Over the last week or more I have been engaging in dialogue with a pastor in Charlotte, North Carolina who pastors at an evangelical fundamentalist Baptist church. He also blogs on WordPress to further proselytize or evangelize his own world-view to a small audience of followers.
This post will address our somewhat lengthy engagements of opposing world-views on one specific post on his blog, as well as my expansions on what simply could not be sufficiently addressed on his blog in long, long comment threads. I am very certain that his small number of followers/readers, some of whom are members of his Baptist church, got extremely bored with the in-depth conversations and Scriptural theological debates we had and simply tuned out. Those discussions will get lost and buried completely in his never-ending blog-posts, never really reaching his audience’s objective minds.
But that’s modern social-media, is it not? And that is modern attention spans on the internet, is it not? Hence, my needed blog-post here… to say the many things and point out the further details that Pastor Jonathan Waits willingly refused to seriously consider. He had already decided how he would respond BEFORE our dialogue even started. If that isn’t narrow bias, then I don’t know what biasness means at all.
Our Brains & Environment Form Our Identities
Before I dive into this fascinating, heavily studied neuroscience of our human brains and the environment we often choose to experience much or most of our life, I asked Pastor Jonathan Waits what his family, educational, and occupational backgrounds entailed. This was his response:
I graduated from Truman State University with a degree in chemistry. I was planning to be a high school chemistry teacher until God very clearly (to me) called me to ministry instead. After graduating and getting married, I went to Denver Seminary and graduated with my M.Div. I’ve been a pastor ever since.
I grew up in a wonderful family with great parents who loved each other and my sister and me. We were active in our church throughout my growing up years. Faith was assumed in the rhythms and conversations and activities of our family, but it was never forced. We didn’t do family devotionals. I made a profession of faith when I was 8 [years old] and grew into it slowly from there. I didn’t fully grasp what I was doing then, but I came to better understand it on my own as I read and study [sic] the Scriptures myself. Never, though, was I pressured into any decision about much of anything related to faith or life. It was a really healthy environment that I hope I am gifting to my own kids.
— Pastor Jonathan Waits, Oct. 22, 2024 — his “The Nexus” blog-site
During our somewhat lengthy dialogue about his current world-view versus mine (Secular, Freethinking Humanist), he really struggled badly trying to understand, to grasp my perspective and world-view and why I deconverted from Christianity and the ministry and missions in 1991. He just could not find a way in his brain to relate to me and my life experiences. It was stunning really, but not uncommon.
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Inside every head of every human, and inside every residence on Earth is the most complex object we have discovered in the Universe: the human brain. That marvel of biology in the cranium might seem alien to us at first, but the fact is… it is us. For our entire lives hundreds of billions and billions and billions of cells have quadrillions and quadrillions of electrical synapses firing trillions of trillions of signals every second of ever minute of our entire life. For many decades (hopefully) those gooey electrical sparks make up all that we experience in life as “us.”
So what shapes who you become? Answer: It is about how your life/environment shapes your brain and how your brain shapes your life.
For a few millenia humankind believed a soul or a spirit, something more than mere matter, made up who you were in life. Today, that is no longer the case. Extensively understanding our identities in-depth can only be done by understanding that 3 lbs. organ in our head.
When any of us are first born we are born helpless. However, we are born with adaptable brains. For about the next two years our brains are unfinished, so human babies are born much more dependent than other mammals who are often born able to walk, swim, or stand just minutes or hours after birth. Not human babies. And yet, after those first two years of learning the very basics of our immediate environment, our infant and toddler brains allow us to develop and make neural connections based on the child’s environment. This biological and physiological strategy has made human beings one of the most adaptable and malleable species on the planet so that we can first survive, then hopefully thrive, based on our immediate and extended environment(s).
Since at least August 1966 with Charles Whitman up inside the University Texas Tower, Austin, TX, but really going back to 1885 with Sigmund Freud, humans have learned that our survival and our growth (or death) and life experiences are just as dependent on our individual brains (or brain tumors as with Whitman, 1966) as they are on our environment(s). We cannot escape the two forces, ever. Life wires up the human brain with few or many experiences in order to adapt, survive, die and/or thrive in most of Earth’s and our familial environments and then tune it up on the fly, on the job. It’s really that simple.
A newborn’s brain has the same number of neurons as an adult. However, after those first two years the neurons are quickly forming newer connections relative to their environment. This continues well into adolescence and young adulthood. By that time the developing young brain’s neuron connections have more than quadrupled—as many as 2-4 million new connections every day—by their mid-30’s all relative to that individual’s environment(s), i.e. life experiences, AND how their brain developed genetically in the womb.
After year two we become who we are not by growth or new neurons created, but by pruning back or removing what is unnecessary in order to survive, adapt, and hopefully thrive. We learn how to make our life and identity happy and happier according to our individual brains and endocrine systems; all very influenced by our immediate and (slightly?) extended environments. The field of neuroscience confirms this consistently in many case studies for a minimum of the last six decades around the world.
Our conscious experiences in life are guided NOT by monism, or even by binary constructs, but by a plethora of pluralism. Everything around us on this planet, and including all humans, is evidenced by immeasurable pluralism to the point our brains struggle with the possibilities. This is also true beyond our planet. To cope, many of us prune down or toss out entirely what is perceived as unnecessary, or harmful, or even lethal… in their own brain based upon their past and/or present environment and individual life experiences. The neural connections go from being universal to very specific of your narrowing and immediate environment(s). Our brains are wired up by our immediate or slightly extended environment. After all, we don’t know, we can’t experience what we don’t know or haven’t ever experienced.
But the outside world that forms our brain and identity is a gamble. The outside influences of our family, our immediate environment doesn’t always give the healthy stimulus our brains crave.
The Jensen Family of Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Americans Bill and Carol Jensen adopted three Romanian biologically related babies aged 4 from a poorly staffed and horrible, over filled Romanian orphanage.
During the collapse and fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s reign of terror from 1968 to 1989 he had created over 170,000 Romanian children orphaned by his rampant ethical cleansing throughout the country. Bill’s and Carol’s adopted Romanian children in 1996 became John, Tom, and daughter Victoria. They did not have names in the orphanage just numbers. Dr. and Professor Charles A. Nelson III of Harvard Medical School describes what it was like walking through these Romanian orphanages:
You’d walk into [an orphanage] room and be surrounded by these little kids who you have never seen before and they’d want to jump into your arms, or sit in your lap, or hold your hand, or walk off with you. And this sort of indiscriminate behavior is the hallmark and feature of kids growing up in an institution.
Did these small children’s behavior go beyond mere distress, neglect, and lack of human contact? Did all of this combine to physically structure their brains? Young human brains need lots of stimulus to develop. It seeks out information and experiences. If they do not receive it or don’t receive a healthy amount of diverse experiences and information, then the young brain does not know how to get wired up and developed for survival, much less to thrive. Those kids in institutions result in adult IQ’s in the 60’s and 70’s. That is terribly low for modern life and humanity. They also develop secondary, ripple-effect emotional-behavioral problems such as severe attachment or detachment issues, and show all the signs of an underdeveloped brain and EEG activity very reduced.
What many neuroscientists found along with Dr. Charles A. Nelson was that children from orphanages placed into a nurturing family before the age of two generally recovered normally. However, children placed in nurturing families after the age of two their brain development was significantly compromised or severely delayed. What do these tests and case studies reveal to us?
The answer is straight forward: the lack of diverse experiences throughout one’s developmental and adult stages leads to the human brain not wiring correctly, especially for a 20th– or 21st-century shrinking globe. As a result, the brain doesn’t receive diverse sufficient experiences, diverse sufficient information over an extended period of time to know how best to wire itself. No debate.
Dr. Nelson’s work clearly revealed that when the human brain is starved of input, of many diverse inputs it needs to fully develop, the development is stunted and ill-equipped to manage a never-ending changing, evolving diverse world, both in the human and animal kingdoms as well as in nature. The Romanian-born Jensen kids still have emotional and learning disabilities from neglect in the orphanage more than 25-years later as adults.
What we individual humans and brains experience in our younger adolescence (hormones) and young 20’s or earliest 30’s goes a long way in who we become. Those youthful years are right on schedule for a more refined/refining, changing brain. But again, this is only half the story of our human brain.
The Genetic Blueprint from Generational & One’s (In)Experience
A neuroscientific experiment called the Look At Me in a glass windowed shop on a busy street reveals compellingly how the teenage brain is wired differently than our adult brains. When adults were placed in the shop window with pedestrians stopping to stare, their heart-rates, sweat glands, and facial expressions almost never changed from before the curtain was drawn open. However, when teenagers were placed in the shop window, all monitored physical responses spiked significantly. Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains in this quick 20-minute podcast:
Basically, the big difference between a teenage, early 20’s brain and an adult brain over 30-years is the area of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex. This area becomes active when you think about yourself, especially the emotional situation to yourself. As one grows from child to adolescence, the activity in this cortex rises peaking around 15-years of age. This is what Pastor Jonathan Waits experienced from (his own words above) 8-years old until he was a teenager surrounded by Baptist friends, family, and church members all his life. His (narrow, confined?) social involvements carried a ton of weight for him.
In most adults this response in the prefrontal cortex is modest. But in teenagers and young adults it causes intensified emotions which go into overdrive. The result is often or sometimes a high stress emotion that can greatly change the teenager’s or young adult’s life for a very long time. This is what happens to most all teenagers and young adults, including Pastor Jonathan Waits.
It isn’t simply about self-consciousness, the development of the teen and young adult brain has other consequences as well. That can include poor impulse control (temptation in theological terms), risk taking (un-Christ-like behavior), and distorted coping skills (Satan?). It has been repeatedly found in neurological studies over the decades that most of the dramatic changes of our brains have finished, but even beyond our 20’s our brains can still undergo radical physical transformations.
Reshaping Our Genetic Adult Brains
Derek O’Reilly of the Knowledge Point School, Ltd., in London, UK is the Training Master of all Black Cabs in London proper. It takes his students at least four years to complete the memory recall and pass certification for a license to drive throughout a 642 radius mile area, 24,000 streets and roads, and 50,000+ places of interest to be quickly recalled for all eventual Black Cab drivers in London. This is by far one of the world’s most difficult feats of memorization to complete.
This trade school’s testing and licensing of drivers made the rigorous memorization of particular interest for an international group of neurologists. The neurology group was most interested in the part of the brain called the posterior hippocampus of these students. They did brain scans before admission into the school, during training, and after graduation/licensing and found in every case that by the end of their memory-training the posterior hippocampus had literally grown larger. All the mathematical calculations, all the visualization driving, all the simulations of future routes had reshaped their brain anatomy to match their M.O., their task at hand or their personal belief system.
This means who you are and who you will be from an infant to a geriatric is a fluctuating work in progress until your very last breath. Everything we experience throughout our life will alter and structure our brain, unless of course we cower, or limit, or avoid new and different experiences that challenge our intellectual and physical comfort zones. Based on all these life experiences, many or few or none at all, will still mold and wire our brains to some great or small degree over time.
But our brains can also change in ways we have no control over. Ways that can have a terrible impact on our personalities and how we behave socially. Epileptic seizures in young or adult people are a prime common example. Another example are children, teenagers, adults, or the elderly who suffer from a brain tumor, Parkinson’s Disease, Schizophrenia, or any number of neurological physiological disorders or diseases.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Charles Whitman in August of 1966 had been a model citizen, an Eagle Scout, a former U.S. Marine honorably discharged, working in a bank while studying mechanical engineering at the University of Texas, Austin. Nothing before had ever suggested to any friends, family, or coworkers he was capable of what transpired next. Tragically that summer Whitman wrote letters about murdering his mother, wife, then his mass shooting of students under the UT Tower. Nothing prior ever pointed the UT campus or Austin Police investigators to a disturbing change in his recent personality. What happened?
With his three rifles and some two sidearm pistols, Whitman went up the tower, killed three persons inside, proceeded to the observation deck of the tower, went outside and began opening fire randomly on anyone below. He shot and killed 15 people and wounded 31 in just 96-minutes. The autopsy report later found that Whitman had a nickel-size brain tumor in the amygdala, the part of our brain that regulates fear and aggression. The pressure on Whitman’s amygdala caused a cascading flow of emotions that led him to the tragic senseless violence July 31 and August 1, 1966 which otherwise would be completely out of his previous personality. His brain matter changed and it made him change with it.
Granted the change in Charles Whitman is an extreme case, however, thousands and thousands of neurological research studies around the world since the late 19th-century show repeatedly that how our brain is developed does indeed form who we are and become in large or small degrees. Our neural networks and how they are structured make up a large part of our self-identity and our social identity. It is inescapable.
The Primary Link of It All: Memory
Brain memory is Central Command of our personality, our identity. It gives our life a unique narrative, one to be expressed, shared, with meaning or purpose unique only to our individual experiences. Unfortunately, human memory is NOT always reliable, not even by the (pre)supposed Gospel copyists/scribes. Whether it was 1st– thru 4th-century humans or 21st-century humans, our brains have not drastically changed in a mere two millenia.
If you try to think back on your 5-year old child memories, then your 13-year old teenage memories, your 27-year old memories, 45-year old memories, 60-year old memories, and perhaps your 80-year old memories, they will link back to a general theme, but neurological studies have repeatedly shown those memories factually change about every decade or less. Why? Because all of our brains have a finite number of neural connections since the age of two. Hence, we prune back or allow to fade the historical memories within weeks/months of our past events for new memories and new replacement neural connections.
Dr. Elizabeth Loftus above conducted another experiment upon 1,000+ volunteer test-subjects to determine whether it is possible to implant entirely false memories into a human’s brain? Her results and other neurologists around the world discovered: well over 65% to 75% of the test-subjects not only embraced false memory implants, but embellished them over time. Humans will weave fantasy and more sensational details into the fabric of who they are as well as those around them and what they may or may not tell you.
Then in 1957 one singular case of human memory and recall revolutionized neuroscience revealing that experiential memory is an integral part of who we become.
Henry G. Molaison 1926–2008
Henry Moliason, or H.M. as he was known by family and friends, was born in Manchester, Connecticut in February 1926. His boyhood was very typical for the time until he turned 10-years old. H.M. began to suffer minor epileptic seizures. By his 16th and 17th birthday the seizures became very severe and more incapacitating. High doses of anti-convulsion meds were no longer effective. When he turned 27 H.M. and his family accepted the then experimental surgery called bilateral medial temporal lobectomy to surgically reset several brain organs to hopefully cure his severe epileptic seizures. Despite the surgery controlling his epilepsy, the side effects removed his ability to construct new memories.
For the remaining 55-years of his life H.M. could never form a single long-term memory. But there was more to his post-surgical condition. Henry was always stuck in the present moment for those last 20,075 days and nights of his life. When asked by doctors during his permanent stay at Bickford Health Care Center, Windsor Locks, CT, “What will you do tomorrow?” Henry would always answer, “Whatever is beneficial” or “I will have to see.” He was unable to recall any actual details of his activities the day before, much less 4-5 days prior. What H.M’s condition revealed for all of our human brains was profound for the field of neuroscience.
The brain regions that underpin memory are the same regions that simulate what is probable or coming next, whether tangible and/or abstract. In other words, the past and the future are creations in our individual brains.
Whoever we think we might be to ourselves and socially is an ongoing narrative. This unique individual and localized social construct starts after age two and continues non-stop until your death. This is where the popular idioms Old habits are hard to break or You can’t teach an old dog new tricks come from. Why? Because of brain degeneration such as dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, or Huntington’s disease as more and more people are living into their 80’s, 90’s, or 100’s. The good news is that through regular physical and mental activities into our elderly geriatric years neural brain networks can be rebuilt or better refined. This is because of Cognitive Reserves.
And now I would like to gradually navigate back toward my recent dialogues with Pastor Jonathan Waits, the Baptist minister in Charlotte, NC.
Meaning of Life vs Self-Meaning
How do the physical cells and neurons in our brains help us/me care about anything in life? Why does consciousness in all of us occur? Throughout your life you will hear, listen, and read as many theoretical explanations as there are stars in the night sky and galaxies in the Cosmos. The question of consciousness is still the greatest unsolved existential mystery of human history. The general question of “meaning” is without doubt still undefined, unanswered. However, we can say with certainty and abundant evidence that the meaning of something to you is completely defined by YOUR web of associations based on your entire history of personal experiences.
Imagine if I showed you a painting of various colors in no particular obvious pattern. Will that conjure up in your mind specific memories and ignite your imaginations? No, not likely. To you it is just a painting of colors with no particular meaning to you. But look at the two images below:
What do these two images mean to you? Do you think they will mean exactly the identical meaning you have to someone else? Why or why not?
The two flags will trigger some sort of meaning that is specific to your personal experiences. However, your experiences will never be precisely identical to someone else’s experiences nor to any number of others who look at the flags. Humans do not perceive or interpret objects as they are we perceive them, interpret them as we are. Every single one of us, including Pastor Jonathan Waits and myself, and all of you are on your specific journey, specific trajectory guided by our generational genetics, our immediate and extended social networks, and our own individual life experiences… whether many or few, wide or narrow, joyous or traumatic, boring or exciting.
As a result, every single human brain has a different neural reality and one that does not and cannot reflect one unified reality. Monism is a human coping mechanism constructed to ease our fears and insecurities about not being in total control. However, the Universe and Cosmos, and Earth itself amply shows through inference and explicitly tangible facts that they do not operate on or require one human’s or a group of humans’ invented Monism.
One of the most popular, widespread human construct of monism since the Bronze, Iron, and Classical Eras is religion’s and their endless plethora of convoluted theological constructs that have either 1) no unifying evidence or 2) very little convincing, compelling collection of evidence. This is no surprise given how the three Abrahamic religions evolved and evolved and changed and changed, some over several millenia of human history, across a vast swath of geographical, cultural, and military events and experiences. Some or many of the storied events changed many times over thousands and thousands of years and some/many which became false narratives, myths, and sensationalized legends or compounded embellishments.
No, the meaning of life and self-meaning is not that complex or confusing at all, not in the end. When “meaning” is understood primarily and/or strictly on an individual’s biological-neurological connections and social networks—tiny, small, large, or immense beyond compare—throughout their own life experiences, only then can one and millions or billions of Earthlings realize that meaning is found best within infinite pluralism as the planet, solar system, universe, and cosmos reflect and repeatedly shows us. This is what I politely and patiently tried to convey to Pastor Jonathan Waits over several days of dialogue. This has been what I always have tried to convey, to show and backup with ample broad evidence to all monistic, theistic faith-believers since 1991-92 the first months of my deconversion from Christianity.
Unfortunately, as I’ve conveyed here and I hope sufficiently, our human brains, such as Pastor Jonathan Waits’ brain or mine and yours, can be deeply programmed in unhealthy ways, in connecting neural pathways, to only perceive reality, his nearby limited reality, in just one way… monism, unbending and inflexible to the point of handicapping a fuller, more wholesome, thrilling life of unimaginable experiences, lessons, and adventures. To further demonstrate what he has done and chosen for many years surrounding himself daily with like-minded sycophants, or people who don’t challenge him or his world-view, but rather echo his world-view, I offer this blog-post. Obviously, Mr. Waits’ chosen tunnel-vision and radical narrow path is not just restrictive, limiting a more whole, sharper brain, but it can easily be defined as unhealthy, even divisive for a species that needs, even demands biologically and socially inclusion rather than exclusion.
An Epilogue
Over on his blog-site I asked Pastor Waits to freely share his background; childhood, teen and young adult background, his educational and occupational background. I was hoping it would be lengthy enough to gain a fair, accurate idea of his life experiences. Whether intentional or not it was resume-like and semi-short. I wanted more extensive background, especially many significant experiences from many continents, many nations, cultures, people and how much time was spent there experiencing different places, people, and events. His answer only told me the probable or implied story of strictly a (limited?) American experience. I have invited him to visit here and maybe change/correct my deduction of him. I hope he accepts.
I, on the other hand, as I share in/under my About menu selection, have had an unbelievable amount of life experiences during my six decades of life and in all sorts of ways and interactions! Every possible life-lesson I have absorbed and cherished has been acquired on four of the world’s six inhabitable continents: N. America, S. America, Europe, and Africa. This was possible because of my unquenchable passion for soccer or football, or futebol as it is called in Brazil. And futebol/football is a universal language no matter where you are and seamlessly connects you to anyone on any continent. I lived for a period of time and playing soccer in Brazil, West Africa, and briefly in northern-ish Europe—Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Austria. The most time I spent in those places was Rio de Janeiro, Brazil around São Cristóvão, Botafogo, and Copacabana, the heart of world-class football and festive, beautiful people! I regret that I have lost most of my Brazilian Portuguese. 😕 The two continents I have not been to or lived? Asia and Australia. I would love to change that.
But all the places and people I have experienced along with their marvelous cultures (and footballing talents) influenced me in enormous ways helping me see, find, and embrace the goodness and wonder of humanity no matter the small differences. I would strongly encourage anyone, especially Pastor Waits or those like him to follow Mark Twain’s profound, timeless observation:
It is because of this life I have lived deeply that I am now a very happy, kind, understanding, compassionate, exploring Freethinking Humanist looking always for more enriching life experiences, good or bad, to give and/or embrace in equal measures for whomever I encounter. I think that is fair.
Further expansive reading from one of my blogging buddies:
Why Aren’t Christians Unified?
Addendum 11/1/2024 — Pastor Jonathan Waits finally answered my invitation to visit here and comment, not here obviously, and he said this:
And now I’ve skimmed your post. I don’t have anything I feel the need to comment on there, and so I don’t plan to. If at some point in the future I find myself with sufficient time to read it more carefully and more thoroughly, perhaps I will, but don’t expect a comment either way.
Unfortunately, this appears to be his regular M.O. with non-Christians who ask him, challenge him about his own world-view—he will not meet you halfway. Interpret that response/behavior as you will. I think it is indicative of his fear about his world-view when he steps outside of his personal comfort zone, his church, or his blog-followers. Being surrounded by Yes people or sycophants is risky, especially if you fortify yourself in very little diversity. It is not healthy for our brains to be trapped in a small box, never wanting or too scared to venture out.
As the popular cliché goes, You can lead a donkey to water, but you can’t make it drink, especially if it has a lifetime of only one type, one pH level of (holy?) water. 😉
Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always
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I stumbled across a business magazine article last week about a very well-known, fascinating trait we humans possess: worth-seeking. The article was 
The Professor's Convatorium 