Category Archives: Faith & Science

March 3, 2015

Rewiring the Brain for Greater Faith

By David D. Flowers

shapeimage_2Can you physically change your brain with your thoughts? It would appear so.

Rick Hanson, a neuropsychologist and New York Times best-selling author, believes that we can use our minds to make gradual physical changes in our brains to transform the mind for the better.

Studies have shown that people who discipline themselves through meditation and prayer frequently have a measurably larger neocortex in the pre-frontal regions of the brain, the area responsible for concentration. As a result, these people are more able to concentrate and pay attention.

If you struggle with attention deficit disorder, should you really try praying more? Yes. While meditation and prayer may not solve all of your concentration problems, it will certainly help.

But that’s not all. There is more.

Dr. Hanson states that if one does not discipline their thinking for the better, outside negative forces such as fear, worry, stress, work pressure, and other people will master you. They will shape your mind, thus your life.

The human brain has a tendency to focus on the negative. Hanson calls it an “evolutionary design flaw” of humanity. This negativity bias allows negative experiences to stick to the brain like Velcro, while positive experiences pass through rather quickly. Bummer, huh?

To compensate against this, Hanson highlights the importance of taking in good thoughts and experiences, savoring them and allowing them to sink in.

Through this process he believes one can hardwire their brain for happiness. It’s even possible to use the mind and imagination for embracing possible positive outcomes and finding peace in the present.

So, you can change the brain with your thoughts after all.

Doesn’t that sound consistent with what Paul says:

“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”  Romans 12:2 NLT

Mastery over your thoughts is critical to the life of faith.

And it’s worth pointing out that for Paul it’s not an “evolutionary design flaw” that has our minds in the gutter, instead it’s the curse of Adam and “the flesh” resulting from the fall (Rom 5:12; 8:1-17). We must intentionally repent of it.

Dr. Hanson is right, but Paul said it first.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”  Philippians 4:8 NIV

That’s from the Apostle Paul, the ancient neuropsychologist.

Greater Faith Via the Imagination

Is it any wonder that Jesus added “mind” in the greatest commandment to love God with our whole being (Mk 12:30)? Notice that it wasn’t mentioned in the original decree (Deut 6:5). What’s Jesus saying?

While Hebrews had a more holistic understanding of the head and heart than their Greek contemporaries, Jesus makes it a point to specify the mind. Why? Because the head is the control center of our lives.

Jesus knew that the mind is the way to great faith, or depleted faith.

I submit to you that our imagination (seeing things with our mind) is a powerful gift from God. It is most unfortunate that we’ve believed it to be something that we should leave behind with childhood.

In doing this, we deny the very practical use of our imagination that is clearly at work every day, whether we’re aware of it or not. But we’re not told to leave it behind, we’re called to let the Lord have it for the working out of greater faith.

Let’s be honest, often our “seeing” is of negative outcomes and fear-based worries about things that never come to pass, or that we’ve used to replay destructive images and hurtful conversations in our head, robbing us of peace.

That’s a misuse of the mind and imagination.

But the people of God are called to use the imagination to touch the divine, to rise above the primal instincts and embrace God’s gift of seeing Christ in the middle of all things—what it looks like when God gets his way.

This is what “faith” is all about.

Our success in the area of rewiring the brain, gaining control over our thoughts with the help of the Spirit, will lock or unlock the door to greater faith. For it’s bad thinking and a poor imagination that makes us unable to believe and trust the God who does the spectacular.

Therefore, let’s use our imagination for envisioning a better future.

Lord, let the Kingdom come in our relationships, in our disappointments and pain, and see where Christ stands victorious in the future, calling us forward into a life full of glorious possibilities.  Amen.

D.D. Flowers, 2015.

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6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Deeper Christian Life, Faith & Science

February 24, 2015

Evidence for God: The Fine-Tuning of the Universe

By David D. Flowers

The folks at ReasonableFaith.org keep pumping out some really helpful videos. Check out this one on the fine-tuning of the universe.

Also, listen to Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project and founder of BioLogos, talk about there only being two options to choose from after observing the fine-tuning of the universe.

And then why he believes faith and science can co-exist.

Keep your minds sharp and your hearts open.

D.D. Flowers, 2015.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Christianity, Faith & Science

January 22, 2015

Morality: The Great Signpost

By David D. Flowers

cs-lewis_originalDeep down human beings are aware of objective morality. It’s what ultimately convinced C.S. Lewis to leave atheism behind. It was the Moral Argument for the existence of God that led this intellectual giant of the 2oth century down the path of theism, and eventually to the divinity of Jesus.

Simply put, this classical argument states that humanity’s universal awareness of morals and values come from a moral Creator, therefore our innate sense of morality proves that God exists.

This short video from Reasonable Faith is a nice summary.

Lewis would admit that there are differences in moral codes. We can’t dispute these minor nuances. However, some differences in moral codes can be explained in terms of differences about the facts. So, he concluded from three separate logical arguments that objective morality comes from God.

In his classic work, Mere Christianity, Lewis wrote the following about his pre-conversion reasoning:

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”

Not only did Lewis believe that morality was convincing enough to close the case on the existence of God, he said the very ability to question God’s existence was itself a signpost to the Creator, a transcendent moral lawgiver.

Lewis said, “When you argue against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.”

In The Case for Christianity he elaborates on this point:

“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”

So when Richard Dawkins, and other skeptics today, belligerently scoff at the idea of God based on what they perceive to be “evil” deeds done by Yahweh in the OT, they actually prove God’s very existence in their condemnation.

Why does Dawkins get to decide what is good or evil? Isn’t morality simply a by-product of human evolution and the formation of culture? Notice that Dawkins uses a moral law code set forth in Scripture to make such a judgment.

Furthermore, by condemning any “evil” thing with morals and values explicitly set forth in the Scriptures as given by God, the skeptic affirms objective morality and a moral lawgiver. Without God, good and evil are only subjective—nothing more than personal opinions and cultural perspectives.

As I heard it put once, a skeptic trying to refute theism, and Christianity more specifically, by making moral judgments afforded to them via the Scriptures, is to hop in the “Christian car” in an attempt to run it into a tree.

If this proves anything, it merely points out that there is indeed such a thing as objective morality, and that it has been indelibly imprinted on our souls by our Creator. It is the signature of God on our lives.

I agree with Lewis that an atheist or an agnostic has to embrace all sorts of illogical contradictions in order to maintain their skepticism. A world without God is definitely a world without morality.

It’s no doubt a world in which none of us would want to live.

D.D. Flowers, 2015.

Check out these related posts:

Does God Exist?
Is God Good?
In Awe of the God of Science

3 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Christianity, Ethics, Faith & Science, Religion & Spirituality

September 29, 2014

Dark Matter vs Dark Energy: War in the Heavens!

By David D. Flowers

Have you ever heard of dark matter and dark energy? If you hold to the Warfare Worldview—that sometime in the primordial cosmos there was an angelic rebellion against God—you might find this interesting.

Dark matter was first postulated due to the gravitational force of galaxies (or lack thereof) which couldn’t be explained by the visible mass of objects in any system. Therefore, it became clear that there is an invisible, ordering force holding space together. Hence, the term “dark” matter.

On the other hand, dark energy is an unseen force that works against the ordering power of dark matter. No, this isn’t science fiction. It’s happening.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Paul, Ephesians 6:12 NIV

Astronomers and theoretical physicists state that both dark matter and dark energy once worked together, from the moment of the Big Bang to be precise, but dark energy began accelerating expansion and working against the ordering forces of dark matter around 5 billion years ago.

“…the expansion rate of the cosmos began speeding up about 5 billion to 6 billion years ago, like a roller coaster zooming down a track. That is when astronomers believe that dark energy’s repulsive force overtook gravity’s attractive grip.” Adam Riess, prof of physics & astronomy at Johns Hopkins University

In other words, dark energy is working to rip space apart and repel the unifying “gravitational” forces of dark matter. These are the scientific facts. And this blog post is my theological interpretation of those facts.

So, what I find most fascinating is how close this event—a war in the heavens—is to the formation of planet Earth, some 4.6 billion years ago.

Could this war between dark matter and dark energy be evidence of the spiritual war that eventually caused tohu wa bohu (chaos and destruction) upon the earth, impacting the evolution of life as we know it?

The early church father Athenagoras (ca.130-190AD) said that Satan was originally, “the spirit which is about matter who was created by God, just as the other angels were… and entrusted with the control of matter and the forms of matter” (see Greg Boyd’s Satan & the Problem of Evil, pg. 46-47).

This idea that Satan is the “spirit of matter” is most likely rooted in the NT teaching that the devil is “the ruler of the cosmos” (archon tou kosmou), having power over the physical and material world (Jn 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; Eph 2:2; 2 Cor 4:4)—a challenging worldview to a post-enlightenment audience.

Just as diabolos is from the root “to scatter and cast apart”… so it is with this “dark energy” that would currently appear to be, or is at least feared to be, the eventual demise of the cosmos.

“The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.”
1 John 3:8b

We need only to embrace Christus Victor for a hopeful future where, in light of the resurrection, cosmic renewal is promised, therefore, inevitable.

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” Paul, Romans 8:18-21 NIV

I suppose that in the future (possibly after you and I are long gone!), scientists will observe dark energy losing its power, or turned in on itself in a way that can’t be fully explained, certainly not with the rhetoric of the rationalist.

Of course, this “dark” power is already losing its grip on the earth through a Kingdom revolution inaugurated by Christ. It’s no mystery to his church.

May the generation of Kingdom revolutionaries that are around to witness dark matter’s victory over the diabolical forces of dark energy be the first to say…

“We told you so.”

Yes. Come, Lord Jesus. Come.

Viva La Revolution!

D.D. Flowers, 2014.

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