While finite minds make sense in a universe created by a Divine Mind, they are exceedingly difficult to account for in a naturalistic universe. Physicalist approaches to explaining mental properties ultimately fall short because mental properties possess unique characteristics that cannot be reduced to physical states, events and properties. [1]J.P.Moreland 2014,P109
[1] J.P.Moreland 2014,P109
April 2nd 1968, might have been what occurs at the end of a nine-month term of pregnancy—the arrival of a newly born with all the associated joys that help balance all the negative experiences of human childbearing and birth.
In the early evening, I had arrived at the hospital to be informed by my young wife that ‘we were having twins’. What she meant was that we (well, she) had given birth to twin girls. We had had no idea that ‘we’ were expecting more than one; at the time the technology wasn’t able to predict any such outcome. The twins were rather tiny and were in need of a bit of extra care. Now, some fifty-three years later, they are parents and grandparents. Rebecca & Esther were not identical twins though they looked/look very much alike. But even identical twins don’t have the same DNA. Esther has lived abroad in Australia for over twenty-five years, whereas Rebecca has lived mostly in the UK. It is said that twins have a special—even telepathic bond. When something is amiss with one (no matter the space between them), the other is somehow aware.
“The body like a prison be, locked in for life’s mortality.”
I wrote the above poem during the ‘transitional period’ of my journey from atheism to Christ. Then, as now, I had been considering the problem of suffering; I hadn’t at that time enquired into some of the more esoteric ideas of religious philosophy but had been thinking about the possibility of the transmigration of ‘the soul’—that, somehow, there was such an entity as the soul and that somehow it was personal—moreover that it pre-existed any present incarnation. I was so pleased with the poem that I typed it out put it on display in the kitchen. The ‘poster’ was noticed by a friend of my wife, who happened to be the wife of a Baptist Minister. Although she was aware that, at the time, I was not a Christian believer, she nevertheless passed on some comments through my wife, who was also a committed Christian. The message was that the idea we (us) pre-existed prior to our conception and birth could, most certainly not, be defended from a Christian perspective. This question is of the upmost importance. If human beings, like any other animal, are merely the result of the interaction pf physical forces then we should not expect to survive that material existence. It would be a case of ‘when you’re dead, you are done for’. Ergo, from this perspective, we are all the products of our genes–inheriting most, if not all of our parents’ physical characteristics. If we were to study Rebecca and Esther’s features—and some other traits of which we might not be too fond. We would see that the twins exhibit a likeness of both of their parents—and even grandparents. However, our personal DNA is unique to all of us. So might there be something ‘within us’ that science has yet to ‘pinpoint’? Is it possible that, somehow, we may survive our apparent demise? The argument here is that we do and that, moreover, we retain that which we have obtained throughout our earthly lives. ‘WE’ shall survive. The implications are large—for those of us who have retained a sense of personal identity and those, who through accident or illness, seem not so to do.
Derek J. White 05/21
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