Spirits in the material world
One of my jobs at the Enterprise-Record is to put together the weekly Health pages in the Style section. Right now I’m doing a series about the human brain, one of the most amazing creations in the universe.
Chico isn’t necessarily the nerve center for the study of the brain, but I’m finding it has a wealth of people who are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about it. Their ability to use simple terms to explain difficult concepts has been helpful to me.
A couple of weeks ago, I covered a talk by Dr. Joel Rothfeld, a Chico neurologist and neuroscientist. He said he hoped we would one day know enough about the brain to be able to understand its “spiritual” nature. That’s why the brain intrigues me. It’s where the mind lives, but so far we don’t have a working definition of what the mind is. The brain’s structure and processes have been found to be staggeringly intricate, but that does not yet explain what gives us our unique identity.
I believe we have a spiritual nature and that it continues after our body dies. What we call the mind is the most likely seat of this part of ourselves. But I’m also a believer in science. As I learn more about the nature of the universe and life, my belief about my fate is constantly being put to the test. Some biologists say our purpose in life has nothing to do with us as individuals. When we die, that’s it. Our purpose is to pass our genetic information on to the next generation. Some physicists say the universe has no ultimate purpose and that it and everything in it will eventually die.
My way of reconciling this to my spiritual beliefs is to conclude that science is still in its infancy and that our ways of explaining the universe and why were are here are still primitive. My hope is that one day faith and science won’t seem so at odds with each other. Maybe one of the reasons we have such a fabulous brain is that it will allow us to make sense of everything and understand our purpose in the cosmos.