* Pain is NOT Physical: This special edition of Real Science Radio is adapted from the BEL Forum at TheologyOnline.com: Pain and Sentience are Knowledge Based, and Knowledge is Not Physical! Therefore, pain is not physical. Consider the three aspects of various created organisms and beings, body, soul, and spirit.
- A Plant has a Body: do not have souls (which are non-material), and when you chop down a tree, it does not feel pain (a 1960s science fiction TV show notwithstanding).
- An Animal has a Body and Soul: in addition to a body, animals have a non-material component, a rudimentary soul as indicated in Genesis 1:24 and elsewhere. A soul enables animals to sense pain, and so that many can relate to other animals and to human beings.
- A Person has a Body, Soul, and Spirit: God made human beings with a body, soul, and spirit (1 Thes. 5:23, etc.), and thus we have a far greater capacity to enjoy the depths of relationship, and also therefore, to experience pain.
* Pain is Comprehension: Pain is awareness; and awareness is not physical. Neurologists claim that we sense pain with our brain. As evidence for that, they show that nerve damage can prevent the signal from an injury from reaching the brain, and in such cases, many patients indicate that they do not feel pain from that injury. However, the brain as an organ itself is completely unable to feel pain. When a brain surgeon operates and cuts into brain matter, the patient does not feel pain from that surgery. Why not? How can the brain, possibly the only organ that does not sense pain, be the very organ by which we sense pain? The answer only appears after realizing from the nature of pain itself, that pain is not physical.
* Pain is Non-Physical: Pain is awareness, which is a state of knowledge. You can program a robot to back up suddenly if it bumps into a wall, and even to yell, "Ouch." But it hasn't felt pain, because it is only made of atoms and molecules, and can have no awareness, because like many very real things, sentience is not physical. The laws of logic are not physical (no mass, polarity, etc.), and neither is reason, nor the laws of grammar. Pain is awareness that something is wrong. Therefore pain is inherently non-physical, and so pain resulting from non-physical causes is dramatically more hurtful than pain resulting from physical stimuli. A paper cut on the eyeball really hurts. A father who will not look his disowned son in the eye is far more painful. The intense pain of childbirth passes quickly. The inconsolable pain of a child dying lasts for years. Physical pain dissipates more quickly because it must be converted to the non-physical realm for it to be experienced. Emotional and spiritual pain hits the soul and spirit directly, and so it persists longer and is more effective. If someone has been abandoned by his parents, he might be able to know the pain felt by the little one who is aborted, purposefully rejected by his mother, and intentionally killed, whether by a surgical or chemical abortion as with the Morning After Abortion Pill. A mother who doesn't have the willingness to love her child hurts him far beyond the physical impact of the abortion. Giving the child anesthesia will do little to alleviate his or her pain from the abortion, and nor will it help with the mother's pain when she meets that child, on Judgment Day.
* Atheist Clichés Disproved in 8 Seconds: or less! (See this updated at kgov.com/atheism.)
Atheist Cliché 1: There is no truth!
Theist Rebuttal: Is that true? [1 second]
Atheist Cliché 2: There are no absolutes!
Theist Rebuttal: Absolutely? [1 second]
Atheist Cliché 3: Only your five senses provide real knowledge!
Theist Rebuttal: Says which of the five? [2 seconds]
Atheist Cliché 4: Great suffering proves that a loving God cannot exist!
Theist Rebuttal: The unstated assumption is false, that suffering can have no value or purpose. [4.5 secs]
Atheist Cliché 5: Atheism is scientific, because science does not allow for a supernatural interpretation of an event!
Theist Rebuttal: Such circular reasoning forces science to assume that which atheists claim it supports. [5 seconds]
Atheist Cliché 6: Widespread evil proves that a righteous God cannot exist!
Theist Rebuttal: The two unstated assumptions are false: that love can be forced; and that some love is not worth enduring much hate. [6.5 seconds]
Atheist Cliché 7: If theists claim that the universe could not have always been here, then God couldn't have always been here either.
Theist Rebuttal: The natural universe is subject to the physical laws, so it would run out of usable energy; a supernatural, spiritual God is not subject to physics. [7.9 seconds]
"If your worldview can be dismantled within eight seconds, then get a better one." -Bob Enyart, adapted from Battle Royale VII, Does God Exist?
* Post-show Thoughts from Einstein: Albert Einstein, in the collection in Out of My Later Years, wrote that, "science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be," necessarily excluding from its domain "value judgments of all kinds." Thus science could not even prove that the Holocaust or slavery were wrong. And on wondering why mathematics corresponds so well to the universe, in 1921 Einstein asked, "How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?" And in 1936 Einstein famously wrote, "the most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible," and in 1944, remarking about Russell, he described the ability to get from matter to ideas as a "gulf–logically unbridgeable," which some scientists and linguists refer to as Einstein's Gulf. For while matter can be arranged to represent data, information itself is not material.
* Why Could Einstein Not Comprehend? The universe is the product of the mind of God. That is why systematic human thought can do such an admirable job as describing reality. Einstein could not understand this because he described himself as an agnostic and claimed to believe only in "Spinosa's God," by which he seemed to mean the laws nature. Beyond Einstein's grasp then was the reason why mathematical thought could describe the physical world, because the mathematically beautiful formulas that the Great Mathematician conceived in His mind He then implemented in the creation. Thus E=mc2. Because he was rejecting the God of Abraham, Einstein made it impossible to to understand, "How could it be," as he would ask, that non-physical ideas should elegantly describe the physical realm. His rejection of the personal Creator also explains Einstein's inability to understand how ideas could arise from matter. They cannot. Ideas are not physical. But believing only in nature, Einstein was vulnerable to an extreme materialism. However, because a personal God created man with body, soul, and spirit, we can operate in the non-physical (i.e., spiritual) realm, of ideas. What makes all things comprehensible is the incomprehensible Jesus Christ, just as He also bridges the gulf between mankind and ultimate comprehension. For as the Lord Himself said, "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God [the Father], and Jesus Christ [God the Son] whom You have sent" (John 17:3). (See also AmericanRTL.org/Gospel.)
* Lesbian Breast Cancer Risk Factor: From Komen.org: "Lesbians... do have a greater risk of breast cancer than other women... it is linked to several risk factors... [including] never having children..."
UPDATE 3 Years Later: Nat'l Cancer Institute Researcher Admits Abortion Link! Louise A. Brinton, largely responsible for getting the government-funded NCI to deny the abortion-breast cancer link, has co-authored a new study which describes significant risk factors, including "induced abortion."
* See Also: In a related matter, see also kgov.com/debating-the-fetal-pain-abortion-regulation.
* Possible Publisher for The Plot: We'll keep you informed as to the negotiations!
Today's Resource: Bob takes on a college professor and her philosophy class in a debate regarding absolutes. Who wins? Watch Get Out of the Matrix to find out!