Question: I enjoyed your article, “The Living Word of God.” However, if the brain doesn’t ...

Question: I enjoyed your article, “The Living Word of God.” However, if the brain doesn’t originate thought, what about dreams, which are visualized thoughts? What about insanity? What about drugs acting on the brain and changing behavior?

Response: The brain is a computer which the real person within uses to operate the body. If the brain originated thought, we would have to do whatever it decided. That is clearly not the case. We decide.

Solomon said dreams come “through the multitude of business” (Eccl 5:3). While we sleep the “computer” plays back composites of what we have said, thought or done. Insanity could represent a foul-up of the physical brain mechanism. As a spiritual problem, apparent insanity could be rebellion against God, against the truth of God, an attempt to escape reality and its responsibilities, a deliberate means (in one’s warped thinking) to gain one’s own selfish ends by manipulating others, etc.

Psychoactive drugs simply distort brain functions and thus change behavior. Neither insanity nor drugs negate the fact that the brain is a computer.