.

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This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

NIV Study Bible, Zondervan; over 50 Scriptures are cited throughout the book.

NIV: Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-1431-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-1433-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-1432-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018900456

WestBow Press rev. date: 01/20/2018

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 Case for the Immaterial Mind of God

1.1 God is Spirit and personal

1.2 Redemption of the fallen

1.3 Attributes of God

1.4 Restored to the indwelling Spirit

1.5 Interaction in our time

1.6 Gifts of the Spirit

1.7 The great revivals

1.8 Cumulation of evidence

Chapter 2 Case for the Immaterial Mind of Man

2.1 In the image of the Mind of God or reduced to the material brain?

2.2 The human spirit and mind

2.3 Dualism vs monism

2.4 Jesus, the eternal Logos of God

2.5 We need our brains to think, but do not think with our brains

2.6 Immortality of I, of the Self

2.7 Beyond death

Chapter 3 Interaction between the Immaterial Mind and Material Brain of Man

3.1 A second fundamental element and a second form of energy

3.2 The highest brain mechanism, the mind’s executive

3.3 Energy, from Spirit to spirit

3.4 OCD studies of Jeffrey Schwartz

3.5 Synaptic plasticity

3.6 Quantum physics and the mind’s free will

3.7 Synaptic plasticity and the fallen mind

Chapter 4 The Neural Synaptic Model

4.1 The inner person of the Self

4.2 Electrophysiology and the hidden code

4.3 The microsite hypothesis

4.4 Dualist interactionism

4.5 Neurophysiology and the microsite hypothesis

4.6 Mental events and the quantal probability field

4.7 Quantum mechanics and probabilities for exocytosis

4.8 Counters to the microsite hypothesis

4.9 What is missing? Information!

Chapter 5 The Synapse Revisited

5.1 Molecular structure and function

5.1.1 Presynapse

5.1.2 Fusion pore

5.1.3 Synaptic cleft

5.1.4 Postsynapse

5.1.5 Hydrogen tunneling

5.2 Eccles and Beck model for dualism revisited

5.2.1 Effect of thinking on cerebral cortex

5.2.2 Supplementary motor area and the liaison brain

5.2.3 Information transmission, the main question

Chapter 6 Transmission of Information by the Mind of Man

6.1 Under cerebral control

6.2 The five components of information

6.2.1 Statistics, or probability

6.2.2 Syntax, or structure

6.2.3 Semantics, or meaning

6.2.4 Pragmatics, or action

6.2.5 Apobetics, or purpose

6.3 Information – specified improbability

6.3.1 Emanates from mind – design by intelligence

6.3.2 Information and intelligence – fundamental to the universe

6.3.3 Unembodied Designer imparts information into the world

6.4 Information, its transmission

6.4.1 To exist is to be in communion

6.4.2 Energy is the causal glue

6.4.3 An informationally open universe

6.4.4 An accounting of energy – material versus nonmaterial

6.5 Neural codes

6.5.1 Dynamic connections between neurons and neuronal networks

6.5.2 Rate versus temporal codes

6.5.3 Spike trains as language

6.5.4 Neural codes and sensory modalities

Chapter 7 An Hypothesis

7.1 The hypothesis

7.2 The neural interaction

7.3 Shannon’s information scheme, a template for interaction

7.4 Questions about the mechanism of interaction

7.5 A mechanism for interaction, Mind to mind and mind to matter

7.6 Space quantum and quantum wave theory

7.7 A caveat

7.8 An Analogy

Epilogue

PREFACE

I was raised in a Christian denomination in Texas that cited the Apostle’s Creed every Sunday. In that Creed is the statement, I believe in the Holy Spirit. Each Sunday I heard single Scriptures read followed by preaching, but I received no expository teaching about the Holy Spirit. Hence I had no understanding of Him or of His personal interactive relationship with me and all mankind. I have remained in the Christian church all my life but with a spiritual emptiness in my soul well into my adulthood. My religion was well intentioned but mechanical, and the Holy Spirit had no real meaning or identity for me. In my youth and middle adult years I was exposed to many of the influences that give various meanings to spirituality, but I sought what was ontologically true. When I met the woman in 1986 who became my wife I was introduced to a person raised in a denomination that taught realities of the Holy Spirit. I longed for our discussions about Him, His indwelling of us and His providential care and teaching of us. My life-long thirst for the Holy Spirit was at last being quenched, and I embarked on a study of the interaction between the Holy Spirit and the human mind and brain over a span of almost 20 years.

My relationship with Reasons To Believe (RTB), an international, interdenominational Christian ministry based in Covina, California, began in 1987 when I heard its founder, Dr. Hugh Ross, speak to a Christian Businessmen’s Committee luncheon in Bellevue, Washington. This experience provided my access to the ministry’s literature and outreach events and enabled me to fulfill the criteria for becoming a certified volunteer apologist with RTB. I launched my study guided by ministry resources into how the interaction between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit, soul and mind might occur. Such a how question is extremely difficult to address. Thanks to in depth discussions with my cousin, an evangelical pastor, and his wife, people who are truly anointed and gifted by the Holy Spirit, I received biblical and personal teaching on this subject. I also express thanks to my former senior pastor at a community church in Kirkland, Washington, Jan David Hettinga, who generously shared time in discussions with me about my research interest, allowing me to consummate my years of study in this book. Initial articles from my study have been listed on the Reasons To Believe website (www.reasons.org). I am indebted to my wife, Judy, who has consistently supported my long hours of reading, underlining and note taking in the margins and has shared her insights with me along the way. Above all I thank our triune God, who by His atoning grace through Jesus Christ has enabled me to begin to quench my thirst for personal knowledge of His Holy Spirit. I will never come to full understanding in this lifetime and trust His Counsel for the veracity and accuracy of my findings.

My studies began by reading the book by Watchman Nee, The Spiritual Man. In his writings I learned ways by which the Holy Spirit communicates with Man. Intuition is one important means of communication discussed by Pastor Nee. Early in my study I encountered the writings of the 1963 Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine, Sir John Carew Eccles, who studied mechanisms of synaptic transmission in neural networks. It was Eccles who published the microsite hypothesis for synaptic transmission. His studies in association with Karl Popper posited that there is an immaterial aspect to the human mind which exerts causal and integrative effects in synaptic networks.

My neuroanatomy professor in medical school, Dr. William D. Willis, former Chairman of the Department of Anatomy and Neurosciences at the University of Texas Medical Branch, often referred to Sir Eccles in his lectures. He earned his Ph.D. in 1963 from the Australian National University under the supervision of Eccles prior to joining the faculty of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas where I was a student. In a telephone conversation I had with my former professor when I was seeking more information about Eccles, he described him as a man of the spirit. My research interest became supercharged, and I had reason to believe that I might be on to something, that Eccles’ work would have application to my study of the Holy Spirit, filling a life-long void. The psalmists said, …my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, (Psalm 63:1) and My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. (Psalm 42:2) I conjectured that the Holy Spirit communicates in a bidirectional manner with human beings which includes prayer but also a direct communication from His Mind to the cognitive intellect of human beings. I thirsted to know at least in small part how the Holy Spirit communicates, or interacts, with the mind of human beings blessed with connection to spirit at their creation. The work of Sir Eccles open a door for me to pursue this understanding.

Having spent 15 years between 1972 and 1987 doing medical research as an academic surgeon in the surgery departments of the Universities of Cincinnati and Washington, I had insight in how to do objective, empirical research, and the standards and biases of the peer review process were no stranger to me. As a physician and surgeon perhaps I could offer a perspective into how the Holy Spirit interacts with the neurophysiology of the human brain and the mind, will and emotion, the soul, mediated by the physical brain. I paraphrase Mortimer Adler who stated that we need our brains to think, but we do not think with our brains!

The most that can be said of the brain in relation to the human mind is that it is an intellect-support organ, an organ upon which the intellect depends, without which it cannot think, but with which it does not think. Mortimer J. Adler, Intellect: Mind over Matter, (New York: Collier Books,1990), 48

In my studies of the interaction between the Mind of God and the mind of Man I sought how the human spirit makes possible the dualist interaction through the power of the Holy Spirit, offered to all mankind by God’s grace through the resurrection of His living Son, Jesus Christ. I have endeavored to clarify how this interaction might occur, at least in part, based on contemporary scientific advances, making a cumulative case for my hypothesis stated in Chapter Seven. I committed myself at the outset to maintain honesty and objectivity in data analysis and exegesis of relevant Scripture and have identified questions that need further testing. I hope to show that the Holy Spirit interacts with Man in our time as has been documented in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Not only may we speak directly to Him via prayer, but we also stand to hear directly from Him through our minds, created in the imago Dei (Genesis 1:26-27; 9:6; James 3:9), checking what we receive with Scripture to ensure consistency and accuracy to His glory.

INTRODUCTION

The secular intellectual emerged in the eighteenth century with the decline of clerical power. Liberal ideas came to fruition in the Enlightenment and have influenced political and economic thinking since then. It underminded the basic values of Judeo-Christian civilization and argues for the absolute power of reason to discover truth and for the rejection of the transcendent. The secularist is a materialist and relativist. That the origin and destiny of man is divine, that he is a creature destined to know God, is rejected. Francis Bacon said, They that deny God destroy man’s nobility: for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. ¹

The nature of reality cannot be avoided in considering the relation of the mind to the body. The materialist believes that reality consists of only the material universe. The Christian considers that reality comprises God and His creation, with the creation being divided into spiritual, the immaterial, and physical. God is other than His creation.

For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, … all things were created by Him and for Him. Colossians 1:16

The classical Christian conception of reality allows God and the world to interact coherently and permits causal relationships with a creation open to that which transcends what is material. How do the spiritual and physical interact? The question has had no answer in the categories of natural science, but recently quantum physicists have presented data that suggests the openness of the material world to that which transcends physical existence. God has given Man rational minds by which to know Him, rational minds that are capable of thinking His thoughts after Him. The purpose of the creation of Man is for humans to know God and to enjoy communion with Him. ²

It is common for secular materialists to reduce all mental activity to the material brain and its physiology, and certain contemporary investigators, including Benjamin Libet, have challenged the belief that human beings have will! ³ According to Libet humans have free won’t! He proposed a theory for a conscious mental field to explain how mental activity arises from within the physical brain. For Libet, some unifying process or phenomenon likely mediates the transformation of localized, particularized neuronal representations into our unified conscious experience. This process seemed to be best accountable in a mental sphere that appears to emerge (Italics added) from the neural events, namely the conscious mental field. The human mystery is demeaned by scientific reductionism with its claim to account for all the non-material world by patterns of neuronal activity in the brain. Contemporary neuroscience persists in claiming that mind ultimately reduces to neurophysiology. ⁴ Sir John C. Eccles stated that, This belief must be classified as a superstition … we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world." ⁵ The perspective of materialistic monism dominates much of academic research and teaching in neurophysiology, medical diagnostics and therapeutics, psychology, psychiatry and philosophy. But if mental activity includes a functional immaterial component, how can the immaterial mind of Man relate to physically based brain activity and to the Mind of God, who is Spirit? How might the Holy Spirit interact with the human mind, will and emotion - the soul?

Within [a] richer world of both material and nonmaterial things, physical laws lose their status as absolutes and become subject to principles that may be quite metaphysical, (principles like intelligent agency and divine providence). ⁶

The brain is a physical system which captures intelligence … which is metaphysical, created by God as part of our mind, soul and heart before we were even placed in