The Superhuman Brain II

There is not a problem that this world can produce that God can’t solve. You may presently be in serious straights of one form or another. You may be in the midst of a divorce, a bankruptcy, spiritual oppression, or terminal illness, but be assured of this one thing: God is an ever present help in the time of trouble. He can always be found when we approach Him according to His Word. II Chronicles 7:13-14:

13 If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people;

14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Jesus said in Matthew 7:7-8:

7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

Seek Him according to His Word and He will always be found of you. If you haven’t yet been born- again, click onto, "Further With Jesus" on this website. NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Genesis 1:26-27:

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

GOD SAID, Genesis 5:1-2:

1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

MAN SAID: What foolishness! There is no God. Man evolved from nothing. Everyone knows that!

Now THE RECORD. Thousands of years before man even contemplated the mystery of a matter, God declared it in His Word. Thousands of years before a word or concept was considered in the modern lexicon, God declared it from the beginning. The passages noted in Genesis will again prove the veracity and supernatural origin of the Scriptures and that they were directed by God and written by His chosen Holy man.

The focus of this feature is the glorious supernatural truth of the Word of God, and not evolution in particular. But because a sizeable chunk of academia supports evolution, and because most embrace some part of its theology (even if is just the idea of a very old universe), I feel constrained to address it briefly. Evolution is truly dead, and I’m embarrassed to even discuss it as a worthy opponent of truth.

The real enemies of the Word of God are the armies of revisionists who are busy attempting to destroy the inerrancy and absolutes of the majority-text Bible. Their attempts are successful among multitudes of people. The real enemies of the cross of Christ are the wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing who consistently say, "Yea, hath God said...?" [Genesis 3:1]

The human brain single-handedly destroys the evolutionary premise that time, chance, and need create life. Unfortunately for this evolutionary premise, the brain that exists between our ears has infinite capabilities of which we’re only just beginning to become aware. And need played no part in the development of our brains. Evolutionist paleoanthropologist Leslie Aiello of University College London said in reference to the human brain:

You don’t evolve large and expensive organs unless there’s a reason. [End of quote]

She is right, of course, but fails to make the obvious God connection. We are all equipped with brain capabilities so vast and so past our needs that it’s unfathomable. This Godlike brain is, by far, the world’s most underdeveloped resource. It is one of the last vestiges of our supernatural origin when man (our great-grandfather Adam) was immortal and dwelt in a place called Paradise.

The incredible brain continually boggles rationalization and scientific scrutiny. The question posed in a February 2004 issue of Discover Magazine was, "One of the great questions of human existence is whether we are smart enough to figure out how our brains work." [End of quote]

The following paragraph is from the GodSaidManSaid feature article, "The Superhuman Brain:"

It used to be said that man used about 10% of his brain capacity. But just recently, science revealed we use only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of our brain and that the human brain has infinite capabilities. It would almost sound braggadocious if it were not for the fact that we are designed in God’s image and have between our ears, God’s brain power—God’s computer power.

The brain is bigger than man’s capacity to understand. The following excerpts are from the GodSaidManSaid feature, "Nocebo, Placebo, and You:"

You have, of course, heard of the placebo effect. Basically, the placebo effect is the ability of the mind to think oneself better. Many clinical measurements have been made over the years concerning this phenomenon. In these studies people were treated for a particular ailment. Part of the group was treated with the appropriate medication while the others were given a placebo, often a harmless sugar pill. After the trial, the results of both groups were measured. The improvement rate of those taking the harmless sugar pill ranked in at about one out of three, or 33%, and the improvement number of the placebo group is sometimes greater than the improvement percentage turned in by the group actually treated with the appropriate medication. Just recently a study was conducted on an actual operation procedure. The placebo operation actually turned in a higher improvement percentage than the medically recommended procedure. It also was noted that the placebo benefit skyrockets when the doctor promotes the fake placebo cure’s benefit with words. "As he thinketh in his heart."

As you should suppose, there is an opposite to the placebo effect and it is called the nocebo effect, which is basically the physically negative things that take place in one’s body simply as a result of thinking on the wrong words.

The following excerpt concerning the nocebo effect is from an article written by Stacey Colino titled "Mind Over Medicine." It reads:

In an experiment at the State University of New York Downstate Medical center in Brooklyn, people with asthma were given inhalers that contained a harmless saline mist but were told that they were inhaling a mist that contained irritants. Nearly half of the subjects experienced airway inflammation—a major symptom of asthma—and several actually suffered a full-blown asthma attack. It was a classic illustration of the nocebo effect at work.

You may already be comfortable with the general notion that your moods and thoughts affect your physical health—you get sick to your stomach when you’re under pressure at work, for example. (Nocebo’s flip side, the placebo effect, is another form of this mind/body connection. That’s the tendency people have to feel better after they receive a treatment—even if it has zero therapeutic value—simply because they think the treatment will work.) But in the more specific form of the nocebo effect, the cause is a particular thought or belief, not something vague like stress or a bad mood. In one experiment, 13 teenagers were told they were being rubbed on the arm with a plant similar to poison ivy. The leaves were, in fact, harmless, but all of the kids had some reaction—itching, redness, blisters. Their specific belief that the plant was poisonous actually caused them to break out in rashes. [End of quote]

The power of the brain is truly dramatic. The claim is that 22 to 58 percent of all sickness is in the mind. It is amazing how readily our physiology responds to words. It should be no surprise to the student of the Bible, because God spoke us into existence with His Words, and therefore, all things are constructed of words. If that sounds bizarre, see "Made Out Of Words," and, "Secrets and Demonstrations of Power Speaking," on this website.

The brain that sends messages to the body at the rate of 240 miles per hour is an enigma to the fields of science that pursue its secrets. In John Horgan’s book The Undiscovered Mind is the following excerpt:

In 1990, the Society for Neuroscience persuaded the U.S. Congress to designate the 1990s the Decade of the Brain. The goal of the proclamation was both to celebrate the achievements of neuroscience and to support efforts to understand mental disorders such as schizophrenia and manic depression (also known as bipolar illness). One neuroscientist who opposed the idea was Torsten Wiesel, who won a Nobel prize in 1981 and went on to become president of Rockefeller University in New York. (He stepped down to return to research at the end of 1998.) Born and raised in Sweden, Wiesel is a soft-spoken, reticent man, but when I interviewed him at Rockefeller University in early 1998, he became heated at the mention of the "Decade of the Brain."

The idea was "foolish," he grumbled. "We need at least a century, maybe even a millennium," to comprehend the brain. "We still don’t understand how C. elegans works," he continued, referring to a tiny worm that serves as a laboratory for molecular and cellular biologists. Scientists had discovered some "simple mechanisms" in the brain, but they still did not really understand how the brain develops in the womb and beyond, how the brain ages, how memory works. "We are at the very early stage of brain science."  [End of quote]

The superhuman brain is highlighted in the article titled, "Neurocomputers," in Discover magazine. The following two passages are from that feature:

Brains derive awesome problem-solving abilities from two characteristics of their individual cells. First, a neuron can be in any one of thousands of different states, allowing it to store more information than a transistor, which has only two states, on and off. Second, neurons can choose which other neurons to talk to by rearranging their own synaptic connections. Neurobiologists call this self-organization.

Neurons speak a terrifically complicated language. Each "word" in the neuron lexicon is a repeatable pattern of electrical impulses. And when neurons talk to each other, these electric words are transmitted across synapses, electrical connections that link neurons into a network. Each synaptic connection can have as many as 200,000 channels. [End of quote]

South Florida Sun-Sentinel columnist Nancy McVicar reported on the 2002 PBS series titled, "The Secret Life of the Brain," and she wrote:

A baby’s brain in the first year of life may be the most complex organism on Earth, wiring itself to form one thousand trillion connections between brain cells—many more than there are stars in the universe. [End of quote]

A very positive thing to note is that the once thought notion that the human brain stops developing at a certain point in time is simply not true. The brain, if exercised, will continue to develop new neurons indefinitely.

The sub-headline in an article written by science writer Douglas Fox in the February 2002 Discover magazine reads:

Are you capable of multiplying 147,631,789 by 23,674 in your head, instantly? Physicist Allan Snyder says you probably can, based on his new theory about the origin of the extraordinary skills of autistic savants.

Again Fox writes:

Sometimes the ability of a savant is so striking, it eventually makes news. The most famous savant was a man called Joseph, the individual Dustin Hoffman drew upon for his character in the 1988 movie Rain Man. Joseph could immediately answer this question: "What number times what number gives 1,234,567,890?" His answer was "Nine times 137,174,210."  Another savant could double 8,388,628 up to 24 times within several seconds, yielding the sum 140,737,488,355,328.  A 6-year-old savant named Trevor listened to his older brother play the piano one day, then climbed onto the piano stool himself and played it better. A savant named Eric could find what he called the "sweet spot" in a room full of speakers playing music, the spot where sound waves from the different sources hit his ears at exactly the same time.

Most researchers have offered a simple explanation for these extraordinary gifts: compulsive learning. But Allan Snyder, a vision researcher and award-winning physicist who is director of the Center for the Mind at the University of Sydney and the Australian National University, has advanced a new explanation of such talents. "Each of us had the innate capacity for savant-like skills," says Snyder, "but that mental machinery is unconscious in most people."

Savants, he believes, can tap into the human mind’s remarkable processing abilities.

Finally, Fox notes:

Snyder’s theory began with art, but he came to believe that all savant skills, whether in music, calculation, math, or spatial relationships, derive from a lightning-fast processor in the brain that divides things—time, space, or an object—into equal parts.

Compulsive practice might enhance these skills over time, but Snyder contends that practice alone cannot explain the phenomenon. As evidence, he cites rare cases of sudden-onset savantism. Orlando Serrell, for example, was hit on the head by a baseball at the age of 10. A few months later, he began recalling an endless barrage of license-plate numbers, song lyrics, and weather reports.

If someone can become an instant savant, Snyder thought, doesn’t that suggest we all have the potential locked away in our brains?

Concerning the purported future evolution of the brain, paleoanthropologist Aiello said:

One of the reasons why people are fascinated with human evolution is because it’s about where we came from and where we’re going,...but we don’t know where we’re going. It’s too much of a lottery.  [End of quote]

This is the plight in which all anti-God groups find themselves. The answers to these questions of ultimate consequences elude them: Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? All who are washed in the blood of Jesus Christ discovered the answers to these questions immediately upon the day of their redemption. Again concerning the portended evolution of the human brain, science writer C. Zimmer said:

But scientists can’t say where we’re headed. It’s even possible that we’ve reached an evolutionary dead end.  [End of quote]

The evolution the author spoke of will never end, simply because it never began.

The human brain continues to boggle the mind. Gunther Stent, who served as the head of the neurobiology department of the National Academy of Sciences said concerning the brain:

...the brain may not be capable, in the last analysis, of providing an explanation of itself.  [End of quote]

Again, an excerpt from John Horgan:

Given their poor record to date, I fear that neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, and other fields addressing the mind might be bumping up against fundamental limits of science. Scientists may never completely succeed in healing, replicating, or explaining the human mind. Our minds may always remain, to some extent, undiscovered.

Finally, Horgan writes:

Inner space may be science’s final—and eternal—frontier.

Romans 11:33-36:

33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

34 For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?

35 Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?

36 For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

The likeness of God’s brain is between our ears and he said so. In the original GodSaidManSaid feature, "The Superhuman Brain," it reads:

Information theorist John Neumann once estimated that the memories stored in the human brain during an average lifetime would amount to approximately 2.8 X 1020 (or 28 with 19 zeroes after it) information bits.

The brain is a literal pharmaceutical manufacturing plant and administering medical team all in one. It creates from the materials at hand a magnificent array of drugs and medications and automatically administers them when needed. Imagine: your brain weighs only three pounds. Yet a computer with the same number of "bits" would be 100 stories tall and cover the state of Texas.

Finally, the feature concluded:

Do you need more proof that your brain is made in God’s likeness? Then consider this:  To build a building 100 stories tall that would cover the state of Texas and then fill it with information bits would cost more than the aggregate wealth of the world. Your (God-like) brain has infinite capabilities and is beyond price.

It is hard to imagine, but one day we will fully put on the mind of Christ. One day we will see Him and somehow He will download infinite knowledge into our God-like brains. I John 3:2:

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

I Corinthians 13:12:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

GOD SAID, Genesis 1:26-27:

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

GOD SAID, Genesis 5:1-2:

1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

MAN SAID:  What foolishness! There is no God. Man evolved from nothing. Everyone knows that!

Now you have THE RECORD.




References:

King James Bible

Fox, D.S., "The Inner Savant," Discover, 2/02

"Letter From Discover," Discover, February 2004, p.33

McVicar, N., "PBS Series Taps Hidden Powers of Human Brain," South Florida Sun- Sentinel, 1/22/02

Sincell, M., "Neurocomputers," Discover, 10/00, p.28

Zimmer, C., "Great Mysteries of Human Evolution," Discover, Sept. 2003, p.37

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