Can It Be Real?

For most modern people, the question is not, “How do you know your prayer has been answered?” but “Can a prayer be answered at all?” Most modern people cannot believe that there is such a thing as a mechanics to getting an answer to prayer. They have no mental framework for believing such a thing is possible.

The reason for this seems to be the contribution that modern philosophy and modern neuro-science has made to the age-old “mind/body” problem. The problem, in a nutshell, is this: Is what we call the “mind” located entirely within the brain (which is part of the body), or is the “mind” something different that is somehow connected to the brain without being part of it?

It appears to most us that we all have a little tiny “I-guy” (or “gal”) that sits behind the bridge of our nose, inside our brain, and looks out on the world through our two eyes, and listens to the world through our two ears, tastes things through the tongue in the mouth below, and receives smells from the nose just in front and below, and feels with the skin that encloses the body the brain occupies. That little “I-guy” seems to be the “operator” of the “machine” that is our body. He (or she) decides what the body will do next, and what it will do about what it senses through the five senses, and what it feels because of those senses and because of memories that are accumulated in the brain like a DVD collection. When we say the word “I,” it is usually this little “body operator” that we are thinking of when we speak.

Through out history, the language of human beings has been that the “I-guy” is indeed a occupant of the body who is different from the body. Put that way, it’s not hard to see that what is mean by “mind” is what is also meant by “soul,” or “spirit.” In fact, the old word for “spirit” is “ghost.” Pre-modern people where afraid of the possibility of an “I-guy” getting disconnected from his host body and wandering freely. (Usually after his host body had ceased to function.)

It is this conception that modern philosophy and modern neuro-science have done their level best to destroy. Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) was one of the old philosophers who tried to preserve the notion that mind was an inhabitant of the body. (http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/Table.html) But modern philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976) dismissed Descartes’ contribution as “the ghost in the machine theory.” (http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/ryle.html) And so now many modern people believe that they are all machine and no ghost - not even the Holy Ghost. And sadly, I believe that this has become an unconscious belief even in modern people who profess themselves to be Christians.