FROM OUR IMMATERIAL SELF: A part from the Triune God revealed through the Bible as the eternal, personal, sovereign Spirit who created, sustains, and is Lord of all souls, there is simply no way to account for, nor explain, our primary spiritual nature. That is, we are immaterial selves, minds, who, though fully integrated with our bodies from inception to death, transcend and supervene upon our physical nature. The soul-less deterministic forces and processes of sheer evolution on purely physical matter will not produce spiritually self-aware, self-conscious, self-determined, and self-evaluating persons like us.

Consider four simple reasons clearly indicating that we each have a prime immaterial nature, also known as a mind, soul, or spirit.

(1) Your mind is more then your brain. Our brains consist of non-conscious parts, which together, host our consciousness. Like an airplane in flight, like a lit bulb, like a electromagnet force, there is something else not equatable to the parts or the whole.

(2) Your mind is more then your mental states. We are enduring, transcending selves, responsible for our past, present, and future thoughts and actions. Like the file folder for a journalist’s story, which story transcends and superimposes itself on the collected facts, sources, and details.

(3) Your mind exercises power over your brain, nervous system, and thus your body. Our minds are fully integrated with, and exercise dominion over, our brains and bodies for living meaningful in our world. Like the personal choice to move a limb vs. external brain manipulation.

(4) Evidence from near death experiences (NDEs) show that people have been aware, conscious, and informed outside their bodies. Conscious awareness after clinical death has been experienced, and in certain cases empirically verified, by people’s accurate recounting of surrounding details upon returning from an NDE.

Human consciousness continues to be a great unexplainable mystery under the dominant philosophical paradigm of the western world. While modern science has indeed learned much about the brain and nervous system, it remains unable to explain and account for the presence of the mind.

Yet, when we simply turn to the ancient biblical text we readily discover that our God made us physical beings with a primary spiritual nature, the real living, conscious you and me (Genesis 1:26-28, 2:7, John 4:23-24, James 2:26). In the power of the Spirit, through the Son, the Father created our physical bodies as vehicles for our true spiritual selves to exist meaningfully in this world.