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From Neurons to God

 

            The title for today’s inspiration is a modification of an interesting article I have read.  I cannot honestly say I understand it all.  The title is “Untangling the Brain: From Neuron to Mind.”  The first line of the article gives you the context.  “Modern neuroscience rests on the assumption that our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and behaviors emerge from electrical and chemical communication between brain cells…”  This is really comprehensive.  Thoughts, feelings, behaviors are all caused by the electrical and chemical firing between my cells.

            So, when I say, “I love you,” BANG, a bunch of cells electrically and chemically zealously fire, causing this feeling, which became a thought and is uttered with those three words.  What I mean to say, I should add, is “that my cells were set afire electrically chemically causing me to realize how deeply I am connected to you”          

And yet when I use these thoughts from the article, I realize they just as easily could describe the Passion of Jesus for all of us in the world.  Jesus admonished his disciples to love one another.  That was his commandment---his “law,” if you will.  In saying this, I realize I have moved from neuron to mind to God. Perhaps it is not even possible to get to God without going through our neurons and our minds.  Without our minds, “God does not exist.” 

            Of course, this does not prove that God does exist.  But if I don’t have my mind and you do not have yours, then for us, “God does not exist!”  Let me then proclaim, “Bless those neurons!”  My article rightly asks.  “How can a tangle of cells produce the complexity and subtlety of a mind?”  “Wow,” I again exclaim, “a tangle of cells: that is a great description.”  And from that tangle of cells we get complexity and subtlety…and perhaps the sense that God exists.

            Complexity is easy to understand when we get some numbers. To this end, another sentence stands out. The article’s authors write, “The human brain, which holds a hundred billion neurons connected by hundreds of trillions of synapses, posed an almost unimaginable complexity for scientists.”  Rather than be floored, I am excited by those crazy numbers.  A hundred billion neurons!  We are incredibly complicated!  We are billionaires!! And then, there are the hundreds (plural) of trillions of synapses.  The synapse, you may know, is the tiny gap between cells across which the connection is made between neurons by which “my mind” forms thoughts, feelings, perceptions, etc.

            So when I think of God’s grandeur or feel God’s warm presence, a crazy numbers of neurons are firing across synapses making connections to give me that thought of “grandeur” or that feeling of “a warm presence.”  Most of us do not bother with neurons and minds.  We simply think and feel things about God.  Or the atheist thinks that God is a sham and feels nothing.

            I imagine many people would not find these reflections to be inspirational.  They might even be “turned off” or “depressed” by all this scientific stuff.  Oddly, all these responses are the thoughts and feelings anybody would formulate with their neurons firing and their brain creating the thoughts and feelings.

            I, on the other hand, am fascinated by knowing this.  I am not able to do science at this level, but I deeply appreciate what they tell me “about me.”  Knowing this makes me realize that I am fascinating!  And so are you!  Without those hundred billion neurons firing over hundreds of trillions synapses, I can’t think and feel.  My mind does not work.  I cannot get to God.

            I realize I have gone one step beyond the article.  I have gone from mind to God.  In my heart I know that God is not just an idea.  God is not simply a fuzzy feeling that my firing neurons have fabricated.  Paradoxically, maybe I have stumbled onto the Fabricator.  Maybe I have come upon my own version of God the creator. 

            At one level, it does not matter.  I value the fact that I have been brought to this place.  It is a place of connection.  It can now be a place of prayer.  Thank you God for showing up now in my thoughts and my feelings.  “I believe” is not a desperate hope, so much as a considered conclusion.  And it can be a heartfelt conviction.

            Glory be!

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