Our 'minds', 'souls', 'spirit' and consciousness are all physical in nature. Thousands of years of research have shown that our brains comprise and produce our true selves. Souls and spirits do not exist. Our bodies run themselves. We know from cases of brain damage and the effects of psychoactive drugs, that our experiences are caused by physical chemistry acting on our physical neurones in our brains. Our innermost self is our biochemical self.
- The Basis of Qualia in Neurology: The Brain Is The Inner Us
- The Physics of the Soul
- Particular Phenomenon
- Religion - Judaism, Christianity and Islam
- The Religion of Spiritualism
1. The Basis of Qualia in Neurology: The Brain Is The Inner Us
Prof. Victor Stenger (2007)1
Modern neuroscience has proven that all mental processes start with the firing of neurones in the brain - and that this activity is itself caused by preceeding firings and sensory input. In other words, modern brain scanning techniques and scientific experiments have proven that our mental life is constructed out of physical events in the brain, and nothing more.
In Neuroscience, professors Bear, Connors and Paradiso (1996, p4) introduce the book with a little history of research into the brain. Several Greek scholars in the 4th centuryBCE, 2400 years ago, believed that the brain was the center of sensation. Hippocrates, the great pagan philosopher and physician (called the 'father of medicine'), correctly believed and taught that not only was the brain our sensing organ, but it was also the seat of our intelligence. But since then, a progression of religions and cultures have asserted that the heart is the source of mind - the Christian Bible is full of such references. Christians in history were even to be found repeating Aristotle's (394-322BCE) belief that the brain was a radiator.
Since then, biologists, neurologists, doctors and psychologists have amassed a wealth of evidence that tells us clearly and comprehensively that the physical brain is the center (and producer) of intelligence, creative thought, emotions, willpower and moral thinking.
Our brainstem controls the impulses that are sent to our body. Our muscles, glands, hormone secretions, skin sensitivity, organ action, heart rate and thousands of other actions are all controlled by our nervous system, which is managed by our brains. So, if we damage a part of our brain we can impair our ability to control our bodies. If we damage our medulla, our physical co-ordination can be lost, if we damage our frontal lobes, our personality can be changed. This is because the brain controls the body and emotions. The cause and effect is clear: physical damage to the brain damages our soul.
Conversely, even if things happen to our bodies that we do not choose (such as the progression of Alzheimer's disease, which causes senility and dementia)2, we are forced to change our behaviour and feelings as a result of changes to the structure of our brain during medical procedures. Psychosurgery, including lobotomies or leucotomies, became used regularly from the 1930s for severely disrupted patients. Since then highly accurate and specific stereotactic tractotomies, stereotactic limbic leucotomies and the like have been developed, allowing the destruction of very small parts of the brain, normally locating particular pathways between one part and another in order to change specific aspects of behaviour and symptoms. For example, a cingulotomy is occasionally used against obsessive and compulsive patients by destroying 2-3cm of particular white matter. An amygdalotomy destroys the brain's neural connection between the amygdala and the hypothalamus and is normally used on patients who suffer from episodes of unstoppable violence and terror.3. What all this shows is that the physical structures and chemistry of the brain can control large portions of our chosen behaviours, experiences and feelings.
If the soul experiences some of the same things that our brain experiences, then, souls must have ways of 'measuring' what neurones are firing in our brains. If we can stimulate neurones with electrodes, which causes us to experience certain memories or feelings, then, if the soul has a "use" then it too must experience some of these things too. If our soul "sees" things, then, it must have eyes. No-one says that the soul sees over 360 degrees; so it must have forward-facing eyes like ours. How can a soul have all these observational tools? Why would the soul be restricted to feeling exactly the same as what we feel as a result of biochemistry? If our medulla is damaged, or our brainstem, why can't the soul control our body? If we have a serotonin imbalance as the result of disease, why does our soul suffer depression and mood disorders? It seems that the soul is highly physical.
“A small amount of damage [...] might even cause rather dramatic changes in your personality. Why? Because your brain is the seat of your self-awareness, the locus of your intelligence, your compassion, and your creativity. All of your mental activities - your thoughts, emotions and feelings - and all your bodily processes are affected by the functioning of your brain.”"Understanding Human Behavior" by James V. McConnel (1986)4
What is the point of calling our minds souls when we know that all our experiences derive from the physical actions of neurones, neurotransmitters and hormones? Not only that, but they very formation (and loss) of memory is purely physical in nature. Brain damage results in loss of memory; it must be that the soul either doesn't have any memories, or doesn't use them.
“Our memories and habits are bound up with the structure of the brain, in much the same way in which a river is connected with the river-bed. The water in the river is always changing, but it keeps to the same course because previous rains have worn a channel. In like manner, previous events have worn a channel in the brain, and our thoughts flow along this channel. This is the cause of memory and mental habits. But the brain, as a structure, is dissolved at death, and memory therefore may be expected to be also dissolved. There is no more reason to think otherwise than to expect a river to persist in its old course after an earthquake has raised a mountain where a valley used to be.”
"Why I am not a Christian" by Bertrand Russell (1957)5
Russell's watery metaphor highlights the fact that there is no apparent mechanism for a soul to influence the brain, or for the brain to influence a soul. It is as if they don't exist, and they apparently carry out no function. If the soul copies memories that are imprinted on to the brain, then, brain damage that affects memory will also affect the soul, and it appears that brain death itself would also remove the memories of the soul. The resolution of such philosophical problems lead to an immensely complex and improbably theory of how souls work. It is much more realistic to admit that the idea of a 'soul' makes no sense: Neurology and science has enabled us to understand the brain to such an extent that such an ethereal concept is no longer needed to explain anything.
If we suffer brain damage, take drugs, or if we are injected unknowingly with hormones by an experimenter, our feelings can be altered. This must mean that a soul is a reader of our experiences, but not a cause of them.
“If you take a couple of drinks, or smoke some pot, YOU become intoxicated. It is easy to understand how the chemicals in alcohol and cannabis can affect the ticking of your nerve cells. But how can physical reactions in your brain cause the psychological or spiritual YOU to get high? If your mind controls your body how does it do so? When you drive a car, you sit in the driver's seat, you push on the pedals with your feet, and you turn the wheel with your hands. If you consider your body to be a biological machine "driven" by your mind, where does the driver "sit"? And how does your purely spiritual or psychological "mind" pull the biological strings that make your neurones fire and your muscles move?”"Understanding Human Behavior" by James V. McConnel (1986)6
It seems that whatever role our 'soul' has, it is not directly linked to the control of our physical bodies, and it is not directly a cause of our experiences.
2. The Physics of the Soul
2.1. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!
If the soul was able to interact physically with the body, or to view the world, it must have some physical structure and recording mechanism. Yet, despite attempts, no evidence for the 'mass' of soul has been found7. An object cannot be mass-free and physical; it cannot react with energy without having energy. In order to react with the brain it must have mass, but in order to be invisible it must be mass free. In order to see it requires photoreceptors and energy measuring devices which need to interact with the physical world. All such interactions are detectable. If souls interact with the world, they would be scientifically detectable in the world, but, scientific studies published properly in peer-reviewed journals have found no signs of souls or spirits.
2.2. The Fog of Death
Another serious problem is death ... the soul in its highly resilient fashion would always survive body death and there would be a huge build up of these slightly-physical souls. With billions upon billions of them each using up slight amounts of energy each, we would experience a literal fog of souls covering the whole planet! We would have to say that the soul decays over time, that eventually it does break up: these contradictions are telling us that the whole idea of a 'soul' is misguided.
2.3. Evolution
There is another major problem with the idea that a soul is required for some parts of the brain to function... the fact that all the individual parts of the brain obey normal biological and chemical rules. Animals and such evolved through a long process of gradual complexification. At no point in the history of the evolution of the nervous system has a soul became necessary. The soul itself must have evolved with us, within us. Growing with us from birth. It is as if our 'soul' is our brains, and nothing more. Or in other words, the evolution of our brain shows us that we have merely mistaken some of the emergent properties of consciousness to be a soul, somehow different from the brain itself. Now we know enough neurology to say for sure that this isn't true. In short there is only one sensible conclusion: Souls do not exist. This lesson from natural biology came too late for some, and the belief in special souls just for Human Beings has pervaded Human religions up to the present day.
3. Particular Phenomenon
3.1. Ghosts
Ghost stories have a tendency to become true. The suggestibility of many people means that they actively seek out confirming experiences for even the most improbable stories that they've heard. Colin Wilson's television series in the 1970s, 'Leap in the Dark', traced the history of a haunting:
“A writer, Frank Smythe, deliberately put round an entirely fictitious story that a particular place was haunted by a particular ghost. No one, apart from Smythe and his team, knew that the story was fictitious. A while later the researchers were flooded with reports from people claiming to have sighted the ghost in question. In this case, then, we have sightings of a ghost which arose simply on the basis of the public suggestion that there was a ghost to be seen.”
"The Origins of Psychic Phenomena: Poltergeists, Incubi, Succubi, and the Unconscious Mind"
Stan Gooch (2007)8
3.2. The Recently Dead
In many folk tales, Westerners tell of seeing the ghosts of the recently departed. Scientific investigation has always found that such cases are either explainable in terms of the subject actually knowing more than they knew they knew (or let on), or are mistaken. Experiments where people write down such predictions before finding out confirming evidence (such as receiving a phone call informing them a relative is dead), results in a very poor record of accuracy, with the only slight success rate attributable to the fact that people tend to predict the deaths of the elderly or unwell. The investigative psychologist Stan Gooch, who does believe that the human brain is capable of supernatural intelligence, argues that all such encounters with the dead are actually subjective methods of interpreting information, but which do not actually have a basis in physical reality:
“In all these cases we do not require the discarnate spirit hypothesis at all. It is totally irrelevant. [...] (As emphasized, the person is not always dead when the vision occurs). Is it not enough to say that in all cases of death that having received kind of telepathic impulse if events, the unconscious mind then generates some kind of symbolic fantasy - a vision, a dream, a premonition - by which means it presents the received information to consciousness? That view gains enormously also from the fact that Australian aborigines are very good at sensing the death of a distant companion. But they do not see a ghostly vision of that person, as westerners often do. Instead they see a vision of that person's totem animal running about the camp. Once again, 'we see what we expect to see' in terms of our cultural (and in this case religious) upbringing. The totem animal is the best choice, and the obvious choice, for the Aborigine unconscious mind to make in presenting its information to consciousness.”"The Origins of Psychic Phenomena: Poltergeists, Incubi, Succubi, and the Unconscious Mind"
Stan Gooch (2007)9
3.3. Out of Body Experiences
Out-of-body experiences were once poorly studied scientifically because of their purely psychological nature, but recent technological developments have allowed neurologists to study these types of states of consciousness. Scientists have been able to recreate situations in which out of body experiences occur in wide-awake individuals.
“Two sets of studies published independently in the same issue of the journal Science demonstrate how the illusion of a bodily self outside one's own body can be stimulated in the laboratory. The studies forge ways to better understand both out-of-body and near-death experiences. "The research provides a physical explanation for the phenomenon usually ascribed to otherworldly influences," Peter Bruger, a neurologist at University Hospital in Zurich who was not involved in the experiment, told science journalist Sandra Blakesee in her report on these experiments in The New York Times (August 24).”Kendrick Frazier in Skeptical Inquirer (2007)10
“Olaf Blanke and his colleagues report that they are able to bring about so-called out-of-body experiences (OBE), where a person's consciousness seems to become detached from the body, by electrical stimulation of a specific region in the brain. I have discussed OBE experiments in two books and have concluded that they provide no evidence for anything happening outside of the physical processes of the brain.”
"God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist" by Prof. Victor J. Stenger (2007)11
The two books by Prof. Victor Stenger on this subject, plus relevant page numbers, are:
- Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World beyond the Senses (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990) p111.
- Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003) p290-99.
Extensive research into cases of OBEs by skeptical scientists have shown that in all cases, details of the event have not produced anything that could not have been known by the patient. Experiments have included hidden symbols placed high up in rooms so that only through an OBE or other supernatural process could someone know what the symbol was. Simple tests like this have always demonstrated that what is 'seen' during an OBE is only ever what the patient already knew was there. This, combined with our neurological understanding of OBEs is conclusive proof that OBEs are purely psychological, with, as Prof Stenger says, "no evidence for anything happening outside of the physical processes of the brain".
3.4. Night Terrors: Demonic Attacks
The following phenomenon has its basis in the biochemistry of the brain, involving the limbic system, cerebellum and duodenum and the way that they are suppressed during sleep. An incorrect balance of neurone-controlling chemicals during sleep makes some people more susceptible to night terrors than others. They occur in the early night and "experiences of entrapment, of being choked or attacked, often with shrieking, sitting-up, or sleep-walking, and tremendous acceleration of the heart. [They become] more frequent when there is greater daytime anxiety; they are frequent among wartime battle evacuees and night terrors are commonly experienced by children aged 10-14"12. The human biologist McConnel describes a likely Night Terror:
“You begin to sense - deep down inside you - that something has gone very wrong. Slowly, almost dimly, you regain enough consciousness to realize that you are suffocating, that some heavy weight is lying on your chest and crushing your lungs. Suddenly you realize your breathing has almost stopped, and you are dying for air. Terrified, you scream! At once, you seem to awaken. There is this thing hovering over you, crushing the very life out of your lungs. You shout at the thing, but it won't leave you alone.Despite a strange feeling of paralysis, you start to resist. Your pulse begins to race, your breathing becomes rapid, and you push futilely at the thing that is choking you to death. Your legs tremble, then begin to thrash about under the covers. You sweep the bedclothes aside, stumble to your feet, and flee into the darkness. You run clumsily through the house, trying to get from the thing.
And then, all at once, you find yourself in your living room. The lights come on, the thing instantly retreats to the shadows of your mind, and you are awake. You are safe now, but you are intensely wrought up and disturbed. You shake your head, wondering what has happened to you. You can remember that you were fleeing from the thing that was crushing you. But you have forgotten your scream and talking in your sleep. The thing dream is a classic example of a night terror.”
"Understanding Human Behavior" by James V. McConnel (1986)13
It is clear to see how such physiological events can be interpreted supernaturally by its victims!
“Before the physiological causes of these experiences was known, night terrors were interpreted as being the attacks of evil spirits. Others have experienced it as an alien abduction, an attempted possession or as the evil magic of medieval witches, along with all manner of other supernatural and paranormal explanations that have arose historically.”
4. Religion - Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Many religions developed their beliefs before we had any understanding of neurology or biological psychology. We know, for example, that us Humans evolved along with all other animals, developing a complex nervous system and brain that led slowly, over time, to conscious life and emotional awareness. As we noted in the section on evolution, there was no point in the evolution of our minds that an independent soul became a necessary addition. Yet religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam have gone to great lengths to argue that only Human Beings have souls: That animals and plants do not. This is based on the account of creation where God 'breathes life' into Adam and Eve; but not into the various animals. But many modern Christians hesitate in saying that animals do not have souls - it is against common sense to say one set of advanced mammal, Humans, have souls and others do not. Yet it seems that God itself wouldn't even have a need for souls.
“God does not need us to have "souls". God's memory is infinitely perfect. It knows our personality and memories better than we do. God itself can contain all of our souls, it doesn't need them to be actual, independent things. God could create precise copies of us anywhere at any time, duplicating our personality and consciousness perfectly because God knows precisely how we work and what we are. It doesn't need "souls" to be able to do this; the biological and chemical make-up of our brains is known perfectly to God, its own memory is sufficient to wipe-out any potential use in its scheme of things for existent souls.”"God does not need Prayer, Prophets, Souls, Evangelists, etc" by Vexen Crabtree (2004)
5. The Religion of Spiritualism
5.1. Institutionalized Spiritual Populism
Despite all the logical and physical problems with supposing that spirits can interact with the world, as examined above, Spiritualism, a modern religion that is based on such interaction, arose in the 19th century. It involves 'mediums' receiving messages from the dead, during psychodramas called séances.
“Spiritualism includes a variety of differing networks and groups, some of which hold some specifically Christian beliefs and others of which are almost totally devoid of any religious dogma at all. They all, however, share on central concept - communication with the spirit realm through gifted or psychic individuals. Spiritualists always speak of the 'departed' rather than the 'dead'.”"Encyclopedia of New Religions" by Christopher Partridge (2004)14
The modern movement began in Hydesville, New York, USA, in 1848, where the Fox family lived15, 16. John Fox's two daughters, Maggie and Katherine, along with a few early converts and colleagues who accompanied them on tours around the country, all proceeded to demonstrate that they communicate with the dead. It presumed a general Christian outlook on life and retained a Christian morality. It has become more than a sect of Christianity, and should be considered a religion in its own right due to the development of its authoritative written works that are no longer Christian. It remains a very loose and secular spread of practitioners, but nonetheless Spiritualist Churches hold services several times a week, some of them including Christian Holy Communion.
It has become the public face of the New Age: 'channellers' and 'mediums' have appeared on a long string of television dramas and in books, so much so, that portions of the population think that there must be underlying truth (if not evidence) to it.
5.2. Issues and Problems: Its Original Proponents Admit Making It Up
The religion has been mired in problems. Not only the apparent fact that souls, spirits and ghosts don't exist, but that mediums' communications are fraudulent. The information gleaned from the dead is the same tone and quality as that obtained through cold-reading, which is the method used by psychics such as tarot-card readers. It is a mixture between obscurantism, astute observations and a Machiavellian understanding of what types of things people want to hear and will believe. There have been several court cases resulting in criminal convictions for fraud against Spiritualists, which is probably the reason that some of their websites state that they are "for entertainment purposes only"17. Not only are there problems with the soul-based theories of the religion and the general substance of séances, but the two Fox daughters who founded the movement admitted later during their lifetimes that it had been a hoax:
“Four decades after spiritualism began, sisters Margaret Fox Kane and Katherine Fox Jencken confessed it had all been a trick. On Sunday, October 21, 1888, the sisters appeared at the Academy of Music in New York City. [...] She explained how she had produced the rapping noises [... and] demonstrated the effect for the audience. [...] Margaret then went on to state:"I think that it is about time that the truth of this miserable subject "Spiritualism" should be brought out. It is now widespread all over the world, [...] I was the first in the field and I have the right to expose it. [...] Mother [...] could not understand it and did not suspect us of being capable of a trick because we were so young."[...] Margaret also stated that Leah knew the spirit rappings were fake, and that when she traveled with the girls (on their first nationwide tour) it was she who signalled the answers to various questions. (She probably chatted with sitters before the séance to obtain information; when that did not produce the requisite facts, the "spirits" no doubt spoke in vague generalizations that are the mainstay of spiritualistic charlatans). Margaret repeated her exposé in other cities close to New York.
Today, spiritualists characterize Margaret's exposé as bogus, attributing it to her need for money or the desire for revenge against her rivals or both. However, not only were her admissions fully corroborated by her sister, but she demonstrated to the audience that she could produce the mysterious raps just as she said.”
Joe Nickell in Skeptical Inquirer (2008)15
Extensive investigations at the original site in Hydesville where the Fox daughters invented the first Spiritualist communications, have also shown every aspect of the story to be invented falsehoods; with details about bodies, persons and fake walls all to be incorrect and with evidence of attempted trickery.
The religion's take on spirits and the spirit world remain a mixture of pop culture assertions and assumptions, with very little rationality or coherency. There seems to be no reason why, if spirits can communicate by banging things, moving tables, talking through people's mouths, that they can't instead simply write clear letters with pens on paper. Also, the abysmal failure rate of psychic 'help' in real police cases, the cold-reading associations, the fraud cases and the negative results of scientific investigations into Spiritualist claims all point to fundamental flaws in the religion/movement.
