Featured Personal responsibility and mental illness

Telling the depressed man to trust Christ is being neighborly.

 

How can one say they love God who they cannot see, when they have no love or compassion for their neighbor who they can see? What will a man give in exchange for his soul? These are just basic questions, not directed at anyone.

There are people on this board in the past who would have preached to a man freezing to death in the cold and not lifted one finger to get him to a warm spot to save his life. Where is the love of God in this person?

 

Our Brains Are Not Us

Our brains are not us” [Excerpts]

"The mind is what the brain does," according to Steven Pinker, Harvard's celebrity neuropsychologist. We "are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules," according to the co-discoverer and Nobel laureate Francis Crick. "You are your synapses," according to neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux.

Neuro-reductionism, the theory that we essentially are our brains, is the flavour of the week in popular science. Which makes it all the more surprising that the hottest article in the latest issue of the journal Bioethics runs under the headline "Our Brains Are Not Us". Normally in the vanguard of attacks on the reduction of personality to a computer-like neural network are non-materialist philosophers. But this study, by Walter Glannon, of the University of Calgary, takes a different tack, something he calls "the distributed model of the mind". "I challenge and reject neuro-reductionism by arguing that the mind emerges from and is shaped by interaction among the brain, body, and environment. The mind is not located in the brain but is distributed among these three entities as the organism engages with and constructs meaning from its surroundings."

Glannon points out that although cognitive neuroscientists reject a dualist model of a non-material mind and a material body, they fall into an equally contentious theory -- brain-body dualism. This fails to appreciate the effect of the body on the brain.

The mind is not a disembodied brain in a vat of chemicals, as in some B-grade horror films, he says. Transplanting a brain into a different body would not preserve the identity of the person. In the words of German neuro-philosopher Thomas Fuchs, "The brain is only an organ, and it is not the brain, but the organism or the living person that has conscious access to the world."

http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/8643/

[TBC: As Dave has commented, “[The articles] Sir John Eccles has written are very fascinating….he received his Nobel Prize for research on the brain. He describes the brain as: ‘A machine that a ghost can operate.’ Your brain doesn’t think; if it did we would be prisoners of our brain. Our brain is like a computer that we use. There’s a ghost in the machine, as they say and the brain is like a computer that we use to interface with this space-time-matter continuum in which our bodies function.”]

Our Brains are Not Us

The non-physical mind cannot "catch" a "physical" disease.

 

And they were charge for manslaughter, and rightly so, for the child could have lived simply going to a hospital and getting proper treatment.

Now, you are advocating murder.

 

Were all epileptics in the Bible demon possessed? If you can prove to me that none in this passage were epileptics, you might have a point.

Matthew 13:58 And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.

 

You did not answer the question. If Jesus had followed your theory, then He would have preached the Gospel to the demon possessed man and left the demons there. He would have told Peter about his lack of faith and let him drowned. He would have let Lazarus rot after comforting Martha and Mary. He would have let the crowd stone the prostitute after telling her to go and sin no more. I guess His greatest feat would have been to tell the Gospel to the 5000+, and let them starve to death.

 

You have to go where the Lord leads. That deacon had no right to say that to you. Follow your heart.

 

WOW. With that kind of logic, euthanasia must be okay.

Shame on you.

 

The thing is, when someone is advocating cruel and harsh theology such as this, when there is no basis in Scripture, it is just a matter of time before they slip, and when they do, they go off the deep end. Does anyone think these two individuals are the same person?

 

No I am not advocating murder.

I believe people with physical problems should seek medical advice.


Matthew 9:12 But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

Now please provide me the Scripture that says the mind can get sick. If you can provide that, I will admit I am wrong.

 

Sorry annsni. Doesn't work. Here is the question that was set forth...

et's use you own logic for a second. If a lost person is suffering from mental illness, and they are at the point of dieing. Would you rather them to just die lost, or live longer with proper treatment, and maybe hear the gospel and get saved?

The person is at the point of dying. That tells me that there is no time to pick him up and walk or drive him to the hospital.

Sorry, but his soul is more important.

By the way, the hypothetical case that was presented is an impossibility anyway since there is no such thing as 'mental illness.'

 

I've been thinking FAL, Stead, and Fred's Wife are all the same; or possibly they are two people. Very similar posts and arguments.

 

If Jesus had followed your theory, He would have gave Mary and Martha Paxil and told them that it would make them feel better.

 

You can rest assured. I am not freeatlast and I do not think I am freeatlast.

 

Ridiculous.

 

Brains can be affected physically. Brains can even be diseased.

But the brain is not the mind and the mind is not the brain. The mind is immaterial and cannot get a disease.

As to your toe, that is a physical feature.