The Brain and Christianity

Rafael Yuste, a professor of biological sciences and Columbia University, is involved with mapping the activity of the brain. He is quoted as saying, “Most people think of the brain as very complex, but I think we’re just ignorant. It could be very simple,” he says. “The idea has permeated that there’s something magic inside the brain, but really it’s just a firing of neurons.” He also says that the brains of human beings aren’t that much different from those of flies and mice. “Nature, at the end of the day, is using the same tricks across evolution,” he says. “The brain is robust, it cannot be too complicated.”(Schocker)

This supports what Lewis wrote—that the brain is just the “receiving set.” Reason and Rationality are “something more than biochemistry” (Miracles 62-63). What Lewis calls Reason and Rationality, I call consciousness. Our individuality, how things appear to us, our yearning for God and our faith—these are powered by God, not by the brain.